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David's Contribution: Ryan-Chapter 6
Ryan and Liam could have been forgiven for thinking they had been thrown into a washing machine, a maelstrom of wet, hot activity, nearly drowning in a new environment, coming up for a quick gasp of air just when they thought the last breath had been taken.
Oddly enough, those gasps of air, life-giving, came from Will and Giorgio, experienced, senior footmen of thoughtful support and service at what had for years been called the Schuyler museum, now renamed the Schuyler Campus, reflecting its present focus on art education.
From Will came gems about where to be and when to be there as well as calm encouragement; from Giorgio came sartorial and political advice. It was Giorgio who told them that presenting one's self well was a duty, not just a luxury. It was Will who organized Ryan's day and enabled it by a process Ryan never quite figured out...like a shepherd and his sheep, Ryan finally decided. The visitor to the campus arrived on time, was seen on time, was extracted from Ryan's office on time and sent to their next destination... yes, on time.
Exactly how that was done and how Will knew to intervene when he did was the mystery. Giorgio, for both Ryan and Liam was the arbiter of business fashion, appearance, accessories, shoes. They would not have guessed at the beginning, but Giorgi was a fan of playful men's undergear and conspired with Liam to order more of the fun, private wear.
The first few weeks of soaking in the Schuyler culture was a process. All four men wanted to establish a shared way of doing things, a way to communicate transparently, and a shared 'database' of information from which to make decisions. John and Jayden had long since memorized what they needed to make great decisions... they were aware that Ryan and Liam had a lot to learn about their new roles, were more than willing to teach, to tolerate errors with some patience, and expected some noise in the circuits along the way.
Will and Giorgio's assistance reduced the noise. Ryan and Liam did not commit some of the errors they might have. From the onset, the four men agreed that John and Jayden would concentrate on the investments.
Ryan and Liam were to take point on external relationships and campus administration, getting to know their Senators, the Governor, the Mayor, the City Council, the Schuyler Trust officers, NYPD and FDNY Commissioners, and major Schuyler campus department heads such as security, maintenance, philanthropy, accounting, insurance services, transportation services, housekeeping, supplies/storage, IT, art curators, travel and food service.
Just learning their names was a start. Learning who spoke to whom, who worked well with whom, who really ran what, who was dependable, which departments of which entities was responsible for what, which politicians were friendly and for what reasons... all that was a mass of facts which took time to organize. Once again, Will and Giorgio's combined experience helped.
It was Giorgio who brought the note from John.
"Hey guys, are you up for a casual working supper tonight? Verbal reply by Giorgio OK. Regards, JJ PS: If yes, please get Will to ask all four footmen to attend in Salon A at 6 pm."
Will began their showers and had their supper casual clothes laid out at 5 pm. The fresh, thick cotton towels for their shower were hung over the heated towel racks, shampoo and conditioners were ready.
"If you need your backs washed, let us know." Will and Giorgio stood in their suite with wide grins on their faces.
"I didn't know that service was even provided," Ryan replied. "Let's surprise Liam when you two enter the shower to do that."
Liam gasped when the shower door opened. A very naked Will and Giorgio trooped in to do the honors. Quickly and efficiently, they used washcloths with soap under the warm rain spray to wash Ryan and Liam's back and limbs and abdomens. They left the private bits for their owners to cleanse and left the shower.
"Wow, that felt good."
"Yeah, I hadn't seen them without clothes on. Will is a sturdy guy and packing too."
"I noticed you noticing."
"Stop. I'm sure he'd be fun to play with but not without you. You're my guy and I'm your man."
"On the other hand," said Liam, "Did you get a load of Giorgio's ass? It's not exactly an ancient ruin."
"Is it sexier than mine?"
"Give me an hour to answer that one, will ya?"
"I can see the headline now in the NYT: Wealthy heir slays footman and fellow wealthy heir."
"OK, OK, I might give yours a better grade!"
