Location: Boardroom, Volta SA Executive Office, Ivry-sur-Seine.
Date: February 1, 1994.
Point of view: Omniscient (Sliding focus on Édouard Renault-Tessier and Lazare Bonaparte).
The heavy, leather-bound ledger rested in the center of the mahogany table, closed on the staggering 5.79 billion euros of immediately available cash. The sum, frozen in the new continental currency they had themselves adopted, still lingered in the minds of the vice-presidents and directors present in the Ivry-sur-Seine boardroom.
The winter rain continued to sweep across the huge bay windows of the top floor, muffling the sounds of the red suburbs and leaving only the faint hum of the air conditioning.
Édouard Renault-Tessier, the finance director, had just finished his presentation on safeguarding this dormant treasure. He sat back down, mechanically smoothing the lapel of his cold wool jacket, expecting Lazare Bonaparte to adjourn the meeting.
The 1993 financial statements, showing a perfect balance between colossal revenues and pharaonic investment expenditures for the Alsatian MegaFab, had been dissected down to the bone.
However, the young, twenty-seven-year-old CEO made no move towards the door.
Seated in his large armchair, Lazare maintained that marble-like immobility that unsettled even his closest colleagues. His dark eyes, with their unfathomable fixity, rested upon the former investment banker.
« You have perfectly mapped our financial firepower, Edward, » Lazarus murmured calmly, his cold tone echoing distinctly to the back of the room. « But a war chest is only useful if one knows exactly when and on which front the first explosive charge must be detonated. »
The finance director frowned very slightly.
« I thought these funds were set aside to absorb the shock of a potential market collapse or to compensate for production delays at our Asian factories. A passive strategic reserve. »Passivity is a luxury that our enemies will no longer grant us from the moment our new machines hit the shelves of distributors,« the engineer corrected him. »
Lazare leaned forward, crossing his long pale hands on the dark leather of his blotter.
Next spring, the global launch of the Compaq AXIOM line, powered by our 66-megahertz VESLA 2190 processor and CELLA-64M synchronous memory, will shatter Intel and Microsoft's market share. We're going to bring simultaneous multithreading to homes and businesses, a technology they haven't even mastered on their own search simulators.
Faced with this complete technological humiliation, do you think they'll simply lower their prices?
Karim Belkacem, sitting to Lazare's right, slowly shook his head. The technical director knew the cruelty of Silicon Valley.
« They will retaliate. If they cannot beat us on the architecture, they will try to prevent us from selling it. »Exactly,« Lazare agreed. »The offensive won't be commercial; it will be procedural. Washington and Santa Clara are going to unleash a legal hell.« The young man listed the coming cataclysms with frightening prescience, as if he were reading from a pre-written timeline. »
They will file dozens of simultaneous complaints with the U.S. International Trade Commission for intellectual property infringement. They will use shell companies and patent trolls to claim prior rights to our lithography processes or the SECDED error corrector integrated into our memory.
They will seek emergency injunctions to block the unloading of our cargo ships in the ports of Los Angeles and Seattle. They will harass our subcontractors, threaten our distributors with lawsuits for complicity in counterfeiting, and attempt to freeze our bank assets through federal court orders.
The air in the boardroom suddenly seemed to thicken. The executives present were taking stock of the scale of the trench warfare that was looming. An administrative quagmire capable of engulfing the world's most successful company.
« To weather this storm, » Lazare continued, « we can no longer rely solely on our current resources. Hiring external law firms, however prestigious they may be in Paris or Geneva, has become a critical vulnerability.
These firms work for dozens of other multinationals. They are porous. They fear conflicts of interest and, above all, they lack the total devotion that our survival demands. »
Édouard Renault-Tessier cleared his throat, guessing his boss's logic, although it clashed with all the conventions of business law.
« Do you want us to recruit massively for our in-house legal department? To build a team of around one hundred salaried lawyers? »
« Recruitment takes too long and doesn't attract the real legal heavyweights, » Lazare stated firmly. « The first expenditure you make from our 5.79 billion euros in liquid reserves, Édouard, will be an acquisition.
You will buy a leading international business law firm. »
Silence fell. The former banker blinked, convinced he had misheard.
« Buying a law firm? Lazare, a law firm isn't a plastics company or a software development studio. It's a partnership, an equity partnership. You don't buy a law firm through a hostile takeover! »
« Everything can be bought, Edward. You just have to find the right lever of legal corruption, » the engineer retorted with chilling coldness. « Target one of the most aggressive and reputable firms in Geneva or London, specializing in patent litigation and international law.
