The Unincorporated Man (20 page)

“Justin Cord,” Neela said, speaking almost as if she was giving a book report, “started the first workerless factory, amidst a bit of controversy, if I remember my history, made the conversion to paperless bureaucracy a reality, was a billionaire at twenty-nine.”

“Thirty-eight… and guilty as charged,” he answered.

“Funny, the show said nothing about your interest in cryonic suspension.”

“Show?”

“Just one of many. You were the only well-known billionaire to just up and disappear. It was assumed you changed your name to escape the pressures of being one of the world’s wealthiest and controversial men.”

“That’s a load of crap. It was great being one of the world’s wealthiest men. As for the controversy, if little minds needed to be shoved into the future and hated the guy doing the shoving, well, then, what can I tell you? The future was still coming, with or without me.”

He folded his arms across his chest and leaned back a bit. “Got another one?”

“Another what?” she asked.

“Another off-the-agenda type of question. I’m really enjoying this.”

Neela smiled, remembering the initial moments of Justin’s revive and all the questions she had wanted to ask him. While still not necessarily appropriate, she figured, what the heck? Nothing had gone according to plan, and it almost seemed with this man that nothing ever would.
Fine, why not?

“You seem awfully eager to answer my questions,” she said.

“Who said anything about answering? I just like to hear the questions. You often learn more about a situation from the questions than the answers. And I have a lot to learn. So, you see, you’ll be doing me a favor by asking your questions.”

Neela found herself smiling involuntarily yet again. “My dear Mr. Cord. Are you manipulating me?”

“Wouldn’t think of it,” he answered back.

“OK, Justin. Why’d you do it?”

“Do what?”

“Just disappear like that?”

“That one’s easy, Neela. I wanted to live.”

“That I figured out without my avatar, thank you very much,” she retorted. “Of course you wanted to live. But you had a much simpler, even more logical, solution in the form of preexisting cryonic organizations. Why would you go through all the extra difficulty of creating your own suspension system? Especially given the fact that suspension in your day and age was so technologically backward. I would’ve thought you’d have stayed with the experts. Or, at least, those who’d already made inroads into the fledgling science.”

Justin waited a moment to answer. While he did, a busboy came and cleared the table while the waiter appeared once more with a dessert cart. “When in Italy,” Justin proffered, “tiramisu.”

“Tira me too,” joked Neela. The waiter did not appear to be amused. Still, he got the gist, took the order, and left.

“Neela,” Justin said, as soon as the waiter was out of earshot, “what do you know about my time?”

“Too vague. Plus, you’re answering the question with a question. No doing that.”

Justin was about to argue, but Neela’s earnest inquisitiveness stopped him.

“Fine. Bottom line—all the cryonics organizations, indeed everyone who believed in cryonics, based their belief on one crucial factor, and all of them were wrong.” Justin reconsidered. “That’s unfair. Not wrong, but hopeful in the face of a glaring inconsistency in their thinking. It was a lot like hiding in a house during a hurricane. The rational part of you knows that the house is going down if the hurricane hits. But it would still be stupid to remain outside, so you go into the house and hope that the hurricane doesn’t come your way. If it does, you hope that it won’t destroy your house and you with it. But deep in your heart you worry.”

“Well,” Neela answered, “that was a masterful job of climbing Mount Analogy, but what does it mean?”

“My world was doomed.”

“Your sister-in-law called. She’s worried about you.”