We met JJs footmen again at dinner. They were twins with brown eyes and brown hair, immaculate haircuts, very formal at dinner, well-built, clearly experienced and alert, cordial. Their other personal footman, Peter, was off that night. Alexander and Benjamin had been JJs footmen for eight years and had their jobs down pat. They had served presidents and princes and I don't think they had been as nervous with them as they were meeting us. They didn't stammer or anything, but I could tell they were clearly out of their element with Ryan and me.
My guess is that they had spoken with Will and Giorgio about us, but they had to be wondering if we would like them and if all four of their bosses would get along OK. They couldn't have wanted a work environment with any more intensity than the one they were used to.
I noticed at dinner that the trays rattled a little and I figured out that their hands were shaking a bit. The 'casual working dinner' turned out to be hamburgers and fries and a choice of vanilla, chocolate and/or strawberry milkshakes. It was a fun meal and all four of us talked about feedback from everybody about having us there, fortunately positive so far.
"The Mayor was pleased that you noticed his Mental Health Initiative, Liam," Jayden said. "He's trying to get drum up sustained support for new and effective ways of dealing with the huge mentally-ill population in the city. Personally, I think it is to our advantage to participate; more importantly, there's a lot of needs to be met and these are on our doorstep. Just saying."
"How have you two prioritized Schuyler giving to the huge stack of needs, Jayden?" Ryan asked. I'd had the same question.
"The Philanthropy office does most of that work. John and I have decided how much to give total, given the income from the Trust each year, and Philanthropy presents us with documents for review, then we approve or change for any number of reasons, some personal, some political, some need-based."
"We've got a pretty soft heart for kids who come hungry to school in the morning and at the same time have given a fair amount of money to the various NYPD anti-gang programs in schools and neighborhoods in the city."
Giving, for the Trust, isn't a problem. We do try to ratchet up a certain level of interest for some programs among other charitable givers, so we don't have to shoulder all the load. The tide that rises and lifts all boats does so gradually and repeats itself regularly since every new generation needs something. That's the way a good philanthropy works.
We both loathe the fact that gangs prey on kids and recruit them away from productive futures. So that personal feeling drives that giving. All four of us have developed, or will develop, our own giving interests over time. You have access by laptop to all of the philanthropy data for the last two decades using your passwords and access information, by the way."
The milkshakes were drained, and the working casual dinner was over.
"Anybody interested in a swim? John wanted to know.
No one rolled their eyes or said 'no' and we all got up to get our swim suits from our suites.
"Why don't we save time and just skinny-dip?" Jayden looked so innocent in that Mae West moment, his eyes sweeping across an arc overhead. He winked at me and I received the message loud and clear. He had a project in mind.
"Yeah," I said, "I second the motion."
When we got to the pool all four footmen stood in a receiving line just inside the door with towels over their bent arms just like the restaurant waiters in some higher-end eateries - only these footmen were stark naked.
We dived into the pool followed by our footmen and all eight of us had a lot of fun, our wealth and employee/employer differences erased. There was a lot of leveling of status which tends to occur while naked in a pool. We all had the same equipment, different sizes and colors naturally, but the basics were the same.
Ryan and I sensed that JJ and Alexander and Benjamin (by now, Alex and Ben) had been in this pool before, as informal as we were now. Will and Giorgio felt free to touch and play and for the first time, we realized that these two had probably come together before.
We had a lot to learn about our footmen, it appeared.
Will had locked the pool door just before he dived in. The water was warm, slightly chlorinated, the room was warm and along one wall were thick, soft mattress-like pads designed for great sex. A couple of levels for kneeling and a higher level with more surface area for fucking. JJ and their footmen played together, a jumble of skin, lips, hands, feet, tongues, cocks and balls, lovely ass views... a male group version of Botticelli images (and a slimmer version of Rubens' images) in porn action...
Ryan and I played with Will and Giorgio in the hottest group I had ever seen or played with in my life.
