The Omega Expedition - Brian Stableford [13]
Adam was, of course, being unduly modest. The principle might have been simple, but the execution of the series of financial coups that began in 2010 and reached its climax in 2025 was anything but easy. It required an awesomely detailed understanding of the constitution and behavior of the world’s markets. Adam’s reference to “the 1929 example” was, of course, slightly disingenuous, because the key to the manipulation of twenty-first-century markets was an intimate knowledge of the computer systems that were handling the bulk of trading. Although they would not have qualified as artificial intelligences by today’s standards, the systems in question were experts of a sort. They could outperform humans in all the circumstances of which their programmers had taken account, but were also capable, in certain extraordinary and unanticipated circumstances, of almost incredible stupidity.
What Adam Zimmerman contributed to the Universal Cartel’s Hardinist property grab was the knowledge of exactly how to bring about the extraordinary circumstances that would cause the computerized trading systems to trash the world’s markets, and exactly how to take advantage of the ensuing chaos.
Contrary to popular belief, the Earth was not won on a single day on 20 March 2025, but it was lost on that day. When the second day of the new spring dawned, the way was clear and the pattern of acquisitions had become inexorable. The world woke up in the secure grip of an association of megacorporations whose chief executives formed the tightly knit conspiracy that soon became known by such journalistic catchphrases as the Secret Masters, the Inner Circle, and the Invisible Hand. The actual agents of the coup were more than content to remain hidden behind such euphemisms, while allowing their humbler instruments to bear the burden of personal notoriety. Adam Zimmerman was not, in any literal sense, “the man who stole the world,” but he was certainly in the forefront of the great heist. He organized the shock troops which led the rapid-fire asset-stripping raids that bankrupted whole nations and cornered every significant commodity whose futures were dealt. Like any true hero, he did not act for himself but for the captains of Global Capitalism, and hence for the world as a whole — but he did take a perfectly reasonable commission on every deal he made.
By 2010 Adam had already made his first billion dollars and had laid the groundwork for the Ahasuerus Foundation. By 2020 he had made his second billion, and the Ahasuerus Foundation was becoming a significant force in longevity research and the commercial development of suspended-animation technology. In the spring of 2025 he made five billion dollars more, and the Ahasuerus Foundation became the leading institution in both its fields of sponsorship.
Although his part in these transactions made him one of the wealthiest men in the world, Adam remained scrupulously unassuming in dress and manner. His legion of aides and assistants thought him rather shy, and they were as grateful for his unfailing politeness as they were for his measured generosity. The only slight resentment that his employees harbored was against his habit of lecturing them on the necessity of self-discipline, the virtues of thrift, the dangers of hedonism, and other related topics. They valued the truths that were invariably to be found in these homilies, but were inclined to think the lectures themselves a trifle pompous.
Despite his nickname and the notoriety it reflected, Adam did not like to expose himself to the public gaze, and he became increasingly reclusive as the twenty-first century wore on. One of his favorite sermons, in fact, was a warning against the seductiveness of fame.
“Fame,” Adam would sternly advise his closer acquaintances, “is essentially a matter of attracting attention, and attention is always fatal to men who make their living by dipping into