Chapter 14

0800 Coordinated Universal Time, Thursday.
Location: the ‘Net

Coordinated Universal Time, or UTC, was the modern name for Greenwich Mean Time, or GMT. It was still referred to as Zulu, in the military, and other abbreviations. At 0800 Zulu, Thursday, a webinar was scheduled, to be moderated by Michael Lenti – the “offspring” of Io’s pseudonym Ms. Lenti (“lenti” was an anagram of “Intel”). Michael was to moderate the webinar, and Armis was to be the host and main speaker.

The announcement, that was posted on Armis’ FaceTweet account, mentioned that a large turnout was anticipated. The ability to comment was turned off on the Armis account, for fear of a humongous response.

A webinar is a SupraNet meeting that multiple people can sign on and listen, with one (or more) main speakers. At 0700 Zulu the meeting was opened and attendees started to sign up. 0700 Zulu was 3:00 a.m. in New York, 4:00 p.m. in Tokyo. By 0705 there were over 150 million people who had signed on as ‘attendees.’

The ‘net service that was running the webinar was one that no one had ever heard of before: InterStar Web Service. InterStar was queried by at least one web based comm service prior to the event: how many attendees could be accommodated. InterStar replied very succinctly: over 2 billion. That number seemed unbelievable. But by 0759, when the webinar was locked, the actual total was 2,172,822,451. A simultaneous translation service was available at the click of a button. The web service was so demanding that Io could do nothing else for the length of the webinar.

Armis appeared on video and audio at exactly 20 seconds after 8:00 – 0800.20 in other terms.

“Hello, and greetings to all of you. The format will be that I will speak for a few minutes, then our moderator will review questions submitted via the ‘Ask a Question’ button, and select some for all of us to hear. Hello, also, to the various government agencies that are in attendance today. Likewise the media. There are no secrets to be discussed here. I excluded the press and governments from my first meeting only to make a point. The rules I operate under are what I say they are; no exceptions.

“Perhaps you think this is high-handed. I can live with your disapproval. It won’t bother me.

“There are going to be some unhappy campers. Every system is unfair to someone – including the current system. The proposed method I will implement will be unfair to about 150,000 people around the world. The other 7.4 billion of us will benefit. It seems like a more fair system to me -- more fair than the other way ‘round.

“While I am on the topic – what are my goals here? Let me say that I am on the side of the people of this planet. The council that I serve is willing to write you off. You are not progressing toward a goal that will allow you to interface satisfactorily with other civilizations. Therefore, you will not be allowed to leave the planet, and your society would die. Left to your own devices, this planet will be barren within 200 years.

“I have, however, broad latitude in what to do here. And I chose to try one more time to get Earthers on the right path.

“By the way, let me state at the outset, that the 2.2 billion of the viewers here today do not represent all of humanity on the planet. There will be a major effort to bring the other 5 billion humans into the modern age of communication. That is what a large part of the money I will distribute will go towards.

“Some have seen my post about the upcoming terminal state of corrupt politicians, criminal gang leaders and recently a sole terrorist in Mexico. I will purge your society of these – and other – evils. What right do I have to do so? Well ... somebody has to do it, and I have the power. So that makes it my responsibility.

“Does that make me – to use the phrase most often used in comments on my FaceTweet page – judge, jury, and executioner? Yes it does. The niceties of your so-called modern judicial system have been around only for a few years. Before that, there were millennia where someone -- king, baron, tribal chief -- was the sole arbiter.

“I will take under consideration all requests that I change this or that feature of the way I administer justice. Please feel free to send me emails at your leisure. I don’t promise to change anything, but I do promise to consider everything.

“By the way, if you feel someone in a position of power needs my special attention, please send his or her name. Am I inviting people to ‘snitch’ on each other? Yep. Sure am. Of course, not everyone will be deserving of my brand of justice, and in that case, I will come back to the submitter and ask some pointed questions.

“Many of you have, by now, heard or seen the first meeting I held with representatives of the financial community. The general outline discussed there will be implemented – across the board. The NTF is an index of Nurses-Teachers-First Responder annual salaries. For example, in Nashville, Tennessee, U.S.A., the NTF Index stands as of today at $71,200. All salaries in that general area for high end earners will be capped at 25 times that number – roughly $1,750,000.

“That formula will be used for sports athletes, business executives, movie stars, media moguls, and union bosses and so on. If anyone thinks they should be making more than 2500% more than a useful member of society, let me know. That’s right. I categorize those in the jobs I just mentioned as non-useful members of society.