A few minutes later all of the footman repaired to another pad to play. JJ looked over to us and we walked over to their pad. John, on his back, once again reached for me and I rode him hard. He broke into a sweat and came once again, hard. Ryan's cock gravitated to Jayden's ass and filled him up. That was hot enough to satisfy the four of us. We all but burst into flame.
Will and Giorgio tucked us in that night after another shower in our suite. Giorgio thanked me for the fun evening, kissed me on the forehead and told me he'd be there in the morning. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Will doing the same for Ryan.
We invited Liam's parents to lunch the next week. They were curious to see the campus and we wanted them to see a 4th floor suite that we had reserved for them. Liam and I had thought to give them the choice of staying there if they visited overnight or longer. We also wanted to give them the option of living there permanently if they wished.
They came by taxi through the front gate and were met by Liam and me, the housekeeper and our footmen, who took their coats and invited them upstairs to our suite, #423. We gave them the tour and we sat in our sitting room, a comfortable place to take a load off.
They eyed the paintings on the wall.
Joseph finally said, "Those look pretty old. Who painted those?"
"Those are French paintings from the Impressionistic Period by Claude Monet, dad. I had taken to calling Liam's father 'dad'. It seemed simplest.
One of them is a previously missing fragment of "Luncheon on the Grass" ('Le déjeuner sur l'herbe', in French), painted near the end of the American Civil War. He and painters like him didn't want to paint exactly what they saw (Realism). They wanted to change to produce images that were all about how an image was seen. They used small strokes of primary colors to indicate how light was reflected with a concern for light and color and movement, especially over time."
The Schuyler collection owns a bunch of paintings from that time, almost as many as the total number of similar paintings in all of the Parisian museums combined."
"Are those valuable?" Joseph thought about money a good deal. He was a businessman.
"These haven't been up for sale in many years, Joseph. One Monet painting of some Haystacks sold for 2.5 million USD in 1986 and the current estimate is that on the market these would sell at about 40 times that amount each."
"The Schuyler thing is to keep most everything it ever buys unless the art object is shown to be fake (that doesn't happen often) or the object doesn't fit the investment goals of the Trust in some other way or unless it turns out the object was stolen along the way in which case we verify that and return it to its rightful owner.
"If the object is a real and important part of a nation's art history, we sometimes sell it back (but even then, if it was obtained legally, we don't always part with it)."
"Other countries have valuable American objects they aren't willing to part with, so we balance that out."
Liam's dad did the math in his head as did his mom and their eyes nearly exited their sockets. There was a long silence. "And you own those?"
"Technically yes."
"How about un-technically?" Could you sell one of those and keep the money?"
"In two years, yes, with Liam's written consent."
"Could he sell... "
"Yes, with my written consent in two years."
Another long silence. "I guess I didn't really, well, I believed you, but it didn't sink in really..."
"I'd guess these are guarded pretty carefully; I hope... "
I told him they were safer in my suite than had they been in most museums.
I took Liam's mom and dad through the basements full of stored art, much of it now in suitcase-like containers, padded inside, securely closed and locked, each connected by a vast sea of umbilical cords (tubes) to forest of tubes and pipes bringing in an ideal mixture of inert gases (argon, xenon, neon, helium and in one suitcase a small amount of krypton) tailored to each piece of art to decrease paint deterioration from the oxidative effects of oxygen over time.
Each basement floor full of these works of art was vast and I could see Liam's dad's face taking it all in. I suppose the security guards marching behind us might have made an impression as well.
We had a professional security staff who not only used RFID tech and motion detectors and cameras but also had superior tracking of known art thieves and vetted visitors, which most museums couldn't or didn't do.
The temperature and humidity in the suites and in the basements were precisely controlled. When the suites were empty, cameras came on and the security staff monitored those art objects intensively by computer and visually as well. The basements were never visited alone, but by a security supervisor and a security team. The elevators were weighed going down and coming up and differences actively explored and documented.
"Would you like to see another suite, mom? We have one we'd like you to see."
