Location: Management Office, Volta S.A. Factory, Ivry-sur-Seine
Date: Early May 1991
Point of view: Omniscient (Focus on Lazare Bonaparte)
The month of May 1991 brought the first stifling heat to the Paris suburbs. Inside the Ivry-sur-Seine complex, the atmosphere was no less heavy.
Operation "Cannibal" had ended forty-eight hours earlier. The logistical war against the American embargo had been won, but the battlefield was still smoking.
In the vast wood-paneled management office, Lazare Bonaparte contemplated the figures lined up on the report placed in front of him. His hands, laid flat on the leather of the desk pad, bore the scars of the last two weeks: bandages covered the burns left by slips of the soldering irons and splatters of boiling rosin.
Opposite him, Benoît, Volta's financial director—usually so measured—seemed on the verge of apoplexy. To his right, Alexandre de Vigan listened in monastic silence, his hands crossed on his knees.
"The final count has been certified by Hélène's division on level -3," Lazare announced in a voice made gravelly by lack of sleep. "Four thousand. We have four thousand fully functional units of the Volta Nomad, equipped with eight megabytes of RAM, flashed, and packaged."
The Builder looked up at his financial director.
"You should be happy, Benoît. We have broken the White House's blockade. We have machines for COMDEX."
Benoît took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes nervously.
"I would be glad, Mr. President, if this victory were not a fatal hemorrhage," the accountant said. "The operation you have just carried out is an absolute disaster from a financial standpoint."
He leaned forward, pointing a trembling finger at the report.
"To extract these chips, we had to buy back at full retail price, in stores throughout Europe, more than four thousand high-end computers from our competitors. Add to that the emergency charter flights from London and Geneva, the bribes to European customs officials to speed up transits, and the triple overtime paid to our engineers to desolder components by hand, night and day."
The CFO caught his breath.
"Sir, the initial cost of a Nomad was supposed to be about two thousand dollars at the time of manufacture. With this scavenger method, every machine currently sitting in our basement has cost us nearly ten thousand dollars to produce! We have literally gobbled up a critical portion of the cash reserves generated by the V-1 sales just to save this project."
Lazare remained unmoved. He knew that war was expensive. But the scale of the financial abyss was undeniable.
"The American blockade of Asia is still holding," Lazare said. "What does this mean for our future capabilities?"
"It means mass production is dead," Benoît said categorically. "We can't produce the four-thousand-and-first machine. It is physically and financially impossible. If we try to expand this cannibalization operation to a hundred thousand units to flood the American market as planned, we will bankrupt Volta S.A. before the end of the year. The banks will refuse to back us on such an irrational economic model."
Silence fell over the desk. The American Empire had succeeded in its coup. They hadn't been able to prevent the birth of the Nomad, but they had just suffocated it in its crib. With only four thousand units, Volta could not claim to replace the millions of machines sold by Intel and Compaq. It was no longer an industrial revolution; it was an anecdote.
Lazare closed the file. He felt neither panic nor regret. He had forced fate to obtain these four thousand machines, and he would own this reality.
"The conclusion is clear," the Builder said, his voice cold. "We are logistically surrounded. The mass-appeal product, the computer for all, is over. We have an army of four thousand black soldiers. Not one more."
Benoît lowered his head, floored.
"How are we going to make this profitable? If we sell them at market price, say three or four thousand dollars each to compete with Apple or Toshiba, we will lose six thousand dollars per unit sold. It's commercial suicide."
It was at this precise moment that Alexandre de Vigan, silent since the beginning of the meeting, smiled. Not a smile of defeat, but the predatory stretch of a man who had just seen the crack in the enemy's armor.
The marketing manager stood up, smoothing the crisp crease of his flannel pants, and walked over to Lazare's desk.
"You reason like a shopkeeper, Benoît," murmured de Vigan, in that aristocratic tone that belonged to him alone. "You cry because we don't have enough lead to go to war. But look at the Nomad. Look at what Minh and Linh have designed. It's not lead. It's pure gold."
De Vigan placed his two fists on Lazare's desk, his gray eyes shining with a formidable intelligence.
"America has deprived us of volume? Very well. We will sell them exclusivity. Lazare, rarity is not a weakness. In my profession, rarity is the absolute greatest weapon there is. It's time to completely rethink what we're selling."
