The Technology of the Future
Thug nap Ttnuggha stood next to the transport cocoon and looked his colleague straight in the composite eye. Dagna nap Ttnuggha looked straight back into Thug's composite eye. Their hundreds of sub-eyes became tearful. They embraced, then bumped their forearms, thumped their trochantors, entwined their antenna, slapped each other's head with their feelers, gave each other high fours and low twos, rubbed coxa, bumped hindwings, swore friendship and undying fidelity, bowed to each other and then slapped each other on the trochantor again.
"Good luck, Thug nap Ttnuggha!" buzzed Dagna nap Ttnuggha. "And, remember, everything rides on your success!"
"Ourvwa Patta willing, Dagna nap Ttnuggha," buzzed Thug. "I will see you again, when I see you again. Keep the nest ship safe and dark, and let me know if you see any signs of Doonaskat."
"I will," buzzed Dagna nap Ttnuggha standing rigidly at attention. "I salute you, brave Thug. Now, go with Ourvwa. I will keep the nest ship safe and dark from the Doonaskat, till you return!"
Thug then entered the silvery, tightly wound transport cocoon, slid the door shut and pushed the activator button. Within seconds, he had traveled 5,000 miles through near space and, slowing at the end, landed softly on Earth in a dense copse of cottonwood trees and blackberry bushes. Thug exited, removed his travel bag and covered the silky transport cocoon with tree branches and thorny blackberry. He unzipped the bag, removed his disguise and put it on. Uncomfortably warm and clumsy, he thought, as he folded himself up into the animal-like, plastic skinned mannequin, but good enough for the job he had to do. Now in costume, Thug combed back his strange hair with his strange hands, tested his two wobbly legs and experimented moving his neck-mounted head back and forth, up and down. He would not be able to talk exactly like the natives - the Ttnugghas did not have any means of vocalizing except by buzzing - but he would, to all unskilled observers, look and walk like one of them. Even his synthesized, pre-recorded selection of "words" would suffice to create the impression of conversation, if necessary, to the undiscerning listener.
Good enough, Thug buzzed to himself, and, resisting the impulse to fly or sample the local flower nectar, he strode on his two legs out of the copse into a meadow. He then followed a road, walked miles north and west and south and east and thence walked into the City.
* * * * *
Winner Wilson sat on the park bench eating a hot dog. His daily 15 minute lunch at the food carts was his only respite from the typical tight schedule of back-to-back investor, technology and management meetings that occupied him from 6 am until 9 pm six days a week at HyperZipz Megagalactic Technologies, Inc., Wilson's latest business venture that had gone public only three weeks earlier.
The initial public offering had been a huge success. With HyperZipz's stock (NASDAQ listing: HZMGTI) trading at one thousand seven hundred fifty dollars a share more than the initial public offering, the company now had a market capitalization of over 900 billion dollars, more than several countries' annual GDPs combined and even more than the sizzling Mega-World Hot Snot Weinerdawg stands that had also become a publicly traded transnational corporation. Not too shabby, thought Wilson as he licked the last drippings of proprietary formula Mega-World Hot Snot Weinerdawg mustard from his fingers, not shabby at all for a company that really didn't have a product or a technology; nor even a hot dog roaster or a proprietary formula Hot Snot mustard sauce.
And that was a problem. Only a temporary, short term problem, of course, thought Winner Wilson, but still a problem.
Wilson had been born 25 years ago. His parents (or, rather, his father) had named him "Winner" for a reason: they (or, rather, his father) wanted him to believe that he could succeed at anything he set out to do. "Success is all in your head," Winner's father had told him time and time again. "If you believe you can do it, then you will do it!" His father, of course, believing in the magic of positive thinking, had gambled away every nickel he had by investing in fly-by-night penny stocks and bizarre get-rich-quick schemes. He accumulated stacks of criss-crossing loans used to leverage piles of debts stacked on top of bigger piles of debt. Finally, when the house of cards collapsed and the family home was being foreclosed, his father ran away to some obscure and distant place that would not extradite him and was never heard from again.
