AIRTEL TO [REDACTED]

RE: ECONOMIC MODEL

The Directory Model of Economy

Economics, as a social science, starts with the description of the complex means by which any given unit of resources is used to satisfy some economic want. This process, particularly when an objective is to get the most product from the least resources, requires the application of military and industrial logistics. These are to be known as Operatives Research.

Our First Era Economic Research Project was an extension of the Operations Research method used in the early days of the Good Revolution. Its purpose was to discover the science of controlling an economy and on both a local and national scale. It was believed that with a sufficient mathematical foundation and robust data sets, it would be nearly as easy to predict and control the trend of an economy as it is to predict and control the trajectory of a projectile weapon.

The immediate aim of the ERP was to reveal the economic structure, discover what forces alter that structure, and determine how the behavior of the structure can be predicted and how it can be manipulated. What was needed was a well-organized cipher of the mathematical structures and interrelationships of investment, production, distribution, and consumption. It was theorized that an economy obeyed the same laws as electro-currents and that all the theory and knowledge developed for the electro-field could be directly applied to the study of economics. This discovery was not openly declared, and its more subtle implications were and still remain and closely guarded state secret.

The most significant hurdle that theoretical economists faced was the accurate description of the household as an industry. This challenge is due to how much consumer purchases are influenced by an individual’s income, product prices, and other economic nuances.

This obstacle was cleared via an indirect and statistically approximate way by applying shock tests to determine the current statistics of a household industry.

Finally, because problems in theoretical economics can be translated very easily into theoretical electro-currents, and the solution can be translated back again. It follows that there only needed to be a book of language translation and concept definitions written for economics. The remainder of the needed data could be harvested from standard works on mathematics and current models. This makes the publication of books on advanced economics unnecessary for our society and greatly simplifies project security.

[CONCLUDED]

This will be a long one and I thank you for your patience with me. It takes a great deal of time to write in a way that prevents too much from being revealed, but at the same time making sure that you all are kept informed.

The story concerns the most controversial House in the Midlands. I know most of the Houses have had some kind of controversy since Restructuring, but this House is the one that you may remember as the only one to have large-scale street protests during the time of their restoration hearing. Now, about a dozen years later, the House’s patriarch has been called to court on a civil complaint. Litigation usually involves many documents and in this case, both sides demanded and produced tons of documents. The Directory appointed me Mitigator for Mister Controversy’s side of things. I was very new to my position at the time. He and I were to go over all the relevant documents together so there would be no surprises at disposition or trial. You see, the Directory likes the term transparency and under the Directory order, the press and publics are allowed into any trial held. The messy nature of this individual was a problem to the Directory’s image of calm control. His bad acts could come back on the Directory for failing to contain a so notably scandalous House. Having him there with me to sift through the documents was supposed to be helpful because he was aging and so looking at the documents again could theoretically refresh his memory and he would be able to advise on any important missing pieces.

For one solid week, I had this man in the same room with me and thus learned way more than I wanted about him. His social life, his vices, his hygiene, and his taste in women. I am not predisposed to be awestruck by any of these ancient Names, but this man’s very presence screamed, “You will pay attention to me and you will bow before me.” You could very nearly feel the old kings in him.

The very first thing I noticed was that he enjoyed swearing and did so frequently. He was exceptionally fond of swearing loudly while I was on the phone or while I was trying to read something. His choice of words was not limited to the basics but was part of a much larger association of words that all flowed together into one enduring stream of profanity. The curses were usually interjected with how he was smarter, funnier, better looking, or thinner than the complainant party.

He wanted to start each morning by about seven, and he was drinking steadily by about 7:30. He kept a flask in his coat and would begin each day with a swig straight from it, and then he would just use it as “creamer” for his coffee the rest of the morning. Generally, at lunch, he would wander out of my office, find the closest person, and order them to the liquor distro for a bottle of Mittleton Rare. Never heard of it? Neither had anyone else in that office. It’s about 140 a bottle and is not easy to find. Of course, he did not offer any money at all to the unfortunate soul assigned to this task. He probably assumed he would be billed, despite my appointment to him being standard Directory protocol. In the event that someone had procured it for him, he would drop any pretense of a flask or creamers and just drink it straight, though from a coffee mug rather than a glass. Incidentally, when I went to his estate one evening in response to a call, which I will describe later, he had four empty 40-year Glenn’s Witch bottles lined up on a desk. Each one is about $2500.

