Insider X (7 page)

“Just one more question,” Lip said.

“No, no,” Hu said, with a minced smile.  He managed to insert himself between Lip and the engineer who was already walking away. “You’ll get folks all excited for this back home, talking to your board, making promises about what we are doing here, and we’re not… we’re not even close to having success with this.”

“But if you guys figured this out,” Lip said.  “How to cloud base all this and not have streaming issues—then you guys have something here.  This is a game changer.”

“Wouldn’t that be nice,” Hu said, forcing a chuckle.  “But I’m afraid we’re not there, and may never get there.  As you are probably aware, everyone has tried something like this, and everyone has failed.  We only have a few people working on this project, if that is any indication of how this project is viewed internally.”

Marks noticed that Sweetwater and Meade had lost their happy faces.

“You guys have anything to add?” Marks said.

“How ‘bout lunch?” Sweetwater said, icily.

“Yes… that sounds good,” Hu said.  “Come this way.  We have an excellent chef and he has prepared something special for us.”

So, Marks thought, that was going to be the corporate line about
EMex?
  Still under development, huh?  Guess none of these characters wanted to mention the two million units packaged and ready for distribution in that off-site facility?  A little detail that Johnny Two-cakes had briefed Lip and him on.

Lip looked at Marks as they walked away.

“Informative tour, don’t you think?” Lip said.

Marks nodded.  In his pocket he could feel the EMex puck he’d swiped.  It was tucked right next to that Made in China label.

8

Facility 67096

AS THEY DROVE onto the construction site, Na could feel herself coming apart.  She did her best to keep it together, but the voices inside her were already in full panic.

She had been right.  The whole thing had been a trap.  A honey pot.  She should have known better.  These men probably knew about everything, including the memory stick she had tucked in her clothes.

She knew what was going to happen.  Or could imagine it, at least.  These men were like wolves.  And she was just a meal to them.  To be used for sport and fun.  And when they were done with her they would get from her everything she had: other names… who she was working for… whatever they thought she had… or whoever they thought she knew.

After that—after she told them everything and anything to make them stop—she would just disappear.  She knew it when they turned onto this construction site.  They probably had a holding place here, possibly with others already “detained”.  Others facing the same fate as her.

It was common knowledge in Brave New China: jobsites were often the disposing spots of choice.  So many buildings going up… so much concrete being poured.  The opportunity to transform the cities in more ways than one was not lost on the PLA.  They rounded up the dissidents that wouldn’t be missed.  Those whose voices were too small, or too insignificant to count.

She’d disappear here.  Never to be heard from again.

The car came to a stop in a cloud of dust.  There was a towering grey building in front of them.  The building appeared to be finished, or close to being finished.

The men on either side of Na opened their doors.  One of the men held his door open for Na.  Na felt her legs go weak.

“This way,” one of the men said.

Be brave, little bird.  Na stepped out onto the dusty site.

9

Tower 9, Facility 67096

THEY ENTERED AN empty lobby area that appeared to be almost finished.  Na smelled fresh paint and the wall to her right looked recently grouted.  The three men escorted Na through the large space over to a central bank of elevators.  Four sets of ornately detailed elevator doors in shiny chrome were either side.  There was no plastic sheeting on the floor in this section.  One of the men pushed an button.

Na considered making a break for it, but the men were too close and all three looked to be in shape.  Even if she managed to dart away, Na didn’t think she could outrun them.  These weren’t the usual overweight enforcer types the PLA sometimes employed.  These men were younger and hadn’t packed on slabs of muscle and fat, yet.

But she knew this might be her only chance to escape.  She tensed as the elevator arrow lit above one of the sets of doors.  The man next to her suddenly took hold of her arm.  His grip was firm; painfully firm.

“You’re very lucky,” he said.  He extended his other hand, palm up, towards the open elevator cab.  “After you.”

She stepped in and he released her bicep.  Maybe he’d sensed she was about to bolt?  Or maybe it was just to show his power over her.  Like he was saying with his grip: 
You are nothing, little bird.

He stepped in behind her.  The other two men didn’t enter, but stayed in the elevator lobby.  The man with her pulled a magnetic keycard from inside his jacket and swiped it over the reader.  He pushed the button for the top floor.  The doors closed and the elevator began to ascend.

A pit formed in Na’s stomach as she looked blankly at the buttons designating the floors.  The buttons were all done as was customary for most tall buildings in mainland China.  There were no buttons that had the number four.  4, 14, 24, 34, 40 thru 49 and 54 were all missing.  So was ‘13’.

Tetraphobia.  Fear of ‘4’. 
Four
when spoken in most local Chinese dialects sounded like the same word for “death”. 
Pinyin.

(x_x)

Unlucky number,
pinyin. 
Omitting ‘13’ was a westernized thing that had taken root, as well.  Also unlucky number.  So skip that too.

