Pawn - Q7 ... Checkmate?

tlb wrote:

cthia wrote:All companies have shareholders unless you have enormous pockets. Even then you still want shareholders because even though shareholders share the profit, they also share the risk. You don't want to lose a billion dollars of your own capital.

So you think the Mesan Alignment (a terrorist organization) will have shareholders to share the risk! How does that work?

Let's assume that at one point, long long ago, the Mesan Alignment had shareholders. Why wouldn't everyone (except the Detweilers) exchange those shares for ones in real businesses? You know, so they could get dividends and buy or sell those shares openly?

cthia wrote: In the beginning there was only one man, Leonard Detweiler, with a vision. How deep do you think his pockets were? He was setting up a lab, buying galactic real estate, bribing people to doctor maps, etc. If I were him, I would approach other people who think like I do. Other people who hated the Beowulf Code and those damn pesky Havenites. At any rate, a centuries long endeavor took a lot of seed capital. And all kinds of resources and favors that money cannot buy. But LOTS of money can. Do you think Leonard Detweiler was like the billionaire Bruce Wayne?

Albrecht nodded slowly. Renzo Kyprianou was in charge of bio-weapons research and development and a member of the Mesan Strategy Council. At the moment, however, not even the Strategy Council knew everything the Alignment was up to.
Not surprisingly, I suppose, he mused, given that the Alignment's always been so much of a . . . family business.
His lips twitched in an almost-smile at the thought, and he wondered how many members of the Strategy Council had figured out just how close he truly was to his "sons."
The official demise of the Detweiler line had been part of the strategy designed to divert the galaxy's—and especially Beowulf's—attention from Leonard Detweiler's determination to uplift human genetics in general. The Detweilers had been too strongly and fiercely devoted to that goal for too long, and the apparent—and spectacular—assassination of the "last" Detweiler heir by greedy elements on the Manpower Incorporated board of directors had punctuated the fact that the increasingly criminal Mesans no longer shared that lofty aspiration. It had also served to get Leonard's descendants safely beneath anyone else's radar, of course, but its most useful function had been to help explain and justify Mesa's switch to the full-bore exploitation of genetic slavery by Manpower. The steady, ongoing improvement of the alignment's own genomes had been buried under Manpower's R&D programs and camouflaged as little more than surface improvements in physical beauty.
But whatever the rest of humanity might have thought, the Detweiler line was far from extinct. In fact, the Detweiler genome was one of the—if not the—most improved within the entire Alignment. And Albrecht Detweiler's "sons" were also his genetic clones. Bardasano, for one, he felt certain, had figured that out, despite how closely held a secret it was supposed to be. It was possible Kyprianou had, as well, given how closely he worked with Daniel. For that matter, Jerome Sandusky might cherish a few suspicions of his own, not that any of that trio was going to breathe a word of any such suspicions to anyone else.

tlb wrote:Why should we believe that there is a Board of Directors separate from the Detweilers themselves? What if there are no shareholders, but instead the Malign is wholly owned by the Detweilers? What evidence (aside from forum comments about "normal business practice") do we have for a Board of Directors existing?

cthia wrote:You are mistaken. We have seen a BoD. I don't have searchable text at hand, so I can't. But I think it was in one of the Shadow books. The BoD is who gave the go ahead to allow the clones. And since that decision had to be passed along to the BoD, then it seems to imply the hierarchy.

It was probably something along the lines of "Ok, but they get no stock options." Because that could change the balance of power. Or they had limited stock options.

Stock options = controlling interest.

tlb wrote:

tlb wrote:Why should we believe that there is a Board of Directors separate from the Detweilers themselves? What if there are no shareholders, but instead the Malign is wholly owned by the Detweilers? What evidence (aside from forum comments about "normal business practice") do we have for a Board of Directors existing?

cthia wrote:You are mistaken. We have seen a BoD. I don't have searchable text at hand, so I can't. But I think it was in one of the Shadow books. The BoD is who gave the go ahead to allow the clones. And since that decision had to be passed along to the BoD, then it seems to imply the hierarchy.

It was probably something along the lines of "Ok, but they get no stock options." Because that could change the balance of power. Or they had limited stock options.