Offer the senior partners triple their annual income in guaranteed salaries and signing bonuses. Shower them with gold. Buy out their office leases, take over their entire administrative staff. »
Lazare swept the room with an imperious look, sealing the fate of these future mercenaries in black robes.
« But the absorption condition will be absolute. From the moment the agreement is signed, they will have to divest themselves of their entire existing client portfolio. They will abandon the banks, the chemical industries, the states they represent.
From that date onward, they will answer to only one master: Volta SA »
The young CEO placed both hands on the mahogany table.
They will become our private army. A legal phalanx cloistered in exclusivity. They will file thousands of preemptive patents one after another to saturate the registries in Washington and Tokyo.
They will drown competitors in delaying tactics, they will crush plaintiffs under mountains of legal fees that our treasury will absorb without batting an eye. If it's necessary to start a procedural firestorm for every silicon chip sold, they will do it.
We will suffocate the American justice system with its own system. Find me this firm, Edward, and bring it in.
The finance director nodded slowly, stunned by the Machiavellian nature of the directive, but unable to deny its formidable effectiveness. Taking over an elite firm and turning it into a captive department was an unprecedented maneuver that would terrify the competition.
However, Lazarus wasn't finished yet. The restructuring of the company's immune system was only the prelude to a much deeper upheaval.
The young man rose from his armchair. His dark silhouette stood out against the wall as he walked towards the large whiteboard at the far end of the room. With a fluid movement, he picked up a red marker.
He began to draw. Squares, arrows, department names, abbreviations. The company's current organizational chart materialized before the assembly's eyes.
It was a complex spiderweb, born of haste and hyper-growth.
There, we saw software teams encroaching on network security, hardware engineers directly overseeing assembly lines in China, and buyers for Operation Scavenger reporting to both René Castella and the finance department. It was an organic, empirical assembly that had allowed the startup on Rue de la Glacière to conquer the world in less than a decade.
But Lazarus looked at this diagram with a grimace of profound disgust.
With a swift, sweeping, and decisive movement, he crossed out the entire organizational chart with a huge red cross. The scratching of the felt-tip pen on the enamel of the board startled some of the managers. »Obsolescence isn't just a matter of processors, gentlemen,« the engineer declared, turning to his directors. »It also affects human structures.« He threw away the red marker to grab a black one, his face closing in unreserved concentration.
« Volta SA survived the storm because we were agile, flexible, and able to blur hierarchical lines in an emergency. But we devoured too many companies in Europe. We absorbed development studios, optical factories in East Germany, research centers in Moscow, and we now produce on a continental scale. »
He tapped the center of the crossed-out painting.
« This creative chaos has become a death trap. We have network engineers wasting their time managing diplomatic crises, and GUI developers interfering with hardware assembly. The days of the small, tight-knit team in a basement are definitely over.
If we want to digest our acquisitions and stand up to the US juggernaut in the 21st century, our internal architecture must become as cold, rigid, and optimized as the code of a UNIX kernel. »
The general staff held its breath. The transformation of the empire was imminent. »From this day forward, Volta SA becomes an imperial holding company,« decreed Lazare. »The monster we have created will be split, compartmentalized into five separate, hermetic, and authoritarian ministries.
Five divisions that will answer only to central management. The overlap of unauthorized powers is abolished.« Lazare drew a first large column on the whiteboard, writing the title in firm handwriting:
VOLTA HARDWARE
« The realm of physics and matter, » he announced, looking at René Castella and Ilya Volkov. « This division will have exclusive responsibility for everything that has mass and dissipates heat. René, you will be its executive director.
You will oversee the operation of the MegaFab in Alsace and our sprawling assembly plant in Huabei, China. Ilya Volkov will manage research and development of the infinitesimally small. It is here that the next generations of the VESLA architecture will be designed, that the integration of SMT multithreading will be perfected, that the etching of our SONG graphics chips will be refined, and that the evolution of CELLA synchronous memory will continue.
The chemistry of dopant gases, metallurgy, substrates… that is the exclusive domain of Hardware. »
He drew a second column.
VOLTA SOFTWARE
« The brains of the company, » Lazare continued. « Karim, you're delegating its day-to-day supervision to your top lieutenants.
