Altus: Part II

Altus: Rebirth

    Disaster looks better from a distance. The television shows you what is happening, grabbed in bits and pieces and colored a hue that is acceptable for the audience. It is so much easier to watch the sorrows of another, make yourself feel a bit of pity, then carry on with your life like nothing ever happened, than it is to really feel what the afflicted feel. That box of glass and plastic shelters you from the cries for help that they send up, which would either break your heart or add another layer of stone.

    There is nothing like starting again with absolutely nothing to your name. No family, no home, and no identity...I was just another child that showed up on the doorstep of a government orphanage, dropped off by a kindly middle-aged woman whose heart was shattered by all the destruction she had seen. But disaster brings out so many responses in so many different people. Where some were kind and helpful to those who came in droves, others looked at me with contempt, hating the disaster for bringing another beggar into their midst. It was here that I learned a difficult, undeniable truth...

    All of mankind values many different things, but above all, they value the ability to keep what is their own. When faced with the call to give to others, spoken or implied, most will simply walk on by.

    I never was extremely attached to anyone, even my parents, up until I lost them. For many months, I was just numb. I was directionless and apathetic to everything around me. There was no final wish from my parents, no blessing to continue my life, there was only the tragedy that ripped my mother from our lives, and the desperation that took my father into the ocean, never to give him back. As selfish as it sounded, I needed someone to reach out to me, but in that moment, there was no hero. There was no Superman that came rocketing down from the sky to save me, not even an ordinary man to grab my hand and keep me one step ahead of the tidal wave. I slowly began to realize that if I wanted to survive this, to come back from the brink, I would have to fight back on my own.

    The school year started in Biloxi, and I eagerly got myself enrolled. I was enrolled in college sophomore level classes before the Exodus attack, but since all of my records were lost, they stuck me back in sixth grade, where a normal twelve year old would be. I did not fight the system, as I knew that I could quickly recover the ground I lost. This time, I would not pretend to be slow for anyone. I finished everything they put in front of me, working tirelessly to complete the work in the textbooks, and with little effort, I finished all of my sixth-grade material in one month. Working at night was not too difficult, since I was always awake. As I expected, my intelligence quickly caught the eye of the schoolyard bullies, and I knew that I would be dealing with them all year long if I did not set an example.

    They came in a pack, and I did not even let them open their mouths. I knew the stupid little smiles they had on their faces all too well, that grin that betrays a young, foolish kid who believes he has the upper hand. I could almost hear the thoughts churning in their heads.

    “You would be wise to go to your next class,” I said to them.

    “Yeah, okay,” they said, laughing to themselves as the four of them surrounded me. I studied each of them closely as they circled, like vultures.

    “So where ya from, huh?” The redhead asked.

    “Mars,” I replied.

    “Ooh, a smart one!” A freckle-faced, well-dressed kid said, giving me a slight shove as he said it.

    “A martian, huh?” A black-haired kid said.

    “You know, Martian, I don’t like you. You should go back to where you came from,” The redhead said. I could see that this poor excuse for a group looked to this kid as a leader.

    “If you watch as much TV as your bloodshot eyes suggest, then you ‘where I came from’ is gone,” I replied.

    “That’s so sad!” The black-haired kid said sarcastically.

    “Breaking my heart,” freckle-face added. At least I gave them the chance to be reasonable.

    “Tell you what, Martian...you give us all that homework, and we won’t beat you up. How does that sound, guys?” Redhead said.

    “I’m not doing so good at math,” Black hair said.

    “I hate history,” freckle-face said.

    “I just want money for a candy bar. Get his money,” The short, pudgy one said.

    “You always do think big. Yeah, so give us your homework, and some money to buy my friend here a candy bar, and we will let you go to your next class without bruises under your eyes,” Redhead threatened. I took another look around: the cameras were smashed, probably had something to do with these delinquents. I could see that several lockers were dented, probably from other kids getting shoved into them by their throats. Every room down this hallway was empty, so no one to hear a call for help. This was going to be simple.

