Life and Production: S1 E9: Aspire for More

Institute a Business

The steam coming up from the vents of the street beckoned the passengers to float over the concrete carpet. Though the numbers remained minuscule, some men and women and a few children held up signs reading whatever would motivate a passenger to toss a few coins their way. Zev Tal viewed a man standing on the corner. His rough beard and tattered clothing and worn sneakers spoke of despair, of hurt. Tal equipped himself with the weapon that could combat such squalor. He had prepared a few pages on his tablet of the what it takes to institute a business in Delaware. A single page, the document served as a beacon of freedom to furnish an enterprise on the free market in the state. Slick and smooth, Tal set the coordinates of his pristine midnight blue Sare File 4 from the backseat. He stretched and rolled up close to the man with the sun bleached skin and haggard face. Tal retrieved the solo sheet.

Paper and a Pen

“Window down,” Tal said. The reflection of the man shown in the tinted window as it descended. His salt and pepper hair and impeccable gray pinstriped business suit distinguished him from the man just a few feet from him.

Tal turned to the man with the paper and a pen. “I know you’ve heard others say, ‘Get a job.’ Well, I’m not others. Why don’t you use that electric screen to create some jobs.” The man exchanged his full name, email and created a username and password. Tal then ordered that the car go from idle to drive in a matter of seconds. The man looked on with a mixture of bewilderment and curiosity at the well-dressed fellow in the snazzy automobile. Tal did this from time to time. Very few people panhandled, begged for spare change, or busked their musical talents on street corners much anymore. With the Great Transition, the flood of funds washed over the bank accounts of people from the top to the very bottom. So the presence of people like the man at the street corner became a rarity. Tal enjoyed it. He said to himself, well if they never use it, no hurt in it. He knew that if they could scrounge up enough funds to visit a local private library to use their tablets to exchange information with him, he would know that they would be worthy of embarking on a journey. And if they employed it, read and understood and applied it to becoming entrepreneurs then the fight against poverty would be won. But he insisted that he remain separate from anyone who showed hostility or vice. Tal kept a record on his tablet of the people who used the digital documents to generate their businesses. The office at the bank where the money for the loan would be in place sent him messages on who started their company and when they started it. As of the moment that he took in the last signature from the man he just met, all fifteen of the people he handed a stylus and tablet to signed up to transform their lives. What made the process so special was that no controls, or regulations, or bureaucratic red tape could hinder the businessman in Delaware.

Acumen

The Great Transition afforded the builders, creators, and doers to develop an idea, break ground on it, and run it. Tal relished this fact. As he figured out all of the transactions he would involve himself with, he ranked this ability to be supreme. From the inception of the Great Transition, he targeted small businesses and championed the cause of making them into big businesses. While the File 4 smoothed its way through the Wilmington streets, Tal noted all of the thriving restaurants, hotels, and banks. Especially the banks. With the advent of investment firms encountering and combining with commercial banks, Delaware’s brightest bankers flocked to the city of Wilmington. Not only did the credit card companies reign this region, but the best hedge funds sprouted up all over town. And Tal would have a hand in all of it. His prowess in the marketplace showed with every trade he performed. His acumen lead him to trade on the riskiest of investments and reap huge dollars in return. Tal saw the power of investing in startups and allowing them to flourish over time. His equity in these companies garnered him hundreds of millions of dollars. Without regulators and politicians breathing down his neck, he excelled in every trade that he posted. With the burden of having to possess licenses in order to trade, Tal busied himself with the task of taking the companies in which he invested to ever greater heights.

Agreed

Tal in his ever expanding knowledge trained his attention on the company which would benefit him the most, both in a physical and spiritual sense: Lesane Laboratories. Tal’s relationship with Trevor Lesane would be tested at times. But he knew that he had a friend in Lesane. When the newspapers declared “Insane Lesane at it again with crazy drug” he scoffed back at their ridicule. He established their friendship around the fact that both men represented work horses; each man produced at levels which would embarrass some and shock others. But the duo never neglected to aspire for more. On a sunny day late in October, Tal paid his old friend a visit.

Dressed in his laboratory attire and still clean despite being exposed to all sorts of substances during the course of his workday, Lesane greeted Tal at the entrance to the Lesane Laboratory of Newark.

“Young man,” Lesane said.

“Well, I’m glad you’re finally getting some work... done or so it appears,” Tal retorted. The two men laughed.

“How’s Saff and the kids?” Tal asked.

“They’re well. How’s Roquetta?”

“She’s well, as well. Let’s say we do away with the formalities and and get down to business,” Tal tore the thread.

“I couldn’t agree with you more,” Lesane said.

“We’ve got to focus on this Israel site in addition to the other labs that exist here.”

“Agreed.”

“What’s with you? Are you okay?”

“It’s these kilos of cocaine and heroin I’m trying to synthesize. I can’t figure out yet how I’m going to change them into drugs which fight addiction. Other than that, I’m swell.”

“Well, I know what you’re capable of. Remember, I provided seed money into this venture we’ve got going here. I’ve seen you work through problems and with the keen insight of a scholar and the exacting hands of a surgeon, you’ve pulled through with marvelous results.”

“Agreed.”

Encrusted

Tal punched Lesane’s arm. He fixed his sport coat and adjusted his sleeves which exposed diamond encrusted cufflinks. He looked at Lesane’s work center in awe of what the master chemist had been tinkering on for the past few weeks. Tal regarded his business partner and friend with the maximum respect. He understood that in order for both of them to succeed, they would have to discover a balance. Lesane and Tal’s time away from their wives and children did not bother them though. They knew that they would spend the bulk of their time toiling until a finished product was at hand. Each man found time still to be with their loved ones. And no clash existed between their work and their families. And they would protect them from whatever menace that was aiming a terroristic bent towards businesses, laboratories being the key targets. They both vowed to find whoever perpetrated the crimes of blacking out entire sections of the state and cutting gas lines. For every triumph they met they knew that some people out there sought to impede and in the end upend their progress. But they never faltered, never wavered. They just kept working.