Stock options = controlling interest.

You will, of course, believe whatever you want to believe; with or without evidence. But here you promised there is evidence; so as soon as you can after getting back to your searchable text, please show it to us all. I want to see a Detweiler being subordinate to someone outside the family. Just a mention of stock options, would be better than nothing.

If the clones you talk about are the "sons", we have already seen text in this thread that shows it is a closely held family secret.

cthia wrote:I specifically said that I do NOT have searchable text. Surely you do not expect me to thumb through each volume page by page.

In fact, the Detweiler genome was one of the—if not the—most improved within the entire Alignment.

cthia wrote:I think that getting close enough to engage the target is possible. Remember the movie Predator? Would he be able to infiltrate the Palace grounds with his unprecedented stealth? We don't know how effective that " stealth cloth" is but it appears to work quite well. It may have the effect of rendering an agent invisible. See the "cloak of invisibility" from Harry Potter. If so, the problem with the guards and the cameras may be solved. Have you ever visited Buckingham Palace? The bulk of the guards are no doubt alert and poised to strike. But they are not making rounds. That appears to be left up to a plethora of surveillance equipment.

tlb wrote:You will, of course, believe whatever you want to believe; with or without evidence. But here you promised there is evidence; so as soon as you can after getting back to your searchable text, please show it to us all. I want to see a Detweiler being subordinate to someone outside the family. Just a mention of stock options, would be better than nothing.

If the clones you talk about are the "sons", we have already seen text in this thread that shows it is a closely held family secret.

cthia wrote:You are mistaken. We have seen a BoD. I don't have searchable text at hand, so I can't. But I think it was in one of the Shadow books. The BoD is who gave the go ahead to allow the clones. And since that decision had to be passed along to the BoD, then it seems to imply the hierarchy.

tlb wrote:You will, of course, believe whatever you want to believe; with or without evidence. But here you promised there is evidence; so as soon as you can after getting back to your searchable text, please show it to us all. I want to see a Detweiler being subordinate to someone outside the family. Just a mention of stock options, would be better than nothing.

If the clones you talk about are the "sons", we have already seen text in this thread that shows it is a closely held family secret.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:The passage that cthia talks about does exist. There is a board that approved the creation of Albrecht's "sons" as further clones of him (possibly with further mods, but we don't know).

However, I never got the impression that Albrecht and B through G were subordinate to that board. Especially Albrecht: I get the impression that he's either the chairperson of that board, with extreme influence, or above it.

Annachie wrote:I figgured that the boys were clones of Albrecht, but with tweaks to their genetic structure.

Never thought that they were the same.

Interesting.

ldwechsler wrote:It would be nice if they were able to sneak in a few genes from their "mother."

runsforcelery wrote:I think the post from me from 2014 that pappilon quoted above makes it clear that he and his sons are the "current generation" Detweiler genome. That is, the Alignment decided its head was going to need some really capable lieutenants Sometime Real Soon Now and decided to duplicate Albrecht to provide them. This is the first time they've done that, and it represents a response to a specific situation, not their long term policy, which has been to crank in incremental tweaks in each generation.

And also, in each generation, there's been room for "sneaking in a few genes" from a broad range of donors, which may or may not include either or both parents. In the MA's case, though, (and especially in its upper echelons) direct genetic contribution to one's child is often the exception rather than the rule. Which doesn't prevent parent from loving child just as much as any other parent and child in human history.

One might reasonably think of this (at least in terms of intents) as removing random chance from the process of producing children with the object of making each generation as good as it can possibly be. The upside to that should, I think, be obvious. The downside is that, as in the case of the Onion, children wind up designed (literally) for specific roles/tasks/jobs. In that respect, the Onion is no different from Manpower, when you come down to it, which is a deliberate irony on my part.

tlb wrote:Do you have a suggestion as to what book you saw this in? It must be after Mission of Honor, because it was not on the CD.

To End in Fire, Ch. March 1923 wrote:With their parents' deaths, leaderships of the entire Alignment had devolved onto Benjamin Detweiler's shoulders, and he would not shirk his responsibilities... or fail the memories of Albrecht and Evelina Detweiler.