Chapter 326: Finishing the DHS & CIA Lawsuit, and Other Miscellany

Friday, December 1 to Sunday, December 31, 2006 (Continued)

Early December, the jury finished their deliberations in our $242 trillion civil lawsuit.

The trial itself had gone very much as expected. The DHS had picked me up without a warrant - end of story! That was a breach of my Fourth Amendment rights. The DHS's claim that they had acted under the Patriot Act and so didn't need a warrant was a dead duck of an excuse, and had been openly laughed at when their lawyer advanced it in court. Although "terrorist" was mentioned early in my DHS file because of Moran's using it as a pretext, it wasn't mentioned in any of the S&T work (ALL of which was related to my possibly have mind-control powers), nor in the documentation covering my transfer from the DHS to the CIA, which made a mockery of the DHS's vain attempt to use that as an excuse. After talking to me, Moran hadn't bothered doing any of the following up he should have done (e.g., with the Thai police), and there'd been enough leaks from within the DHS that the whole world knew that Moran had ordered me picked up because he had an insane mind-control theory. Nor was the "T" word mentioned in any of the CIA's documentation, so the CIA employees - which were the majority of the defendants - had no defense to their breaching my Fourth Amendment rights either. The defendants were easily established as being guilty.

The only real issue was over the amount of damages. There were two main arguments between our side and the baddies: the method to be used, and the numbers to plug into the chosen method.

For example, the defense put up pretty graphs showing the expected lifetime earnings of a 16-year old boy, and tried to argue that was the method to use. We countered that by listing all the ways in which I wasn't an average 16-year old boy, for example, our lawyer had said, "The DHS and CIA don't kidnap and illegally experiment on 'average boys'. If that were the case, millions of us would have had holes drilled in our head and parts of our brains scooped out, which is what it would take for anyone to believe that the DHS and CIA thought Mark Anderson was 'average boy'."

The defense had figures for how much money Einstein and other geniuses had made in their lifetimes. Our lawyers had figures for how much money business-oriented geniuses had made (I'd been doing a Business degree, so was clearly oriented that way). Those values were FAR higher, especially when geometrically extrapolated through to my IQ. As a simple example, Bill Gates is worth a million times more than the average person. His IQ is 60 points higher than average. Mark's IQ was 60 points higher than Bill's, so Mark would've been worth a million times more than Bill, so $56,000 trillion, comfortably higher than the $242 trillion we were asking for.

Our lawyers brought in scientist after scientist who raved about the medical advances that would've been possible had Mark lived. The defense countered that our witnesses were speculating, but the first few scientists we brought in had already started achieving useful real results from the CIA data, so the "speculation" claim had the rug partly pulled from under it. There was a lot of speculation remaining, especially about how long I could have lived, but there was enough merit already established for my having extraordinary health that extra longevity was an easy sell to the jury.

The formula we'd used in our suit was multiplying:

• The chance that the cause of my transformation would've been discovered within 50 years

• The chance that the cause would've been reproducible in other people (i.e., sellable) within 50 years.

• The chance it wouldn't be discovered and brought to market by a competitor first.

• What people would pay for it.

The defense tried to water it down with some counter-arguments:

• "Scientists can't even find the cure to the common cold, nor major diseases like cancer or AIDS. There's almost no chance they could find the cause of something as dramatic as what the plaintiffs are claiming for Mr. Anderson."

• "What about the chance that manufacturing the drug would cost more than people could afford? We all know how prohibitively expensive many drugs are. Anything as wonderful as what the plaintiffs are claiming would certainly cost a fortune to manufacture, leaving almost no profit for Mr. Anderson."

• "Even if the complicated drug could be found, it might only work on one person in a million. If Mr. Anderson was the only person to have gone through the changes the plaintiffs had claimed, it must be a very rare person who can be affected.

• Etc.

We had counter-counter-arguments:

• "Scientists have found the cures for MANY diseases," whereupon our lawyer read out a VERY long list. For some of them, he read how many people they used to kill, which had been horrific numbers. That made scientists seem VERY impressive people.

• "Mark Anderson transformed himself, so it can't have involved a very expensive manufacturing process. If he could stumble across it, it'd cost only pennies to manufacture in bulk."

• We tried to claim that I was a thoroughly normal boy before I transformed, so most people would be able use it. We lost points on this one though, as it seemed reasonable that post-adolescent people might be too old to change, and maybe it only worked on boys, and who know what other restrictions. We tried to counter that even if 10% of the population could be transformed, a country would still pay 100% of its GDP to have that happen.

