Location: Ministry of Economy and Finance, Quai de Bercy (Paris).
Date: February 1996.
Viewpoint: Omniscient (Focus on the French state apparatus).
The concrete and glass behemoth of the Ministry of the Economy and Finance, moored on the banks of the Seine, seemed to slice through the grey waters of a particularly frigid February. On the upper floors, where air conditioning filtered out the sounds of the capital, the silence was not that of rest, but of absolute concentration.
It was the sanctuary of large numbers, the place where the sweat of the entire nation was transmuted into statistics, deficits, and finance laws.
In the vast corner office of the Minister of the Economy, the tension was of a mineral density.
The tenant of Bercy, an experienced politician with a face scarred by parliamentary battles, stood behind his desk. Facing him, seated with an almost aristocratic stiffness, was François-Xavier de Montcalm, the Inspector General of Finances (IGF).
Montcalm was a pure technocrat, a graduate of the old school of the École Nationale d'Administration (ENA), whose dry and formidable mind was never swayed by political rhetoric. He respected only columns of figures.
And the figures he had just placed on the Minister's desk, compiled in a thick report with a blue cardboard cover, had just shattered all the certainties of the Republic.
« I'm listening, Montcalm, » said the Minister, crossing his arms. « The European business press is worried about a general slowdown in Germany and Great Britain. The IMF was forecasting sluggish growth for the OECD area.
Tell me, France's 1995 fiscal year isn't too rough, is it? »
Montcalm adjusted his tortoiseshell glasses. He didn't open the file. He knew the autopsy report by heart.
« There is no landing, Mr. Minister. There is an orbital anomaly, » replied the Inspector General in a monotonous voice that immediately chilled his superior's feigned enthusiasm.
« INSEE and my department have just finalized the consolidated national accounts for 1995. Germany's Gross Domestic Product shows a paltry growth of 1.7%. The United Kingdom's growth is capped at 2.4%. »
Montcalm placed both hands flat on his report.
« France, Mr. Minister, has just closed the year 1995 with a growth in its Gross Domestic Product of 5.2% . »
The Minister froze, his arms hanging limply at his sides.
« Five point two percent? » he stammered, unable to process the data. « That's... that's a figure from the post-war boom. That's Asian overheating! That's full employment making a comeback! »
A triumphant smile spread across the politician's lips. He could already picture the front pages, the speeches in the Assembly, the triumph of his tax policy. He took a step towards the bay window, his mind racing.
« The reforms are bearing fruit. The tax breaks for heavy industry, the stimulus through consumption... President Chirac will be overjoyed. »
« Don't take credit for this miracle, Mr. Minister, » Montcalm interrupted sharply, crushing his arrogance with the impassive force of a guillotine.
« Your reforms have absolutely no bearing on this figure. The traditional French economy is in exactly the same state of stagnation as its European neighbors. »
The senior official stood up, grabbed his report and opened it in the center of the table, revealing graphs with alarmingly vertical curves.
« I've prepared a breakdown of the growth for you, » Montcalm explained. « Look at our industrial giants, the pillars of our power since the Liberation.
In 1995, Renault posted a net profit of 320 million euros . Peugeot stagnated at around 260 million euros . The oil giant Elf Aquitaine, the jewel of our energy geopolitics, struggled to bring in 840 million euros in net profit.
The textile industry was collapsing, and the steel industry was suffering. »
Montcalm planted his index finger on a green curve that crossed the graph with the force of a ballistic shot, literally crushing all the other lines under its weight.
« Almost all of this 5.2% growth rebound, our entire record trade surplus, and the explosion in our tax revenues rest on the shoulders of a single private entity. A statistical anomaly of staggering gravity that we have aptly dubbed: » The Volta Variable. « »
The Minister returned to his seat, his face suddenly waxen, devoid of all euphoria. The name of Lazare Bonaparte's empire echoed through the corridors of Bercy with the terror of an uncontrollable myth.
« Give a detailed autopsy report, Montcalm, » he ordered in a flat voice. « I want the exact figures. »
« Let's start with employment and payroll, » the Inspector General declared, turning the page. « The historic factory in Ivry-sur-Seine and the new Silicon Seine laboratories in eastern Paris now employ 18,400 highly skilled engineers, developers, and managers .
