Web of the Weaver Book III: Financial matters, Chapter 2

By that evening I was well up on most of the law regarding factories and such, including one book comparing Earth Aleph and Bet regulations.

Fucking. Endbringers.

What had happened in Bet almost certainly wouldn’t have happened in Aleph. But the problem, as I spent more time than I’d ever spent in school studying macroeconomics, with no less than 12 data streams, was that Bet was closer to the wire. Losing a major company could set off a chain reaction, and there was almost a superstitious dread of thinkers doing just that.

A dread that had in part been true, and the reason for NEPEA-5. The Elite liked to claim they were completely innocent, but continued studying of college level, not high-school-level books, left me aware, even more so than when I’d been checking to make certain my identity as The Exterminator wouldn’t get me in trouble, that there had been real manipulation of the economy in the run-up to its passage. Far from being the Villain many claimed, the PRT had tried to steer a middle course, only for panic and entrenched interests on the pro side, and an Elite that wanted to be free to utterly dominate the economy, on the other side, to make any kind of compromise impossible.

The more I read, the more sympathy I started to have for the PRT and Protectorate. Before the Locker, Taylor could laugh at how incompetent they were.

Now, frighteningly, I was actually impressed at how well they were doing. It was astonishing how many regulations, ranging from Tinker restrictions to deeply ingrained institutional paranoia had been born out of grim experience.

But businesses had any number of financial and regulatory waivers they could claim, waivers that were not available on Aleph, because Aleph didn’t have to deal with entire sectors of the economy vanishing. When handled correctly, they allowed the kind of red-tape cutting that could save a city or a state’s economy, pushing restrictive regulations to the side. Many of those waivers and laws had come about in the aftermath of Behemoth rampaging through the beating economic heart of America, and were credited with turning what might have been a worldwide depression into a minor recession.

But when abused…

Well.

Much of the information wasn’t available to the public, not yet. I expected that the various investigators were keeping everything close to their chests because getting a lynch mob started wasn’t something they were interested in.

Not to mention, it could wreck the case.

There were patterns, but I couldn’t… Fully understand them. Complex, networks of businesses and if I had the information, I didn’t have…

The wisdom, the learning. I could learn faster than most because I could read a dozen books, more at a time, listen to a dozen conversations, and watch a special on corruption while I was scanning the Internet.

But knowledge took time to learn. To internalize. That’s why my technical foreys had more than a few melted circuit boards in them, and why I had to practice every day—but was still nowhere near anyone with practical experience in fighting.

If only I had Alexandria’s mind. I could do without her power—I didn’t expect to get into punching fights, not if I could avoid it, but her thinker abilities…

Well.

I shook my head, rubbing my eyes. It was four in the morning and I had devoured just over three thousand pages and six hours worth of video.

“Don’t wish for what you don’t have,” I told myself, something Mom had told me once, long ago.

I missed her. Dad… Maybe we were getting better, maybe we weren’t. I didn’t know.

But it would have been better if she was around.

But the problem was, I doubted there was a direct connection. The articles on how the various laws were abused mentioned that it was very rare that something was written down. No boss said “cut these safety measures or you’re gone.” No, it was just quietly hinted, that maybe poor productivity might lead to a need to… engage in budget and personnel cuts.

But it would be very hard to turn that into a direct, criminally actionable connection, especially if the authorities couldn’t. Because I still didn't understand, not entirely how this had happened. What dad said made sense. But there were other cases of people trying the same exact stunt which ended with investigations and convictions, long before it got to this point. I was missing something.

I would—there was a flicker at the TV, and I looked. The Late Night Bay Caller. I had it on my list because it was one of the few call in shows in the Bay that would take anyone. Nine times out of ten it was just local lunatics, but once or twice there had been more, and the whispered words of the show had me turning it up, looking at the balding man in his decrepit “studio,” still bearing the scars from Leet’s “hard-light ballerina” presentation.

“And here we are!” He said. “And Ladies and Gentlemen, we have none other than Kaiser on the line! I didn’t expect this call, since you declined my previous invite,” he said.

Ah. The phone debate between Kaiser and Lung. Neither one had dignified that with a response. So why was…

PR. He can’t just show up I public, and… PR. People will hear him.

“Hello, Richard,” His voice was calm, measured. “I felt that there were some things that needed to be said about the recent disaster.”

“You had Othala and Victor, there, didn’t you, along with Vista and Krewe for the Protectorate—and Krewe almost died.”

“Yes, While the Empire could not send all of its forces, due to the fear of looters from less prosperous neighborhoods taking advantage of the disaster, we sent who we could. I do wonder why the Protectorate downplayed Vista’s abilities so often, as she might have been able to help in other cases…although of course, such a dangerous power in such a young person might have concerned them, a concern that I share.”

I clenched my jaw. Vista had saved the city, and Kaiser was already calling out how dangerous she was, and that her true age wasn’t far from children who were sent to bed without their supper when they were bad. If it wasn’t so infuriating, I would be impressed. Kaiser and Emma could compare techniques.

“And, of course, Krewe did defy her superiors and forced a number of fire fighters to risk their lives—“

For a moment I saw red and insects tore themselves apart. By my sources, the Fire Department was one of Krewe’s biggest fans—going into smoke and fire to save some kids made her one of theirs and this…

I stilled my bugs and took a deep breath, calming down. He wouldn’t just be here for that. So what was his…

“But that isn’t why I’m here. You see, in our investigations of the event, we determined that a number of banks have been investing in the company, both this one and its bankrupt predecessor.”

“Banks invest in a lot of places.”

“Yes, but not all banks have such a high percentage of Jewish stockholders.”

Kaiser continued, but I barely kept track of what he was saying, my bugs taking down a transcript.

You… I said every obscenity I had. Kaiser had been shown up by Krewe and Vista, but now he was taking another route. I bet that the banks he was referring to didn’t have any more Jewish Stockholders than normal. But angry people, people waking up to find out that much of the city might have been destroyed, people who had lost their jobs and homes, wouldn’t always care.

I wonder if he’s also claiming they poisoned the well water.

It would give him something to direct the Empire and its fellow travelers, without risking fighting Lung, without sending his capes out to risk attack by other forces—and it would spread both the BBPD, those parts that weren’t corrupt, and the Protectorate thin.

And it would paint a target, even more than normal, on everyone who was—no—everyone who some idiotic E88 ganger thought was a Jew.

For a moment, the world just felt unfair. How was I supposed to fix the problem of a company if life kept throwing other problems at me like this?

And then I shook my head and laughed. Now, I was really starting to feel sympathy for Emily Piggot.

But it looked like Orb Weaver was going to have some work to do…