Location: Council Room, Volta S.A. Factory, Ivry-sur-Seine
Date: May 1991
Point of view: Omniscient (Focus on the inner circle)
The silence that followed Alexandre de Vigan's intervention had an almost physical density. In the half-light of the council chamber, the faces of Auguste and Karim were illuminated by the bluish reflection of the monitors. Lazare, on the other hand, remained in the shadows, watching his marketing manager with icy curiosity.
"Twenty-five thousand dollars," Karim repeated, his voice rising an octave in disbelief. "Alexandre, you've lost your mind. It's 1991. A Compaq LTE or a Macintosh Portable already costs a fortune at five thousand dollars. At twenty-five thousand, you don't buy a computer—you buy a luxury sedan or a studio apartment in the suburbs! No one, and I mean no one, will spend that kind of money on silicon and plastic."
De Vigan did not blink. He adjusted his cufflinks with calculated slowness, his gray eyes meeting those of the young hacker.
"Precisely, Karim. People won't buy this object to do accounting or word processing. They will buy it for the simple pleasure of knowing that their first-class neighbor cannot afford it. We are no longer in the IT business; we are in high-end horology. We are selling a status symbol."
He turned to Lazare, his voice becoming more urgent.
"We have only four thousand units. This is a misery for the global market, but it is a gold mine for the egos of the elite. If we sell the Nomad for five thousand dollars, we lose money and we look like amateurs who mismanaged their inventory. But at twenty-five thousand dollars? We become the most exclusive brand on the planet. We are targeting Fortune 500 CEOs, Wall Street traders, emirs, and heads of state. For these people, twenty-five thousand dollars is a tip. For them, the price is proof of superiority."
Lazare slowly sat up, his hands crossed under his chin. De Vigan's arithmetic was implacable. Four thousand machines multiplied by twenty-five thousand dollars...
"A hundred million dollars in sales," murmured Lazare.
"Exactly," confirmed De Vigan. "One hundred million dollars that instantly replenishes our treasury and covers the entire financial massacre of Operation Cannibal. We turn an industrial failure into an unprecedented marketing stunt. We are creating global frustration. People will tear their hair out to own one of the four thousand black monoliths of Volta."
Auguste, who had remained silent, nodded slowly. The former spy understood the psychology of power better than anyone.
"It's a guerrilla strategy, Lazare," Auguste said. "By pricing the Nomad at this level, you put it entirely out of reach of technical comparison. Intel may release faster chips next year, but they will never be able to buy the prestige that we will build in a single week in Chicago."
"But how are we going to justify this price?" Karim insisted, still shaken. "Even with your VESLA-M chip and Linh's screen, it's robbery!"
Lazare laid his dark eyes on his friend from Polytechnique.
"It's not robbery, Karim. It is the price of freedom. We are selling the world's first machine that can last an entire day without a fan, with a touch interface and workstation power packed into a kilo and a half. We aren't selling megahertz; we are selling the future, ten years in advance. And the future has a cost."
The Builder turned to De Vigan, validating the strategy with a simple nod of his head.
"Prepare the press kits, Alexandre. The Nomad will be the jewel in the crown. But there is still one problem: COMDEX opens its doors in less than ten days. Vasseur and the DGSE still forbid me from leaving the country. I can't walk onto that stage to defend a twenty-five-thousand-dollar product from an office in Ivry."
A carnivorous smile appeared on Karim's lips. He had just found his role in this new madness.
"For that, I have a solution, Lazare. Do you remember what we tested with the fiber optics and motion sensors in the bunker? If you can't go to Chicago, we're going to bring Chicago here. We will use the high-fidelity network that we've deployed with AMD's satellites."
Karim typed a few commands on his keyboard. On the giant screen, a three-dimensional wireframe model of Lazare's face appeared, animated in real time.
"We're going to project a high-definition hologram onto the COMDEX stage," Karim explained, his excitement finally overpowering his financial shock. "You will be there, in the form of light and data, ten thousand kilometers away. The audience will see the creator of Volta appear as a ghost in the machine. It will be even more mysterious, even more exclusive. The man who is worth billions, locked away in his French fortress, presenting the most expensive computer in the world."
Lazare looked at his own digital double. The irony was delicious. The French state had locked him up to protect him, but his technology would set him free.
"Do it," ordered Lazare. "Prepare the hologram. Prepare the sales contracts. We are going to show Silicon Valley that you cannot imprison an idea. And on May 20, we are going to sell them the black dream at the price of blood."