Hawke Residence, Georgetown, Washington D.C., United States of America.
Six thousand kilometers (3728.227 milles) west of the perpetual snows of Saint Petersburg, the American morning stretched itself awake without the assault of industrial coal. The air, slipping through the cracks of the Hawke mansion, smelled of the beeswax the servants rubbed into the Chippendale furniture before dawn, of Virginia tobacco cured in oak barrels that the master of the house smoked in his pipe, and of the slow, majestic breath of the Potomac River, which beyond the hills of Georgetown licked the bare trees with the promise of a spring still distant.
On the second floor, in a room whose windows faced east, the sun was breaking, dyeing the plaster ceiling in shades of orange and pale pink.
It was in that precise instant when a thirteen-year-old boy opened his eyes. Eyes of an unusually penetrating olive green that fixed themselves instantly, without a single blink, on the neoclassical moldings of the ceiling.
Charles Eugene Hawke sat up in his bed. To the servants preparing breakfast downstairs, to the senators who visited the mansion, to the society pages that chronicled his academic achievements, he was simply the Hawke heir, a young prodigy. The luminous future of American capitalism.
But beneath that adolescent skull, reality was far denser. It housed the complete consciousness of Dr. Charles Eugene Morrison, a Harvard professor who in his time had been murdered by nationalist terrorists. A man who came from a future where nations were nothing more than museum relics and a Global Technocratic Government managed human resources with artificial intelligence. A world without wars, without poverty, without individual freedom beyond alignment with the common good. A world, Charles thought as his bare feet sank into the plush Persian carpet, perfect.
Charles Eugene Hawke did not lament this reincarnation. He savored it like an aged nectar. He felt powerful. He was thirteen years old, had the moldable body of an athlete, and the knowledge of a man who had lived the end of history. His room was a reflection of it, he had traced the true veins of the world, the rubber routes, the Coltan deposits, the maritime bottlenecks. Fresh clay for his sculptor's hands.
When he drew back the green velvet curtains, Washington D.C. spread out before him like a freshly laid chessboard. The United States was a vigorous but naive power, a bully with muscles of steel and the brain of a child who still believed in "true democracy." It was the perfect laboratory for his experiment. His objective was not to save a particular nation. Nationalism was the disease he had come to extirpate from the world. His goal was to build a system, a world order where technocracy would not be hampered by flags.
Two discreet knocks on the mahogany door interrupted his musings.
"Good morning, Master Charles. I trust you slept well."
Mrs. Eleanor Pemberton, his English governess, was fifty years old, had a tight bun, and wore a dark wool dress that smelled of starch and authority. A woman, Charles had verified in his analyses, of an intelligence as sharp as her loyalty, bought at a gold price but genuine.
"Good morning, Mrs. Pemberton." Charles modulated his voice to sound brilliant but not terrifying, the perfect mask of the child prodigy. "I slept excellently, thank you. Dreamless, as always".
"Your father expects you for breakfast in twenty minutes. He has several meetings scheduled today with senators regarding the proposed Federal Reserve legislation. Most important matters of state finance".
"Ah, the Central Banking system". A spark of perfectly calibrated interest gleamed in his eyes as he took the Egyptian cotton shirt the maid had left laid out. "To stabilize currency fluctuations and prevent market panics through centralized monetary control. Fascinating economic architecture, really."
Mrs. Pemberton observed him with a mixture of pride and that slight unease he so well knew how to provoke.
"Indeed, young master. Now, please dress appropriately. Your father detests unpunctuality above all other sins."
Once alone, as he knotted the navy blue silk tie before the full-length mirror, Charles allowed himself a smile. This second life was infinitely more pleasant than the first.
The Hawke dining room had been designed with a clear purpose: to diminish the visitor. Dark walnut panels climbed the walls to a vaulted ceiling, and heavy colonial silver flanked an oak table where twenty diners could sit without brushing elbows. At the far end, the picture windows revealed a garden covered in a frost that the sun was beginning to melt, making the lawn glisten like a field of diamonds.
At the head of the table, Cornelius Hawke III dominated the room. At sixty-two, he seemed to have been sculpted from granite and dollar bills. Tall, broad-shouldered, with a thick mustache and blue eyes that seemed capable of appraising everything, he read the Washington Post with a furrowed brow while his secretary, Mr. Jonathan Jefferson, a former Army officer, waited with a sheaf of telegrams in his hand.
"Good morning, Father. I hope the morning correspondence brings favorable news."
"Good morning, Charles. How progresses your architectural model? The miniature city project?"
"Excellently, Father. I have completed the integration of the hospital complex with the railway station terminus. Direct logistical connection, it optimizes medical supply delivery by approximately forty percent according to my calculations. If supplies arrive directly to medical facilities rather than through central warehouses, patient recovery times decrease, and workers return to productive factory labor more rapidly."
Cornelius let out a deep, genuine laugh.
"You think like a manager, son. Like a true captain of industry. The world is fundamentally a vast factory operation. It simply requires someone with vision to properly grease all the gears and optimize the production flow."
Charles chewed a bite of toast, applying just the right amount of jam with a silver knife.