She assented and the four of us walked down to the other end of the museum on the same floor to #402, a two-bedroom suite with a lovely view of the park, walk-in closets, a sitting room, a dining room, a formal living room, a library, an office/den and a wonderful bathroom his/hers, and a kitchen with a walk-in pantry, great stainless steel appliances and other amenities. Liam offered his parents the suite rent-free for temporary or permanent use.
"We both would love for you to live here all the time. It's an easy commute to the store, dad. You could walk in good weather or have one of the limos take you every day, your call. You can pick a painting you like or a sculpture from the collection to add to the wall or library."
"Mom, if you don't feel like cooking, you can use the suite's laptop to order from the day's menu from the chef or order anything you like if you give them a little time and it will be delivered to the suite when you want it."
"You would have a personal footman and maid services every day unless you want to change the sheets yourself."
"If you want to take a Gulfstream to Hong Kong or anyplace else safe, you just reserve it. It has a bed in the back and wonderful food and service for free. You can use one for up to two weeks at a time."
"It's your turn to relax some if you let yourselves."
"Ryan and I have decided to offer you free financing for your store projects, dad. If you want to buy some more of your block for expansion or parking or if you want to open more branches in a chain, in the US or globally, we think you have a great concept, wonderful ice cream and with your new in-store menu, a real chance to compete and have fun with the business, all at the same time."
"We can create a Trust for the business with the income going to yours for 10 years, interest free. We're thinking of starting the Trust with a principal of 200 million USD which at about 10% per year could most years bring you 20 million USD to finance business expansion, some years more, some less. This income to your business would be a gift, not a loan."
Liam told his dad to think about it and get back to us if he wanted to pursue that.
His dad asked if JJ would go for that. Liam assured him that they had come up with the idea and certainly would approve it. His dad kind of wilted a little with relief, I think. That his son had that kind of money (was willing to share it) and believed in his business meant a good deal to Joseph. It also took a burden off the bottom line with which he had struggled for a long while.
I wasn't sure that Liam's dad believed it in the full sense of the word. He wasn't a cynic exactly, but like many others in this world, he wanted to see some evidence before celebrating.
Being a mouse in the corner of his store would have been entertaining the next day when a Schuyler courier delivered the quad-'ben' authorized Trust documents and a copy of the wire for $200 million USD to a Schuyler Bank account. JJ invested that amount over the next few weeks into a template of stocks that was unique to our Trust at a rate not anywhere near enough to rattle the markets. They got full value for that money and the dividends and growth began immediately.
We named that account the "Reilly Peppermint Trust" as an investment into Liam's dad's business.
A report at the end of ten years on the history of peppermint ice cream in the Schuyler Trust history was required as was reversion of the $200 million USD to the Schuyler Trust at that date.
Income from the Peppermint Trust during the ten years was to flow to the store and its enterprises (as determined by Joseph and Minerva Reilly, or at the death of one spouse, by the other.
If both were deceased prior to ten years, their heirs and assigns would assume control of the Trust), this income could be willed to their heirs and assigns to both genetic and legally adopted offspring through the last surviving grandchild of the line.
The Reilly Enterprises were responsible for paying all taxes, federal and state and local on the income and the intention of the income was to generally advance the concerns of Reilly Enterprises, Inc.
All I saw at first was Liam lying on his desk, crying into the phone. His dad had called. A believer finally, his dad told his son he was proud of him and they had a telephone meltdown together.
When Liam told me, he had his stuff back together again, but lost it again, then we both had a meltdown and I dragged him over to that couch after locking the door, took his clothes off, and showed him just how much fun a meltdown could get.
A knock on the door summoned us back to business. It was our footmen, summoned by our secretary, worried about some riot in the office.
Once the footmen got naked, you'd better believe a riot happened... on the thick wool carpet, the desks, the couch, against the wall and maybe someplace else.
But not until Will covered the areas at risk with a towel to catch the drips.
Those guys didn't have years of experience for naught.
