NEW WORLD TRILOGY (Trilogy Title) (23 page)

Beijing was evidently unhappy with the extent of this continuing and unwanted media attention, but it was also unprepared to appear to respond and bow directly to any international pressure; consequently, the Hong Kong authorities quietly informed Ikaros sixty days after arriving back in Berlin, to his complete surprise, that they would hand back the building in just over three months' time, explaining that the delay was related to internal matters of security and protocol that could not be compromised.  This occurred as scheduled in a low-key manner, accompanied by the previously unstated and unnegotiable condition that the property be put on the market immediately.

Nearly six months later, Ikaros sold the building to a feared yet respected Taiwan property tycoon for a reasonable price, albeit a marginal loss, the whole process being closely monitored and ultimately approved by the Hong Kong authorities who had given Ikaros a shortlist of potential buyers and had emphatically emphasised in no uncertain terms to him that if he tried any tricks, they would use their power to veto the deal and seize the property proper, evidently unwilling to deviate from their preset course or let anything like the Global Domination Corporation fiasco slip through their processes again.

• • •

The question of how Ikaros was able to become established in Hong Kong to the extent that he did and to do it legally was in fact the result of a naïve and unlikely gamble that he made by merely following procedure, which was to submit an application written in Chinese with all the required attachments to the Department of Corporate Property Ownership and Leasing of Hong Kong.  Because all the documents were in order and the legal language contained therein was so extensive and dense, the poor official responsible for reviewing the application approved it with little hesitation after glossing over it and looking only briefly at the proposed sign; although accompanied by a translation, it was only when it was too late did he realise that his lack of curiosity about the implications of use of the word 'domination' and the effect that the company logo would have on the cityscape was what unfortunately set the following events in motion.  The official wasn't taken over the threshold to consider it seriously because everything else seemed to be perfectly in order and, importantly, he'd never been confronted by a daring application before; moreover, being a Friday afternoon, he was wanting to make a decision about the application quickly just before heading off to lunch with colleagues, after which he didn't intend on returning until Monday morning.  Having put the matter out of mind, it wasn't until he was watching TV while eating dinner with his family on the day the sign was revealed did he realise the extent of the mistake he'd made.  Knowing instantly the probable ramifications that were in it for him, after a long and sleepless night, he kissed his wife and children goodbye after breakfast, left the apartment, and stepped in front of a bus on his usual route to work; he died a week later in an intensive-care unit without having woken up to see his family keeping a constant vigil by his side.

The lead investigator of the Global Domination Corporation affair subsequently wrote into his final report a fairly accurate account of the official's involvement and the nature of his death, the details of which were obviously kept from the public.  Despite this, by graciously publicly classifying his death as an accident, the authorities allowed the family to be eligible for the Accidental Death Payment, a once-off sum for officials' families, which nevertheless meant that his widow quickly had to look for work while still in mourning; being unqualified for a professional position or trade, and not having worked in nearly twelve years, she eventually found a job as a cleaner in a hotel and another washing dishes in a restaurant, the wages from which were barely enough for the family to survive on even after moving to a much cheaper apartment.

• • •

On the plane to Berlin, Sascha opens her eyes after napping for a while and looks at Ikaros.  Barely able to concentrate on the film he's watching, he spots her moving and takes off his headphones.  "You okay?" he asks softly, not wanting to wake up Samuel.

"What would you have done if the sign and so forth didn't get approved?"

Ikaros stays silent for a moment.  "I don't know.  I suppose I'd have gone someplace else and tried it there."

"Do you reckon you'd have gone ahead and done it, anyway … if you could have found a way?"

"Maybe … but we'd definitely be incarcerated right now if I had, not just forced onto a plane."  He laughs quietly at the prospect.  "Do you really think I'm that naїve?"

Sascha shuts her eyes again and grins.  "I reckon you'd have done it."

"Maybe," he repeats softly, putting his headphones back on.  "I hope I wouldn't have, though.  It could have screwed us over for years to come … and we really don't have many more years to spare.  I'm starting to get a little bit edgy.  I wanna speed things up a bit."

"Yeah, why don't we just turn things up a notch?"  Sascha smiles at the suggestion without opening her eyes.

"We need to.  We really do."

"I know.  I agree.”

Chapter 18

Sascha, Ikaros and Samuel quickly settled back into life in and around their apartment in Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, enjoying the initial comfort and the familiarity of being home; Samuel was also allowed to play around the city for a week before starting back at his school.

At the same time, Ikaros took as many interviews as he could while contemplating his next strategic move; in one of the early interviews, when pressed for an answer about his future plans, he revealed that, in around three months' time, the Global Domination Corporation would release a report about the 'state of world affairs,' including the likelihood of meeting the many challenges over the coming decades given current trends.  He was unwilling and also unable to provide any more information at that time as he hadn't done any formal research on the associated topics; it was merely the culmination of a basic idea he'd had several years earlier and had recently thought that it was probably about the right time to bring it off the back burner to make something of it.  He also saw it as providing a convenient stopgap when faced with questions in interviews about the future of the corporation and its operations.  His plan, however, was deservedly and widely scoffed at by the media and considered bizarre, presumptuous, arrogant and considerably left field since the area seemed already to be being well covered by various experts around the world, and there was thought to be little place for such an odd 'report' in the current context, especially when produced by an evidently farcical entity like the Global Domination Corporation; nevertheless, Ikaros maintained his course undeterred, happy that he had something to move forward with.

