The Age of the Conglomerates: A Novel of the Future Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  1 Christine’s World

  2 Patsy and George Meet the Captain of the Galaxy

  3 Ximena in the Underworld

  4 The Next Day

  5 The Chairman

  6 Conglomerate Manipulation

  7 When Patsy and George Arrived Out West

  8 The Coots’ Café

  9 We

  10 It’s the Recovery That’s the Problem

  11 The Collaborator

  12 When It Rains…

  13 Ichabod’s Train

  14 Change

  15 The Conglomerate Rangers

  16 Gone

  17 The Break-In

  18 Angelo

  19 Heat

  20 Time

  21 Tomorrow

  22 To Do

  23 Paradise

  24 An Order of Mercy

  25 Canal Street Cocktail

  26 The Baby Brigade

  27 The Connection

  28 Landing

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Me: “Hey, Dad, how are ya doin’?”

  Dad: “Not bad, for an old coot!”

  For my mother and father,

  Pat and Pete Nevins,

  thank you for everything.

  Prologue

  The Social Security Administration failed. So did the massive bailout waged by the government to save it. Medicaid and Medicare fell next, and then the insurance companies and the health care industry soon followed. As investments evaporated, the stock markets collapsed. Company after company went bankrupt, as did the pension plans promised to employees.

  This economic implosion coincided with another shock: the early retirement packages offered to control costs and reduce corporate vulnerability came due just as a generation of workers reached retirement age, provoking a mass maturation of 401(k)’s and IRAs. This confluence of economic disasters overran the courts, the banks, and the national and global markets. And thus was ushered in the age of the Conglomerates.

  The Conglomerates, a political party that emerged from the private sector, quickly assumed control of the republic. The party consisted of a group of chief executive officers who were united in greed and who had, through the first half of the twenty-first century, embezzled their way into personal security and mutual protection. They were the only ones to have money, and, in fact, they had been pulling the strings that controlled everyone else: the president, members of Congress, and the businesses of banking, industry, and commerce.

  Now that they were in power, there were no checks and balances; the Conglomerates had taken over everything and everyone.

  Manhattan was the capital of the Conglomerates, as it was home to the financial markets, to business, and to the executive board running the party. Washington, D.C., was where the president of the United States lived and served as a talking head for the party and its policies. Since D.C. played well to the media and the masses, it diverted attention from the real business of running the country. All that took place in New York City, from the office of the party’s chairman.

  The Conglomerates instituted their platform and enforced their will of an economic martial law to insure that budgetary surplus and cost control were matters of constitutional amendments rather than of company policy.

  They had seized control of the economy by eliminating paper and coin and transferring all moneys to a digital standard of currency under the auspices of the Federal Reserve. Not only was a monetary system of paper and alloy obsolete, but it was also said to contribute to the overall health risk of communicable diseases as the germ-laden agent changed hands. At least, that was how the Conglomerates marketed their currency innovation to the public. In addition, this new means of money eliminated the vulnerability to individual identity theft, as all identity was controlled by the state. There was no need to mention that this new policy was a mask of the government for control of personal and public finance, and the Conglomerates didn’t; nor did they bring up the IRS accountants, who loved this means of tracking and taxing.

  The Coots, as the elderly were called, were those born during the baby boom of the twentieth century, and it seemed they would live forever: the ranks of the elderly had swelled, depleting not only the country’s economic resources, but its emotional and psychological resources as well. The elderly came to be seen as a constituency that was robbing the population of what was new and productive. The boomers had borrowed from their tomorrows and couldn’t pay them back. This produced a perceived cultural divide: those who had abused the economy and those who had to pay the price; the aged against the young. The deficit mentality of the me generation produced disastrous results. It was felt that the past had sucked the lifeblood out of the future. This resentment toward the elderly evolved into a force of hatred toward an entire generation, an emotion that spread through ethnic groups, sexual identities and persuasions, race, religion, place of origin; all were becoming united in a hatred of the Coots. The Coots were a constant reminder of why the economy had gone bad and why the society was in such a deplorable condition. Besides, these people were living too long, and there wasn’t a place to put them.

  To ease the burden that the nation’s families had to bear for the sins of their fathers, the Conglomerates created the Family Relief Act, through which the government assumed control of the octogenarian generation. Families were relieved of the expense of their elderly, financial as well as emotional, in exchange for the elderly’s assets and properties. It was a mandatory retirement program that removed the burden and the decision from the family, and it removed the elderly from sight, as well as home. The Coots were removed to retirement communities in the desert Southwest.

  The properties they had owned were seized in an act of eminent domain, and the elderly were removed to “more suitable housing,” which was defined by the Conglomerates as any place they wanted these people to be. Besides, the economic collapse had produced a mass migration of youth to the major urban areas—Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, and Seattle—while the New York metropolitan area now sprawled all along the eastern coast.