Our 'go to' giggle from then forward during meetings to relieve tension was to mutter "couch stuff" and we could reliably summon up a giggle on the tensest of occasions.
One of the hazards of wealth is that others sometimes try to impose (as in imposition), perhaps under the misapprehension that Mr. or Ms. Rich has nothing else to do, nowhere else to unload money, or time to spend than on them, 'theirs' or their favorite charity.
Liam seemed to get a call every week from a someone, usually a very distant acquaintance, to "please be on the board of my charity" or please take a $100 per annum PAID seat on my business's board" or please chair the Special Olympics Gala even after the Trust had sent a $50,000 donation thus erroneously giving the impression that we were all in and willing to go all out there versus somewhere else.
The dictum 'give an inch, take a mile' never quite applied so well as it did at the Trust. We learned to recognize camel's noses from clear off on the other side of the tent.
John and Jayden just smiled. They had already told us that the most important word in the English language as it related to giving was 'no'. In retrospect, they realized that we'd have to learn that one on our own.
I learned 'no' before Liam did because Will had a heart of steel about some things and Giorgio did not. We were fond of both footmen but were getting to recognize that they did have different talents that they didn't necessarily share.
Liam learned the value of 'perhaps' earlier than I and learned it from Giorgio. The word delayed a lot of trouble.
Will taught me the value of 'I agree, can it be done today?' as a phrase which conveyed 'Sure. And I think so much of the idea (and you) that I want it done right now and am willing to lend my power and wealth to the idea'. At the same time, a half-baked idea wilted before that flame very nicely, a bonus to deflect half-baked ideas. My employees learned to dread that response.
Liam learned the art of a very slight sneer soon enough from Giorgio, not intentionally taught, I'm sure...it was an example thing, a sneer Giorgio mastered at his mother's breast, of course. The evocation of that response echoed when Liam, in conversation, lightly uttered the phrase, 'consider the source'. No facial expression was required with that one.
David and Payne had decided that it was time to see us in our new digs. I got the call from David when my secretary rang through and said there was this farmer who insisted he was my dad on the telephone, and he was coming to visit with Payne.
The names sounded familiar enough to me so I took the call and asked when he and Payne would arrive.
"We're out front, son. Do you have a minute to say Hi?"
We had a minute.
Both of my dads reminded me of Liam's dad...their reaction to our campus and the money and the total wealth was a stunned sort of "Oh, sure I understand, son."
I was pretty sure they didn't, at all. I hadn't understood why the fickle finger of fate had pointed my direction and didn't expect them to feel it.
I was wrong.
David himself had flown right into a soft cloud when Joe came into his life and rescued him from the haystack and fed him. Payne had found love finally from two men in his life who supported him in just about every way supporting happens.
I don't know where I got off assuming no one else understood good fortune. David and Payne may not have gotten mine, just yet, but they weren't strangers to good stuff. And then, of course, they'd engendered me, I mean, what a stroke of fortune that had been for, yeah... for me.
I wanted them to be proud of me, to be glad for me, to understand how rich and powerful I was. They were proud and glad. They could not have cared less how influential or powerful I was.
They were glad I had enough to survive in terms of wealth, but the rank wasn't important to them. They had already learned about the relationship between money and happiness in life.
I was still learning.
One of the bigger decisions I made early on was to review the jet fleet. We had Raspberry, Sweet Pea, and Rainier, the oldest Gulfstream that was nearing the end of its useful life.
We liked the Gulfstream 650-ER as our basic jet and even the Boeing 737 that a previous beneficiary had bought for a sex trip around the world. I wasn't in the market for another aircraft of the B737 size, but we still would get a crew put together and take a group of us to some warm place in the Manhattan winter sometimes when the slush threatened to overwhelm.
For all other travel, the Gulfstreams were ideal: range, speed, cost, flexibility, ease of maintenance, company support and all.
