The inside of the historic San Francisco Opera House has long sat empty under the mandate of the Municipal Heritage Act, which is technically still on the books, but tonight it is as if the West Coast's golden age never ended. The interior, glistening from the light of synthetic diamond chandeliers, is packed with bodies wrapped in silk dresses and tailored suits. Banquet attendants, faces politely obscured with masquerade masks, hand out samples of endangered crustaceans to clawing fingers that barely seem to register the fact that one bite from this delicacy would sink most regular Californians into debt. The windows have been replaced with lifelike screens of the night sky to ensure the socialites aren't disturbed by a view of the Doomsday Sphere frozen in place above the Bay, blotting out the stars. Lifelike animatronic acrobats swing from golden rings suspended from the ceiling, their many arms folding outwards in imitation of Hindu deities, courtesy of the event's host, The Temple — i.e., Temple of Mammon, a Dubai-originating luxury catering & longevity firm with its thumbs in the pie of every company being represented here tonight.
Despite its location, the party is by no means a Californian or even American event, although, sure enough, the city's Mayor can be spied in the centre of the writhing mass of name-brand-watch-bearing limbs, laughing heartily at something unheard from Reed Fischer, who owns the majority of the city's airspace. Magnates from the purple of commerce have flocked to this room from every corner of the earth: from my position near the kitchen — wherein a chef appears to be suffering from a sudden paralysis in his left hand, unable to remove it from the burning stovetop, while his colleagues avert their gazes and rush around him as one might with a wailing homeless man in the street — I can spot more billionaires than I can count, notably: Alan Hyatt, owner of the London-originating Telebion; Omar Atiyeh, founder of the New-Cairo-originating MouthPlate; and, the shine of his glass scalp unmissable, Eli Ong, richest man in the world and owner and self-identifying "ontological emanation" of the Hong-Kong-originating HYLONET, which counts The Hanumist among its subsidiaries. The event is primarily a networking opportunity, a fertile ground for businesses to spread their tendrils and sprout partnerships.
The party is strictly off-limits to the general public; merely standing in the presence of such celebrities gives one the unshakeable sense of committing secular sacrilege. As one of the lucky few reporters allowed through the threatening phalanx of armed guards outside and into the event, I'm not here for these A-listers, who would be eager to plug their latest venture in an interview; I'm here as part of my ongoing profile on a recent arrival to the scene, the delightfully mysterious Renault Pashayev. Pashayev made headlines in May when his sudden acquisition of ADRAUG, a company that holds almost 40% of cloud storage used by social & pseudosocial media platforms, shocked betting markets, invalidating a prediction with millions on the line. His was a name previously unheard of, and preliminary investigations by prediction firms revealed little about his background. In the absence of any forthcoming details, I decided to get his story straight from the horse's mouth.
I found him enjoying some synthetic wine with minor members of both the Saudi and Omani royal families, whose conviviality almost made me forget the two countries were still locked in a protracted armed conflict. Pictures of the man are surprisingly hard to come by, so the in-person meeting was enlightening. His hair has migrated downwards, granting him a full black beard in exchange for a rapidly thinning scalp. His accent shifts fluidly from American to French to something I can't quite place. His suit, although certainly costing more than my salary, is on the bland and unassuming side in this room of lavish dress. He sports no diamond-encrusted watch, glistening jewellery, or any cranial augmentation to speak of. When he notices me, he bids adieu to his royal friends and shakes my hand. He already knows I'm here for a profile on him; he insists we talk out on the balcony.
The Doomsday Sphere dominates the view of the harbour, its smooth surface reflecting the city lights in a hazy shine. The clamour of the party is muffled as he closes the door, replaced with the sounds of a scuffle below: some security guards have decided to leave a passerby with a physical reminder of what happens when they walk too close. He withdraws an e-cigarette and takes a long drag. The smoke tastes like tar.
I explain that my readers will benefit from some personal questions to help humanise him.
"Does The Hanumist still have readers?"
A common question from my interviewees. The answer is effectively no. I ask him to try to play along.
"That's what you've been reduced to. Men and women play-acting journalism. Pretending like there's still a polite society on the other side of the screen, or a journalistic standard to uphold, or an objective truth to strive for."
