Location: Board of Directors Room, Volta S.A. Factory, Ivry-sur-Seine
Date: End of January 1990
Point of view: Omniscient (Focus on Karim Belkacem and Lazare Bonaparte)
The board room of Volta S.A. had nothing to envy to those of the largest Parisian investment banks. Located on the top floor of the administration building, just above the roar of the assembly lines, it offered a sanctuary of padded silence. A huge oval table in solid mahogany dominated the room, surrounded by black leather armchairs.
That morning, the sky in the Paris suburbs was low and gray, but inside, the atmosphere radiated euphoric heat.
Auguste Bonaparte, impeccable in a navy blue double-breasted suit, stood at the head of the table. The former diplomat who became executive chairman of Volta was enjoying his audience. Opposite him were the company's CFOs, the head of the hardware department, and Karim Belkacem, the brilliant software architect, whose curly hair and crumpled sweater still stood out in this solemn setting.
At the other end of the table, Lazare Bonaparte presided in silence, his hands clasped under his chin.
"Gentlemen," Auguste announced, placing a thick leather-bound binder on the mahogany. "The financial year 1989 is officially closed. And the numbers that our auditors have just certified exceed the most optimistic projections in our history."
A murmur of anticipation ran through the room. The financial directors recovered.
"Last year was marked by two major victories," continued the ENA graduate with the presence of a minister. "The first is the definitive security of our contracts with the State. Thanks to the successful integration of the VESLA-II chip into Thomson-CSF's radar systems and the encrypted communication networks of the French Defence Procurement Agency, we have become the leading supplier of sovereign silicon to the French army. These defense contracts, negotiated at a high price for national security reasons, have guaranteed an unshakable revenue base."
Auguste cleared his voice, his eyes sparkling with mischief.
"The second victory is of a logistical nature. As you know, the economic collapse of the Soviet bloc allowed our president to negotiate exclusive supply agreements in Siberia. With the ruble no more than a monkey's currency, we are currently buying the tantalum, palladium and rare earths needed for our capacitors at a price that defies economic rationality. Our material cost collapsed by seventy-five percent in the last quarter."
One of the financial directors, a poached veteran from Paribas, could not contain himself.
"Monsieur Bonaparte, give us the net result."
Auguste smiled broadly.
"After taxes, depreciation of our R&D, and provisions for the launch of our consumer computer this spring, the net profit of Volta S.A. for the year 1989 amounted to one billion four hundred million francs."
A cathedral silence fell over the room. One billion four hundred million francs. It was a monstrous, astronomical, unreal figure for a company that, a few years earlier, had been just a clandestine project in the basement of a disused factory. Volta was no longer a start-up. It was a titan.
"Faced with this exceptional cash flow," Auguste continued, "and in anticipation of the massive liquidity that will be generated by the agreement with AMD and Compaq in the United States, the board has decided that it is time to reward those who have built this empire. For the first time since Volta's founding, we will be paying dividends on the founding shares."
Karim Belkacem, slumped in his chair, froze. He took a pen out of the pocket of his corduroy jacket and pulled a notepad toward him.
One billion four hundred million.
He roughly divided the figure into distributable shares, then applied the percentage of founding shares that Lazarus had given him years earlier to thank him for coding the core of VoltaOS. Karim had always considered these actions as symbolic pieces of paper, a distant promise. He had never looked at the numbers closely. He lived for code, ate cold pizza, and slept half the time under his desk.
He traced the final result on paper. He counted the zeros again. Once. Twice.
His hands began to tremble. His pen slipped from his fingers and rolled on the mahogany table.
Twenty-eight million francs.
He had just earned, in a single vote of the council, more money than his entire extended family would earn in ten lifetimes of toil in the towers of the Paris suburbs. The shock was physically violent. His heart raced, his breath stopped. He looked at his old worn sneakers, his faded jeans. He was a multimillionaire.
"Karim?" asked Auguste gently, noticing the sudden pallor of the young genius. "Is everything okay?"