John and Jayden left the decisions about jets to me after telling me that there existed unlimited funds for jets. Something inside of me must have been Scot, though, and I didn't want to spend unlimited dollars for jets.
I had a love affair going with another method of transportation.
We put our name on the list for another 650-ER and the same afternoon I called Mr. Hyperloop. At the time there was more than one of him.
The Trust took a $500 billion USD position in the company, eager to see if the financial boost accelerated the progress of the Hyperloop in the US. Several routes had already been planned.
We asked that LA to San Francisco be added to the top of the list and a Seattle to New York route be added with an intermediate Chicago stop as a thank you for the investment. The answer was 'yes' and the legislators from those places and places in between then were on board as well.
I asked Liam to name the new Gulfstream and he came up with 'Fuckwad', which I managed to quash after laughing my ass off in private with him. He did have a fallback position, naming it 'Peach'. That name sounded OK to all four of us and we signed papers and christened it 'Peach' the day it arrived in Teterboro.
By "christening' I don't mean we smashed a bottle of champagne against the outside skin of that $71 million USD jet, but the four of us did open a bottle inside and christened it another way. I wouldn't have been surprised to hear that the cleaning company was still puzzling over those sheets two weeks later.
I can say that the 'eau de brothel' had reverted to 'new jet smell' by the next flight, however.
For years, pilot crews had been scavenged from former owners. We decided to look at the pre-eminent jet flight schools and have their valedictorian that year hired as co-pilot on Peach.
For the chief pilot, we did the scavenging act in order to have at least one pilot with a lot of experience and then added a couple more pilots for Peach from the pool who had either flown for the Air Force driving small jets for generals... or for airlines and whose gender preferences had stunted their upward mobility in their profession at that airline.
We were constantly surprised at which airlines welcomed gay male flight attendants to serve coffee and pass out nuts but seemed to be a trifle slow bringing gay pilots and co-pilots to top rank.
Peach was basically the same as our other jets, but oh so much newer... it had wings and jet engines and a nose, but the way those were put together, oooh-la-la! The instrumentation now was all glass, had been for a few years already. It was fly-by-wire, meaning no mechanical connection between the cockpit and the moving, main parts of the jet.
It could fly from Teterboro to Hong Kong without stopping for fuel. The galley could microwave foods, bake food with its convective oven, freeze what needed to be frozen, refrigerate food and had plenty of pantry and storage for food and utensils for the flight chef. The flight attendant had her or his own space as well.
Gulfstream had, once again, outdone themselves.
I hadn't forgotten Joe's gift to me and had some time to think about it when beginning to assess the Hyperloop investment progress. Some of the Trust officers had been approached about that investment by people they didn't know and asked if the Schuyler Trust planned future investment in Hyperloop progress.
All four of us talked about that and decided that someone was interested in that investment, probably in a negative way.
I wanted to know who didn't want Hyperloop to succeed. The list wasn't long, and it wasn't hard to confirm. Our computers had already modeled transportation money flows globally with and without Hyperloop installations. We already knew that airlines would suffer some, automakers would see some downward pressure on auto sales, and the oil industry might see less fuel consumption.
On the other hand, the oil industry might see increased consumption to balance that from the increase in travel in general.
We were already aware from other analyst's work that industries that made traditional railcars and streetcars might make fewer of those over time, causing stress in that sector.
Likely allies to Hyperloop would include those companies who would profit from helping to build it and public service unions who would likely operate the service and the public, who just wanted to get somewhere at very rapid speeds before grandma died.
We knew that airlines, the oil industry, and the auto industry did a fair amount of lobbying (read: passing of money to Congress) and wouldn't hesitate to bring out the big guns in private to their representatives and senators both in Washington, D.C. and in their home states.
We saw the identification of those money streams as important. The Trust, I felt, should safeguard its investment at least that much.
Like turning over a rock at the beach and finding creatures that scurry off, the Trust needed to expose this activity and make it public.