The superstition had an added benefit for some.  It was good for developers and real estate agents.  Not having those numbers always made buildings taller.  And the taller the better.  More money for them.  People liked to be up high and paid more money for units on higher floors.

Silly though.  Didn’t people realize that the 60
^th
floor was actually the 44
^th
floor?  As if skipping numbers meant you could skip your fate.  As if…

(x_x) (x_x)

Na listened to the whirr of the conveyance cable as the elevator rapidly ascended. 
Pinyin… pinyin...
it seemed to say.  On the control panel was the illuminated button showing their destination.

<60>

THE ELEVATOR DOORS opened.

The man with her did not step out.

“Room 6008,” he said.

Surprised, Na stepped out of the elevator.  She looked back at him as the doors began to close.  His expression was unwavering—no emotion at all on his face—his lips set, eyes unblinking.  He seemed to look right through her as the doors fully closed.

She was alone.

(@_@)

Na walked to the hallway.  There was a directional sign for the rooms, showing which rooms were located where.  Off to the left was a sign for the stairs.  She looked back at the elevator she’d come from.  Her eyes settled on the unlit button.  She could press it.  Or…?

Room 6008.

Na bit her lip, considering the number.  60 meant 44, which was very bad.  But then again, it was all in how she looked at it.  Maybe she could change her fate?

If she added 4 plus 4 that equaled 8, which was very good, because eight was the
bestest
of numbers.

Munching munching…
She chewed on her bottom lip.  She missed her bubble gum flavored pink lip gloss she’d had on yesterday.  What would Paris Hilton do?

6008.  60/08.  60=44=bad.  08=good.

Bad/good.  Yin yang.  Black/white.

Na went right and headed down the hallway towards room 6008.

10

IDF

“THAT COULD HAVE gone better,” Sweetwater said as McKinley Morganfield and Shawn Carter left the building.

Meade frowned.  “Why wasn’t EMex shuttered before their visit?”

“It was,” Hu said.  “An oversight, it appears.  Not everyone got the message.  But we are fine.  The engineer revealed nothing of importance.”

“Except for one big thing,” Sweetwater said.  “We just said we were years away from developing the technology for EMex.”

“And we were,” Hu said.  “Until today.  Minutes ago we had an amazing breakthrough.”

“That’s our line?” Sweetwater said.  “We had a breakthrough?”

“Yes,” Hu said.  “Amazing accomplishments happen all the time.  But please… you two needn’t worry.  Next month each of you will be sitting pretty counting your blessings.  All seventy-nine million blessings for you, Mr. Honorable CEO… and sixty-three million blessings for you, Mr. Distinguished CFO.”  Hu looked at each and chuckled.

“I don’t see the humor,” Sweetwater said.  “We need to modify the release date in our arrangement.  If those two end up getting chatty at some later point in time, this deal could face scrutiny.”

“I agree,” Meade said.  “We could be exposed here… from a legal standpoint.  If it comes out we had EMex ready for release
before
the sale of the company, we’re not going to look good.  We need a year minimum.  Three and a half months is not enough.”

“Gentlemen… relax, please, we have a deal,” Hu said.  “Everything is going to be okay.  I already have assurances from my contacts that this sale has been preapproved.  It will be a simple formality.  Your government is not even going to review the sale.”

Meade looked surprised.  “Your contact at CFIUS said the deal wouldn’t face review?  When did you hear this?”

“Just this morning,” Hu said.

Sweetwater laughed.  “You could have told us that, Hu, and saved us some heartburn.”

Hu smiled.  “My apologies.”

HU KEPT HIS smile as Sweetwater and Meade left the room.  Personally, he was disappointed that CONTROL hadn’t listened to him.  These two charges (“cows”) of his would have taken half the payout they were offered to sell out their company.  A missed opportunity with these two.

No matter.  These “acquisitions” were becoming almost too easy.  These two executives had thought nothing about taking the deal.  It enriched their coffers in the immediate term, albeit at the expense of their “sucker investors”, and that was all that mattered to them.  They probably would have sold their own mothers, if the offers were high enough.

Yet even with their singular, happily obsessive greed, Sweetwater and Meade had still overlooked the big picture.  They had been so intent on pumping the price up
before
the sale, they had lost sight of what they actually had.  Had they waited a little longer, they could have sold their company for ten times the price they’d agreed.

As Hu’s SUPREME LEADER would say,
greed will be these cows’ downfall
.  According to SUPREME LEADER, Americans didn’t have the capacity to visualize, to see beyond the here and now, to touch and taste what the future could be.  These two lesser individuals (true to their archetype), were like American cows, penned in constrictive cages, unable to see beyond their feeding troughs directly in front of them.

Eat!  Eat!  Fatten yourselves, you corporate lions of America.