“Ex-sister-in-law, Sebastian. Amanda’s dead,” Justin answered, putting down his morning
Wall Street Journal
and looking up at his ever-faithful assistant, Sebastian Blancano. As usual, his aide was in a three-piece suit and firmly grasping his crackberry. In addition to notifying Justin of his ex-in-law’s concern, Sebastian was scanning the smartphone as it fed him bits and pieces of information from twenty different papers in four different languages. As far as Justin was concerned, Sebastian was hands down the best executive assistant he’d ever had. He was not much of a looker, with his light brown eyes that pinched at his nose, giving him the mien of a well-groomed bird. Being very tall, very thin, and a few years away from being completely bereft of hair didn’t help his physiological ensemble. As per his modus operandi, Sebastian stood while Justin sat eating his breakfast and reading his newspaper. Justin had tried early on to get his executive assistant to lighten up—even going so far as to invite him to sit and join him for breakfast—but gave up when he realized that Sebastian would have none of it. Sebastian, in fact, seemed to have no informal moments whatsoever, and whatever quirks made him treat Justin like a god also made him invaluable in helping run the Cord multibillion-dollar corporation. Of the two, Justin realized, Sebastian was unquestionably the smarter man. He spoke more languages, was much better at math, and was far more organized. But Justin also knew that Sebastian would never be able to do what he did. Because what Justin had in droves Sebastian had in drips—that intangible mix of curiosity and cunning that breathed life into the type of innovations that made one a billionaire at thirty-eight and the other a glorified secretary at fifty-three.

“Send her some flowers,” responded Justin.

“We did that already. Twice. I guess that’s why she’s concerned.”

“Look, just tell her I’m too busy… or out of the country.”

Sebastian shot him a look.

“Done that too, huh?”

Sebastian didn’t speak. A slightly raised eyebrow answered in the affirmative.

“Doesn’t she realize I’m OK? Yes, her sister is dead, yes, my wife is gone, but that was over six months ago. It’s time to move on.” He pulled his paper back up so that Sebastian wouldn’t see his eyes. “I… have to move on.”

Sebastian remained silent until he felt that his boss was ready for the next bit of news.

“We’re taking a beating in the press,” he said—emotionless.

Paper down. “What are they complaining about now?”

“The factory in Elkgrove.”

“Well, let me guess,” he groused. “They can’t be complaining that I’m oppressing the workers.” He, as well as everyone else, knew that the Elkgrove, Tennessee, plant was an entirely workerless factory—in fact, the first.

“No, Mr. Cord. Quite the opposite, it would seem,” answered Sebastian. “They’re up in arms that you have
no
workers.”

“That’s not technically true,” he answered, referring to the fact that the factory had at least a few humans in it. Technicians, mostly, plus the occasional cleanup crew. But it was also true that this was the first factory in history that did not depend on humans for the day-to-day manufacturing of its product. There were plenty of self-automated plants, but all were labor-dependent. Nothing else came close to this. Because Justin had devised a system that learned from its mistakes and reconfigured itself on the fly so that new ones were not made. It was, in essence, a factory of self-replicating robots building better robots better able to accomplish the task at hand. What’s more, the system could be applied to practically any manufactured product.

It also didn’t help that Justin was able to pay the few workers associated with the Elkgrove plant outlandish salaries. After all, his worker costs were next to nothing, having next to nothing in workers. It was for that reason the unions hated him; it was for the potential of shutting down overseas operations that his competitors in China and India hated him; and for all of this combined that his own government was scared of him. Not surprising, he thought, in that the government always tended to be scared of the truly innovative, being by its very nature conservative.

“Maybe,” offered Justin, “they’ll back off when they realize it’ll take at least ten years for the place to show a profit.”

“Tried feeding that to them already,” countered Sebastian. “Besides, sir, it’s not the profit, it’s the prospect.”

“Right. No workers. No unions. No strikes. No family picnics… blah, blah, blah.”

“I see we woke up chipper today, sir.” Sebastian realized that his boss’s last statement was far closer to home than perhaps his employer was willing to admit. He knew that Justin and his deceased wife had once talked dreamily about children. He also knew that the drunk driver that had cut her life short had turned his boss from caring to callous almost overnight.

Justin feigned a smile.

“Plus,” added Sebastian, “I think we both know that the ten-year mark is just a wee bit of a stretch.”

The next smile was real.

Sebastian was referring to the fact that the books showed profitability in four years, and if current projections were met, as early as three. But Justin, with the help of Sebastian and some savvy PR work, found it safer to have his friends and enemies underestimate him. He smiled at the thought of the Elkgrove factory—his most controversial venture yet. It was an environmentally sound, pollution-and emission-free, efficient, and safe factory that caused no traffic jams. Yet everyone hated it. This was to be expected, and to some extent it gave Justin’s belief in the project more credence. Small minds had always hated big ideas, and this idea—his idea—was proving to be no exception.

