Chapter 1

In what has to be one of the greatest plays on words of all time, Mark Twain wrote: ‘Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.’

“This can’t possibly be happening. It’s impossible. I just won’t accept it.”

Everyone has observed denial at work. Everyone has experienced denial for him or her self. Denial is a universal experience. One can deny it, but that denial rather proves the point.

Denial is an unavoidable consequence of how the human mind works. The human mind makes gross generalizations about how the world works, in order to easily deal with the commonplace. Why reason about something when the answer is already known? It is known that two plus two is four, so why bother going through a difficult mathematical proof to prove the answer? There’s no need. Denial arises when the world starts working in a way the violates the gross generalizations.

For the most part, the mind does a pretty good job with the generalizations that it makes. When one observes that something happens repeatedly, and in the exactly the same way, the mind makes a generalization that it will always happen the same way. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west. The mind can even deal with events where the outcome is not always identical, by enumerating the possible outcomes: a tossed coin will land heads up, or heads down.

These gross generalizations allow the mind to deal with common situations, without having to go through an exceptionally complex process of reasoning about the outcome. It is well known that A) a coin only has two sides and b) that one side must be up. When a coin is tossed, the mind will make the assumption that there is only one possible outcome – the coin lands, and one of its faces will be upwards. With some experience tossing coins, the mind will generate statistics to determine the frequency with which a head will be up. These aren’t the precise statistics of the mathematician, but an imprecise guess in the form of usually, mostly, often, frequently, and rarely. That’s a level of precision that is sufficient to deal with most situations.

When asked to predict an outcome, the mind doesn’t even attempt the nearly impossible calculation of the physical dynamics of tossing a coin to predict which side will land facing upwards. It can select one possible result without any information about the coin or the toss knowing that it will be wrong half of the time. On the other hand, it will be correct the half of the time and that is usually good enough.

However, there are other outcomes to a coin toss that do not fit the generalizations. They are absent because the mind has glossed over some facts about coins and the act of tossing them. There are actually three sides to a coin: the head, the tail, and the edge. Something that is tossed upwards does not always come down. The rare outcome is that the coin doesn’t land or it could land on the edge rather than the face. In fact, those outcomes are so rare that the mind assumes (i.e.: believes) that they will never happen.

Most of the time, these gross generalizations work. An individual can survive, or even thrive, based on them. Day in and day out, the strongly held generalizations run consistent with reality. The right decisions are made. The outcomes are as desired.

Denial arises in situations when the mind has a strongly held belief that the world works in one way, and is faced with a rising reality that contradicts that belief. How can one have a strongly held belief that contradicts reality when these beliefs derive from a lifetime of experience? Well, the world, particularly in terms of economics, business, fashion, and government, is not nearly as stable as one might believe. Things do change and can change dramatically, almost overnight. (Don’t even try to deny it.)

Eastern Europe, which had been under communist rule for forty years managed to eliminate communist rule over a two year period. The revolution in Romania ‘officially’ began on December 16 and ended on December 25 with the execution of President Ceaușescu. That’s nine days for an uprising to begin, a government to end, and the former leadership executed after a public trial. The fall of the communist government in the Soviet Union extended over a six year period after having been in power since 1922. Everyone of working age had lived their entire life under communist rule, and then one day it was gone.

A company that appears healthy one day, declares bankruptcy the next. “My job is essential, I perform it well, and people purchase the product I make. Hence, I will not be laid off from my job.” Such logic stands strong in the face of announced layoffs. Your job is not essential, you do not perform it well, or people do not purchase the product you make, hence you will be laid off from your job. It is exceptionally easy to deny that one’s job is at risk, until the day the pink slip comes and you are escorted from the building. Even as one leaves the building, it is easy to say that it can’t be happening.

All is well, until ‘the change winds’ blow, and the way the world works is altered in a fundamental way. One must choose denial or acceptance, there is no alternative. Unfortunately, it is far easier to deny change, than accept that nothing will ever be the same.

Betsy, despite losing her need to be constantly moving, very seldom just sat around doing nothing. One of the beneficiaries of her constant activity was her research. She had tagged over twenty sharks during a two month period and collected an impressive quantity of high quality data. A picture of the routes taken by the sharks in traversing from one area of the ocean to another was beginning to emerge.

Twenty genetic samples weren’t enough to establish a full picture of breeding colonies and the degree of mixing among them. However, she had collected nearly three times that since her samples were being augmented by those collected at various piers around the world by associates. Fishermen, proud of their catches, brought sharks to shore and a number of biologist friends would take samples from them.

As a result of the influx of samples, Betsy was spending more time in the laboratory than on the Bloated Shark. She was spending so much time there, that Dr. Woods, whose lab she was using, had begun to get upset that every time he went to run a sample he had to wait for Betsy to finish what she was doing. The sudden appearance of four Raptor 9000s in the lab had gone far to calm the waters since Betsy had handed three over to him for his use.

