Kaiju Agonistes

May, 1973—December, 1977

Messenger is absolutely rolling in it.

Eugenia’s personal staff balloons to the size of an army regiment. Messenger takes possession of office buildings in a dozen major cities. Its people have quasi-immunity from all earthly laws but they pay their rent, their bills, and their parking tickets. Purchasing more banks is an inevitability. Messenger begins offering loans large and small, undercutting existing credit markets, leveraging its holdings to secure more of everything. It buys controlling shares in Lockheed Martin, McDonnell Douglas, Dassault, and three dozen other global defense contractors. It pumps the brakes on their operations, giving raises to its personnel while cutting their duties, subsuming them as footnotes into its vast bubble of profitability. Golf games on six continents improve drastically. Messenger buys effective control of non-communist uranium production and makes subtle inroads on the rest of it. Men who would have torn out their chest hair rather than surrender their nuclear weapons are suddenly content to accept healthy paychecks to simply not build the things.

In 1976, Messenger buys the Olympics. It endows think tanks at nine major universities. The next year it starts buying its way into petroleum.