Hah!
  Cows who thought they were lions.  They were oblivious of what really awaited them, just around the bend, past their line of sight… the hammer gun in the slaughter pen.  As long as they got fat now was all that mattered to them.

There was no such thing as a ten- or twenty-year plan for American companies.  Such thinking, according to their profligate CEOs, was for suckers.  Because only a sucker fattened their successor’s pockets.

No.  Better to eat now, eat eat eat, while the eating was still good.  Men like Sweetwater and Meade were like cows, nose deep in their troughs.

They thought EMex was doomed to fail.  That there was too much additional investment necessary to make the concept work.  That the cost structure, the price they would need to sell the units and still make a profit was “prohibitively high”.

The silly nearsighted bovines didn’t get it.  But that annoying Mr. Carter (one of their so-called “sucker investors”) had.  It had taken him all of two seconds to see the potential of EMex.  And he’d been right. 
It was a game changer. 
But that was only half of it.

EMex was so much more than it appeared on the surface.

Hu considered this moment.  One day he might tell his progeny of his role in the “China Dream”.  All the deals he had helped broker, just like this one.  How the corporate elite of America (like dimwitted cows) had sold out their country one shortsighted little deal at a time.

Perhaps he should heed Meade’s and Sweetwater’s concern.  Those investors, Morganfield and Carter, could get chatty at some point.  Particularly when EMex got released and began to reap success.  The price point of the unit would make it move quickly.

Free
had a way of doing that.  Forget a thousand dollars a unit.  That—to Meade’s point—was prohibitively high.  But the soon-to-be new owners, a Beijing-based company hand selected by SUPREME LEADER, and blessed with the full support of the Politburo (who just so happened to have all State banks within the PRC at their disposal), had true vision for the product.

Offer a better product and better experience and make it free with a nominal two-year service agreement.  Like cell phones given free in America, customers would receive the EMex free, and they just had to sign up for two years of service.  But in this particular case, their $19.99 a month was going to give them access to all the games they could possibly want.  Not just IDF’s complete game portfolio, but any Activision, Nintendo, Electronic Arts, (simply “name your game manufacturer here”) game offering could be streamed directly to their gaming device of choice; be it their home computer, flat screen TV, iPad, laptop, PDA device, smartphone, or whatever.

EMex was revolutionary in that it was compatible with all formats.  While Xboxes couldn’t play games designed for Wiis or PlayStations (or vice versa), EMex had no such limitations.  The actual gaming system was “cloud-based” (EMex was just a routing instrument, not the device itself).  The cloud-based infrastructure could play any and all games (albeit using blatantly stolen technology from other gaming console manufacturers).  It was the next evolution of gaming.

And another Trojan Horse the Americans would never suspect.

Pretty soon there would be an EMex unit in millions of households in America.  The math was the deciding factor here.  $480 for the duration of a 2-year service agreement.  A new game console from any competitors (Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, etc.) still cost more; or would be perceived as costing more.  And then a person still had to pay additional monies for the games.  And games were expensive.

As had been proved time and again in the market, if parity was achieved in regards to the product delivered, price won every time.  Sure, there would be some copyright issues to be resolved.  Stealing technology could prompt that reaction.  But a fleet of international lawyers, waiting in the wings, already had a strategy in place to skirt those obstacles.  Sharing networks, insider deals with some of the game creators… fatten the right pockets of certain “facilitators” (more cows) and anything became possible.

Particularly when money was not a concern.  The People’s Republic of China had billions at their disposal.  The PRC’s initial investment of $72 billion, once the IDF sale was inked, would smooth the way.  Free EMex units for everyone!  All subsidized by the PRC.

It was Sony’s, Nintendo’s and Microsoft’s misfortune they didn’t have their respective country’s full support.  Such a competitive disadvantage would unfortunately prove to be their undoing.  The China Dream was conquering markets one by one like dominoes. 
A123 Systems, AMC movie theaters, Smithfield Foods, Teledyne Technologies…
the list of American companies acquired in the last two years was growing.  One by one, like dominoes falling down, the US was giving up without a fight.  Selling their companies to China.

Of course, Hu reflected, it helped that the PLA’s
Big Blue
was doing their part.  They (the West, arrogant overlord, subversive instigator) had no idea what they were really facing.  They were deaf, dumb and blind to the foe right in front of them, walking among them.  And that was certainly no way to win on the economic battlefield.

Hu’s phone vibrated.  He looked at his phone and saw the meeting reminder for the meeting he’d just had.  He deleted it, but not before recalling that annoying ‘porn collection’ comment by Mr. Carter.  The man had had fun at his expense.  Hu’s face burned thinking of it again.  Of course, Mr. Carter couldn’t have known about that episode that one time… that was just a coincidence.

Hu frowned.

Or was it?

Maybe he needed to make some more inquires.  Because there was one thing about coincidences that Hu in his humble career had found out.

Coincidences do not exist.