Their median salary is sixty percent higher than the national average. »
Montcalm slid his finger eastward across the map of France.
« But that's nothing compared to the MegaFab. The foundry complex in the Alsace plain now operates three shifts a day, seven days a week. The lithography lines for VESLA processors and CELLA memories employ 24,500 highly skilled technicians and workers .
The income taxes of these 42,900 direct employees alone, along with employer contributions to the URSSAF (French social security agency) and the apprenticeship tax, represent a financial windfall of over €2.13 billion in pure revenue for the State. »
The senior official looked at his Minister with surgical severity.
« And we're only talking about direct jobs here. The Volta ecosystem has permeated eastern France. Fine chemicals in Bavaria and Lorraine for doping gases, precision metallurgy for copper heat sinks, armored transport...
My department estimates that the Bonaparte Empire supports the creation and maintenance of 115,000 indirect jobs across the country. Lazare Bonaparte has, in effect, become the leading industrial employer in the Republic, eclipsing Renault. »
The Minister wiped his brow, overwhelmed by the macroeconomic scale of the monster.
« It's... it's colossal, » he breathed. « But the wage bill alone doesn't justify five percent GDP growth. What's happening with capital? »
A smile devoid of any warmth stretched across Montcalm's thin lips. It was there that the Builder's dark magic truly worked.
« The trade balance, Mr. Minister. 1995 saw the global launch of the Compaq AXIOM computer line, powered by the Volta X operating system . You know Bonaparte's dumping strategy.
He flooded Europe and emerging markets with the AXIOM 2150 SX model , sold at a price that defied all physical rationality: 381 Euros . »
Montcalm displayed a chart of the Customs.
« The sales volume is a collective frenzy. More than eight million machines sold in Europe alone in eight months. The VAT collected by the French government on domestic sales amounts to billions.
But the stroke of genius lies in the exports. These machines are assembled in China, but the intellectual added value, the patents, the chips, and the software licenses belong to Volta SA. Exports of this single product alone represent 14% of France's overall trade surplus . »
« And what about the space division? » inquired the Minister, recalling the rumors about the launches at Kourou.
ASTROLABE program is an expense, not yet a revenue stream," the Inspector General corrected. « But the group's other divisions are offsetting this effort with remarkable liquidity. Take Japanese royalties, for example.
Sony's PlayStation console dominates the global market. On every machine sold in Japan and the United States, 12% goes into Volta's coffers for the use of the SONG-III graphics processor . Added to that are the licensing fees paid by the American competitor AMD for using the VESLA architecture . »
Montcalm allowed silence to settle in before delivering the final blow.
« Mr. Minister, I am going to give you the figure that is keeping my tax directors up at night. For the 1995 financial year, the net profit before tax of the holding company Volta SA, after consolidation of its worldwide subsidiaries, amounted to the equivalent of 6.3 billion Euros . »
The Minister gripped the edge of his desk, breathless. Six billion three hundred million Euros in profit. It was an absurd sum, a statistical anomaly that defied the laws of French capitalism, historically cautious and averse to technological hypergrowth.
« With such high profitability for a rapidly expanding monopoly… » the politician stammered, his tax-collecting instincts suddenly kicking in. « The classic tax optimization schemes must be working overtime.
They've surely stashed their intellectual property in Ireland or the Netherlands. They're using abusive transfer pricing with their factories in Huabei. Bonaparte must be siphoning profits off into tax havens through his Luxembourg holding companies!
We must launch a massive tax audit. If we recover even just twenty percent of that amount, we'll plug the Social Security deficit! »
The statesman straightened his shoulders, his republican pride flattered by the prospect of a manhunt. The French state was sovereign. No matter the size of the Leviathan, Bercy had the power to gut it if it didn't pay its dues.
But François-Xavier de Montcalm slowly shook his head. The Inspector General of Finances looked at his minister with the clinical pity one reserves for a man who has not understood that the world has changed direction.