  The elder care policy proved a popular success and became a precedent that the Conglomerates exploited and expanded to include a way of dealing with another burden on the populace: troublesome children and adolescents. And so the Dyscards were born. A legal option was created whereby families could discard a progeny that had become a social, family, or genetic problem. The nuisance was removed from the home; the child was transferred to the so-called custody of the state. In fact, these young people were discarded and lived in the city’s subways, an underground world.

  At first the Dyscards were a pilot program for the New York City area, and then the program expanded to the rest of the nation, providing the means to get rid of what people no longer wanted: the problem child. The Conglomerates replicated the Coots program and shipped these kids into New York. The city’s system soon swelled beyond control, and the Conglomerates authorized new discard dumping grounds in Orlando, Detroit, L.A., and San Antonio.

  The participating parents of the discarded child were eligible for a new child selected from a program of personally designed reproduction, whereby troublesome and inferior traits in one’s future offspring could be eliminated from the family unit through individually chosen genetic manipulation before conception.

  And this was how life was at the start of this story about a man, a woman, and a family, in the age of the Conglomerates.

  Christine’s World

  It was New Year�
�s Eve and, for once, Christine Salter had the dress and the plans. True, you would expect the director of genetic development at the New York Medical Center, a position of professional power in the age of the Conglomerates, to be a popular woman and a woman with a full schedule. The director had the year end to wrap up; she had to reel in the budget; she had a lot of product to process, rank, categorize, and deliver to their expecting mothers. And Christine had a number of adults to process besides.

  Under Dr. Christine Salter’s direction, Genetic Development had changed from being a cost sieve to become the division that led all others in the medical center in productivity, fame, and profit. People wanted to go there to create, or re-create, the infant they wanted, or to enroll in a newly developing program that would enable a person to re-create him-or herself through genetic manipulation. Which traits of theirs would they like to develop, which eliminate? Soon it would be possible to act on this personal improvement initiative. There was a waiting list of patients for the medical center’s programs, and these lists represented future growth and revenues. Dr. Salter was determined to retain the premier position for her division, even though lately she had begun to feel uncomfortable about some of the decisions she was being forced to make.

  As soon as Christine thought about that, she thought about Gabriel, and that led to thoughts of her dress and what might happen between them during the evening ahead.

  She looked down at the year-end report she was compiling on the “the Pool.” The division of genetic development was nicknamed the Pool by those who worked at the center, a term that referred to the department’s work in improving the gene pool of their clients. Through the procedure of genetic contouring, a process at which Christine and her team excelled, those who could afford the expense, and who came from the correct demographic groups, could now design, or redesign, their basic genetic structure and adjust their offspring’s appearance and behavior before birth. It was possible to select the characteristics of one’s children. The Pool worked to provide the child you had always dreamed of and one who could contribute to the state, but Christine’s own special initiative had been the division’s new process whereby genetic manipulation would be extended to adults. In the interest of self-improvement, less desirable existing genes could be replaced with more desirable ones. “Why not be skinny and bright?” was the line they were working on to market the campaign. These were trickier, more complicated operations, with so far untested results, but that hadn’t stopped the Conglomerates from enrolling. At the moment, the procedure was available to only an elite few, but Christine believed it would soon roll out to a large segment of the party. This new initiative would increase profits, the Conglomerate way.

  Babies were still the Pool’s core business, however, and the source of the revenue stream at year’s end. Not only were babies from the Pool marketed to be smarter, healthier, and more productive members of the economy. They were designed to be individuals who would add to the nation’s resources through their efficient, productive use of the resources left—a generation that would develop innovative alternatives and not further deplete those resources, as their fathers and their fathers’ fathers had done before them. Contouring babies was just the beginning, the higher end of this cleansing policy. The Coots and the Dyscards were at the other end of the scale, people who only sucked the system dry. But they were an entirely different matter and one that was not part of Christine’s life or responsibilities, and so she preferred not to think about them at the moment. And, anyway, it was New Year’s Eve, and Christine had the dress and the plans; she had a date with Gabriel Cruz.

  She looked back at her year-end report. The Pool had improved productivity by introducing a standardized, automated approach to genetic manipulation. What their clients wanted was a more intelligent, more attractive, more resilient child—in short, a better offspring than they thought they could produce on their own. Though the clients might think they wanted a choice, when it came down to it, they all wanted pretty much the same things in their children. Dr. Salter’s department had designed a genetic template whereby a gene was split, altered, and fused with a preprogrammed outcome that implanted the genetic adjustment into the product. And while all designs were in effect standardized, the doctor was in control of the process and could offer exclusivity of design for an appropriate price, thereby increasing the program’s profit. Genetic Development had implemented these changes, along with a reduction in workforce, in a streamlined approach to the process.

  Christine turned back to the performance reviews. She printed them out and began to study them further. Some of the findings were unsettling, no doubt about it. She didn’t want to draw attention to them, or to the information she had uncovered. This year the department of genetic development had conceived and processed 11,753 babies for their customers, a pretty good number. It was higher than last year—it had to be—but this number exceeded their goal by a double-digit percentage.

