Beneath a perfect blue sky the red faced leader watched the scene of battle unfold before him. The casualties were horrific and yet there seemed to be an almost never ending supply of young recruits willing to sacrifice themselves for the cause. He wasn’t sure if he could even remember what that cause was, let alone whether it was just or righteous. Righteous enough to sacrifice so many of their young.
As he pondered the futility of their fight yet another recruit launched themselves into battle, literally hurling themselves against their enemy’s infrastructure. He watched their trajectory, wincing as they fell short, yet another wasted life. Even as their memory was still fading away another recruit was taking their place, but just as they were about to make the ultimate sacrifice the whole world seemed to shake. The commander and the recruit looked about themselves, uncertain what was happening, what new weapon was being used against them, and then the world faded to black…
“Shit !!!”, Mark Peterson cursed as the incoming message interrupted the game he was playing on his smart phone, automatically taking him out of the game and into the message app. His initial annoyance soon turned to pleasure as he read the messages contents. Though perhaps pleasure was the wrong word because the information was bad, in fact it was for some people very bad. However for someone like Peterson bad news received in good time could be good news, because it could then be used to his advantage and that gave him lots of pleasure, so perhaps it was the right word after all.
Peterson took a last gulp of the orange juice that had comprised his entire breakfast. Dropping the smartphone into the top pocket of his Ralph Loren shirt, he grabbed the Porsche keys from the expensive kitchen countertop and headed for the door of his docklands apartment. He needed to get into the office early before the news got out. As he crossed the apartment floor he felt and heard glass crunching beneath his shoe and the unexpectedness stopped him in his tracks and made him look down.
The floor was strewn with glass and other debris, picture frames, a wine glass, some ornaments that he seemed to recall had been insanely expensive but he hadn’t liked anyway. Some candle sticks, though what the hell candle sticks were doing in his apartment he had no idea. Memory caught up with him and he smirked almost childishly. Clara his girlfriend, though he used the term loosely, had walked out on him the night before. She had been arguing about something, probably that he had been back late from the office, which was the selfish bitch’s usual complaint, he thought. Yes that was it, he remembered now, she’d got some notion about it being some anniversary or other and that they were going to have a romantic night in.
But there’d been a lot of activity on the New York markets following some reports about how this new internet legislation would affect the dot coms. He’d stayed late at the office capitalising on the carnage then dropped by a bar to wind down. By the time he had rolled in at midnight Clara had spent several hours simmering and let rip at him as soon as he stepped through the door.
Whilst she had obviously spent her time waiting to carefully catalogue all of his faults in preparation for this onslaught. She had not thought to change her attire from, sexy night in, to something more appropriate. So Peterson had been faced with a screaming Clara dressed only in Victoria Secrets sexiest and skimpiest underwear. Already somewhat drunk he had found it difficult not to laugh, and to be honest had not really tried. Clara had turned it up a gear and started to throw things around the apartment. Whilst the scene of this scantily clad leggy blonde destroying his apartment had been quite sexy, it was also ridiculously funny so Peterson had laughed all the more. At that point Clara had completely flipped and after shouting at him that he had a “Fucking negative personality” had stormed out of the flat, still dressed as she was.
Her dramatic exit had been followed by loud banging on the door as she demanded to be let back in again. This had caused the drunk Peterson to collapse into a fit of hysterics until eventually the comedy value had seemed to wear off. So to avoid the now annoying noise he had fired up the Playstation, sat down in front of his sixty inch ultra-HD screen put his headphones on and played Call of Duty until at some point he must have fallen asleep.
Snapping out of his reminiscence he started heading for the door again a look of concern on his face, he couldn’t care less about the state of the apartment, the Latvian cleaner would clear up the mess while he was out. But Clara had only been dressed in her underwear and the Docklands area of London, revitalised and expensive as it now was, was still not a safe place for a young woman to be walking around half dressed in the early hours of the morning.
By the time he reached the door his astute mind had analysed all the options and as his hand fell on the door handle he had developed some serious concerns. He opened the door and stepped out into the hall way. He looked around but it was empty.
“Thank Christ for that”, he muttered under his breath. The last thing he needed was a scene with Clara, he had to get into the office. As he stepped into the elevator he briefly wondered how she had managed to get home. By the time it had reached the basement level he was more concerned that she may still have access to his flat. But had rationalised that, in her near naked state, she couldn’t have been concealing her keys to the flat so that was one positive. As he walked to his car he quickly texted the cleaning company to say that on NO ACCOUNT was the cleaner to let Clara into his flat.
As he pulled out onto the still quiet streets he had mentally almost moved on from the previous night’s events but for some reason he kept thinking of Clara’s comment about his “negative personality”. Other’s had said similar things in the past which was, he thought, strange. Since he always felt that he looked for the positives in life. But deep down he had an uneasy feeling that he knew what they meant. When something bad happened he did look for the positive, but not in the blitz spirit, stiff upper lip, “could be worse”, “look on the bright side” that some positive souls might do. He despised such people with their unrealistic perspectives as they tried vainly to hide from reality by pretending everything was alright.
Peterson was entirely realistic, when there was a problem or even a tragedy he had no such pretentions that it was somehow ok. He saw instead the true calamity, and looked for ways in which he could gain from it. He had been like it as a child; one of his earliest memories had been when his father had sat him down to tell him that his mother would not be coming home from hospital. The seven year old Peterson had looked into his father’s face, wondering why it looked like his father had been crying, he’d never seen him cry before. Perhaps his young brain couldn’t process the enormity of the event, but it could see a normally stern adult that was vulnerable as he quietly said.
“Don’t worry daddy you and I can get that new train set and play with it together. That will make you happy.”
Which was the beginning of a life of manipulation, especially of those around him that were at their weakest, his father, grandparents, friends, teachers, all fell prey to his ability to seize advantage through others frailties. So it was perhaps not surprising that when he left university and followed into his father’s profession in the financial industry he was drawn to the hedge funds that had become so much more prevalent since the late 1980’s.
Hedge funds trade in stocks, shares and almost any other financial instruments, but the practice where they get their name from is that of hedging against future changes in market value. Effectively covering their bets by taking forward positions on stocks based on their predicted value. By doing this they can make a profit on either the rise or the fall in the value of what they are buying, providing that they could guess the direction correctly.
This ability to make money, a lot of money, from what otherwise might have been viewed as bad things happening attracted Peterson from the outset. At just twenty eight he was already very wealthy and the information he had received that morning was about to make him wealthier by far.