« You have not grasped the profound nature of the » Volta Variable «, Mr. Minister. »
Montcalm opened a red folder, stamped with the seal of tax secrecy, and took out a simple spreadsheet, the Cerfa tax return form for the company.
« From the very first rumors about the company's hyper-profitability last September, the Directorate of National and International Audits (DVNI) secretly audited the group's financial flows, » the senior official admitted. « We looked for the loophole.
We looked for the infamous 'Dutch sandwich,' the empty shells in the Caribbean, the aggressive tax evasion. »
Montcalm placed the sheet of paper on the desk.
« There are none. »
The Minister frowned, astonished. « None? That's impossible. A multinational of that size always optimizes. »
« Lazare Bonaparte doesn't play by the rules of American multinationals, » the Inspector General declared, his voice tinged with terrified admiration. « He hasn't registered any of his major patents abroad.
All of the VoltaOS X software licenses, the rights to the VESLA architecture , and the CELLA memory are the exclusive intellectual property of the company's headquarters in Ivry-sur-Seine. »
Montcalm pointed to the final figure at the bottom of the Cerfa form.
« Sony's royalties flow directly from Japan into accounts at the Bank of France. AMD's dividends arrive from California without passing through the Cayman Islands. Lazare Bonaparte pays corporate tax at the full rate of 33.33% on all of his repatriated worldwide profits. »
The sentence fell with the crash of a conceptual collapse.
« For the 1995 financial year, Volta SA signed, without the slightest objection, without the slightest legal recourse, a check to the French Public Treasury for an amount of 2.1 billion Euros . »
The silence in the ministerial office was so dense that you could have heard the freezing rain hitting the windowpane.
Two billion one hundred million euros in direct taxes, paid in cash. Added to this were billions in VAT, colossal social security contributions, and local taxes from the MegaFab. A single company, run by a twenty-seven-year-old engineer, suddenly accounted for nearly fifteen percent of the total corporate tax revenue of the world's fifth-largest economy.
« Why? » murmured the Minister, overcome by dizziness. « Why doesn't he cheat? Why does such a ruthless capitalist, who destroyed the American computer market, agree to pay us such astronomical sums without hiring an army of tax lawyers to bleed us dry? »
« Because it's not a tax, Mr. Minister, » replied Montcalm with the foresight of great statesmen. « It's a tribute. And it's a purchase of protection. »
The Inspector General slowly closed the blue folder.
« Bonaparte is an absolute geopolitical strategist. He knows that the CIA and the Pentagon are trying to destroy him by any means necessary—legal, commercial, and clandestine. If he were to cheat the French tax authorities, if he were to stash his billions in Bermuda, he would be a mere tax evader.
Public opinion would eventually turn against him, and the state would have no vital reason to oppose American pressure to dismantle him. »
Montcalm stepped forward, putting his full weight on the desk.
« But by repatriating all his intellectual property to national soil, by pouring the concrete for the MegaFab in Alsace, and by paying us these two billion Euros in pure taxes, he has just chained us to his own survival. »
The senior official allowed the naked truth to invade the Minister's mind.
« Mr. Minister. If Lazare Bonaparte decides tomorrow morning to relocate Volta SA's headquarters to Singapore, or to move to Switzerland because a French tax inspector was overzealous, our national budget will collapse.
The state deficit would explode. We would be unable to meet our European commitments to the convergence towards the Euro. He finances our social peace.
He finances our hospitals and our roads with the money he extorts from Japanese video game players and American companies. »
The Minister of the Economy slumped heavily back into his chair. The majesty of sovereign power had just vanished. He thought he was the boss of the French economy, the guardian of the temple of Bercy.
He realized he was merely the accountant for a silicon king.
« He doesn't cheat, because he knows that his fiscal integrity makes him our absolute master, » Montcalm concluded, his tone respectful, almost reverent. « He doesn't abuse his influence.
He doesn't demand tailor-made laws. He simply asks to be allowed to operate in the shadows. He has bought the French Republic, Mr.
Minister. And the Republic is delighted to have sold itself for that price. »
The red, secure telephone, resting on the adjacent console, began to vibrate with a muffled ring. The direct line to the Élysée Palace.