The campus at the current time was quiet. The spring semester had just ended and the majority of students had all returned home. Faculty and staff were off taking care of things they had let slide during the hectic final days of the semester. As a result, a handful of faculty and the full time graduate students who were working on their research were all that remained on campus. It was a highly productive time for everyone who remained at work.

Betsy had finished examining the genetic data gathered and was sitting at the small desk in the Dr. Wood’s laboratory. She was thinking back over the activities of the past few months. They had been hectic months considering all that she had to accomplish in a relatively short period of time.

The major source of her activities originated with William. It seemed to her that he was sending her thirty partnership agreements, with small privately owned companies, every day. She had to sign and return them to him. When she suggested that she just sign a Power of Attorney, he dismissed the idea with a snort, and then hung up on her. She got the message.

She had no idea how many people were working for him to take care of all of these deals. She did know that her whole family was involved in similar activities. Based on her parent’s worth and the worth of the Fusion Foundation, William was pumping close to four hundred billion dollars into small companies, farms, and shops all around the world. The sheer scale of what he was doing was mind-boggling.

All she knew was that she was now a minor partner in nearly three thousand companies. Her share of the partnership was always around ten percent, which was always just enough that she could get the primary owner’s attention when she wanted it. They were always companies, somewhat strapped for cash, that were just a little too small to compete in the larger markets dominated by the multinational corporations. She provided a much need injection of cash and gained a minor interest in the company. She got ownership on the basis of what was really a minimal investment in most cases.

Charlie was working double time trying to keep up with all of paperwork dealing with the acquisition of those companies. In fact, she had brought in four temps to help her. The paperwork was almost staggering in volume. She was keeping track of each acquisition, who owned it, what they produced, how much they made, and how many people worked there. It was a full time job.

Betsy was kept busy along with Charlie. In addition to signing papers, there were calls that Betsy had to make to introduce herself to her new partner. It was often an awkward and uncomfortable conversation in which she basically told her partner to run the company and not to worry about her. It was amazing how few of them believed that she wasn’t going to come in and try to establish herself within the company.

Although she only recently recognized what he had done, she was now the proud partner in every kind of company that stood between food production and the end consumer. In addition, she was a partner in companies that dealt with raw minerals all of the way through production of essential consumer goods – items like clothing, shoes, and pots and pans. In short, she had a part interest in small companies that made the things people needed to live.

In addition to purchasing companies, William was having her set up stockpiles of food, near every one of the companies in which she was a partner. It was insane trying to keep up with it all. For a while, Charlie had hired additional temporary people just to deal with the food stockpiles. It was always the same instructions, one month’s supply of food for each and every employee and his or her family. After the first fifty food caches, they had it down to a science: so many cases of this staple food, and so many cases of that staple food, for every employee.

She had purchased five small motels at locations scattered around the country, but William had called her and told her to sign them over to the Druid College. He had simply said that her role wasn’t to protect people or to shelter them, since Druids existed for that purpose. She had another purpose to serve. She had signed over all of the motels with the exception of the one in Vancouver over to the Druid College knowing that the properties would serve their purpose even if it was under the watchful eyes of others. She was happy knowing that she had enabled others to better serve The Powers That Be.

Construction had started on the recycling plant. It was nowhere near completion, but all of the building materials and equipment that would go into it were stored on site. The project was running low on money, though, and Betsy wasn’t sure that she had sufficient funds to see it through to completion. She was beginning to doubt the wisdom of having purchased the fishing boat for Debbie, but there was also a nagging suspicion that it was the smartest thing she had done.

The one thing that was going great in her life, was her relationship with Chuck. He had taught her how to drive, and she now had a driving license. She also had a car that Wheels had fixed up for her. It was fully loaded with every modern convenience. It also had an extremely powerful electric motor that turned what appeared to be a middle of the road sedan into a high performance machine. The body was reenforced to survive even a major explosion or collision.

Every weekend had been spent with him, although she rarely spent the entire night ... that is, if one considers coming home at four in the morning as not having spent the entire night. One of those weekends where she never came home she came to the rather startling realization that, despite her extreme strength and high energy, she did have a tender side to her. She could understand why little petite Sue wasn’t afraid of getting broken by big muscular Paul.

Not all of their time was spent in bed. They did things together like all couples who are dating. She had even worked in his store a little on Saturdays, finding it a lot more fun than she had thought possible. It was a nice place to meet her neighbors. People would stop in the store and chat for a bit about what was going on in their lives. It sort of reminded her of her home town in Arizona.