"Twenty-eight..." Karim stammered, gasping for breath, wide-eyed staring at the notepad. "I... I can buy an entire building for my parents. I can... I don't even know what I can do with it. It is... That's a mistake, isn't it?"
One of the CFOs patted him on the shoulder in a friendly way, laughing.
"That's not a mistake, boy. Welcome to the big leagues."
At the end of the room, a butler in white gloves discreetly stepped forward and popped the cork of a bottle of vintage Dom Pérignon Champagne. The sharp sound sounded like a joyful gunshot. The crystal cups were distributed. The room filled with laughter, congratulations, and a perfectly justified capitalist intoxication. They had just changed their social dimension.
Except for one man.
Lazare Bonaparte looked at the quivering glass of champagne which the butler had just placed before him. He did not touch it. His face remained as smooth and impenetrable as a death mask.
While his directors celebrated the culmination of a lifetime, the Builder saw in these figures only a vulgar accounting line. For the kid from Ivry-sur-Seine or the veteran of finance, becoming rich was an absolute dream. For the former agent of the DGSE's Action Service who died at the age of sixty in the Bali inferno, it was a childish distraction.
Wealth was not a shield against pain. The money had not prevented the blood of his adopted daughter, Camille, from flowing on the tiles of a hospital. Money had not prevented the 21st century from sinking into the chaos of predatory algorithms.
Lazarus slowly raised his eyes. His dark gaze, heavy with the melancholy of centuries, swept the table. The ambient euphoria suddenly seemed to freeze at the contact of this unfathomable coldness. The laughter died. The cups were lowered.
"The champagne is excellent, father," said Lazare, in a low voice that resounded in the sudden silence. "But I fear that you are celebrating the end of the war when we have only just loaded the guns."
Auguste put down his glass, his smile slowly fading. He knew that tone. It was the tone of the strategist, of the Elder who saw the horizon that others did not know.
"Lazarus," Augustus attempted. "We have the equipment. We have the alliance with Compaq. And we now have the financial means of a multinational. Can't you allow yourself, if only for a minute, to savor this victory?"
"One billion four hundred million francs is not a victory," said Lazare, pushing back his cup intact. "It's just a piece of ammunition. A vulgar pile of black powder piled up in the hold of a ship. And if we don't use it immediately, this treasure will only be used to fund our own funerals."
Lazarus got up. He dominated the room, radiating terrifying authority.
"You think we won because our VoltaOS operating system is the fastest in the world? You are mistaken. An operating system without software to keep it alive is not an empire. It is a beautiful desert where no one wants to live."
The Builder turned to Karim Belkacem, brutally tearing the young man from his newly-rich reveries.
"Put away your pen, Karim. We have a world to buy."
Location: Board of Directors Room, Volta S.A. Factory, Ivry-sur-Seine Date: End of January 1990 Point of view: Omniscient (Focus on Lazare Bonaparte)
The euphoria had dissipated as quickly as it had appeared. Dom Pérignon's cups, barely begun, were discreetly pushed back to the edges of the large mahogany table. The silence that now reigned in the council chamber was no longer one of blissful admiration, but one of absolute concentration. Volta's investment bankers and CFOs had just realized that their young CEO had not given them dividends to rest, but to buy their unwavering loyalty in the coming war of annexation.
Lazarus opened a black leather folder he had brought with him and slid several cardboard folders toward the center of the table.
"A computer, no matter how powerful, is just an inert brick if it doesn't allow its users to create," Lazarus began, his eyes dark and piercing. "The V-1000 processor and the VoltaOS system will pulverize Intel and Microsoft in terms of raw performance. But Bill Gates has an advantage that speed cannot compensate for: an ecosystem. Thousands of developers code for MS-DOS and Windows. If they keep the monopoly of software, the public will stay at home."
Karim Belkacem leaned back in his chair, regaining his senses after the shock of his twenty-eight million.
"My team coded V-Office for office automation," Karim said. "We have a word processor, a spreadsheet, a presentation software that runs natively. This is enough for the basic professional market."
"I'm not interested in the basic market, Karim. I want absolute hegemony," the Builder said. "And your team, as great as it is, is too small to code all the computer uses of a civilization. We're not going to waste five years writing software from scratch. We are going to use this billion four hundred million francs to buy those who have already written them."