Lobbyists go to some effort to stay under their rocks. They depend on massive money streams to operate and tend to avoid the light of day. Rarely does cold logic convince a legislator how to vote... we felt that publicity about their methods would not further their aims.
The Trust didn't have or use lobbyists. We did, however, have one hell of a massive money stream available, dammed up at the moment. We also had a bucketful of technology to unleash.
I had a review of Trust technology summarized and an astonishing fact popped up from that 'sex trip' that a previous beneficiary and his throuple took mentioned tiny drones as being helpful in one case.
A threat to one of the principals had been neutralized by drones the size of wasps that flew, had a tiny camera monitored close by security types. The wasps had a needle and a paralyzing agent that stung the assailant, who never had a chance against two or three of those drones.
We researched a source for those drones and found that the Trust still owned the company that made those.
They were still produced for use in maximum security prisons for riots or situations when the guards couldn't go in. They were very effective in that situation.
Minus the needle and drug, I saw no reason why a drone/wasp couldn't fly into a building, perhaps assisted by hitching a ride on a human visitor, perch on a high ledge, then video and listen to encounters (what we were beginning to label) 'of the worst kind'.
We did a storyboard kind of preparation, planning each step along the way.
The weakest part was the signal from the wasp and how to capture it, the next spot where trouble could occur was how to store large volumes of data that video and audio tend to produce.
Our tech people arranged to have the wasp simply re-broadcast to the electrical network in the room and from there to a pre-planted USB in someone's computer close by. It wasn't perfect, but it was a first-draft.
We wanted to test it. We set up a building in the Nevada desert, a regular office building with offices and computers and people.
A visitor with the drone/wasps gently took a linen bag with wasps inside and released them within a few feet of the office in question.
The devices hopped off and sat on the ledge above the door until it opened just at closing time, then they quietly swooped into the room, found a ledge to perch on and waited for the fireworks the next day.
When the conversations began the next day, the drones recorded the video and audio, transmitted it to the electrical wiring in the room and a very high capacity USB in a laptop in another office in the building recorded everything.
'Go' date was after we had identified 217 lobbyists in D.C. who did work for the three industries, rented a desk in the 14 buildings which held them, knowing that some flew in from Houston and Detroit and various other cities, thus perhaps out of reach for now.
The equipment was in place and the drone wasps ready to go by that date.
We recorded who went in and out of the buildings and identified everyone by supercomputer matching of multiple data streams including known appointments, driver's licenses, hacking into computerized calendars, facial recognition and more.
In one location, we gathered air from certain elevators for DNA analysis of exhaled cells with coughs and cells from the elevator call buttons also.
The operations room that day was a fascinating place to be. No one person could keep track of everything.
We had a special program written for the supercomputer to do the tracking and reminding and watching for opportunities, artificial intelligence building with more data acquired.
Wasp #91 struck pay dirt. It recorded a conversation with video between a United States Senator and a lobbyist from an airline with a check passing between them to the Senator...
"We'd sure appreciate a 'no' vote on this Hyperloop' legislation for this money. You understand that, don't you?"
"No problem, Mr. Abrams. I'll vote no for this much."
The supercomputer told the drone wasp to zoom in on the check...to the Senator's wife for $800,000.
We hacked all of her known accounts compared to the accounts that spit out money for her purchases and credit cards and queried databases of known Cayman and Swiss accounts, cross-referenced this with public tax databases (not easy to access, but possible with enough money) and sure enough. The check now cashed and deposited with the front and back images and her digitized signature and instruction on the back to deposit only to her account was hacked and reproduced on the front page of a prominent Washington newspaper within a week along with a juicy story.
The accompanying story resulted in the resignation of that Senator.
That operation continued until public opinion polls about Hyperloop had gone up about 25 points over time, then we ratcheted back.
The energy required to drive the vacuum pumps for the Hyperloop chambers and to operate the magnets that levitate the units carrying passengers had posed a problem until Alain Industries debuted their fusion reactors.