It's a derivative screed; almost every tycoon I've spoken to repeats the same talking points, on and off the record, as if this time they will finally convince me. A sickening crunch from below freezes our interaction in its tracks, and we wait awkwardly for the noises to subside. He fidgets with his e-cigarette nervously.
Eventually, I get the skeleton of a life story: he was born in Baku to a wealthy family with corporate ties to the oil industry and personal ties to the ruling Huseynov family. He was raised as a proper nouveau aristocrat, his early years spent learning French, the art of conversation, and postmodern monetary theory. He was sent to Harvard to study business, at which point he "fell in with the wrong crowd," taking a three-year break from his degree to move to Montparnasse and "become a Bohemian." Bohemiancy presumably attained, he returned to Harvard, completed his degree with honours, and set about amassing great hordes of wealth with the help of his inherited connections. He pockets and then immediately withdraws his e-cigarette around five times throughout his explanation.
An unimaginative story; at this point, I start searching for something to set him apart from every other privileged investor I've written similar pieces on. I ask him what drives him. Entrepreneurs love this question; it gives them the opportunity to rant about whatever they care most about to someone whose job it is to listen.
"I want to save the world."
A promising start — but, then again, Eli Ong and his fellow solipsists have the same answer. I press him.
"Humanity naturally tends towards savage, dog-eat-dog bellum omnium contra omnes because of its unprecedented ability to create higher-order coordination problems. The profound state of decay in modern society is caused by the collapse of the post-WWII house of cards ensuring the balance of powers. Hippocrates was right; his only mistake was applying Humorism to biology instead of economics, politics, and sociology. In our modern race to the bottom, coordination is the only solution. The problem is, cooperation is dead: the panalgorithm killed critical thought, memetic engineering killed solidarity, and enforced scarcity killed any meaningful resistance to the new world disorder. But the single-mindedness of unfettered capital is, in a word, dumb; we can put the genie back in the bottle if we're smart. Our economy, our society, our faux-democracy, it all operates on virality. There are structures in capitalism's possibility-space that haven't been attempted yet. I'm going to build the meme that fixes humanity."
Neoclassical music leaks into the balcony from inside. A withering old lady is receiving an impromptu organ transplant on the mezzanine. Brilliant LED headlights driving by temporarily turn Pashayev into a silhouette. I ask him to put his ideology in fewer words.
"I'm an institutionalist — the last partisan of the Democratic Party. Ong is my ideological antithesis. His altar is der Wille zur Macht; mine is the social contract. I've started a venture that's trying to find ways to monetise getting people to read the Federalist Papers. Have you read Kawakibi?"
(I pulled out my phone immediately after the interview to find out what he was referencing. The Democratic Party was a big-tent, social democratic American political party in the 20th and early 21st centuries. Its politics were moderate and broadly aimed towards the middle class — it's hard to see how it could radicalise anyone.)
I find the conversation naturally subsiding several times as he gets lost in the view. It is beautiful; the bay reflects the glistening skyline, creating a dreamlike, glowing city beneath the surface. It's one of the few world metropolises where most buildings have remained below four stories. Kelsey Huang's sinuous offshore arcologies continuously reorganise their modular parts on the horizon like flowers that don't stop blooming.
Once you've interviewed enough billionaires, you get a feel of what's been carefully designed and focus-tested to grab the most attention, and what is actually a genuine opinion. Pashayev isn't talking to the audience — he's talking to me. There's only one small problem: I can't resist asking about his investment in the recent HYLONET-led coup in Guatemala. The quiet fervour disappears from his voice.
"What, so one can't participate in society while being critical of it?"
His chuckle brings me back from the brief dream he had spun to the San Francisco balcony, overseeing that terrified passerby limping away from the building, bloodied and beaten. He invites me back inside to speak to Bilyana Petrovka, whose recent app lets you control the body of a third-world citizen for tiny cryptocurrency payments. Pashayev makes many friends that night, including the Eli Ong he's ostensibly diametrically opposed to. Before the party is over, he's purchased a modest sum of HYLONET shares.