Lazare turned to his financial directors. The former executives of Paribas, accustomed to mergers and acquisitions, immediately took out their pens.
"Prepare your legal teams," Lazare ordered. "We are going to launch a series of takeover bids, friendly if possible, hostile if necessary. I want you to buy out the software pioneers in four specific strategic sectors. The condition imposed on each acquisition will be draconian: they will cancel all their ongoing developments for Microsoft, Apple or Commodore, and will port their software to VoltaOS in absolute exclusivity."
Lazarus stood up and walked over to the flipchart. He drew four distinct columns.
The Four Pillars of Annexation
1. The Video Game Industry & Asset Creation: "The first pillar is entertainment," Lazarus announced, writing the word "Game" on the board. "Most executives in our industry despise video games, seeing them as a children's market. This is a monumental mistake. Video games are the technological Trojan horse that forces the adoption of hardware in homes. You have seen our balance sheets. The license to use our RISC micro-architecture that we secretly signed with the Japanese giant Sony last year is already earning us massive royalties. Sony is preparing a revolutionary console based on our technology for years to come. But for the Volta machine to become the creation station for all developers on the planet, we need to control the tools. I want you to buy studios that create game engines and 3D assets. Look in Europe, in England, in Japan. Buy out the companies that develop geometric modeling tools."
2. Cinema & Special Effects (VFX): "The second sector is computer-generated images for cinema. Hollywood is on the cusp of a digital revolution. Plastic models will disappear. Soon, dinosaurs, spaceships, and explosions will be calculated by computers." (Auguste interrupted, noting Silicon Graphics' dominance, but Lazare countered): "Silicon Graphics provides the hardware. But animation software is often created by small independent studios in Canada or France. Find these 3D pioneers. Buy them back. Our upcoming GPU, the SONG-III, will have the power of a Silicon Graphics workstation on a simple desktop card. When we buy the best rendering software and make it exclusive to VoltaOS, Hollywood will have to throw away its old stations to buy our machines."
3. Cybersecurity & Networks: "The third pillar is cybersecurity. We equip the Directorate General of Armaments and the State's radar systems. This is our political shield. But since the Dakar affair, we know that the American NSA and the CIA will do everything to infiltrate our networks and fracture our operating system. I want to acquire a company that specializes in encryption and data security. No matter the price. Whether Swiss, French or Scandinavian. They will become Volta's 'Black Operations' division, tasked with creating tamper-proof firewalls, auditing VoltaOS code, and assuring our global military customers that the NSA cannot tap a Volta-branded machine."
4. The Music Industry & Digital Sound: "The fourth pillar is the sound industry. Analogue recording is in its final years. Music studios around the world will switch to digital audio stations (DAWs)." (Karim agreed, noting German companies making MIDI sequencers). "Buy them," Lazarus ordered, with the terrifying calm of an ogre pointing to his meal. "Or buy their direct competitors. I want a sound engineer in London, Los Angeles or Paris to be unable to produce an album without using proprietary software owned by Volta S.A."
Lazarus put down the black marker. He leaned against the wall, crossed his arms, and looked at his directors. The map of the world had just been redrawn before their eyes.
"Video games. Cinema. The military complex. The music industry." He let the words permeate the bankers' minds. "Microsoft builds windows for accountants. We are going to build the matrix in which engineers, artists and the military will create the world of tomorrow. Don't talk to me about dividends or profits anymore. Money is made to be burned on the battlefield. You have a war chest of one and a half billion francs. I give you three months to empty the coffers and bring these companies back to me."
The former wolves of Paribas' finance swallowed their saliva, suddenly intimidated by the carnivorous magnitude of the task. They had just understood the true nature of the Builder. He didn't want to just get into the IT industry. He wanted to capture the intellectual production chain of all humanity.
"Prepare the letters of intent to purchase," murmured Auguste Bonaparte, his eyes shining with pride mingled with terror, addressing his financial team. "The council adjourned the meeting. The hunt is on."