I called Valentine and told her that I was interested in buying one of those units to power the Hyperloops in the US.
She told me not to be silly. John and Jayden's management of their cash had 'paid' for dozens of them and a unit of appropriate size was available without charge whenever we were ready for it. Liam and I celebrated that night by putting our dark glasses on and going out with our footmen (escorted by a lot of security guys and a string of well-prepared Suburban security vehicles). I thanked her and said I'd accept her kind gift only if I could buy one to power Europe's Hyperloops. She, being the business person she was, saw a bargain... and took it.
The profits from our investment in Hyperloops became substantial over the years. They became large enough to generate the knowledge needed to feed a lot of kids.
I converted the Operations Center into the enterprise that Joe had envisioned, perhaps with some modification, but I think he would have approved the use of his money.
Liam and I awoke with a start at the same time one Saturday morning. We had the same identical thought, which I decided wasn't coincidental. But then, we'd both read the same book about world hunger and seen a CNN piece on starvation in a country south of the Spanish Sahara, so maybe we both had the same neurons tickled, hard to say.
I went to my office that morning and began ticking off the components of food sourcing and flow, the obstacles, the challenges, the organizations working on the problem, the extent of the food shortages here in the US and I wondered if $50 million USD thrown at an institute to study the problem from other angles might not help.
I was a little tired of hearing about water shortages. The amount of water on the planet is exactly the same, gram for gram, as it ever was. Water doesn't go away or hide. It does, however, sequester into places that don't allow it to be diverted to useful flow to gardens or oceans or ice caps or? The same hydrogen and oxygen atoms that made up earth's supply of water have not disappeared. They might have joined other atoms to do different things and make different substances, but they didn't fly to the moon or anything. The total amount of fertilizer on the planet, say phosphorus, atom for atom, is the same as it ever was. Phosphorus atoms don't fly off into space, nor do nitrogen or gold or silver or carbon or any other atom on the Periodic Table of Elements. That's just the way chemistry works. Those atoms don't change into some other kind of atoms, all told, or alchemy would be taught in the Ivy League Universities. It isn't.
The biggest problem was the accumulating waste from people causing sequestering of vital elements from use in the food chain, from re-use in manufacturing, from entering back into the cycle of life, (an example being carbon atoms now linked to oxygen as a gas high in the atmosphere instead of in Brazilian rainforests).
I was tired of hearing about fossil fuel depletion. If we found ways of retrieving the carbon and re-using it, who cared about whether Saudi Arabia had fossil fuels to sell or not? The carbon from that source wasn't getting us anywhere anyway.
I called up Valentine once again within a month period and asked her if between Alain Industries and the Schuyler Trust, we might drum up some solutions to retrieving the atoms for life from our waste streams and the atmosphere too.
She thought for a moment and asked why we couldn't chain a bunch of scientists to an institute for a few years and ask exactly what the obstacles were to retrieve what the planet needed from where the atoms were at the moment? We didn't know if there was political will to pick over garbage in a scientific way. We didn't know if we could invent or encourage a known process to retrieve carbon from the atmosphere but didn't know who else had the resources to try. It was becoming critical to rescue the rare earth atoms from old TV screens and the silicon atoms from plastic and the mercury atoms from sea water and the nitrogen atoms from countless diapers full of poop in landfills and ten thousand other chemical operations. Some of those solutions hadn't been discovered yet and some were known but no one knew how to do them efficiently.
Once again, we set supercomputers to work combing the chemical literature for chemical reactions to release the atoms we needed to use again. We identified what we didn't know yet.
We set about allocating resources to specific 'most' important problems facing the planet.
I asked John and Jayden what had happened to the school they attended, the one that identified kids that had the mental abilities to solve important problems. They found that it had closed a year before for lack of funds. We fixed that problem and resumed the search for future scientists and business people who could make a real difference.
We asked Congress to prioritize waste stream management and financed the campaigns of those who took that request seriously. Between Alain Industries and the Schuyler Trust, we made a difference.