• Etc.

At the end, the jury accepted the use of our formula, and in their wisdom, they ascribed the following values to it:

• The chance that the cause of my transformation would've been discovered within 50 years: 20%.

• The chance that the cause would've been reproducible in other people (i.e., sellable) within 50 years: 50%.

• The chance it wouldn't be discovered and brought to market by a competitor first: 80%.

• What people would pay for it: 10% of GDP for 10 years (not the 20 years we claimed we'd sell it for), and they used 2% higher NPV discount factor too, although I doubted that any of them knew what NPV was, let alone the correct discount factor to use.

• The proportion of people that it would be useful for (a new term they included, at the defense's suggestion): 10%.

Logically the penultimate term was what a country would pay for whatever proportion of its citizens were treatable, so it encompassed the last term, but the jury didn't seem to grasp that.

The value calculated out to be $235,951,380,000 ($236 billion). From which they decided to subtract $20 billion of business running costs, for a net profit of $216 billion.

Rather stupidly, they didn't then multiply the answer by 0.75 because my claimed business plan was for me to own only 75% of the patents and business. We'd mentioned that issue but hadn't given it any emphasis. The other side hadn't emphasized it either, probably because it made no real difference. With no one stressing it, the jury forgot to include it, making $216 billion the final value.

It was less than one thousandth of what we'd asked for, and somewhat disappointing. I thought my ass was worth more than that, and I CERTAINLY thought possible human immortality or just freedom from disease was worth more than a company that sold computer software. But it was large enough for our purposes. Most importantly, the Government would HATE to have to pay it. By the terms of our second settlement agreement, they would be liable to pay us $216 billion should they breach any of its terms, so they should make damned sure they don't.

The jury was also required to rule on the degree of culpability each defendant had. The DHS defendants were less responsible for my death than the scientists who experimented on me, than the managers in charge of the lab, etc. On the other hand, it was the DHS guys who first kidnapped me. The important factor was that any of those people could've blown the whistle and had a good chance of getting me released, thereby preventing my death, and allowing me to earn the $216 billion profit.

The degrees of culpability ranged from 10% up to 50%, all of which were academic as none of the defendants had even 0.001%.

That was the most important part of the trial over with. The Government wasn't a party to the case so couldn't appeal it. It could act behind some of the hundred defendants, trying to get them to appeal, but that was all.

Our lawyers initiated bankruptcy proceedings against all the defendants and moved to have their assets immediately frozen. The defendants tried to fight the freezing, but lost that as preserving assets was clearly the correct holding action until the defendants appealed the $216 billion award. The court-appointed managers of the defendants' assets kept a very tight lid on how much they were allowed to spend (no clothes shopping, no restaurant meals, no luxuries of any sort at all), as their assets were effectively our assets until such time as they won a massive turnaround on appeal.

As our lawyers predicted, the defendants' lawyers were unable to come up with a justification for an appeal. They delayed as long as they could, and then filed their appeal applications.

The Court of Appeals considered and then rejected them, refusing to hear the case. The defendants' lawyers had tried to dress it up as much as possible, but there was no new evidence to reverse the defendants being found liable, no judicial misconduct or any other grounds for appeal, and the appeal court had no interest in wasting its time arguing over exactly how many billions of dollars each defendant wouldn't be able to pay.

The Supreme Court would have been even less interested in taking the case than the Court of Appeal had been, so that was the end of their defense.

The bankruptcy proceedings resumed, which usually resulted in their houses being sold from underneath them. Not having accommodation didn't matter because during the appeal period, all the defendants had been found guilty in the criminal prosecutions and were in jail for an average of a couple of decades.

We got some negative publicity over it, but Vanessa's response was, "These people took money to commit terrible crimes. That's WRONG! The proceeds of crimes should be forfeit, regardless of how the money was spent, whether on expensive sports cars or family homes. They cut Mark open to experiment on him, so they literally have blood money on their hands.

^-- "There are doubtless other Government employees committing, or thinking of committing, crimes. If they love their families, this should encourage them to behave honestly. This action will serve as a strong disincentive, saving many innocent victims from undeserved misery. For those of you listening who are married to Government employees. Your spouses have more power to do harm than most private individuals, and therefore need to take more care and be more accountable. Talk with your spouses about their jobs, and about what has happened to the families of the DHS and CIA criminals. Do everything you can to ensure that your spouses don't commit crimes. Let's all try to make America safer and better.

