‘There were many of these ‘bad guys’, Dually continued.’ They showed up wherever power could be held. They sought leadership roles in all facets of life and placed themselves in politics, and business. Of course, you couldn’t swing a dead cat without hitting a psychopath in the tech sector. They were found in all places that influenced world direction, and determined it’s momentum.

‘The Magnates were of one mind. They recognized this amongst themselves. They could only see things from the perspective of conquest. Many were too lacking to become any true threat to the social order. They had already lost somewhere along their way in life, been beaten down like dogs, yet stayed. Like minions wearing the ‘Mark’ they scurried around doing the dirty work of their masters.

‘In fact, the actions of the Magnates closely mirrors the passages in the bible that tell of the ‘Mark of the Beast’. Even the way to identify the beast was found to be accurate.’ Dually showed Ethan an image of 666 which transformed into three people with large bellies, standing together.

‘As you can see the number of the beast is simple symbology. It represents people who gather together to appease their personal appetites. This method of co-existence proved to be a very efficient system of conquest. They worked together and they infiltrated places of policy. Some of these places were so embedded in society, it was impossible to believe a Magnate, or in fact, a succession of Magnates, could be running them.

‘In the years leading up to the singularity, all places of economic policy were controlled by magnates funneling money to their cohorts. Huge banks or groups of banks in the Western World would fail, and rock the economy. The politicians would get together, make a big show of investigating the whole thing, condemn the banks and come up with additional regulation. The regulation always favored the banks, which would in turn fail again. Each time taking huge amounts of money out of the system and place it into a dwindling market. This caused a tremendous amount of economic instability and visibly weakened the Western World. In addition, these economic explosions caused all kinds of hardship for the ordinary citizen. With every occurrence, more and more people were left out of the economic system entirely.

‘Most of the money did eventually funnel into just one pocket. That’s the nature of capitalism, competition, and conquest. Only one can win. In the Western World, that leader was Eldon Whitehead.

‘ Originally, from Kent UK, what set Whitehead apart from the others was he had already created to the finest detail, an empire of his own making, and the steps he took to create it, before he ever entered the arena of conquest. It was more than just an idea. Like the autistic artist who can fly over an entire city and from memory recreate it on canvas, Whitehead held all the information of his conquest in his mind. It was not as an idea. It was a living conceptualization. He did not live in this world. He interacted with it from his world. This made all the difference. He knew exactly what to do at every intersection in life. No-one could beat Whitehead in recognizing potentials and willing a degree of certainty upon them. He knew exactly the potentials he was looking for and manipulated individual causal events which would produce a larger, desired outcome. His brain functioned much like AI in it’s early stages. High retention and retrieval, capable of calculating endless possibilities, and absolutely zero emotional attachment. He was quite perfect in many ways.

‘In China, a peasant farmer Zhang Wei, rose to become supreme leader, not only of China, but what came to include vassal states including Russia and other independent autocratic nations. He followed the Chinese tradition of leadership which came out of the original Chinese Communist Party. At the time of his leadership, his rule became known as the CCP with Zhang characteristics. Apart from his strategic ingenuity, there really was only one characteristic; the ability to entrap nations and people, and subject them to his rule. They either submitted willingly or unwillingly, but they all submitted. Zhang had an iron grip on half the world and his influence was growing every day.

‘Something Zhang held onto from the early days of the CCP was the ‘five year plans’. These set focused 5 year objectives and procedures for the nation. They not only provided rapid results because of unified determination, but they also provided detailed measurement of progress, and highlighted adaptations that would strengthen the desired outcome. They provided Zhang with the very same capability Whitehead naturally possessed of bringing desired outcomes by manipulating smaller associative outcomes. The difference was, Zhang was doing this with an entire nation. The West was full of gunslingers who shot from the hip. They could never turn their collective resources to a single objective, such as ruling the world. Zhang could and he had tremendous momentum over the West’.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

‘That’s good for tonight Dually,’ Ethan said, yawning. Full on Immersive Discover could be tiring. ‘I’m just going to do a little Interactive Immersion and go to bed’.

II (Interactive Immersion) removed the tutorial aspect of Immersive Discovery. Dually only spoke when spoken to during these times. It allowed Ethan independent exploration of a topic by placing himself in the experience and placing his focus on whatever caught his eye. Freed of commentary he was able to form his own judgment.

Tonight, he was interested in Eldon Whitehead, so he simply entered Whitehead’s file; a location where everything known about Whitehead could be found. Immediately Ethan was greeted with moments in time throughout Whitehead’s life. The moment Whitehead married Zhou Mei, daughter to one of the most important diplomats in China. The moment when Whitehead suspended his StarForce service in Africa and the long running war in Ukraine.

All documented moments of Whitehead’s life were there. Most of the moments looked to be pretty boring to Ethan. He was inclined to skip over things like his marriage to Zhou Mei and move right on to Whitehead’s StarForce where all the action was.

Because Ethan skipped over the marriage, he missed an example of just how calculated Whitehall’s every move was. As might be suspected in a traditional marriage of convenience, he didn’t marry Zhou Mei to gain access to her father’s influence. He married her to gain access to her father’s best friend; influential business magnate Jimmy Wang. Whitehead identified Wang as someone who could become an ally and co-conspirator. What made Wang so desirable as such, was he was in a position to place himself inside Zhang’s inner circle in a way a diplomat could ever achieve. He could enter as an outside influence, This provided Wang with all kinds of ways to kill Zhang. Ethan missed this piece of information and every piece of information in Whitehead’s puzzle had it’s place. Ethan’s journey of understanding was just beginning.

StarForce was a pretty good place to begin. It was the most significant piece of Whitehead’s puzzle. It was the final piece that placed him in position to rule the world. StarForce was a satellite system and the total package at that. Owned by Whitehead and funded by the US government, it had GPS; infallible communications and surveillance; jamming capabilities via High-Altitude Electromagnetic Pulse (HEMP), as well as subsequent nuclear weaponry; an all inclusive Directed-Energy Weapon (DEW) package, and debris collectors.

By the time StarForce became fully functional, there were over 25,000 laser powered satellites in it’s orbit. They were powered by remote nuclear and solar power stations placed in medium and high earth orbit. They all had their purpose. Some satellites had bombs, some could drop into low earth orbit where they could take the perfect shot using the DEW of choice. A lot were for defense, and this was what created one of the biggest problems the world had ever faced. No one else could get their satellites into space. Whitehead had complete control over earth’s upper atmosphere, and not even the United States of America, who paid for it all, could put a satellite into orbit. Because of StarForce’s diverse and exacting space weaponry, Whitehead was in control of all warfare on earth and in the sky.

In spite of Whitehead’s treachery, Ethan could not help but revere the man’s ingenuity. Because he presented StarForce to the US government as a surveillance and communications package (with a few discreet bells and whistles), he was allowed to build the system with relative impunity. In fact, he had already built most of it privately before he ever sold it to the government. There was very little regulation on frontier discovery. All the surveillance and communications were up there already. Later, when he needed a nuclear reactor, he convinced the government it was part of an impenetrable power system and grid. He also hinted large covering HEMP potential would be there, if ever the need occurred. By then government was so bastardized (because of Whitehead’s interference), they just gave him the green light. No-one even watched what he was doing, except Zhang Wei. Unfortunately, Zhang was not in a position to stop Whitehead, and even more unfortunately, had not taken steps early enough to prevent it from happening. One day the world just woke up and realized it was fucked. At the time, the only difference between Zhang and the rest of the world, was he knew that months ago, and that information was something he could work with.