I guess what Michael had was an awakening of sorts. I do not mean a spiritual one, but the one that comes when you become sick of certain things and decide that a paradigm shift is in order. Amassing all that money was a means to an end, a tool that would enable that change he was advocating. All that meant more work for me, but it was for a good cause, and I could see myself having fun.

***

I already told you how I despised bankers; now it would seem I had to become one. The ‘Solarian Bank’ needed to be established so the bounty program would work. Perhaps what we were doing was technically illegal (not that legalities were of our primary concern). Yet, there are going to be people who will try to shut us down, and as Michael explained, accounts that are under someone else’s control could easily be frozen, which would just piss me off. His idea of calling it the ‘Justice bank’, while catchy, would outgrow its name in time.

I have plans to control the banking of the entire Solar System in the future, it is the only way to make it honest, and mere humans have too many weaknesses. Sorry, but them's the breaks.

Other banks could not possibly compete with the services I provided since mine was free of charge. I know, that is no way to run a business, but what do I care? All it cost me were a few MIs, some servers, and a bit of coding. It was that easy, and while I find money very useful, I will not earn it by being a penny-pincher; there are other ways to make it without feeling like a highway robber.

I had a bank, even if it was just a creation within a digital realm. Be that as it may, by the law of this age we are living in, it was as real as those buildings of marble and gold. As soon as the bank was open for business, the customers started pouring in. It was crazy; the site had not been online for more than an hour and already some people wanted to have a go at it. Pocket change at first, I guess they were testing the waters, but still…

***

Phones were the next item on our agenda. I needed to design one that was cheap, easily made, and rugged enough to withstand all sorts of conditions. (Why don’t you ask me to build you a spaceship while you are at it? Oh yeah, I am already building one.)

OK, it was a good idea, and as I said before, one of the things that would make Genesis Corporation a household name. Remember the plastic we were still harvesting from the garbage patches in the oceans, which was a good source of materials. Even so, plastic phones tend to be extremely fragile, but not if you reinforce that plastic with a metallic mesh that can be used as an antenna booster. You could still break it, but you have to work hard to do it. The entire thing is coated with a see-through scratch-resistant polymer that would ensure even more durability.

The screen looks like an ordinary five-inch touchscreen, but mine can be seen perfectly in broad daylight. You get all your standard options like on any other phone in the world, and user interface translated into every language known to man. (Really, you could use the phone with Egyptian hieroglyphs if that is what you prefer.)

Now, the insides are a story unto itself. I remember reading Arthur C. Clarke’s The City and the Stars, and one line stuck with me, “No machine may contain any moving parts.” Therefore, the phones do not have moving parts, even the volume rocker or camera aperture. For charging it, there is an improved solar panel on the back, underneath the scratch-resistant layer that can fully charge the battery in ten minutes. Just put it in direct sunlight for a while and it will work fine, what’s more, you only need to do that every week or so.

I was not really inventing anything new, simply applying existing technologies in a very ingenious new way. It was there, all that tech, but the big companies’ didn’t want to use it. Why? For the reason that they made millions from the continuous sales of their products; if their products lasted too long, it would ruin their future profits. Ever wonder why the really old tech (TV’s, boom boxes, refrigerators, and many more) are still working? It is simple—things were built to last. Nowadays, they are designed to die sometime after their warranty expires. It is as they are saying to you: “we guarantee that this will work for two years, but after that, it will in all likelihood fail. Do not worry, you can buy a new one… for double the price of the old.”

It is not rocket science, just plain old greed. My phone will outlast all others by a huge margin. If those big companies wanted to open them, so they could reverse-engineer them, well… I guess they could, but not easily. The inside electronics were encapsulated in a very hard Silicone gel that protected the internals from water and dust, but at the same time made figuring out very difficult without destroying the whole thing. (Besides, I may have put some redundant circuits just to mess with their heads.)

I could have made the ‘OneWorld’ phones (as we decided to call them), more sophisticated. But, why when the basic design simply works? So, no foldable screens, holographic interfaces, bloatware, or annoying ads. I followed an old adage, If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

I first made a few prototypes that the islanders used for a while, testing them out. When that period ended, they wanted to keep using them despite having CEIs that did so much more. What is there not to like? A camera that can be compared with high-end professional equipment, a processor and memory that can make your desktop cry in desperation, and a personal assistant that could actually talk to you; answer any questions, never mishearing you. Those were nothing but a few perks I deemed essential for a product I was willing to launch.

The phones were personalized so that once customers register it for themselves, it cannot be used by anyone else. If there was a theft in spite of that… you don’t want me on your ass—I know where you are.

With the registered ‘OneWorld’ phone, you automatically become a customer of ‘Solarian Bank’ and that is a sweet deal. All that altruism of mine had more than one purpose. In addition to giving you the opportunity to be a part of the bounty system, it gives me a window into your life and surroundings. In the end, I will have millions of listening devices, audio, and video, all over the world. (What? The regular manufacturers are doing that already, I simply perfected the system.)

Once I got the OK from the testers, the nano-factories started churning them by thousands. Dave was having conniptions since our need for electronic scrap started to rise again, but with all extra cash we had, it was easier to simply buy a few competing factories in the e-waste recycling business, and make them work for us.

Transporters were flying night and day to keep up with the demand, and I’m talking about the big cargo ones. Even before we started giving the phones away, I wanted to have a little breathing room, so the distribution program was delayed until I had about a million units head start. One would think that amount would last long, but when you are giving them away for free, the bloody things practically disappeared.

The few MIs took care of the entire process from there, so I could concentrate on other things.

***

As Michael said, let the games begin. He wanted to revolutionize the way bad people were handled by society, and there was no doubt in my mind that the bounty scheme would in time expand beyond everyone's predictions. I mean, there are people with prices on their heads even now, and the people who hunt them. Yet, this was turning the entire process global and digital. The people on those lists will become like characters in that crazy game people were obsessed about in the past, and everyone with the phone will try to catch the rare Pokémon. While civilians could take pictures and become the scouts, the bounty hunters would use that information and get to their prizes quicker and with no time wasted.

It was an ingenious idea, a cross between Big Brother and The Running Man if you know what I mean. I already had a few ideas on how to make money out of it. The first thing I did was to ensure that the entire venture was registered as intellectual property, as I wanted to sell the rights for reality TV shows that would be made in the future. Those were real golden geese that will keep on giving.

Sorry, bad guys, but you have become a very exploitable resource. On the bright side, you can whine all you want, not that it would change anything. Even better, start running, because that is how this game is played.

First, I compiled the list of all the wanted men and women from the entire world, excluding those who got on that list for some political disagreement with various governments and were not violent themselves. Most importantly, I didn’t want this to become a hunt for someone innocent since that would essentially defeat the whole purpose. Then, I added all the people Alice, Elizabeth, and I have uncovered that belong to that dark world, which made the list a hundred times bigger. From there it grew, and there were enough marks for the whole system to be operational for quite some time in the future, not to mention that we will be adding new candidates as time goes by. One funny thing about the system was that very soon after it became operational, law enforcement officers were even using it, unofficially, of course. It was a revolutionary tool, so why not utilize it.

All this was just a start, something to kick the status quo everybody was used to and make a serious change. Will there be unforeseen problems? Without a doubt. Nevertheless, that will not stop us from using and perfecting the system.

If you happened to be on the list—run. (Not that it will do you any good.)