Beginning around the early afternoon, he would start using the rotary. He would hunt for the woman whom he would be granting the honor of sleeping with him that night. Well apparently no matter how much he paid, the honor was not something many of his contacts wanted to repeat, so the calling usually lasted for several hours. I should say that as far as I know, he has never actually exchanged money for sex. In fact, most of the time it seemed women approached him first. It was after this first time that he would end up having to buy them gifts or something to convince them to spend time with him again.

All of these contacts he kept in a bulging black book with all sorts of comments and notations next to each entry. He either made very observant notes, had a great memory, or was full of shit; because he always had a comment about each person in his book. There were several hundred names in there and considering his shaky handwriting, shaky memory, and tremendous drinking, it still astonishes me to think he could remember them all. His comments were not the variety of, “Oh she was a nice girl who loved the theater.” They were all related to their anatomy and how they behaved in bed. He was as married then as he is now, but as he put it the first time I asked of his wife, she was great but specific parts of her were not.

His calls also consisted of everyone he ever knew from a House regardless of where they were located. He would start telling a story about someone and then forget some detail, which lead him to call another person to get that detail, and then call the first back to finish the story. If someone wasn’t available to take his call he would harangue whoever had picked up to such an extent that they gave in and did whatever they could to help him. Calls were made to his bookies. He had more than one because he liked to make them compete for his business and if one did not immediately accept his call he was on to the next.

Since he did not live in town his week with me was what he called his “time of freedom”. He explained his need for something fresh and new, as he was tired of whatever he was presently getting. When women would come into the office it was horrific to watch him, listen to him, and see most of these poor girls enjoy the attention in the first round. Not just enjoy, they loved it and were very flattered…at first. As the week wore on, however, everyone grew weary of his behavior and the women all learned to stay far from his reach after midday. If he caught one, he’d bully them onto his lap where they would suffer his Eau du Liquor and elderly body odors. At the end of this week, that office needed specialized cleaning. He would change clothes twice a day. His clothes and their tailoring were impeccable, and that was about as far as his personal hygiene went. He acted inappropriately almost every second of the day, but because of who he is and was, no one was going to say anything.

The problem, as it so often is with his generation of Old Families, is that time had changed but he had not. The higher in the ranks they were before Restructuring, the more they suffer from this flaw. So many were so accustomed to having every whim granted and know of no other way to behave. Combine that with the fact this his generation spent most of their years the times before the Good Revolution and the problem is magnified. When he was in his prime he could do anything, and commit any crime short of murder. When the world changed these learned behaviors didn’t just stop and so what was tolerated before had become a horrendous offense. He had age on his side, as well as his legacy, which went much further towards helping him than the Directory would care to admit.

While staying in town he felt free to call on me at any hour of the night. He continued this habit even after he went home, which resulted in a rotary assignment change, though this is no longer unusual for me by now. On his third night in town, he called me in a panic in the dead of night. He told me I had to hurry over because he had a big problem and had no idea how to fix it. I tried to get him to explain what was wrong and if it could wait until morning, but he would have none of that. He wanted me over there now and started cursing at me so furiously that it only stopped when he ran out of breath.

As I dressed and drove over my imagination was screaming. The hotel he chose for that night was decently close to where I lived. He changed hotels every night depending on what he was hungry for. He picked this one because the chef cooked everything in duck fat. The night before he had a craving for snails and baked salmon. There was only one place that could accommodate such a craving and it was all the way up in Roark. Normally these kinds of things aren’t my problem, but he had decided he hated his driver and so he volunteered me.

For those unfamiliar with our lovely country, Roark is something of a resort town about a hundred miles in from the Highland sector limits. And it was the week that the third quarter markets opened, one of the biggest events in Roark. I spent many, many hours in the car that day with him and still have sweat-drenched dreams about it. He had something to say about every person and car that he saw. He never wavered, just talked endlessly. The only relief came in the afternoon when he decided he wanted to sit in the back and sprawl out because he had been drinking all day. The next morning I ordered everyone in that office to only talk about food and hotels within a five-mile radius of us.

When I arrived at his suite he was wearing only a robe, his hair was wild, his face pale, and he was terrified. The lady of the night was not to be seen, which made me even more anxious about whatever he’d gotten into.

I’ll tell you what happened next time.