  Christine opened the folder she had placed beneath the stack of reviews. She frowned. She had noticed something in the numbers before and she hadn’t been able to brush it aside. She looked again carefully at the center’s overall statistics. Gross volume was up, that was true. They had produced an increase of 17 percent above the previous year. Still, while they had delivered more perfect babies, their overall success rate was dropping. With the increase in patient volume, there was also an increase in fees associated with settlements paid to disgruntled consumers.

  She looked down at her folder, and her frown deepened. Statistics on the number of babies born with defects—or, more precisely, where for some reason the contouring process had not taken effect, babies that had been born not to the parents’ specifications but with deficiencies ranging from crooked teeth to a lack of interest in competitive skills—those numbers had increased in the past year to a disproportionate percentage.

  Christine ran her fingers down the spreadsheet, studied the overall statistics, and made notes. She uncovered the sheet with the statistical breakdown by employee. And there it was, all in the numbers—what she had been vaguely aware of and had feared. Gabriel Cruz, her best employee, a man she was half in love with, and one with whom she had a date this evening, was responsible for a significant number of the flawed products. Too great a number, in fact.

  Christine shut the folder, tapped her fingers on the desk. It was late in the afternoon; even at this prestigious medical center, many people had already gone home to get ready for New Year’s Eve, or had gone away for the holidays. The silence in the center felt strange. Christine thought about her dress, Gabriel, her plans, and she decided to go home herself. She locked the papers in her desk and hoped she could lock her concerns away along with the incriminating news.

  For the last few New Year’s Eves, Christine had worked, covering the overnight shift for the Pool. She had never really minded. She liked her work, and it kept her distracted from the fact that she wasn’t seeing anyone and her family wasn’t close. But this year Gabriel had invited her to a party. She had been so surprised that he had had to ask her twice. The second time he had given Christine a chance to catch her breath, and then she had accepted. The attraction between them had become more and more obvious. She liked him, and she liked the way he made her feel. He was funny, and unlike a lot of people, he looked into her eyes when she spoke. Sometimes he even made her forget that she was director of genetic development at the New York Medical Center, as he had when she had accepted his invitation. Christine knew it was highly inappropriate, and she had never dated a coworker before, never mind someone who reported to her, but she had found herself saying yes anyway.

  As a doctor, Gabriel Cruz had made a name for himself before he had come to the med center. He was smart, clearly, but Christine also recognized that, at times, he was even smarter than she was. She hadn’t often found that to be true with men. Cruz was Latin and lean, he moved like a cat, and Christine hadn’t found that in many other men either. He had become indispensable to
her, even though some of the things that he said to her seemed close to being politically incorrect.

  But when Gabriel worked, he focused, no matter the distraction. He was a master technician, with faultless hand-eye coordination and a statistician’s interest in breaking down data. But it was his talent with people that had especially impressed Christine. He seemed to be a natural administrator who could get his peers as well as the support staff behind him, supporting his decisions, following his direction and goals. The productivity that had resulted with Gabriel’s addition to her staff couldn’t be denied.

  Christine stood by the elevator bank and stared at the elevator button. What was taking so long? She tapped her feet, folded and unfolded her arms. She wanted to get to the lobby and away from the center.

  When Christine had joined the New York Medical Center, she had agreed to work to achieve the standards and contributions required by the Conglomerates. Christine had never been concerned about either before. The elevator came and she got in.

  As the old elevator began its descent, Christine ran over the numbers again in her head, trying to determine what needed to be implemented to improve the performance of her group. She thought of the political seas she would have to navigate in order to sail out of the Pool and into open waters. If Christine thought about it, she could not recall a time when at least part of her mind and most of her energy had not been occupied with getting ahead and with being the boss.

  Christine blew the hair out of her face as she looked up at the camera in the corner of the elevator. That brought her back to just where she was.

  You would think that by now she would have been used to it. The Conglomerates were everywhere; they were always watching everything—or you should assume they were. But today the constant security eye made Christine feel on edge. Everything live all the time, live transmissions, live feeds, live action, live reads. Christine hadn’t voiced her objections because to some degree she had been aware that she was working for the Conglomerates and benefiting from the association. She had joined them and had experienced firsthand just how deep the Conglomerate desire for control went. It had been Christine who had come up with the idea to upgrade the existing surveillance system, equipping the cameras with scanners and adding a corresponding chip to the employees’ I.D. badges. An employee’s location and movement were monitored using that I.D. badge, allowing the system to match an employee’s actual location to where the employee was supposed to be. Christine saw it as an efficient use of the security system and a means of controlling movement within the facility, minimizing the risk of corporate espionage and internal theft. But med center employees resented it and claimed it was an invasion of privacy; management deemed it the right of the facility, adopting the monitoring technology at all buildings throughout the government system.