The Richest Man in the Galaxy

By John Magee

Based on They Tried to Outsmart Wall Street by Dennis Overbye in the Science Times section of the March 10, 2009 New York Times.

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“And welcome back, viewers. We’re speaking live with Norton Aziz, one of the wealthiest men in the Galaxy and the only man to have ever achieved majority ownership in a Galactic Corporation.” Robyn Bluebird, MarketNet's most popular reporter, shook her lush blonde hair alluringly as the threevee shot changed to the subject of this week’s interview, Mr. Norton Aziz himself.

Norton Aziz looked considerably more like a high-school chemistry teacher than the Galaxy’s wealthiest man. He wore a plain blue shirt and despite the untold riches available to him, he had apparently chosen to let his hairline recede naturally. “Thank you, Robyn. I have to say that being on your show today is as big a thrill as any of my best days on the market. “

“You’re too kind. Now, let’s go back to your early years. You started your academic career as a theoretical physicist before becoming one of the early pioneers of unified quantonomics. What made you decide to change from science to business?”

“The math led me that way.” Aside from looking like a high-school chemistry teacher, Norman Aziz possessed rather less charisma than the average high-school chemistry teacher. “Also, I was working my way through school and it was a good deal easier to find support for my research from the corporate sector if I applied my research to a matter of practical importance.”

“Do you regret leaving pure science behind?” Robyn poised an inquisitive look of concern on her perfect brow.

“Not at all. I was able to help people across the galaxy by creating wealth. It’s a far nobler pursuit than the chase for meaningless hypothetical mathematical constructs.”

“You started with barely a penny to your name, didn’t you?”

“Indeed, I was simply looking for a practical way in which to test the theories of some of my colleagues, and I had a small fund of money that I had managed to save up.” In truth, Norton Aziz had started with the rather substantial fortune that had given him the financial independence to pursue a field as bereft of corporate support as theoretical physics.

“So you wanted to test your colleague’s theories, not your own?” asked Robyn.

“I was never able to perfect my own theories, you see. But I did believe that practical testing of the work of others was a worthwhile effort.” In truth, Norton Aziz was the first to perfect a unified theory of quantonomics. However, one of the first conclusions he drew from the completed theory was that it would never do to admit success if he wanted to apply his theory to the creation of personal wealth for Norton Aziz. And Norton Aziz desperately wanted to create personal wealth for Norton Aziz.

“Mr. Aziz, you first came to the public eye when you achieved majority control of Phreshtor, Inc., which at the time controlled nearly 500 star systems. How does one man achieve such power?”

“I had a pretty good day on the market, that’s for sure,” said Norton Aziz to his beautiful interviewer. In point of fact it had been one of Norton Aziz’s worst days on the market. He had never wanted to come to public light, much less as the majority owner of a Galaxy-class corporation. However, an unfortunate combination of several still-flawed subroutines in his general market A.I. had combined with an unexpected crash in several commodities markets to trigger the unanticipated cascade of financial dominoes that led him to publically assume the majority stake in Phreshtor, Inc. It had been the least costly of several bad options at the time. The subroutines dealing with the specific exotic high-leverage investment products that had created the problem had been immediately updated and corrected. But the potential liability they had created remained, and its cure had required a level of public exposure that Norton Aziz found distasteful at best.

Before consolidating the stake and making it public, Norton Aziz’s instant analysis of the future costs of that unfortunate act included even the annual wardrobe tally for the men who would have to be hired to play the role of Norton Aziz in public. The latest in that line of imposters continued the interview.

“What’s most important, though, is what I quickly came to realize. It was simply too great a concentration of my assets for the long-term benefit of my investment portfolio. And I certainly lacked the expertise to take direct control of Phreshtor. Nor would I have wanted to do such a thing. My full confidence in the management team at Phreshtor was one of the primary reasons I had chosen to invest in their stock.” Fortunately, Robyn was willing to take his word for it instead of doing the research that would reveal that most of the upper-level management of Phreshtor had been pensioned off in a matter of weeks after the public takeover. The real Norton Aziz had no intention of letting the same rabble of incompetents run the company, since their mistakes had forced his public disclosure.

“Would you ever be interested in obtaining another majority stake in a Galaxy-Class corporation?” Robyn chose this moment to gently thrust forward her galaxy-class chest in a manner that 72% of the most recent MarketNet focus group had described as “arousing.”

“No, Robyn. Since I divested the Phreshtor stake years ago, I’ve been mostly retired from finance. I like to concentrate on my philanthropic endeavors. That’s really where my passion lies these days.” The philanthropic endeavors had always been planned to give a cover of benevolence to Norton Aziz’s investment patterns. The Phreshtor disaster had simply accelerated the rate at which Norton Aziz had been forced to divert a small portion – a very small portion – of his enormous wealth into the philanthropic line. Norton Aziz being Norton Aziz, of course, he still managed to see a 238% year-over-year return on the money he had invested in his charity work. That would hardly do for real investing, but it would suffice for a line that existed only as one of his many protective shells.

The nebbish man who posed as Norton Aziz had no way of knowing that, of course. He truly believed that his job was simply to provide a public face for one of the galaxy’s great benefactors due to his sponsor’s great shyness.

“Do you think anybody will ever again own a majority stake in one of these great entities?” asked Robyn, following her question with the slightest lick of her lips.

“Oh, I doubt it. That was years and years ago and the market has become much more diversified since then. Nobody, including myself, has come close since.” The truth was that nobody other than Norton Aziz had come close. Through his various shells, Norton Aziz had already controlled a majority stake in four of the 16 major Galaxy-Class corporations at the time of the Phreshtor disaster. The real Norton Aziz currently controlled a majority stake in eleven of the sixteen. The real Norton Aziz expected that number to continue to grow.

“Is there anything else you’d like to tell our viewers?”

“Work hard. Do your best for your corporation, and everything will work out fine, as it did for me.”

“Thank you, Mr. Aziz. And now, back to you, Dennis.” Unlike her usual manufactured but extremely convincing mannerisms, the look of pure lust that Robyn gave the threevee cameras to close the interview was real and genuine. It wasn’t for Dennis. It was for the cameras. Robyn loved the cameras, and the cameras loved her.

…

In his tank in his private complex on the central galactic market planet of Dow, the real Norton Aziz monitored the interview on one of his many co-processing information channels. The real Norton Aziz hadn’t wanted to stay out of the public eye because of great shyness. The real Norton Aziz could give a fig about public perception and he would give that fig if it weren’t for those nigglesome public-perception constants, variables, and algorithms that kept appearing in so many portions of his unified quantonomics theory. The real Norton Aziz wanted to stay out of the public eye because the first step in implementing his theory to the benefit of Norton Aziz had been the conversion of his body and brain into an efficient information conduit. The technical limitations of that time required substantial physical alterations to achieve that sort of efficiency. The public-perception constants, variables, and algorithms in his unified theory of quantonomics showed his current situation to project a suboptimal public image. The real Norton Aziz, The Richest Man in the Galaxy, was imprisoned in a cyberfluid bath and tied down by nearly 200 wired inputs and tubes that fed data to the processors in his brain and kept his body alive.

Mr. Norton Aziz controlled The Wealth of the Galaxy. And The Wealth of the Galaxy controlled Mr. Norton Aziz.