“Okay, let's divide up the world,”
said Rod Pullman.
Pullman was rather embarrassed to be
hosting the meeting of the three trillionaires on such a small yacht.
He owned five yachts that were vastly larger in size. But this yacht
was the only one he had at Lake Tahoe, Nevada, the designated site of
the meeting of the world's three richest men. So the small yacht
would have to do. With Pullman were his main rivals, the obscenely
rich Edward Heathton and the ridiculously wealthy Xiao Jing.
The three men were each worth than
1,000,000,000,000 dollars. It was now the year 2040, and throughout
the twenty first century there had been a relentless acceleration of
the trend of more and more wealth accumulating in fewer and fewer
hands. The poor kept getting poorer, and the rich kept getting
richer. Each of the men controlled multiple global conglomerates, and
each of the men had bought political connections that guaranteed
control of a large fraction of the world's population. Relatively
few people knew how much political power the three men had, because
they acted in the shadows as clandestine puppet masters.
Pullman, for example, was in charge of
political action committees that placed him in control of the US
Congress. One time in the Oval Office when the President of the
United States resisted his proposals, Pullman had used an arm swipe
to clear the President's desk, and had bellowed: “You are not in
control of this country; I am in control of this country.”
The activities of the three giants of
industry had put them at odds with each other. The three
trillionaires had decided to meet together to work out an equitable
agreement between them. They sat on the deck of the small yacht on a
pleasant April day.
“Two thousand years ago when Mark Antony met with Octavian and Lepidus, they basically divided most of
the known world up among the three of them,” said Pullman. “Now
let's do something similar. The decisions we make here will probably
spell out the fate of the world's nations for the next four decades.”
“Europe is in my hands, and I'm
keeping it,” said Heathton. “It took me a long time and many
billions to gain control over the European Union.”
“Some things are pretty obvious,”
said Pullman. “I control the US, and you, Heathton, control Western
Europe. Xiao controls China. But what about all those countries on
the edges? What about Africa, and Japan, and Russia, and the
Philippines, and Indonesia?”
“I claim all of the countries around
the Philippines and Indonesia,” said Xiao Jing. “They're part of
the Chinese sphere of influence.”
“Okay, sounds pretty fair,” said
Pullman. “But I get dibs on Japan. That's been in the US sphere of
influence ever since World War II.”
“I should get Japan myself,” said
Xiao Jing. “It's right next door to China, and I'm the lord of
China.”
“Let's have a fair competition,”
said Pullman. “You want to arm wrestle, or flip a coin?”
A flip of the coin decided the issue.
“Now what about Russia?” said
Heathton. “Russia is part of Europe, and Europe is my piece of the
pie, so I figure Russia should be mine.”
“But Russia is next to China,”
protested Xiao Jing. “It should go to me.”
The two men arm wrestled, and Heathton
won. It was agreed that Russia would be under his control.
“Now what about South America?”
asked Pullman. “I figure that as South America is in the Western
Hemisphere, and the USA is my piece of the pie, it's only fair that
I get South America.”
“I have spent billions and billions
gaining control over the government of Brazil,” said Xiao Jing. “Do
you expect me to hand that over to you for free?”
“Okay, let's make a deal,” said
Pullman. “You give me South America, and I'll let you have all of
Africa.”
“Deal,” said Xiao Jing.
“That means you guys are getting more
than me,” said Heathton. “To fix that, I should get Australia and
New Zealand.”
The other two agreed.
“So I think we're close to a final
deal,” said Pullman. “Let's sketch out an agreement on the map.”
Pullman took out a map of the world,
and got out three pens. He drew one big circle in red, which included
the whole Western Hemisphere. He drew another big circle in black,
including all of Western Europe and Russia. He drew another big
circle in blue, including all of China, the Mideast, and Africa.
Pullman wasn't too concerned about who controlled the Middle East, as
most of its oil had been tapped out. Pullman finished the map by
writing a map legend which made clear which circle was for which
person.
“What do you think?” Pullman said.
“Looks good to me,” said Heathton.
“I can live with it,” said Xiao Jing.
But at that moment disaster came like a
thief in the night.
A few years earlier, rocket powered
speed boats had become wildly popular. The boats used a combination
of rocket technology and hydrofoil technology to reach speeds of 250
miles an hour.
A young man was riding his speed boat
at a speed of 240 miles an hour when he came near the yacht on which
the three trillionaires were meeting. The young man saw a message on
his wrist phone from his lady love. He began texting a reply, and
took his eyes off of the water ahead of him for a moment. While in
the middle of texting, his speed boat collided with the yacht where
the trillionaires were meeting.
The force of the collision instantly
knocked unconscious the three trillionaires, who were ejected thirty
feet into the air. All three fell into the lake and drowned.
The three trillionaires had each
imagined that they would use their enormous wealth to somehow cheat
death through sophisticated technology they could buy, so that they
would live for hundreds of years. Instead their bodies were eaten by
hungry fishes.
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