This division will abruptly absorb the twenty or so software publishers and creative studios we've acquired across Europe over the past two years. The goal is absolute standardization. Volta Software's sacred mission will be the development, optimization, and deployment of the VoltaOS operating system, its future graphical interface Volta X, and the entire application ecosystem, which must run without the slightest friction on our chips.
It's the pure code industry. Logic disconnected from silicon. »
The black felt-tip pen slid across the enamel to form a third column. Lazare paused for a fraction of a second, his gaze unfathomable, before tracing the letters.
VOLTA SECURE
The mere mention of that name sent shivers down the spines of the board members. This department was already, unofficially, the dark heart of the company.
« The sword and the shield, » Lazarus said, his voice lowering, resonating with geopolitical gravity. « Marc and Karim, you retain total control over this sanctuary.
Volta Secure will manage the Empire's cryptography. This division will finalize the architecture of the alternative interbank network to SWIFT and refine the asymmetric algorithm for the future European Carte Bleue cards. »
The engineer tightened his grip on the marker, fixing his lieutenants with the demanding air of a chief of staff.
But above all, according to the unalterable terms of the agreement reached last spring with the President of the French Republic, this division will have exclusive responsibility for the »Clandestine Project.« Young officers and mathematicians from the Directorate General for External Security and the Joint Staff will be trained here, in the shadows of our servers. You will teach them cyberwarfare.
You will teach them how to penetrate enemy defenses and secure our backbones. Volta Secure is the direct interface between this company and the survival of the Nation. Secrecy surrounding this department must be total and permanent.
No one dared to comment. The secret pact with the State, sealed in blood and terror after the assault on Avenue de Marigny, was taking on a definitive administrative form.
Lazarus drew the fourth column with methodical speed.
VOLTA ADMIN
He turned to Édouard Renault-Tessier, who was watching the restructuring with a fascination tinged with anxiety.
« The internal machinery, Edward. This is your new kingdom. An empire cannot function without a ruthless and fluid bureaucracy.
This division will bring together the Human Resources department, which must now manage tens of thousands of employees spread across three continents. It will integrate central accounting, the auditing of our factories, and the trading floor where our brokers will grow or safeguard our cash reserves. »
Lazare pointed his index finger at the financier.
« And it's within Volta Admin that you'll join the new army in black robes. The law firm you're about to forcibly acquire will be housed in this department. They'll never interact with the engineers.
They'll know nothing about our source code. They'll simply handle complaints, crush litigation, and file patents at an industrial pace, locked away on their own floor. »
Finally, Lazarus approached the right end of the whiteboard and wrote the fifth and final entity there.
VOLTA PUBLIC RELATIONS (PR)
He sought Nadia Chérif's gaze. The communications director, always impeccably dressed, sat bolt upright in her chair. She bore the heavy responsibility of translating Lazarus's mathematical aridity into a discourse intelligible to humanity.
« The face of the Empire, » declared the young CEO, barely softening his harsh tone. « Nadia, you are taking the helm of Volta PR. I want the doctrine of silence we have established as dogma to become institutionalized.
No Volta Hardware or Software engineer, no plant manager, will ever again be authorized to speak to the press, an outside partner, or a government representative without your prior written approval. »
The engineer leaned against the board, contemplating his restructuring work.
« Volta PR will be the sole channel of communication with the civilian world. This division will orchestrate the public propaganda, skillfully cultivate anticipation for the imminent release of the Compaq AXIOM, and justify the aggressive pricing of our deprecated chips.
It is also you, Nadia, who will manage the diplomatic choreography with our convenient allies, such as AMD, and negotiate the superficial agreements with foreign multinationals. You are the filter between our reality and their perception. »
Lazare Bonaparte placed the black marker back on the aluminum edge of the painting. The dull thud of the object sealed the end of the old era.
The whiteboard now displayed the map of a silicon pentagon. An unshakeable structure, where each cog was isolated from the turbulence of its neighbor, designed to operate with the coldness of a regular army.
« The small, artisanal business that survived the American embargo no longer exists, » Lazare concluded, his voice echoing through the room with the gravity of a sovereign engraving new laws in stone. « The challenges of 1994 demanded an architecture commensurate with our financial power.
The war machine is now streamlined, financed, and blind to any form of sentimentality. »
He returned to his executive chair, adjusting the button of his jacket. His black eyes, unbearably sharp, fixed one last time on his directors.
Our defenses are airtight and our weapons are ready. Return to your posts, gentlemen. The world is about to discover that Europe is no longer merely surviving.
It is structured to crush it. The session is adjourned.