Kaiju Agonistes

October, 1972—E-Day

It’s a balmy morning in Miami Beach and the sky is a washed-out haze of pink. On an arc of pale sand, four thousand of the great and good await the coming of the space monster. Upright citizens, all. Well, mostly. A lot of connected guys, and a lot of congressmen, and the overlap of those demographics is…let’s just say it’s America. Bankers, brokers, agents, advisors, senators, Elks, Knights of Columbus, mayors, aldermen. Cubans, of both the asset-nationalizing and the asset-stripped persuasions. Some of the CIA’s friends from South America are here, and if some of those guys look a bit Teutonic, well, heh, water under the bridge, you know. All the European neutrals and satellite people are here, the ones the Soviets definitely don’t use to maintain investment portfolios. The Saudis are clustered at one end of the crowd. The Shah’s people are here. Egyptians and Israelis are studiously pretending not to see one another, as are the Japanese and the Chinese, Nigerians and Ghanaians, Indians and Pakistanis. The waves lap gently against everyone’s feet, since furniture isn’t part of the deal this morning, but nobody wants to be seen cowering from the water’s edge. A very human pile of humans.

Ten on the button, and Messenger looms. It has smoothly perfected the art of not splashing the locals for these beach events. Black tendrils boil out of the surf, extruding polymers, building a speaking platform in a matter of moments. Eugenia Aldrich-Haines appears at the climax of this magic trick, waving, her sharply angled pantsuit as black as her sunglasses. Some sort of amplification technology carries her words across the crowd. Greetings, glad-handing, a concise dispensation of formalities. TV cameras roll atop two dozen cranes. Meat and potatoes time; she summarizes the previous day’s Special Declaration of Modified Equivalent Statehood at the UN, the act that makes Messenger whichever blend of individual, ambassador, corporation, and nation-state it chooses to be at any given moment.

“Now, here’s today’s first important note,” says Eugenia. “Messenger hereby pledges to cease all unprovoked attacks against the assets and persons of the human race. Our cities will be safe from harm. Our oceans will be fully open to commerce and travel once again.”

A scattering of applause becomes ripples, torrents, waves. Gofers at the edges of the crowd sprint for their parked cars or start shouting into walkie-talkies. Even as Eugenia speaks, the word goes out, straight to the hallowed tiles of the trading floors in New York City. Buy back into shipping, buy back into fisheries and oil platforms, dump those exploratory drilling projects in Wisconsin.

“In exchange for this guarantee of security, Messenger will collect from every nation on earth an annual service fee of approximately one-half of one percent of GDP. Penalties for nonpayment are probably quite obvious.”

The applause transmutes to consternation. Gofers trip over their own feet. Buy orders fresh from the lips of the radio men are desperately countermanded. Messenger has just proposed a payment larger than the annual revenue of GE or Exxon Mobil. Muttering turns to shouts of “extortion” and “shakedown.”

“We won’t pay a ransom for the use of our own planet,” yells a man in the center of the crowd. “We have nukes! You know we’re not afraid to keep using them!” This man is a Caucasian.

“Today’s second important note,” continues Eugenia, easily drowning out the un-amplified protests, “is that at the opening of the markets tomorrow, Eastern Standard Time, Messenger will commence an initial offering of shares in itself as a unique sovereign investment opportunity. Capitalized by the aforementioned service fee, Messenger can offer a baseline annual revenue of fifteen to twenty billion dollars US, with minimal labor or infrastructure costs, even leaving other financial activities out of consideration. Under terms that will be made clear later today, every citizen of earth will have the chance to buy a piece of the biggest thing that has ever happened to us. Today is E-Day. ‘E’ for equity!”

Protests turn to shocked silence, then back to ripples of excitement. Gofers start running again, radio men start babbling, but they hardly know what to say. Confirm those orders for shipping. Maybe short some positions related to national defense industries. Maybe short everything, maybe buy everything. Trading will be suspended for the day about an hour later after two floor brokers have heart attacks. Straight to Wall Street Valhalla for those martyrs of the bull market. There will eventually be a nice plaque.

“It’s joining us,” someone yells. “Praise God, it’s joining us! We’ve won! It sees things our way!”

“This is insane! It’s a giant fucking space monster!” cries someone else.

“Its money is still green!”

“It’s capitalizing itself with funds it’s stealing from our coffers! Funds that should be reserved for human private enterprise!”

“It IS private enterprise now, you goddamn fool! And once we buy in, it becomes human private enterprise!”

“Right now we have phone companies and oil companies and car companies,” says Eugenia, “and those are nice things to have. But General Motors can’t sink an oil tanker if its creditors don’t pay. Ma Bell can’t survive three hundred nuclear explosions. Messenger represents the first guaranteed, permanent, unassailable financial opportunity in our planet’s history, and the best part is, it’s a partnership opportunity. Messenger doesn’t want to hurt anyone ever again—it wants to share itself with all of us. And that’s just good business!”