What Matters More Than World Conquest
The press conference on the Black Vorg acquisition was finally over.
“Haa… I can finally breathe.”
Victor let out a long sigh and loosened his tie.
“Did you see their faces? The reporters looked absolutely stunned. As expected, Sanha, you’re the best… y-you are, Boss. The best, Boss.”
He had been speaking casually, as he always did, but when he suddenly noticed Caroline and Ethan Locke standing nearby, he stiffened and hurriedly switched to a respectful tone.
Victor was my roommate and my friend, but when other people were around, he always drew a strict line between private and public.
I lowered my voice and said, “You worked hard. You’re heading back to the dorm? Want a ride?”
“Nah. I’m actually heading straight to Becky.”
“Becky? Becky Thompson? You’re still seeing her?”
“Yep, hehe. She saw me in a suit, working all serious and stuff, and said I looked cool. Told me to come see her again.”
Victor grinned sheepishly.
Well, the reason she’d dumped him in the first place had been because he kept showing up in whatever wrinkled, unwashed clothes were closest at hand. If he was actually paying attention to how he dressed these days, there was nothing strange about them getting back together.
“Then I’ll see you tomorrow at school! Or… yes, sir, Boss!”
Victor clocked out right there on the spot.
I turned to Caroline, who was standing beside me. “Right, what was that thing you mentioned earlier? Before we went into the press conference.”
“Ah!”
Caroline opened a leather diary.
“We got a call from the White House, Boss.”
“……!”
So it had finally come.
Caroline went on, “It’s a dinner invitation under the Chief of Staff’s name. It looks like it was arranged through the Harvard Alumni Association, for the Oddball Entrepreneur Competition.”
One of the seeds Grace and I had planted had clearly sprouted.
Is this unrelated to the Black Vorg acquisition? Doesn’t seem likely. Hmm.
From the knowledge I’d accumulated during the decades I spent grinding away on Wall Street in my previous life, I knew one thing very well: it was extremely rare for the White House to contact a private citizen first.
Usually it’s the other way around.
Businessmen hired lobbyists, donated political money, and pulled every string they could find just to get near the White House.
They begged for a single handshake with the president, an invitation to dinner, one photo—anything that would let them signal credibility to the market.
But the White House reaching out first? That was a completely different order of magnitude.
If the White House showed interest first, it meant they needed me.
My money, my technology, my ability to shape public opinion, my race, my narrative—whatever it was, they’d decided it would be useful to their political agenda.
And that judgment would have come after a thorough review by the White House staff.
The National Security Council, the Domestic Policy Council, the Council of Economic Advisers… and a dozen other bodies besides.
All of them had gathered information on me, analyzed it, and ultimately concluded that I was worth cultivating.
That was a double-edged sword.
The real question is how much they’ve figured out about me.
Did they know and were simply letting things lie? Did they know nothing and were letting things lie anyway? Or did they know nothing, but wanted to know more?
Personally, I thought it was the last one.
I need to be careful about what I reveal—and what I keep hidden.
Especially because this involved energy, which made everything even more sensitive.
Ever since the Gulf War in 1990, the United States had become obsessively sensitive about energy security.
Reducing dependence on Middle Eastern oil had risen to the level of a core national security issue, and companies capable of increasing domestic crude production were treated as strategic assets.
The Garden Queens oil field, with an estimated reserve of 100 million barrels.
When I eventually brought that card to the market, what kind of ripple effect would it unleash?
I had to calculate and anticipate that with care.
And speaking of which, under the Chief of Staff’s name…
White House dinner invitations generally fell into three categories.
First, state dinners.
These were formal events for visiting heads of state or royalty, held under the highest dress code standards and attended by hundreds of distinguished guests.
Second, congressional dinners.
These were political gatherings where senators and representatives were invited for lobbying and negotiation to push legislation through.
Third, private dinners.
These were informal but strategic events that invited private power players—business leaders, philanthropists, and cultural figures.