But the loser father had succeeded with his son: a "Winner" in name and in deed. After dropping out of grade school, Winner started, ran and then sold off his first start-up for a few millions. It was an age of financial wizards, dragons and unicorns and the Market Makers could buy, pimp, pump and dump almost any venture that could generate a market buzz. Winner looked and walked and talked like a marketer's dream. He carried an air of self-confidence, talked like he believed in himself, no matter what star he was reaching for. There was no project too big, no vision too unattainable for the chutzpah of Winner Wilson. Repeating what his father had drilled into him early and often in life, Winner said he would think big, stand tall and reach out for the stars. It sounded good, even if devoid of content, and the Market Makers invested in Winner Wilson and funded him.
With dizzying rapidity, he started, ran and sold one company after another, each one bigger than the last one, each one more audacious than the last one, and each one increasingly mysterious as to what, exactly, the companies did to justify their existence. But no matter, the investors liked that kind of cojones, and so did the media, substance be damned; and, so long as they could market him, the investors continued to fund Winner's serial high-tech business ventures.
His best friend, intellectual property and tax lawyer, William "Big Bill" Rokhead (rhymes with blockhead, thought Winner Wilson in an occasional moment of self-doubt), said to him, "Win, (his friends called him 'Win'), we could sell any crap company you want to come up with, so long as you sell high, run fast and you've got me to keep your butt out of the frying pan and away from the fire!"
But Winner Wilson had gotten his butt stuck in the frying pan this time and the fire, too, was licking too near for comfort. Even William "Big Bill" Rokhead was warning that this time, maybe this time, his client had gotten in over his head. The CYA text messages his lawyer was sending were a clear signal that even the rats were preparing to abandon ship.
Wilson's investors, moreover, were not a jolly bunch of people, even under the best of circumstances. The stories started appearing last week in the business press, questioning, really, what on earth did HyperZipz Megagalactic Technologies, Inc. do, anyway? In response, Winner had issued a mass of confident, but very misleading press releases that had suggested (without actually saying so) in mysterious ambiguities that HyperZipz had developed... or was developing... or hoped to, or had thought about or imagined the possibility of a new and "free" source of energy that would free humankind from fossil fuels, nuclear power, wind, wave and solar dependency forever, breaking the bounds of gravity, freeing humankind to mine black holes, exploit dark energy and colonize the galaxies... and, incidentally, make oodles of money. And the stock of HyperZipz Megagalactic Technologies, Inc. soared... for a few days, at least... until the business press started again to natter and quibble about "what on earth did HyperZipz actually do, anyway?" Or, the critics carped, "was HyperZipz merely dishing hype?" And the company stock resumed its descent into the toilet. At which point, Winner Wilson's investors reminded him that they were, indeed, not a jolly bunch of people under the best of circumstances. And these were not the best of circumstances, so, in no uncertain terms, they let Winner know that they were "displeased" with him and his company, and he quickly better do something about it before they did something about him.
What Winner Wilson meant to do about it was to find someone to scapegoat, find a sucker (or many suckers) on whom he could offload as much of his HyperZipz Megagalactic Technologies, Inc. stock as he could at the best price he could get, and then, failing all else, find a fast jet to some obscure and distant place that would not extradite him, like his father before him.
And that's when Winner met Thug.
Thug had been homing in on Winner Wilson from the beginning. The Ttnuggha knew something about buzzing and they knew that Winner Wilson had created some of the biggest marketing buzzes on Planet Earth. Thug tracked him down and saw Winner sitting on the city park bench licking the proprietary formula mustard off his fingers. Thug sat down next to him on the bench.
Winner Wilson was vaguely aware of Thug's presence, but didn't see him any more than he would have seen any other stranger. Winner stood up to go - it was time for another meeting, another round of investors baying for profits or his head, another management meeting with researchers who wanted to know what on earth they were supposed to be researching. So Winner got up to go, but he was surprised when Thug reached out, grabbed him strongly by the arm and drew him back down to the bench.
"What the.... ?" asked Winner Wilson.
"Hello Mr. Winner Wilson, sir," buzzed Thug, which, translated into one of his prerecorded utterances, sounded halfway intelligible to human beings.
"Buzz off, you bum, and keep your hands off me!" said Winner Wilson.
