Chapter One

Sunday, January 11, 2032

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To the uninitiated, what was most memorable weren’t the sights or the sounds, but the smell.

Specifically, the smell of the world occupied by the elite. The rich. The well-to-do. Zillionaires. Whatever term a person might want to use, depending on one’s own particular place in the social strata. To outsiders, the scent of the upper echelon’s domain was unfamiliar yet unforgettable.

For those at the pinnacle of society, the aroma might permeate every room of their splendid home, or perhaps the interior of the forbiddingly expensive car they drove. The scent would also make its presence known in the private jet in which they were transported, as if in a customized conveyance tube encircling the Earth.

It would be difficult to characterize the exact nature of the fragrance since it was an unpredictable combination of materials and conditions from one environment to the next. Perhaps it came from an especially good grade of leather, combined with the faint wisp of a past perfume. Or maybe the home, jet, and car of any given aristocrat were simply cleaner than most others, since servants were always on hand to ensure they were pristine.

Whatever the cause or reason, F. Scott Fitzgerald was quite right in asserting that the rich were not like the rest of us. Even their world smelled different.

This was assuredly true inside the sumptuous confines of Thomas Peterson’s Gulfstream, gliding several miles above the French countryside and heading southeast toward the Flughafen Zurich. The jet’s owner was resting comfortably in the only occupied passenger seat, staring out at the winter landscape during the final portion of the flight. He was on his way to the annual conference of the World Economic Forum, more colloquially known as WEF or, most commonly, Davos, named after the town which hosted it every year.

Thomas Peterson had slept for most of his trans-Atlantic journey, and although the creases on his face were those of a person in his late forties, his mind and inner energy were those of a much younger man. True, he looked his age, but he endeavored never to act like it. As a teenager, he had always tried to act older, but as a middle-aged man, he still tried to tether his aura to the same idealized point in his life, which he imagined to be around thirty or so.

As Peterson watched the snowy mountains pass beneath, his mind was crackling with plans about whom he wanted to meet and what he wanted to accomplish. Peterson had always believed the most effective way to carve out the life he desired was to anticipate, execute, and follow through, no matter what the endeavor.

In aid of this philosophy, he was impeccably dressed for the conference. Even at this, the tail end of his lengthy international journey, he managed to look ready for a photo shoot, although none was scheduled.

Some of his fellow attendees at Davos might have assumed a man as wealthy and well-known as Peterson would be arriving with some kind of entourage. On the contrary, he was traveling in the manner he vastly preferred, that is to say, alone, the three pilots in the cockpit notwithstanding. He had never been married, and although the man would be turning fifty in just a couple more years, he had no intention of altering the solitude of either his personal or professional life.

The truth was that Peterson had been restless for months, and he was hoping the endless networking opportunities at the conference might initiate some important new project. It had been years since inSight, which he co-founded, had gone public, and while the corporation’s IPO had established his fortune, he was no longer involved in the firm’s daily management, nor did he desire to be.

Mr. Thomas Peterson was rich, independent, and looking for the next big thing, because he was a man who dreaded boredom vastly more than he ever feared death. 

As for inSight, tending to the administration of a growing organization had never been Peterson’s forte, and even if it was, he was far too addicted to novelty to keep grinding away there. He had no intention to retire either, since he wasn’t the kind of man who idled particularly well.

Achieving wealth was a worthy goal, but it could make for a vapid existence, especially with no family within which he could immerse himself. So, the next chapter of his life began with a blank sheet, and he was eager to figure out what to write on it, starting with the conference.

Since Peterson was an invited guest, it was ironic that his own inSight creation was one of the few things that was actually banned at the event. The reason for its prohibition was not because it was hazardous. Indeed, the product’s purpose was harmless and simple enough that a child could understand it. Specifically, a person wearing a pair of the inSight glasses could, at a glance, learn a tremendous amount about just about anyone or anything merely by looking at it.

If the wearer gazed at a restaurant, he could see a summary of its reviews, the menu, and its specialties. Looking at a car parked on the side of a road, the user could know the vehicle’s make, model, year, and even what kind of reputation the driver of the car had, which was an exceptionally useful way of steering clear of obnoxious motorists. Since every wearer of the glasses was also a content provider, the user could create information for others by “tagging” reckless jerks on the road simply by staring at the appropriate virtual buttons on the screen or voicing one’s unvarnished opinion. 

For all this, it was just about the most addictive high-tech product ever created, especially during the first few weeks a person started using it. In a nation packed with consumers and social voyeurs, the inSight glasses were endlessly useful, particularly when it came to looking at other human beings. It was that use case, as an engineer might describe it, that was the most alluring feature for the public and had made inSight a household name.

Paradoxically, the famously non-innovative Washington D.C. had made inSight possible. The federal government of the United States had grappled for years with the issue of personal privacy, social media, and data breaches, and by the mid-2020s, the authorities had succeeded in passing what was called the Total Open Data Doctrine. In the tradition of most federal programs, it was trotted out to the citizenry with a memorable acronym: TODD.

As the government saw it, the best way to foster social cohesion was for government-curated digital data to be managed centrally and, crucially, be accessible by license to the public as a whole. Thomas Peterson, along with his former business partner Kevin Toffler, had been uniquely positioned to create something that would make the most of this new paradigm. They had therefore created, in the parlance of the Silicon Valley, a “killer app” for the new TODD data cloud. 

