up-and-coming—before they suspect anyone would care. Before they become powerful. These rich dynasties had been using offshore photo mills for decades to enforce loyalty with one another, their business partners, and their kids. Get them married, set them up as respectable people in the community. Pay them tons of money—but always get photos of them with underage hookers. The more perverse the better. It could pay huge dividends when they chaired a government committee or tried to go public with damaging information. Political ideology didn’t matter. They hosted junkets for left-wingers, right-wingers. The Major had cut his teeth on a Panama operation like that back in the late eighties, using cocaine and sex workers to generate potentially career-ending imagery that made the business world go round. Photoshop had pretty much ended the still picture side of the business by making photographs meaningless. High-def video was the only way to go now, and sooner or later computer graphics would do that in, too. Someone really had to come up with a solution, or the entire blackmail industry was doomed. Thankfully, The Major had long ago moved on to more serious operations.
The MBAs were now evaluating world commodity markets, highlighting key items with laser pointers.
The Major contemplated his present line of work—and what led him here. It was over twenty years ago that he’d taken his first life. God did not, in fact, strike him down. Instead, a problem disappeared.
He still remembered the musty smell of the La Paz hotel room. The bray of a two-stroke engine whining past outside while he stood with a bloody knife in his hand. The young trade unionist on the floor, her wide eyes staring at him as she clutched her throat, gurgling. Nothing stopped. The universe didn’t care. He might as well have been slicing bread.
And that began his awakening—his realization that the Western world was a bedtime story of comforting humanistic bullshit. Slavery existed everywhere—even in the United States. We were all slaves in one way or another. Slavery was just control, and control kept things running in an orderly fashion. It was what made progress possible.
But now the problem he’d been waiting on suddenly appeared on screen. A bar graph labeled “Decline in U.S. Agricultural Subsidy Applications.” He turned away from the window and tuned in to the Pakistani MBA’s presentation.
“. . . in certain counties, we’re looking at a ninety percent drop—unprecedented in the history of modern American agriculture. Farmers in these counties have basically decided en masse to stop growing subsidized crops—even though there is no distribution system available for anything else. Something is causing this, and causing it all at once on a local basis in defiance of market conditions.”
The Major saw it. Nothing else had the scope to do this—and with such suddenness. It had to be the Daemon.
He spoke from the back of the room. “Why would farmers willingly turn down subsidies? With prices rising, why would they not grow corn or soybeans?
“Excuse me, you are . . . ?” The Pakistani was taken aback by this sudden question from a junior staffer in the back of the room.
The Major’s agronomist stepped in. “Yes, that’s a good question. Why isn’t the free market correcting this imbalance?”
The Pakistani turned back to the front row. “Uh, we haven’t been able to determine the cause. These numbers are for the coming year.”
The Major spoke up again. “And you have on-the-ground confirmation. This isn’t just a reporting glitch?”
“No, it’s not a glitch. Agribusiness and biotech firms have a comprehensive network of private investigators, researchers, and surveyors throughout the Midwestern United States to enforce their seed patents. They’ve documented population movements, unexplained capital inflows, and infrastructure investments in alternative energy technologies, high-tech equipment, heirloom
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