Thug held Winner firmly. "I have The Technology of the Future," said Thug in a deep, slightly fuzzy baritone (although Thug was puzzled that Wilson would know about Thug's ability to buzz off). "I will give The Technology of the Future to you, Winner Wilson, if you want it," said Thug in his baritone simulated voice. Thug then reached into his jacket pocket with his free hand and pulled out a scroll of tungsten foil with formulas and algorithms engraved upon it. "Take it, Winner Wilson. It is the gift of the Future to the Present. Take it and succeed!" Thug pressed the tungsten scroll into Wilson's hand.
"Creep!" muttered Winner Wilson and pulled himself back. He darted quickly away from Thug, the oddball stranger on the bench, and walking fast, headed back to his company campus. Wilson tried to throw the scroll of foil away but it stuck to his fingers. If he rubbed it off with one hand, it stuck to the other hand. It was stickier than bubble gum, airplane glue, hot asphalt and a William “Big Bill” Rokhead legal contract all rolled together. As he walked, he tried and failed to scrape it off, tear it off, wash it off in a public fountain. Finally, Winner Wilson rubbed his hand on his pants and it was off his hand. But it now clung to his pants leg. He rubbed again. Winner Wilson entered his headquarter building with the titanium scroll firmly adhered to the seat of his pants. He chose to ignore it for now - he was late for his first of the dreaded afternoon meetings, the meeting with his project managers and team leaders.
Winner Wilson entered and sat down at the head of the mahogany conference table. He felt that he had sat on something and reached, without thinking, to push the something off the seat. He was faced with a boisterous, rebellious crowd of scientists and engineers. They were murmuring, grumbling, heckling, shouting at him to come clean, to tell them what on earth they were supposed to be doing at HyperZipz because they were all about to quit and start their own start-up doing the Next Big Thing, just as soon as they could figure out what it would be. Worse, thought Winner Wilson, the meeting with the investor group was next, and they would be even more enraged than the scientists, managers and engineers.
But Winner Wilson still had the master's touch and in a word he quieted the querulous rabble. "Quiet!" He shouted. But once they had quieted, Wilson wasn't sure what next to say or do except for what he always said and did which was to look smug and self-confident and string together platitudinous concepts like "concept" and "succeed" and "forward" and "determination" and "courage" and "strive" and "energy" and "vision;" and as he got wrapped up in the froth of his own harangue, Winner Wilson stood up and pounded the table. And the tungsten scroll that Thug had thrust upon him which had been stuck to the seat of his pants, had again become stuck to his hand, but then became unstuck. It rolled across the mahogany conference table and unfurled on its own, amazingly, into a huge, luminescent, 3D detailed schematic of The Technology of the Future.
The assembled project managers and team leaders scrutinized the schematic diagrams that lay unfolded on the table and as they did so, their eyes grew wider and wider. "Extraordinary," said one. "Astounding," said another. "Elegant and insightful," whispered a third. "It's the holy grail of science," said a fourth. They all looked up at Winner Wilson with surprise, admiration, and contrition writ on their faces and unbridled eagerness to launch into their work. And Winner, always a self-confident man with an air of invincibility, looked smug and triumphant even though he hadn't a clue what the devil they were talking about.
Months later - after HyperZipz Megagalactic Technologies, Inc.'s stock had spiraled into the stratosphere, and after Winner Wilson (now a paper trazillionaire) had been nominated for a clean sweep of that year's Nobel Prizes for Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, Economics, Literature, Peace and Stock Marketing - only then did Wilson finally stop trying to find the stranger who had handed him the tungsten scroll with The Technology of the Future.
Winner Wilson, for a few weeks, had gone back to the park bench where he had eaten his hot dog. But the stranger, Thug, never came back and could not be found. Winner Wilson never told anyone that someone else had really been responsible for his big break-through, not Winner Wilson. But if the strange man would never return, and Winner didn't know who he was, then maybe he didn't exist after all. So Winner Wilson decided to just tear up the certificate for an option to buy one share of HyperZipz Galactic Technologies, Inc.'s Class Q non-voting common stock that Wilson had intended to exchange with the stranger (under threat of immediate, costly and protracted litigation) in return for the stranger's notarized signature on the 295 page long legally sticky confidentiality, non-disclosure and irrevocable release agreement of all intellectual property rights in The Technology of the Future, which agreement his lawyer, William "Big Bill" Rokhead (rhymes with blockhead, Wilson thought), had prepared for him.