^-- "In addition, every dollar that we receive from the ninety eight bankruptcies will be held in trust to be paid out to victims that the Mark Anderson Foundation identifies. You may think the families deserve to keep the money their criminal breadwinner earned for them, but the victims of other Government crimes deserve and need the money far more. Let me tell you about Mrs. Delaney: a single mother in Chicago whose home was condemned by a city employee who had a brother-in-law who owned several pieces of land around hers. She tried to get the alleged defects repaired, but no matter how much she spent, her house was never good enough. Her house was forced onto the market and bought for a pittance by the brother-in-law. The development went ahead and generated millions of dollars of profits. The city employee now lives in one of the best units, which has a value well above what he should've been able to afford.

^-- "Mrs. Delaney tried to take legal action against what was effectively an eviction from her own home, but the city fought her every step of the way and she ran out of money. The Mark Anderson Foundation is restarting and funding her suit against the development company, the city employee and the city itself. We've estimated what we think Mrs. Delaney is due. Rather than waiting for her lawsuit to come to a conclusion in a year or more, we're paying her that amount tomorrow out of the money we obtained from the criminals we bankrupted. You're invited to that presentation. When her suit is concluded, she has to repay the amount we advanced so it can be used to provide instant justice to the next victim of governmental abuse. If she's awarded more than what we've given her, she'll keep the gain; and if there's a shortfall, MAF will let her keep it, writing off the debt.

^-- "We have other cases we're working on which will be announced over the next few weeks. The important thing is that the money we obtained from the hundred criminals is being put to a good use to immediately ease the lives of INNOCENT victims, rather than criminals' families..." You get the idea. Note that Mrs. Delaney's problem was not a Federal or State government one, those being the original targets of MAF. Vanessa had so much more money available than she'd expected that she'd widened MAF's aim to include smaller forms of government.

MAF's staff had been searching through the last few years' newspapers, looking for cases of government corruption or abuses of power, investigating them further (newspapers not being the best sources of factual information), and MAF was now ready to start pursuing several of them. The idea of "instant justice" was one that appealed strongly, certainly much more so than sympathy for the criminal Frankensteins' families, so we came out of it looking good.

Another idea that appealed strongly was "instant money". Begging letters poured into MAF. Nearly all of them got sent the same letter back, telling them that MAF would only act on cases that'd been publicized in the media. It wasn't ideal in the short term, but the long-term need was for a LARGE pool of dedicated investigative journalists because they'd have a greater ability to keep Government honest than just MAF operating through the courts. MAF would pay the reporters to work, effectively as paid-on-results, private investigators.

There were lots of small things going on that I haven't made any reference to:

• We all got new cellphones that automatically encrypted their transmissions when talking to each other (not to other phones, obviously). We had no obvious need for them; it just seemed like a good idea.

• Dad and I got some firearms training, and Dad bought a handgun for "just in case". I drove up to Portland one night and took several weapons and boxes of ammo out of a gang house. Quite a lot of cash too, as it was available for the taking. None of them saw anything, so they'd have a nice little mystery on their hands. I floated it back to my car, then drove to a remote location. I got out of my car and flew at very low altitude to an even more remote location, then practiced using the weapons entirely with NP and a sight blob. Once I had that mastered well enough, I drove home, bagged the gear up, and hid it in the area. If my home is ever attacked again, I have weapons I can use that won't come back at us in any way.

• I was studying OSU courses four or five nights a week, and powering through the three degrees. No practical work, exams or anything like that; just the lecture notes and reading the textbooks I already had.

• I was still averaging a déjà vu every seventeen hours so I was interacting with a lot of Mark Andersons. Assuming no repeats and a low rate of missed events because I was asleep, I was 'meeting' about forty Mark Andersons (counting bodies, most of which had thirty two minds each) per month. I'll describe my déjà vu experiences in more detail below.

• By the end of 2006 my ability to use two visual sources was good enough to drive with either of them and I habitually had a sight blob on overwatch with one mind tasked to concentrate on it, move it around to check things, etc. Operating dual sight sources was a skill I was effectively perfect at now, although I would've liked to have more than two of them. That need wasn't just in case of emergencies, but because it's extraordinarily useful to be able to look anywhere within five hundred feet of yourself. Just around home I often wanted to have three or four sight blobs going at once. It would've been one more than that if I could ever get a sound blob going, because then I could watch and listen to anything good on TV or as many DVDs as I wanted to buy, no matter where I was around the property.

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