The Minister took off the hook, his hand slightly trembling, his face still pale from the revelation he had just heard.
« Yes, Mr. President. »
At the other end of the line, the gravelly, vibrant voice of Jacques Chirac, the new President of the Republic elected the previous year, resonated with a martial authority, free from any technocratic ambiguity.
« Have you read the consolidated financial statements of our friend from the red suburbs, Mr. Minister? asked Chirac in a jovial but sharp tone. »
« Inspector General Montcalm has just briefed me, Mr. President. The figures are... abnormal.
Our public finances' dependence on the Volta group has reached a critical systemic level. Our departments were considering regulation or... »
« You're not going to regulate anything at all, » the President cut him off sharply, crushing any hint of administrative resistance.
In his office at the Élysée Palace, Chirac vividly recalled the pact forged between Mitterrand and Bonaparte, a sovereign legacy he had embraced without the slightest hesitation. French silicon had become the shield of Europe, and the Ogre of Ivry was the commander-in-chief of this shadow army.
« Listen to me carefully, » Chirac instructed, his voice growing low and commanding. « This young man brought the Americans to their knees, he forced the Germans to align themselves with our European vision, and he just bailed out your ministry with Silicon Valley money.
You don't send tax inspectors after him. You don't nitpick his accounting. Volta SA is the jewel in the crown. »
The presidential order fell like an inalienable state doctrine.
« The French administration must never again be an obstacle for Volta. It must become his escort. If he requests building permits to expand the MegaFab in Alsace, your prefects will sign them within the hour.
If he needs customs clearance to land his Antonovs full of Chinese chips at Entzheim, you open the air corridor without question. »
« Well, Mr. President, » stammered the Minister of the Economy, feeling the control of his own ministry slipping away from him for good.
« We spent the twentieth century begging for the protection of America and its army, » Jacques Chirac concluded with fierce satisfaction. « Bonaparte restored our independence.
If he wants to operate from his bunker undisturbed by your bureaucrats, that's the price to pay. The protection is absolute. End of story. »
The line cut with a sharp click.
The Minister hung up the receiver. He looked at François-Xavier de Montcalm. The Inspector General of Finance calmly put the weighty blue ledger back into his leather satchel.
There would be neither inquisition nor confrontation. Reason of State had just expressed itself in all its pragmatic nakedness. The French Republic agreed to efface itself before Lazare's organic power, understanding that in the great global information war of the twenty-first century, the only law that mattered was that of survival.
And survival, in 1996, bore a name etched in silicon: Lazare Bonaparte. The national economy was now nothing more than a satellite orbiting the black sun of Ivry-sur-Seine.
Location: International press kiosks (Europe) / Director's office, Volta SA factory (Ivry-sur-Seine).
Date: February 1996.
Point of view: Omniscient (Sliding focus on the media apparatus and Lazare Bonaparte).
The winter wind swept across the avenues of major European capitals, but in the newsstands of Paris, Frankfurt and Milan, the headlines of the economic press burned with an incandescence that the continent had not known since the Trente Glorieuses.
For months, editorialists had prophesied the worst. They had dissected the chemical explosion at the MegaFab in Alsace the previous year, predicting the collapse of Volta SA's supply chain and the premature end of French technological arrogance in the face of Silicon Valley's lightning awakening.
But the reality of the first quarter of 1996 had just shattered the narrative of disaster.
« The French Miracle , » headlined the major national daily Le Monde in capital letters . In Berlin, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung emblazoned its front page with a simple word, freighted with Rhenish pragmatism: « Die Lokomotive » (The Locomotive).
In Italy, the Corriere della Sera devoted a special twelve-page supplement to what they called « The New Carolingian Empire of the Economy. »
The autopsy, conducted in secrecy within the offices of the Ministry of the Economy in Bercy, had leaked, skillfully disseminated by the Élysée Palace's communications team to reassure the markets. The figures were then displayed publicly with the pride of a nation that had just rediscovered the ultimate weapon of sovereignty.
French growth, propelled to 5.2%, was no longer a statistical anomaly hidden in tax records. It was physically permeating the country. The MegaFab, whose West Wing had been completely rebuilt, redesigned, and reinforced after the silane accident, hadn't simply restarted.