    I immediately stepped on Pudgy’s foot, and punched him in the gut, pushing him over easily. Black hair tried to reach for my throat, but I ducked under his reach and threw him over my shoulder. Freckles looked very confused as I threw my weight into him and slammed him into the locker several times until he fell to the ground in disbelief of what was happening. They all took a few moments to lay on the ground in pain, enough to give me some alone time with their now fearful leader.

    “I’m gonna guess that your parents work for the school board, and you are not at all worried that you’ll get in trouble for anything that happens inside this building. I’m also gonna guess that those two,” I said, pointing to Black hair and Pudgy, “Are your enforcers, who are your friends because you keep them out of trouble. And Freckles, well, he’s probably just too confused to realize that you keep him around for his money. Am I wrong about any of this?” I said smugly. Redhead didn’t respond at all, but simply looked at his friends on the ground and tried to find the words. That was the only reaction I needed.

    “Well said, my friend,” I replied. I took his fist and rammed it into my arm, giving myself a slight bruise and discoloring his knuckles, a sure sign that we had been in a fight. The others, well, they had signs enough.

    “Now, let’s head to class,” I said. We stood up the others, and surely enough, were stopped by a teacher, who saw the signs of the fight on us. After we all received a pink slip for detention in the afternoon, I bid farewell to my new friends, telling them I would see them later. They all headed off with fear in their eyes, utterly confused and defeated.

    I ran into the four delinquents later that day in detention. We were there with a few others, and I had a plan to help pull us all out of the rut we were in. Normally, we would not have been allowed to talk, but since the teacher who was supposed to be supervising did not show up, we just had to stay put for 45 minutes.

    “Alright. First, I just want to let you know that I hold no ill feelings towards any of you. I just wanted to make an example early on that I am not to be threatened,” I said.

    “Don’t worry, we won’t try anything else,” Redhead said.

    “I know. I’ve got a plan to make some money, if you’d like to hear it,” I told them. It got their attention pretty quickly.

    “What’s your plan?” Black hair asked.

    “First...names,” I said, “I’m Vincent,” I said.

    “Tim,” Black hair said.

    “Edward,” Pudgy said.

    “Mike,” Freckles said.

    “Charlie,” Redhead said.

    “Alright. What do you think of this?” I asked, holding up a small bag, shaped like a diamond a little larger than a couple of textbooks. It looked as though it was made of cheap material, but had a tribal design drawn into it.

    “It’s not bad,” Charlie said. I handed it to him, and he opened it up. It had a notebook, a pencil, and a pen inside with the same design imprinted into it.

    “How is this going to make us money?” Mike asked.

    “This bag was made by a guy who is trying to start a business. The material is cheap, yes, and it probably would not last a whole school year. We’re not selling the bag, we are selling the design. Thing is, he is having a hard time competing with retailers who have assembly lines and deals with big box stores,” I explained.

    “Meaning what?” Mike asked with a puzzled look on his face.

    “He can’t break into the business,” Charlie said.

    “Exactly. But we are going to help him, and in the process, help ourselves. I talked to him to convince him not to try to sell it to stores, but to let me try to sell it in the school. They cannot run a business inside the building because they are not allowed on campus. Mike, how much does a backpack sell for these days?”

    “Uh...two hundred bucks?” Mike replied.

    “This guy can make them for fifteen dollars. He wants to sell them to us for forty dollars, but I convinced him to drop the price down to thirty a piece if we buy five hundred of them,” I said.

    “That’s fifteen thousand dollars! We can’t buy that many,” Tim exclaimed.

    “Don’t worry, I have that planned out, as well. I have already come up with seven and a half thousand myself, so we only need to cover the other half. Which is where these come in,” I said, giving each of them a permission slip for a field trip.

    “We’re gonna go to a weekend at the water park?” Edward said.

    “No. What we want is the two thousand dollars a piece it costs to go to the park. We use that to buy the bags and sell them for sixty dollars a piece. The other kids will love the design, and the parents will love the fact that it only costs sixty bucks,” I said.

