What Adam Zimmerman contributed to the Universal Cartel’s Hardinist property grab was the knowledge of exactly how to bring about the extraordinary circumstances that would cause the computerized trading systems to trash the world’s markets, and exactly how to take advantage of the ensuing chaos.
Contrary to popular belief, the Earth was not won on a single day on 20 March 2025, but it waslost on that day. When the second day of the new spring dawned, the way was clear and the pattern of acquisitions had become inexorable. The world woke up in the secure grip of an association of megacorporations whose chief executives formed the tightly knit conspiracy that soon became known by such journalistic catchphrases as the Secret Masters, the Inner Circle, and the Invisible Hand. The actual agents of the coup were more than content to remain hidden behind such euphemisms, while allowing their humbler instruments to bear the burden of personal notoriety. Adam Zimmerman was not, in any literalsense, “the man who stole the world,” but he was certainly in the forefront of the great heist. He organized the shock troops which led the rapid-fire asset-stripping raids that bankrupted whole nations and cornered every significant commodity whose futures were dealt. Like any true hero, he did not act for himself but for the captains of Global Capitalism, and hence for the world as a whole — but he did take a perfectly reasonable commission on every deal he made.
By 2010 Adam had already made his first billion dollars and had laid the groundwork for the Ahasuerus Foundation. By 2020 he had made his second billion, and the Ahasuerus Foundation was becoming a significant force in longevity research and the commercial development of suspended-animation technology. In the spring of 2025 he made five billion dollars more, and the Ahasuerus Foundation became the leading institution in both its fields of sponsorship.
Although his part in these transactions made him one of the wealthiest men in the world, Adam remained scrupulously unassuming in dress and manner. His legion of aides and assistants thought him rather shy, and they were as grateful for his unfailing politeness as they were for his measured generosity. The only slight resentment that his employees harbored was against his habit of lecturing them on the necessity of self-discipline, the virtues of thrift, the dangers of hedonism, and other related topics. They valued the truths that were invariably to be found in these homilies, but were inclined to think the lectures themselves a trifle pompous.
Despite his nickname and the notoriety it reflected, Adam did not like to expose himself to the public gaze, and he became increasingly reclusive as the twenty-first century wore on. One of his favorite sermons, in fact, was a warning against the seductiveness of fame.
“Fame,” Adam would sternly advise his closer acquaintances, “is essentially a matter of attracting attention, and attention is always fatal to men who make their living by dipping into other people’s pockets. People like ourselves should make every effort to avoid being interesting; it not only renders one vulnerable to the iniquities of inquisitiveness, but makes one susceptible to flattery. Flattery is a powerful force, and its attractions can be difficult to resist. One must constantly remind oneself that fame is one of the most awful reminders of one’s own mortality. The masses are always hungry for misfortune and disaster, and they love to revel in the tragedy and grief which attend the sufferings of their idols. The public invents celebrities mainly in order to revel in their decay and extinction, and fame always breeds sickness and self-abuse. The unluckiest men in the world are those who have a fame thrust upon them from which they cannot escape.”
These were wise words. I could have judged them wise even from my own very limited experience of the fame I gained as the author of the definitive History of Deathand the pioneer of emortal spiritual autobiography, but Adam Zimmerman provided a far more telling example himself. While he remained hidden from the world he was able to retain the status of a mere shadow on the page of history, an elusive myth — but the longer he remained in his chrysalis of ice the more certain it became that he would wake to find himself famous, with disastrous effect.
Five
Adam Zimmerman’s speeches warning against the hazards of fame and sermons on the benefits of thrift were sometimes taken by those who did not know him well as evidence of cynicism. Here was a man, his critics argued, who was notorious throughout the world as the greatest thief in history, who poured the billions of dollars that he stole into esoteric scientific and technological research. In contrast to the great philanthropists of Classical Capitalism, who had endowed universities, art galleries, and museums for the betterment of their humbler fellows, Adam Zimmerman seemed to care for nothing but the preservation of his own self, desiring only to become “immortal” in the crudest imaginable sense of the word.
What fools those mortals were!
“It is difficult for those who can see to imagine the plight of those who are blind,” Adam told me, when we discussed his treatment in histories other than my own, “but it ought to be impossible for any reasonable person of yourday to entertain an atom of sympathy for my critics. It should have been obvious, even to my contemporaries, that I was the ultimate incarnation of the underlying philosophy of capitalism, as first set out in Bernard de Mandeville’s The Fable of the Bees; or, Private Vices, Public Benefits— but I suppose we ought to be generous and remember that Mandeville’s writings were also misconstrued in their day, and prosecuted for the offense they offered to Puritan ideals.
I asked Adam whether he had had the remotest inkling, in the early twenty-first century, of the difference that his actions would ultimately make to the general human condition.
“Yes,” he said, unequivocally. “I knew perfectly well, from the very beginning, that emortality would become the privilege of all humankind — or, at any rate, all but the very poorest members of society. Some of the more shortsighted members of the Cartel were inclined for a while to think of it as something that ought to be reserved for the ultimate elite, but I tried to persuade them that it would be as unwise as it would be impossible to monopolise longevity. The whole point of their enterprise was to achieve economic stability, and there could be no other permanent guarantee of stability than universal, or near-universal, emortality. Before I was frozen down I advised them to make every effort to persuade their customers that emortality was imminent, that nothing was required for its attainment but loyalty and patience, and that once it was commercially available they should err on the side of generosity rather than play the miser.”
“Are you surprised,” I asked him, “that so very few of them followed your own example and put themselves into suspended animation to await the fulfilment of that promise?”
“Had you asked me in 2035 how many would follow my example,” he said, after a pause for thought, “I would have guessed that every rational man who had the means would do so. But I think I can understand why the actual figure was so low. The men to whom I acted as adviser were not of my kind. They were hungry for power, and they loved to exercise authority. They were, of course, ambitious to be the saviors of the ecosphere, but they did not want power because they wanted to save the world — they wanted to save the world because that was the best way to prove that they were powerful.
“The men for whom I stole the world had the same deep-rooted fear of death and annihilation that I had, but they had never brought it to clear consciousness in the manner that I was fortunate enough to achieve. Their coping strategy was a different one, requiring a fierce avidity to seize the moment, and to lose themselves in the opportunities of the moment. They were, above all else, successfulmen, and their success extended to the repression of their death anxiety. They did not have the strength of mind or the force of will to let go of what they had and what they were about, until it was too late. They could be honest in their dealings with their fellow men when the situation demanded it — as it occasionally did — but they were incapable of being honest with themselves. They thought themselves extraordinary men, but their insensitivity to the fact of their own mortality was pathetically ordinary.”