Justin got up from the breakfast table. He was dressed in his gym clothes.

“I’m going for a run.”

“Very well, sir.” Work, Sebastian realized, had been his boss’s saving grace since the tragedy. And when work failed to suffice, there was always exercise.

Justin was out the door in a flash. Though it wasn’t his job, Sebastian collected the dishes and brought them into the kitchen.

Sebastian looked worried as his boss came out of the doctor’s office. Justin had enough money to pay for the best, which was precisely what he got. The reputation and experience of this physician would, Sebastian realized, make whatever conclusion he arrived at harder to take, not easier.

“Well?” Sebastian asked.

Justin put a hand on his faithful assistant’s shoulder. “It’s as I suspected. They can delay it but not stop it.” Then, “I have a year at best. Six months at worst.”

“Sir?” Sebastian looked far more stricken than the man who’d just received the news. It was Justin who ended up gently guiding his assistant to the elevator.

“Sebastian, it’s time to call the people in Arizona about the cryonics.”

“Sir, is that really a sensible thing to do? No one has any proof that this frozen suspension stuff really works, in fact the odds against it are…”

“. . . pretty much 100 percent that I will be dead in a year,” interrupted Justin. “Given that, a long shot doesn’t seem like such a bad idea. It’s my money to waste, and my life, such as I have left, to risk.”

Sebastian knew better than to argue. They proceeded down the long hallway. As they were about to exit the building a reporter ambushed them.

“Mr. Cord,” said the man, “mind if I ask you a couple of questions?”

Although Justin loathed reporters as a rule, and believed that answering one question from a reporter was like putting one drop of blood into a pool filled with sharks, he paused. The young man, he reasoned, showed extreme skill in cracking not only his timetable but also his location. And while Justin valued his privacy and would endeavor to plug the leak that had led this reporter to him at this most awkward of moments, he had to admire the determination and ability that had brought their universes together.

He looked at the young man and said over his shoulder, “You have until I reach the car.”

“How do you feel now that the men who tried to sabotage the Elkgrove plant have been caught?” asked the reporter, chasing after his mark.

Sebastian checked his smartphone and leaned into Justin’s ear.

“Ten minutes ago,” he whispered, “sorry… distracted.”

Justin continued his pace, never once looking back at the man tagging along.

“This is a matter of law, not feeling,” he answered. “Next question.”

“Why are you visiting a renowned oncologist for the second time in three weeks?”

Justin stopped. He turned to look at the reporter, who seemed more surprised at the reaction than at the fact that he was going to get an actual answer.

“How would you like an exclusive interview with me?” asked Justin.

“Serious?” the reporter asked. For a young reporter an exclusive with a man who rarely gave them would be huge.

“Dead… serious,” answered Justin, with no hint of irony. Though he noticed that Sebastian winced.

“Yes or no?” Justin asked.

The reporter considered the story he would lose versus the one he could gain. “No promises on special treatment or what I print or don’t print.”

Justin nodded in agreement. “One condition. You hold off on what you saw today until we finish our interview.”

“As long as it takes place in the next two days,” the man countered.

“Give Sebastian a number where he can reach you in the next hour.” Unspoken was the knowledge that if the reporter did not hear from Justin’s assistant he would publish what he’d witnessed. The reporter gave Sebastian his card with the assurance that his cell phone was on.

Once they got into the limousine, Sebastian groused.

“I apologize, sir. I do not know how he got our schedule, but I will find the leak.”

“Don’t worry; in a month he’ll be working for me.”

“I don’t think you can bribe him, sir.”

“I should hope not. But I’m not going to offer him a bribe. I’m going to offer him a job. I own a newspaper; I think he’ll do just fine.”

“Sir, he saw you leaving an oncologist’s office. It’s not going to be much of a leap from there.”

“Of course he’ll find out. That’s why I’m going to tell him. Now, why don’t you tell me about who sabotaged the Elkgrove plant?”