Around three weeks after returning to Berlin

By this stage, Ikaros had already started to think seriously about how to go about researching and writing this so-called report that he'd been talking about; on Tuesday evening, it struck him that it was probably a document that would take a considerable amount of time and effort to do the job justice, and would therefore require a team of researchers and writers if it were ever to get finished on time.  So, being eager to get started, he got up early the next morning and began planning in earnest. 

Just after breakfast, they started searching for likely candidates at the local universities, targeting potentially sympathetic members of already established student organisations and those studying socially and politically focused subjects.  After ten days, they had a shortlist of nearly thirty students that they'd spoken to personally at university social events and elsewhere on campus while being careful not to mention the project at all.  They formally approached those who best fit their agreed-upon profile and ended up with fourteen very well-paid employees, who all began work within a week.

In the apartment, the team worked shifts for most of each day, trying to coordinate the best they could around their study commitments.  Sascha and Ikaros worked most of all, nearly twenty hours a day between them, but they made sure that someone was always available to take care of Samuel when he needed it.  The living room became the office with five computers, which were all usually in constant use day and night.  Ikaros sat amongst his staff writing up most of the document himself; he also edited and proofed substantial sections written by each of the others.

Close to four months after starting work on the report: February 22, 2053

Happy with the late-in-coming final draft of the report and having informed various media outlets of its impending release, Ikaros placed the document on the Global Domination Corporation's newly developed website, which was a considerable relief for everyone involved because they had missed three 'deadlines' over the previous two months.

By the end of the week, there had been nearly twenty thousand downloads of the report, a figure that climbed steadily to over one hundred thousand by the end of the first month and 2.2 million by the end of the second.  This was spurred on by a moderate amount of media commentary and reviews, and an expensive international marketing campaign on many different Internet platforms, all of which was paid for by Ikaros's large cash reserves.  Over the following months, the number of downloads from the website continued to climb as discussion of the document went moderately viral across a growing number of social networking platforms.

Predictably, the advertising campaign was severely hampered by the authorities and the advertising channels in many countries once the nature of the report's content and the public's reaction to it became known; however, it was allowed to continue for long enough in a relatively unimpeded manner that just about everyone who had access to some form of information technology was eventually made aware of it one way or another.

Disturbed and affronted by much of the content contained in the 'report,' the conservative mainstream media condemned it on the following grounds: being aggressively anti-establishment; condoning violence and civil disruption; encouraging susceptible members of society to be antisocial; and, particularly, attempting to 'legitimise' the actions of extremists, such as religious zealots, racists and terrorists, etc., by suggesting they have the potential of fostering positive social changes over the long-term.  Some of these claims were fairly accurate, but much of the criticism missed the point, often deliberately.  Moreover, before long, a long list of documents and articles emerged claiming to refute the arguments and many of the facts used in support of the main theses in the report.

Meanwhile, Ikaros again began another series of interviews — but this time without leaving home — with almost anyone who offered to interview him, be they friendly or hostile; on many occasions, these interviews predictably became quite heated encounters due to the overt hostility of the journalists themselves, but not least of all because of Ikaros's ever-shortening fuse and his unapologetic lack of sympathy and disdain for those he considered to be ignorant of, or complicit with, the complex of power institutions that were leading the world to ruin.  Ikaros had become adamant.

Chapter 19

Nearly two weeks into the research of the report: 1:40 p.m.

A member of staff, Heinrich, a science studies student, who at times appears to be more interested in science fiction than actual science, brings a digital tablet over to Ikaros's desk and hands it to him.  "What do you know about what's going on in space?"

Ikaros looks at the tablet and starts scrolling through the open file on it.  "Well, I'm pretty sure that whatever I think I know probably isn't the half of it.  What have you got?"

Heinrich nods quickly, then launches into his speech.  "I've been interested in this topic for some time, and even though a lot of people have been suspicious about it, there's barely any information on it, and it all kind of sounds the same because, I mean, they're usually just working with the official word on it, right?  Anyway, some of what you find in the dark corners of the Internet and in the 'out-there' media is mainly this alarmist and conspiracy theory stuff, some of which even looks crazy to people like me who believe that something's going on.  But this here," he says pointing vigorously at the tablet, "is something I've collected from a range of sources that I think paints a pretty interesting and damning picture that needs to be looked into further.  I don't know how much we should put in the final report about this topic, but there's got to be more than just a mention of it … I reckon, anyway."

Ikaros nods as he continues skimming through the document, spotting lists of countries, corporation names, investment figures, international organisations, and pages of estimates of covertly channelled resources and raw materials, all interspersed with bullet-point descriptions and analyses.  "Okay, can I have a look at this for a while before we have a talk and work out what we can do with it?"

"Yeah, okay," he replies, knowing it will be taken seriously.

Ikaros looks at him with curiosity.  "You know, you took your time to mention it."