Under the tyrannical and tireless leadership of René Castella and Ilya Volkov, it had transformed. The 0.4-micron manufacturing speeds had reached an astonishing level of output. The factory churned out millions of VESLA 2150 SX processors and CELLA-64M memory modules , flooding the market with the Compaq AXIOM line of computers .
But the real shockwave of this « French Miracle » lay in its ability to spread. France was not rising to the top alone; it was pulling the whole of Europe along in its gravitational wake.
And the first beneficiary of this industrial earthquake was the Federal Republic of Germany.
In the director's office in Ivry-sur-Seine, Lazare Bonaparte contemplated the immense digital world map that covered the wall of his sanctuary. The data flows, materialized by luminous arcs, traced the anatomy of this continental symbiosis.
Édouard Renault-Tessier, standing near Macassar's table, leafed through the international press summary with cold jubilation.
« Our neighbors across the Rhine have finally understood which side of the Atlantic their survival lies on, » observed the finance director, adjusting his tortoiseshell glasses. « German growth has stabilized at 4.1%.
And that's not thanks to their car exports to the United States. »
Édouard approached the large screen, pointing the beam of his red laser at the Ruhr basin and Bavaria.
« German heavy industry and fine chemicals are running at full capacity solely to quench the MegaFab's thirst, » the former banker explained. « Bayer and BASF had to open new, dedicated production lines to supply us with the rare gases, photosensitive resins, and ultrapure acids required by Volkov.
The master glassmakers at Carl Zeiss in Jena, in the former East Germany, hired an additional 3,000 technicians to machine the lenses for our DUV lithography systems. Krupp supplies us with the special steel for our IMPERATOR servers .
We have literally infused German industry with lifeblood. »
Lazare didn't take his eyes off the map. He knew that this interdependence wasn't just a simple business partnership. It was an irreversible geopolitical web.
« Economics creates stronger bonds than diplomacy, » murmured Lazarus, his voice resonating with a mineral gravity. « Helmut Kohl thought he could maintain a balance between Washington's military protection and the European market.
We proved to him that the only viable armor in the twenty-first century was called Volta Ltd. If he opposes us, if he gives in to the White House's blackmail to slow down the Euro, hundreds of thousands of German workers will find themselves unemployed in less than a month.
He is trapped by our own hypergrowth. »
The Euro, specifically, was no longer a scriptural abstraction.
Lazare slipped his hand into the pocket of his double-breasted vest and pulled out the broad, two-toned two-euro coin he had received from the Bank of France. Since the beginning of the year, the single currency had crossed the threshold into physical cash.
ATMs in Paris, Frankfurt, Rome, and Madrid were now dispensing wads of pastel-colored banknotes. European citizens were paying for their bread, their gas, and their computers with a unified currency.
The physical introduction of the currency, forced upon us by the Franco-German alliance under pressure from the Lazarus technology war, had finally made the continent more fluid. Exchange barriers had vanished.
An Italian subcontractor could buy components in France without losing a single cent in conversion fees. The Volta ecosystem operated within a single, vast domestic market of over three hundred million consumers, protected by an interbank network encrypted by Volta Secure 's asymmetric algorithm .
Continental Europe was experiencing a euphoric mini-recovery. An economic spring fueled by the age of sovereign silicon.
Yet, on the immense map of Lazarus's screen wall, one area remained desperately dark, plunged into a greyish atony that clashed with the luminescence of the rest of Europe.
An island.
Édouard Renault-Tessier followed his boss's gaze. The beam of his red laser left the Alsatian plain to cross the Channel and stop over London.
« The British, » the finance director muttered, a hint of deliberate contempt coloring his voice. « The Anglo-Saxon press may cry foul about manipulation of our balance sheets, but the facts are utterly damning for John Major's government.
The United Kingdom is the only Western European nation not to have benefited from a single drop of this economic miracle. »
Lazare approached the table, placing both hands flat on the frosted glass. Britain's ostracism was not an accident of circumstance. It was a methodical execution, conceived, planned, and carried out from the Bunker at Ivry-sur-Seine.