    “Can’t buy a kid’s meal for sixty bucks anymore,” Edward added.

    “But won’t they stop buying the bags when they break?” Tim asked. There were more brains in that kid’s head than I gave him credit for at first.

    “They will, but it’s not the bags we are selling, it’s the design. Remember that,” I said.

    “But wait, won’t we get caught when we don’t go to the water park?” Charlie asked.

    “Not if we refund your parents the money and tell them that we backed out. We will make enough to do that. Are you in?” I asked. They all agreed, and we went home for the evening. I went to talk to the supplier, and told him to have the bags ready in two weeks, while I gave the four of them bags to wear around the school. It was a simple, undeniable truth that allowed me to have so much faith in this project...

    People are always looking for the newest, shiniest thing, and they will buy it until everyone has one.

    The four of them brought the money, and I showed it to the supplier to keep him interested. I knew that, being a twelve year old kid, he would not believe that I had money, but that if I gave it to him immediately (and he did ask for it upfront), he would think that he could extort whatever he wanted out of me. I had two of them wear the bags to school, and the other two pretended to want the bags, asking where they got them. As I planned, others took notice, and began to ask where they could find one of them. Of course, within a week, I was waiting with them, and we made a killing off of them, selling all five hundred bags at seventy-five dollars a piece, bringing in $37,500 in a week. I gave the four of them their money back plus a cut of the profits, and saved half of it to buy more items. As typical children, they did not want to invest their money in another venture, and so they just walked away happily with their profits. I learned another undeniable truth from this little incident...

         A man may risk little to gain much, but he will never risk all he has if he does not know the reward from the outset.

    Inevitably, I encountered resistance. The school tried to tell me that I could not sell the backpacks on campus, citing a rule in the handbook. I ignored them for a while. My supplier’s products, which by now went far beyond just backpacks, were rapidly gaining popularity with the kids at my school. He had gained enough street credit to be able to sell products at his local store, but I was able to convince my supplier that my advice to his company would be invaluable...that is to say, I made him realize how out of touch he was with this generation. With a few more demonstrations of my ability to sell his products, I was hired as an analyst at the age of thirteen.

    I did a fairly excellent job of making sure that other companies knew of my ability to read the vibes on this generation, and so I was able to sell my advice to the highest bidder. When faced with child labor laws (which I was able to circumvent for a while by only being in their offices for 15 hours and being paid a salary), I opted to stop the nuisances altogether and start my own business. They could not stop me from working for myself if I was doing well enough with my studies. Being close to finishing my MBA at 15, was enough to keep the law off of my back in that aspect.

    Altus Analytics started small, like many of my operations. Most potential employees were not keen on the idea of listening to a teenager teach them a new way to help analyze and market products, but when my business started to make money, I had to hire someone else to help me sort through all the applications. Altus Analytics was worth ten million dollars by 2075, shortly before my seventeenth birthday. I watched other businesses shrivel up and dry as mine continued to grow. I knew that I would not find much resistance from Anti-Trust laws since the U.S. had more important things they were concerned about.

    Despite all of this success, my mind was ill at ease. My dreams continued to remind me of my mother’s tragic death, and seemed to imagine on their own what my father’s final moments must have been like. We were just small fish in a big pond during that attack, this I knew. But in my dreams, I could still see the Exodus woman taunting me, threatening to strip me of all I held dear. I could not figure out what she thought she could possibly take from me that would matter. I did not value my business, and I would have given it up in a heartbeat to bring back my parents.

    Guilt racked me every single night. I wished that I had paid more attention to them. I wished that I had not been so cold as I knew I was, so distant and uninvolved. Going from an orphanage to a penthouse did not change the fact that inside, I was still a young kid who wanted to see his parents again.

    I chided myself for being that weak. No longer would I wish for the past to return to me. Instead, I would ensure that the future would never see another disaster like the one that befell us that fateful May day. By whatever means necessary, I would make sure that the world would never again tolerate one who could upset that balance so much.