As was the case with most high-tech success stories, Peterson and Toffler were in the right place at the right time with the right knowledge. The hardware, the software, and the government’s disposition toward information accessibility all lined up to make possible something which had never existed before, especially with such an irresistible variety of uses.

The two men and the company they created had literally and figuratively given humanity an entirely new way to see the world, and it had made them both fabulously wealthy.

Thus, given the inSight’s power, there was no way the organizers of the Davos conference were going to permit attendees to stroll around, aiming their data-enhanced gaze at participants and trying to divine who was worth talking to and who should be ignored.

Over the many years the conference had been held, and long before inSight even existed, the regular attendees had made a high art out of assessing which colors of conference badges, which styles of dress, and which catered events offered the highest likelihood of rubbing shoulders with the right people. In a way, a contraption like the inSight glasses took the sport out of the entire WEF experience.

He didn’t care, though. The ban against his product hardly mattered one iota to Peterson. Although he had been the strategic mind behind the company, dovetailing his product vision with Toffler’s engineering expertise, he never had an especially strong interest in actually using the product in his own day to day life. Just about the only time he donned the things was during interviews for demonstration purposes at trade shows and media events.

Fortunately for both Peterson and Toffler, the consuming public had no such reservations, and a miniature ecosystem had even sprung up around accessorizing inSight glasses to make them fashionable.

Regardless, it wouldn’t have been the look Peterson wanted to project even if they had been allowed. He never would have admitted it, but he thought wearing the things made him look like a dork, in spite of the fact he was otherwise a very good-looking man.

As the Gulfstream started its descent, Peterson became more intent on the stunning scenery looming ahead. This early in the year, the Swiss Alps were captivating. It had been a good snow season, so the jagged mountaintops shimmered with fresh powder, and the sky was so clear that the peaks’ reflection could be seen in the lakes below. 

Although his jet’s path didn’t put him within sight of the Matterhorn, Peterson had heard that the conference organizers had paid for the event’s name and logo to be displayed via laser on the mountain’s peak in a rather odd celebration of the conference. It was a garish idea, but no lasting harm would come of it.

Completing its approach, the Gulfstream touched down gently, and the plane decelerated down the long runway. Peterson slowly stretched his legs and felt around the floor for his shoes while the plane taxied to the terminal for private jet passengers. That portion of the airport was far busier than normal, since Davos week was the heaviest amount of private air traffic Zurich would see all year. 

He felt relaxed, rested, and ready. Like the others who had just jetted in on their own planes, Peterson had long since forgotten the misery of flying with strangers in a commercial craft. Solitude, like privacy, had become an unspeakably precious and expensive asset, and it was just one of the many perks of being at the top of the socioeconomic food chain. It was going to be a fantastic week.

After the Gulfstream’s cabin door opened, Thomas Peterson made his way down the stairs to the tarmac, taking a few deep breaths of the crisp alpine air. The winter sun was already low in the sky, and it was a pleasure to have finally arrived and be out of the plane. All he had to do now was find his ride.

“Mister Peterson!”

An unfamiliar man walked briskly toward him, smiling. He was slender, mostly bald, and had a neatly trimmed beard. Although the stranger was a few inches shorter than Peterson, he had one of those slim, muscular builds that made him seem taller.

Extending his hand, the man said, “Welcome to Zurich, Mister Peterson. My name is Gerald Flynt. I’m here to take you to the conference.”

“I’m sorry, you’re who?”

“Gerald Flynt. We’ve got a helicopter waiting.”

“A helicopter? I thought I was going to be driven.”

“Oh, no, Mr. Peterson, this is much faster. It’s nearly a hundred-mile drive to Davos. Mr. Toffler didn’t want you to deal with all that, so he made arrangements.”

“Toffler? Kevin Toffler?”

“Yes, sir! Follow me, and we can be right on our way.” Flynt put his hand on Peterson’s right shoulder, giving it a gentle nudge toward the waiting aircraft.

As Peterson followed Flynt across the tarmac, a porter carried his suitcases just behind them. It was puzzling that this helicopter trip had been arranged. Peterson hadn’t heard from his former business partner since Alexandra’s funeral, which was more than a year earlier, and the last place he expected to hear from him again was in Switzerland. It was a generous surprise, although Peterson felt a little annoyed at the sudden change in plans, no matter how well-intentioned.

In spite of all that had ensued over their lives, Peterson and Toffler owed a lot to one another. The two had succeeded in making each other extraordinarily rich, although once the excitement of their success had dissipated, the thrill of the chase vanished with it, and Alexandra’s shocking death made the partnership untenable. Their friendship was based more on a shared goal than anything else, and once that goal had been achieved, the two men quietly elected to go their separate ways.

As he stepped inside the helicopter’s cabin, Peterson felt a tinge of shame, since he had done such a poor job of staying in touch with his despondent partner, yet that same friend had evidently taken the time and trouble to arrange a comfortable welcome for him to the conference. Peterson felt like a heel and started to mull over what he might say when they met, which already felt like it would be awkward.

Still, a scenic jaunt in a helicopter was a welcome alternative to a lengthy slog in a car. Peterson sat next to Gerald Flynt in one of the craft’s passenger seats and buckled in for the final leg of his journey. With the extra time provided by the earlier arrival, Peterson figured he and his old buddy Kevin could partake in the festivities that would be commencing that evening, and who knows, he might even wind up enjoying himself.

The rotors spun up to full speed, the skids left the tarmac, and the craft lifted Gerald Flynt, Thomas Peterson, and their pilot into the frigid afternoon sky.