« Explain the anatomy of their downfall, Edward, » ordered the young CEO, his eye shining with a cold, predatory intensity.
The financier opened a file containing summaries of the financial markets in the City of London.
« That's the price of arrogant insularity, » Edward began. « Since the 1980s, successive British governments have systematically refused to fully integrate into the European architecture.
They've demanded exemptions from Brussels, they've fiercely refused to abandon the pound sterling for the euro, and above all, they've always considered themselves Washington's privileged partner, the famous Special Relationship . They thought they could have it both ways: benefit from the common market while remaining the financial and technological aircraft carrier of the United States in Europe. »
Édouard let out a short, dry laugh.
« Except that you have changed the rules of the game, Lazare. By imposing the Euro as the exclusive currency for our transactions and by locking down the European interbank clearing network under the control of Volta Secure , you have technically isolated the City of London. »
The banker scrolled through graphs showing the collapse of capital flows across the Channel.
« Until now, London was the hub of global finance. But today, the billions of euros generated by our Compaq AXIOM sales, by Japanese PlayStation royalties , and by the massive orders from the Chinese government go directly to the Paris or Frankfurt stock exchanges.
Not a single cent crosses the Thames. Major American and Asian investment banks are closing their London offices to relocate their traders to La Défense or Frankfurt's financial district. Why would they stay in a country that uses a secondary currency and is excluded from the most secure payment infrastructure on the planet? »
Lazare Bonaparte nodded slowly. He remembered the countless concessions and diplomatic niceties that previous French governments had had to make to avoid upsetting British sensibilities. He had chosen a different path: amputation.
« And what about the industrial aspect? » asked Lazare, knowing the answer perfectly well but relishing the report.
« It's pure and simple famine, » Edward declared. « Prime Minister John Major demanded special treatment.
He wanted to negotiate tariff exemptions and refused to allow the British administration to switch exclusively to our IMPERATOR servers , citing its intelligence-sharing agreements with the NSA. »
Édouard closed the file.
« You responded with an invisible blockade. In accordance with your directives, René Castella's purchasing department has removed the United Kingdom from our list of subcontractors. We no longer buy a single screw, a single meter of cable, or a single chemical component from across the Channel.
The Huawei assembly plants and the MegaFab in Alsace operate in complete self-sufficiency with respect to the British. We even refused to locate any of our future Giga Web Centers there , depriving their economies of the infrastructure of the nascent Internet. »
The finance director approached the bay window, observing the Seine.
The macroeconomic outcome is unequivocal. Inflation is rising again in London. Industrial unemployment is worsening.
The pound sterling is under attack from speculators fleeing to the euro. Great Britain watches the European continent grow richer at breakneck speed through the windows of a crumbling mansion.
« They held the key to the future in their hands, » Lazare recalled in a low voice, imbued with the absolute cynicism of an industrialist. « The ARM architecture.
The ultra-low-power microprocessors born in Cambridge. If the British had known how to capitalize on this invention, if they had understood that the future lay not in coal mines but in mobility, they could have built their own empire. »
Lazare stepped up to the wall of screens, placing his pale hand on the dark area that represented the British Isles.
« But we bought out all of ARM from them through a hostile and untraceable takeover. We stole the DNA of 21st-century mobile telephony for a handful of millions of pounds that their government foolishly approved, thinking they were getting a good real estate deal.
We drained them of their intellectual substance, and now we're starving them in terms of manufacturing. »
Lazarus turned to Edward. In his obsidian gaze, there was neither hatred nor a desire for historical revenge. There was only the ruthless rationality of geopolitical warfare.
« England has always been America's aircraft carrier in Europe, » Lazare theorized, his voice echoing in the silence of the Bunker. « It was through London that Washington's policies, its standards, and its vision of asymmetrical free trade infiltrated the continent.
By isolating the British, by depriving them of the dividends of the European economic miracle, I am not punishing a people. I am disarming the White House's fifth column. »
The engineer crossed his arms over his chest. The plan was cruelly elegant.
« British leaders will eventually crack, » Lazare predicted with mathematical certainty. « Under pressure from their own people, who will demand the same ADSL connections as in Paris, under pressure from their students, who will want the same Compaq AXIOM computers at European prices, and faced with the exodus of their financial elite, Downing Street will come begging at our door.