It was just a few minutes before ten in the morning when she glanced over at the clock on the wall of the lab. Her cell phone rang, and she looked down at the caller ID. Her stomach tightened and her hands shook.

She answered the telephone with a tentative, “Hello?”

“Betsy, you have forty eight hours,” William said.

“Forty eight hours?” Betsy asked looking again at the clock with dread.

“The bankruptcy that will trigger the collapse will be filed in forty-eight hours. It will only take hours for the whole banking system to fall. Drain your bank accounts dry between now and then. You’ve got four million left,” William said.

He hung up, undoubtedly to make some more calls. Betsy stared at the cell phone in her hands. The idea that she was to drain her bank accounts suggested that she go on a shopping spree. Of course, the news that she had four million in the bank was rather surprising. She thought she had nearly triple that amount. She decided that a quarter of a billion dollars didn’t go as far today as it used to.

She dialed a number and waited impatiently for Ben to answer. When he did answer, she said, “Hello, Ben. This is Betsy.”

“Hello, Betsy. This is a pleasant surprise. I was thinking of calling you. The investigation into the crash was completed, and I was exonerated in the hearing. I’m keeping my flying license,” Ben said.

“The timing couldn’t have been better,” Betsy mused. She had called intending to have him fly out to the island. Inspiration struck, and she said, “I need you to buy an airplane that can make the flight from the mainland to Hawaii.”

“I’ll look into it,” Ben said.

Because of the time difference, she knew that he wouldn’t have much time to purchase a plane. Still, there had to be something that could fit her needs and was available to be snapped up quickly. Betsy said, “Buy it today. Get one off the showroom floor if you have to.”

“Today?”

“Yes, today. I want you on that plane, flying here, by tomorrow,” Betsy said.

“It doesn’t normally work that fast,” Ben said.

Betsy said, “Go to a bank and open an account. I’ll transfer two million over to you. Pay what you need to get the best that you can buy for that money. Take whatever you don’t spend as cash and bring it with you.”

“Okay,” Ben said doubtfully.

Betsy proceeded to give Ben the information necessary to contact Charlie. She was pretty sure that Ben and Charlie would be busy over the next few hours. She knew that she was going to be very busy. She was going to buy a ship that afternoon.

Betsy left the lab and headed directly for her car. While driving over to the marina where Busy Island Boats was located, she filled Charlie in on how she had told Ben to buy an airplane and to make sure that the money was available for him to use. Charlie objected quite strongly to the order to transfer that much money. Her hesitancy was understandable. She realized that Betsy was going to be in a very tight bind, financially, considering that her available cash on deposit was disappearing at a phenomenal rate.

All questions came to an end when Betsy said, “The horsemen are on the move.”

“Let me get my black notebook out,” Charlie said.

She was making reference to the notebook in which she kept the notes for what to do, when the warning of the fall came. The notes were quite extensive. There were already draft e-mails to send to all of the businesses in which Betsy was a partner, informing the other owner about a stockpile of food and instructions on how to stay in business over the next few months. There were plans on who to call, what to tell them to do, and when they had to be done.

“I guess I should have mentioned that first,” Betsy said.

“Yes,” Charlie replied absently. She was still looking for the black notebook. “I’ve got it. Now, we’ve got basic plans for everyone. What changes need to be made?”

Betsy said, “First inform everyone clean out their bank accounts. The banks won’t be around in three days, so any money left in the bank will be lost. I’m pretty sure that the FDIC will not be around to pick up the pieces and pay off the defaults on the accounts.”

“Got it,” Charlie said.

“Keep the evacuation plans the same. The boat will be sailing at nine,” Betsy said.

She wanted to get everyone out of Honolulu before the violence began. The best way to assure that was to have them get on the boat before the events that triggered the fall started. She had people packing up to meet at the Bloated Shark an hour before sailing time. Captain Jack had orders to leave the dock within ten minutes of the scheduled sailing time.

Betsy said, “The modular offices should be ready for them.”

“They are,” Charlie said.

The fight to get the modular offices had been resolved when Betsy had promised to build a new school. The school board was still arguing over the building plans. She would decide what to do after the full consequences of the coming economic crisis came. For now, they had the buildings on the property and that was the important thing. The security and office building construction had started, but was nowhere near complete.

Betsy asked, “How much cash do we have on hand?”

“You have a little over a hundred thousand in the safe,” Charlie answered.

“I’ll see what I can do about increasing our cash situation,” Betsy said.

She didn’t know if cash would be of any value after the banking collapse. William was surprisingly tight with information about what would happen. She and Chuck had speculated on what the consequences of the credit card derivatives market collapsing, but it was just speculation. William’s statement that the banks would be gone fit into what they had speculated.

“Okay,” Charlie said.

Betsy asked, “How are we doing in terms of arms and munitions?”