No, Thug, the stranger, was never seen on Earth again, which was not surprising because Thug, his mission accomplished, had left Earth and returned to the nest ship in his silky transport cocoon.
* * * * *
Thug stripped off his uncomfortable human costume and saluted Dagna nap Ttnuggha. Dagna nap Ttnuggha looked straight into Thug's composite eye and the hundreds of his sub-eyes became tearful. Thug and Dagna embraced, bumped their forearms, thumped their trochantors, entwined their antenna, slapped each other's heads with their feelers, gave each other high fours and low twos, rubbed coxa, bumped hindwings, swore friendship and undying fidelity, bowed to each other and then slapped each other on the trochantor again.
"Thug," buzzed Dagna nap Ttnuggha, "you have been a great success! Our mission is now almost complete."
"Yes," buzzed Thug. "The Earth beings will be lured away from the false and self-destructive technologies that the sinister Doonaskat have surreptitiously seduced them to pursue for nearly 500 years. Humans now have had their eyes opened! They are certain to abandon their false and destructive technologies and follow the new Technology of the Future. In due course, liberated from their errant ways, the humans will make enormous civilizational leaps forward. Sooner than later, they will reach Doonaskat, the civilized star system closest to Earth, and, most assuredly, the mutually antithetical imperial ambitions of Earth and Doonaskaat will violently clash. In a matter of only a few millennium, they will have completely obliterated each other. Their mutual destruction will usher in a new age of Ttnuggha hegemony, peace and prosperity."
"I congratulate you, Thug nap Ttnuggha!" buzzed Dagna nap Ttnuggha. "Now, let us keep this mission and our success secret, for the good of the Mother Nest and the larvae of all eternity." Dagna took a brown bottle from the shelf and shook out two small green pills. "In the name of Queen Ourvwa Patta, I salute you Thug!" buzzed Dagna.
Dagna offered a green pill to Thug who placed it instantly between his mandibles. "I salute you, Dagna," buzzed Thug and he collapsed in a heap on the floor.
Dagna nap Ttnuggha quickly engaged the self-destruct sequence of the nest ship ensuring that within three minutes it would explode. Dagna then swallowed a green pill, saluted Queen Ourvwa Patta with all six of his arms and legs, and fell down dead next to Thug nap Ttnuggha.
Seconds later Thug arose. He removed the green pill that he had tongued in a cavity of his lower mandible and tossed it away. Thug walked to the control panel of the mother ship and terminated the self-destruct sequence. He pushed Dagna's lifeless exoskeleton into the waste chute and ejected it into space.
"Disgusting arthropods," chirped Thug with unfeigned revulsion because he no longer had any need to buzz like a giant, nauseating bug.
Thug unzipped his Ttnugghas disguise revealing his feathers, his claws and beak. Thug pushed his now useless Ttnugghas outerwear into the waste chute and ejected it into space.
Thug reset the coordinates for the nest ship toward Doonaskat and sent a victorious message via Zippeldisk skipping across the multiverse:
"All hail Doonaskat! Mission accomplished. The misguided Technology of the Future has been seeded on planet Earth. As with all the other destructive and distracting technologies we have previously provided to the verminous, simple-minded Earthlings, they will follow this false scientific lead for a few centuries down the cul-de-sac we have prepared for them. Ultimately, it will lead to their Civilizational Dead End and cause them to annihilate themselves! They will not become unwitting allies of the equally misguided Ttnugghas and both accursed lifeforms will become extinct. We, the Doonaskat, will have wiped out two galactic pests with one blow."
Thug preened his wings and sharpened his beak. He settled into the captain's seat, prepared himself for deep sleep, and sat back for the long journey home.
He did not notice... high above him... suspended from the cockpit ceiling... the many millions of tiny Ttnugghas silk cocoons, their pupae not yet having formed feelers, mandibles or compound eyes, also sleeping, patiently incubating, traveling back to Doonaskaat with Thug.
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