"Father... I was reading in the Times yesterday that President Taft is experiencing considerable political difficulties with tariff legislation in Congress. And simultaneously, our engineering operations in Panama continue moving literal mountains of earth. The scale is quite remarkable."
"The Canal project. Yes. We are cutting an entire continent in two, Charles. Reshaping geography itself for commercial purposes. Ships will no longer need to navigate around Cape Horn through those treacherous waters. Trade will flow like blood through a newly opened artery. Weeks of sailing time eliminated."
"It is genuinely fascinating from a systems perspective. Altering physical geography to improve economic efficiency. And strategically... if we control the Canal's access and transit fees, we effectively control which nations can conduct Pacific-Atlantic trade efficiently and which cannot."
"Precisely, son. Precisely. That is true power. Real, tangible power. Not the illusory power those charlatan politicians believe they possess in the Capitol building. They pass laws. We build infrastructure that makes their laws irrelevant."
At that moment, Mr. Jefferson cleared his throat with a discreet cough.
"Mr. Hawke, sir. An urgent cable has arrived from our London office. From the Black Rock Ventures operational headquarters. Marked priority alpha."
The atmosphere in the dining room froze. Cornelius extended his hand without a word, and as he read the yellow paper, his face transformed. A storm of rage crossed his features while his knuckles turned white. Then, with a roar, he struck the oak table, making the silverware chime and the coffee spill in its cup.
"God damn those Slavic barbarians!"
Charles set his teacup down on its saucer with an exquisitely controlled movement, without a single tremor. His face had molded itself into a mask of "moderate surprise," concealing the intense curiosity he felt.
"Problems in the European theatre, Father?"
"Russia. That god-forsaken country of illiterate peasants, endless snow, and incompetent aristocrats." Cornelius spat the word as if it were poison. "Our partners in London report that the technical supply blockade we have maintained for eighteen months is failing systematically."
"Failing? I was under the impression that H&A Holdings controlled the critical patents for precision ball bearings and several other essential industrial components. Without access to modern bearings, their industrial modernization should be severely limited."
"We do control those patents. But they are reverting to primitive alternatives... lead-alloy bearings, tin-based compounds... archaic metallurgical solutions from decades ago." Cornelius reread the telegram with disgust. "And they are conducting international commerce using physical gold, completely bypassing the City of London's credit systems. They are purchasing industrial machinery directly from Sweden and moving wheat through Argentina without utilizing any of our established credit lines. Someone in that backward empire is thinking... differently."
Charles felt a stab of interest so sharp that his pulse quickened. Russia, in his collapse model, should have been a political corpse. Someone, in that empire of snow and vodka, was applying modern systems theory.
"Perhaps, Father... the fundamental problem is not the fish itself, but rather the design of our net."
"Explain."
"If they refuse to follow our established banking rules and credit mechanisms..." Charles said, methodically crumbling a breadcrumb on his plate, "perhaps we should cease attempting to charge them interest on loans they refuse to accept, and instead focus our efforts on directly changing their internal political structure. If a building's owner refuses to sell at our preferred price, Father... sometimes one must engineer a convenient fire to motivate the owner to accept more reasonable terms. Did you not teach me that precise strategy when discussing the Western railway consolidations?"
For a long instant, Cornelius scrutinized his son. In those green eyes, older than time itself, he saw something that chilled him to the marrow. Then, the moment passed, and Charles was once again a smiling boy.
"A fire... an internal fire... Yes. Our associates in Saint Petersburg mentioned recently a Minister of Justice willing to cooperate to restore his 'traditional Orthodox order.'"
Cornelius turned to his secretary.
"Send immediate authorization to the London office. Release the allocated funds to Minister Shcheglovitov and his patriotic associates through the established untraceable channels. We shall observe how efficiently their new factories and reforms function when the streets are burning and mobs are rampaging."
"Yes, sir. Immediately."
Charles was no longer hungry. His mind was working at a processing speed far superior to that of anyone in that room. There was a rival on the other side of the board.
"Father, may I be excused? I wish to return to my workshop. I have several modifications planned for my city's drainage system that require immediate implementation."
"Of course, son. Go ahead. Continue your excellent work."
. . . . . . . .
Upon reaching the third floor, Charles closed the door to his sanctuary, and for an instant, he allowed himself to abandon the mask. His model city, with its tunnels connecting schools to factories, its neighborhoods segregated by social utility, and a panoptic surveillance tower at its center, was the scale model of the utopia he would build. But that morning he ignored it completely.
He went to the three-meter world map that covered the north wall and drove a red tack into Saint Petersburg with surgical precision.
'The anomaly must be contained and studied before correction. The twentieth century does not belong to kings, nor to tsars, nor to nationalist demagogues. It belongs to the System. To rational administration. To scientific governance. And the System fundamentally does not tolerate independent variables that refuse integration.'
He adjusted his tie before the mirror and stared at the horizon.
[Nemryz: If you've enjoyed this story and want to read ahead, I have more chapters available on my patreon.com/Nemryz. Your support helps me continue writing this novel and AU. Thank you for reading!]