They will plead to join the Eurozone. They will beg for our factories to be built there. And on that day, Europe will not negotiate exemptions.
It will dictate the terms of an unconditional surrender. »
Édouard Renault-Tessier felt a shiver run down his spine. The former investment banker had spent his life rubbing shoulders with powerful men, ministers, and CEOs of CAC 40 companies. But none of them had ever possessed this ability to manipulate the destinies of nations with the cold precision of a surgeon wielding a scalpel.
Lazare Bonaparte wasn't playing politics; he was rewriting the source code of the world order.
The door to the director's office opened with a pneumatic hiss, interrupting the leader's geopolitical oration.
Karim Belkacem entered, a thick report printed on thermal paper in his hand. The technical director of Volta SA seemed exhausted, his features drawn from dozens of hours of uninterrupted supervision, but an electrical urgency emanated from his posture.
« Lazare, the MegaFab engineering team has just sent the final validation, announced Karim, placing the document on the meeting table, instantly sweeping aside the British topic to return to the organic survival of the company. »
« The space line? » Lazarus inquired immediately, his mind swinging from global finance to materials physics.
« Affirmative. Dr. Volkov's team has successfully stabilized the SOI (Silicon On Insulator) process for hardening our chips. The DUV lasers are operating at an acceptable thermal regime. »
Karim approached the whiteboard and drew a quick sketch of the stratosphere.
« The first batch of thirty VESLA-III Rad-Hard microprocessors , capable of withstanding cosmic radiation without bit corruption, passed vacuum tank tests this morning. The manufacturing yield is catastrophic compared to civilian silicon; nearly eighty percent of the wafers are discarded due to military requirements, but the chips that survive are indestructible. »
« That's the price of the orbit, » Lazarus conceded in a monotone voice. « Are the components ready for integration? »
« They are leaving Strasbourg this evening in an armored convoy of the gendarmerie, heading for the CNES assembly facilities in Toulouse, » confirmed the technical director. « Space engineers will plug them into the G, S, and R modules of the 'Common Bus.' The chassis for our microsatellites are complete.
If the launch vibration resistance tests on the launch pad are successful, Arianespace confirms that the first multiple launch of Ariane 4, carrying the first four satellites of our constellation, is scheduled for next month in Kourou. »
Lazare leaned back against his desk, arms crossed, his gaze fixed on Karim's technical diagrams. The Earth was locked down by the interbank network and Niel's ADSL. The civilian market was flooded with Compaq AXIOM laptops priced at 381 Euros.
But the celestial vault remained the exclusive domain of the American GPS network and the NSA's spy satellites.
« The ASTROLABE project is no longer a financial theory, » murmured Édouard Renault-Tessier, contemplating the MegaFab reports. « We are going to send our own silicon into space. We are going to privatize low Earth orbit. »
« We're not going to privatize it, Edward. We're going to confiscate it, » corrected Lazare, his voice resonating with implacable gravity in the silence of the Bunker.
Lazarus turned toward the bay window, observing the low clouds that seemed to be brushing against the satellite dishes on the roof of the factory in Ivry-sur-Seine. America still believed it could encircle the Franco-Chinese alliance with its naval fleets and diplomatic influence in Asia.
Bill Clinton thought his « Pivot to Asia » and tariffs would be enough to stem the bleeding.
But Washington was unaware that the enemy was no longer fighting on a two-dimensional world map.
« In a few weeks, » Lazare concluded, the shadow of a final threat hovering in his dark eyes, « when the Ariane rocket's fairing opens in the vacuum of space and our first four gaze light up above the Atlantic, the Pentagon will understand the true nature of our war.
We are no longer fighting for market share. We are taking control of the roof of the world. And no one, neither John Major on his island nor the President of the United States in his Oval Office, will ever again be able to claim to escape our gaze. »
The die was cast. The autopsy of the Republic in 1995 had proven that the French state had handed over the keys to its economic independence to the silicon monarch. And this monarch was now preparing to forge the heavens themselves in its own image.