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Page 55.
 As applause rippled through the air, and while the audience in the corporate towers gasped and booed, Megan Spite spun the big drum. The plastic chits tumbled and sparkled for a full minute before the drum came to rest.
A ticket popped out and flew into a silver tray.
Miss Megan Spite flounced by, picked it up, turned, and strode off to the right. Her arm was up, holding the ticket to present it to someone off camera.
"Good job, Miss Spite," said Dr. Night—whose face nobody outside Black Umbrella had knowingly seen to date. That information in itself would have been both invaluable and dangerous. The person knowing who Dr. Night really was could earn a large reward from the world's corporate consortia, led by Camelback in the west and Anaconda in the east—and a quick assassin's garrote, bullet, or crocodile.
"Let's see what it says. Oh! Unfortunate man! Let's watch the clock."
For the first time, the video recorder on the set shifted to an enormous clock, which had a white face as tall as Meg, and black hands ticking off the minutes and hours against a circle of simple black numbers. "The computer on board Gemini has received the information, and the program is executing. Oh! I am informed that the shot has been fired. Four minutes, folks. In about two minutes, I will read off the name of the unlucky winner."
Words like outrageous and amoral and psychotic floated around the 300 corporate boardrooms forced to participate in Dr. Night's elaborate and bizarre show.
For over 100 seconds, the music swelled in lifting fugues.
Through the music, one could hear the giant clock ticking on the set.
At the two minute mark, the music softened and Dr. Night cut in. It seemed the clock was ticking louder.
"Our unlucky winner is…Mr. James Dooley of London, U.K.
"Folks, don't try this at home. Our sniper bullet from outer space orbit is on its way to terminate Mr. James Dooley, a sidewalk artist, who is at the moment painting in chalk on the sidewalk on the southeast corner of White Tower on the grounds of the Tower of London. What a terrific choice! It will be too late for anyone to warn him, especially since only you leaders of the world's 300 top corporations are aware of our little demonstration. This should prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that we mean what we say, and that we are capable of killing anyone on earth, at any moment, with this Orbital Sniper Technology."
The screen cut to London. On the grounds of the Tower of London complex, by the Thames, the satellite video from the Keyhole-Corona based cameras on the Gemini space craft picked up a young, long-haired man of about 25 years old. He wore an easily targetable white T-shirt with a rock band logo on front and back. He was crouched over a large sidewalk artwork—one of a line of such artists permitted the rare honor, on the queen's anniversary day, to work in chalk. Immediately below the brownish-gray, white-streaked walls was a strip of grass, hemmed in by a nondescript little iron fence. Before the fence ran a row of black iron benches. Today's festive street art exhibit was taking place on the concrete surface before the benches. Throngs of tourists walked slowly by, or stopped to examine the portraits of flowers, the queen, and passers-by.
"Ten…nine…eight," Dr. Night counted.
One heard sobbing in the corporate boardrooms. They knew that any one of them could soon be next.
"…Three…two…one…"
James Dooley finished a line in white chalk on his drawing of a vase of flowers. He straightened his back and tilted his head to one side to inspect his artwork. A small circle of bystanders clapped.
"Great job, Mr. Dooley," Dr. Night enthused.
Abruptly, the target's T-shirt made a violent fluffing motion, and in the same split second, he was thrown several feet forward. A cone of bloody ejecta spewed ahead of him. His corpse bounced once or twice, so violent was its crash into the concrete surface.
There was an outcry in the corporate boardrooms.
"You profess disapproval," Dr. Night said, "but think about what your corporate policies have done, and continue to do. Think about how you sold cigarettes, and used your media to lie about how good smoking is for people. What about healthcare in the U.S.? Evil! Communism! Socialism! The useful fools preferred to kill their own children to avoid common-sense health care that every other industrialized nation on earth long ago delivered to every citizen. Your outcome was mass murder, a holocaust of banality, happening one child at a time without undue notice in the media that you controlled. With the lessons learned from those early experiments in New Think, right out of George Orwell's 1984, you could convince people of the most absurd falsehoods. What lie have you not promoted for your profit motive? What murder and outrage have you not perpetrated?"
He chuckled drily and appeared to clap slowly. "Really, let's put all pretense aside and agree that this is a wonderful technology. Too bad it's not under your control any more. You will have to negotiate with me, with Black Umbrella, to establish a new world order. It will be so much better for everyone."
He cleared his throat modestly. "So, you ask, what do we, BLUM, have to gain from all this? It's very simple, ladies and gentlemen. Why did nobody think of this before? You will turn over 25% of your common or preferred stock to a special account that can be accessed from any one of thirty major world financial institutions. It will be registered in the name of our consortium, on behalf of the world's lost causes, desperate rebellions, deposed kings, waiting princes, and struggling poets to name just a few. We'll provide social services and win the masses over. We'll restore the decent, middle class life that you destroyed. We'll provide universal health care even to the poorest soul, because it is affordable and the right thing to do. You have created a vast new class of former middle class families now living in their cars and lining up at soup kitchens. They'll hate it at first, because you taught them lies. When they realize their families will be healthier, happier, and more productive, they will vomit on your and your lies. History will piss on your disgusting grave
"Think of it—the number one law—in fact, the one and only law that exists—in the corporate universe is to maximize the wealth or equity of shareholders. That's the people who own stock, and therefore own your corporations. Of course, most are tiny stake holders, who have no real vote. Like the world's industrial democracies, you permit fake proxy votes, but really, ladies and gentlemen, you are to be congratulated on the hermetically sealed and perfect little world in which you have enshrined your absolute power amid smoke and mirrors.
"Now the rest of the world is going to take a large piece of your action.
"And if you do not pay up, we will begin whacking your leadership, one by one, until you tire of running and hiding. We can pick you off while you stand on your balcony, holding your spouse in one arm, and raising a martini to your lips with your other hand. We can pick you off as you go sailing on your twelve-crew yacht. We can pick you off as you board your private jet. There is no place on earth we cannot reach you.
"That's food enough for thought today. I give you five days to comply.
"Those that sign over 20% of their equity will continue business usual. Trust me, you won't miss it, so vast are your holdings. But the poor and working classes, and the disappearing middle class, they will appreciate the health plans, the road projects, and the jobs we will create right under your greedy and ruthless noses.
"And—lest you think we are the imaginary leftists your propaganda has denounced for generations to secretly promote a corporate, post-nationalist, global agenda—I will admit that we are a for-profit organization, interested in our own wealth and bottom line.
“We are not do-gooders, and we do not sing Kumbaya. We are business people, only far better than you are. You are amateurs. We are professional killers when it comes to having our way. We never lose, because we do not waste time with lies and contradictions. That is why we will bury you. You will soon be in the dustbin of history. I have established a new world order that will last for a thousand years or more.
“We have a new product line, and we are tougher and smarter than you. We have more coils than Anaconda, more ripples than Camelback, and more tentacles than an octopus. We do not pretend to be a democracy, nor do we pretend to be a legal entity. We are, in a nutshell, going to eat your lunch. Actually, we are going to eat you for lunch, and spit out your pathetic bones.
"Either comply, or get your final affairs in order. Your days in the board room are numbered.
"Ta-tah, children, until we talk again."
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Copyright © 2018 by Jean-Thomas Cullen, Clocktower Books. All Rights Reserved.
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