‘At first, there were many of these ‘bad guys’, Dually continued.’ They showed up wherever there was power. They sought leadership roles in all facets of life and placed themselves in business and politics. 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 its momentum.

‘The Magnates were of one mind, and formed an easy alliance. As long as you were bent on greed, and didn’t step too heavily on anyone else’s toes, you were in the club. Over the centuries they organized and created an alliance of sorts. Some were capable and some weren’t. Some rose to the top, and others scurried around doing the dirty work for others.

‘The Magnates have been likened to those who wear the ‘Mark of the Beast’; a brotherhood who wears the mark to buy and sell. Even the biblical identifier of the beast was found to be accurate regarding the behavior of the Magnates’. 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 have come together to appease their personal appetites. This co-existence proved to be a very efficient system of conquest. The Magnates and their minions worked together and 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, but they had been since time immemorial.

‘In the years leading up to the singularity, all places of economic policy were controlled by Magnates. Risky practices caused huge banks or groups of banks in the Western World, run by Magnates, would fail and rock the economy. The politicians and policy makers, also Magnates, would make a big show of investigating the whole thing. While bailing them out, they’d condemn the banks unreservedly, and come up with additional regulation to prevent such a thing from ever happening again. The regulations were often ignored by both sides, and always provided enough leeway for the banks to fail again. They had to. This was the most efficient way to concentrate money.

In the end, competition produces a victor. Only the strongest survived, and soon fewer and fewer people had access to the huge amounts of money being taken out of the system. This caused a tremendous amount of economic instability and markedly weakened the Western World. It had become a world of have and have not, with a very clear defining line. With every failure to the market, more and more people were left out of the economic system entirely. Poverty ran rampant.

‘Most of the money did eventually funnel into just one pocket. In the Western World, the one who won was Eldon Whitehead.

‘Originally, from Kent UK, what set Whitehead apart from the others was he had a tremendous ability to conceptualize potentials regarding anything he came across. He would identify utility in them and file the potential in his mind until it was needed. He was able to build an entire empire, step by step inside his mind with all these potentials he gathered along the way. Like the autistic artist who can fly over an entire city and recreate it on canvas from memory, Whitehead held the same complete conceptualization of his world conquest in his mind, from start to finish. His acumen took everyone by surprise. It was like witnessing magic, and people looked up to him with fear and admiration.

‘Eldon could recognize exactly the potential he was looking for. He didn’t look at something for what it did. He looked at it from the perspective of what it could do in relationship with something else. Bringing these relationships together appeared like building a new reality from nothing. His brain functioned much like AI did in its early stages. High retention and retrieval, capable of calculating endless possibilities, and absolutely zero emotional attachment. He was quite perfect for his ambitions.

‘Coming out of China in the East, Zhang Wei, a peasant farmer rose to become supreme leader, not only of China, but what came to include vassal states including Russia and all the other nations who fell under his autocratic umbrella. His leadership was in the tradition of past Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leaders. He exercised authoritative discipline, and followed state objectives laid out in 5 year plans. This combination, which had been in effect since the party’s conception, was so successful it allowed Zhang to turn his focus to expansion and world domination.

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‘The 5 year plans proved to be China’s greatest engine for creating reality with Chinese characteristics. These were 5 year objectives and procedures for the nation. They not only provided rapid results because the effort was completely focused, but they also provided detailed measurement of progress, and highlighted adaptations that could be implemented to strengthen the desired outcome. Everything was measured before, during and after it occurred. The practice created momentum, and provided Zhang with the very same capability Whitehead naturally possessed of bringing about desired outcomes by manipulating smaller associative and manageable outcomes into bigger outcomes. Zhang was doing this with an entire nation at his fingertips. The West, with diminishing regulation, was full of gunslingers who shot from the hip. They could never turn their collective resources to a single objective like an entire nation. Zhang used this leverage to produce tremendous momentum over the West’.

‘That’s good for tonight Dually,’ Ethan said. He could only take little bits and pieces of full on Immersive Discovery. ‘I’m just going to do a little Interactive Immersion and go to bed’.

Interactive Immersion removed the tutorial aspect of Immersive Discovery and allowed Ethan the freedom to roam around any place or period on his own. Dually only spoke when spoken to during these times. This allowed Ethan independent exploration and judgment without being influenced by commentary.

Tonight, like most nights, he was interested in Eldon Whitehead. Ethan stepped into Whitehead’s world. Everything known about Whitehead was there. There was the moment Whitehead married Zhou Mei, daughter to one of the most important diplomats in China. There was the whole StarForce period. Whatever interested Ethan, he could experience. Just walk into the experience and start snooping around. He might take a cursory look, or spend days there. All the information of that moment in time was there, down to the finest detail waiting to be discovered.

Ethan jumped right into StarForce. Because he skipped over the marriage to Zhou Mei, he missed an example of just how calculating Whitehall’s world had been. 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 tech giant 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 never achieve. He could enter as an outside influence. An advisor if you will. This provided Wang with all kinds of opportunities to disrupt Zhang. Wang could neutralize Zhang. This was a critical piece in Whitehead’s puzzle, and Ethan missed it.

StarForce was where all the action was. It was the most significant piece of Whitehead’s arsenal. It 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), an all inclusive Directed-Energy Weapon (DEW) package, debris collector and a nuclear power system to maximize weaponry.

By the time StarForce became fully functional, there were over 25,000 satellites in its 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 communicated, some could drop into low earth orbit where they could single out and destroy anything, including someone walking down the street. This would become a huge problem for everyone other than Eldon Whitehead.

No other nation or company could defend against Whitehead’s system. If they shot at it from the ground, his satellites would shoot down approaching missiles. They couldn’t attack him in space either. He tracked and destroyed any competing satellites before they even had a chance to position themselves. Whitehead had complete control over earth’s upper atmosphere. Not even the United States of America, who paid for it all, could put a satellite into orbit without Eldon’s permission. Because of StarForce’s diverse and exacting space weaponry, Whitehead had power over all warfare on earth and in the sky.

Ethan loved it. All of it. The cunning. The power. Even Whitehead. The guy had panache. Because he presented StarForce to the US government as a surveillance and communications package, including a few discreet bells and whistles, he was allowed to build the system with relative impunity. No one paid much attention to him. There was very little regulation on frontier discovery in the first place. All the surveillance and communications were up there as a business endeavor, and no one paid it any mind. Later, when Whitehead needed a nuclear reactor to blow things up on a grander scale, he told the government they needed it if they wanted an impenetrable power system and grid. He got the green light over a phone call.

That’s what Ethan loved about Whitehead. He made it look so easy. Always three, four and five steps ahead of everyone else. How could you not admire a man like that?