If it came under the Chief of Staff’s name, it was probably the third.
That was why I judged that this wasn’t the White House calling me because it already knew something specific about me.
Private dinners are usually small, maybe ten or twenty people at most… so the atmosphere shouldn’t be too murderous.
It was a setting where one might get a direct chance to speak with the president.
You could ask about policy direction, sound out cooperation, and sometimes even work out unofficial deals.
In my previous life, as a fund manager at Black Diamond, I’d seen countless people invited to those kinds of gatherings.
And I’d also watched how the stocks of the companies they represented moved afterward.
After a White House dinner, their firms invariably won government contracts, benefited from regulatory easing, and rode political favor into rapid growth.
Of course, there were cases on the other side too.
Businessmen who refused the White House’s request, or failed to live up to expectations, were quietly forgotten and left to rot as yesterday’s news.
No—if all they became was quiet has-beens, they were lucky.
I knew all too well what happened when you made Washington your enemy: IRS audits, Federal Trade Commission antitrust investigations, Environmental Protection Agency crackdowns… I understood the consequences of that far too well.
For now, I’ll go, eat the meal, feel out the atmosphere naturally, and take only what benefits me.
In that sense, being a first-year university student, just barely an adult, was extremely useful.
It was an age where I could pretend to be a clueless kid—or act like a seasoned business partner who spoke the same language as everyone else.
Then—
“Boss?”
Caroline’s voice snapped me back.
“How should we handle the White House contact? They’re asking for a quick reply.”
“Ah, of course we should accept.”
“Yes! I’ll check the guest list and the dress code too. Is there anything special you’d like me to request?”
“No, I’ll take care of it.”
By then, we had reached the elevators.
Caroline stepped back after finishing her business.
With Victor and Caroline done, only…
“Let’s go up.”
“Yes, Chairman.”
Only my final private conversation with Ethan remained.
* * *
……Ding!
The elevator doors closed.
Just the two of us—Ethan and me—were headed up to the top floor of the former Black Vorg headquarters building.
“Chairman.”
Ethan spoke first.
“Go on.”
“Is it really all right to proceed like this? I mean developing an offshore field.”
His voice carried a heavy note of concern.
“The initial capital expenditure alone is at least 300 million dollars. Deep-sea drillship operations, BOP installation, riser system construction, subsea pipeline laying… Where are we supposed to raise that kind of money? Bank loans and outside investment will be difficult for Black Vorg in its current state.”
“……”
“I’ll be blunt. I’m a whistleblower. In this industry, I’m treated like a snitch. Who’s going to finance a company with me sitting in the CEO’s chair?”
Ethan gave a bitter smile.
“Investors are the same. Hedge funds, private equity—whatever the name, the thing they hate most is an unpredictable CEO. And who is more unpredictable than a whistleblower? Is there really anyone who would trust me with hundreds of millions of dollars?”
The label of whistleblower.
I knew exactly how heavy that shackle was.
In my previous life, I’d seen plenty of whistleblowers on Wall Street.
Most of them had raised their voices in the name of justice, only to be completely buried by the industry.
Traitor. Snitch. Untrustworthy. An uncontrollable time bomb…
No matter how justified their accusations were, the financial world never forgave them.
And Ethan would have to carry that label for the rest of his life.
But—
“We’re not raising offshore development funds from outside.”
“……Pardon?”
My answer made Ethan’s eyes widen.
I shrugged. “Once the Garden Queens onshore field goes into full production, it’ll generate over 100 million dollars in cash every month. At current oil prices, with a daily output of 50,000 barrels. We’re putting that money into offshore development. No bank loans. No outside investors. We’ll fund it ourselves. No need to worry about anyone else’s opinion.”
“But… a project of that scale, entirely with internal capital… is that really possible?”
“I’ll make the money. Ethan, all you need to do is make sure the project doesn’t stall.”
I went on, “The reason I asked you to take the CEO position isn’t so you can flatter Wall Street or bow your head in front of investors.”
“……”
“You’re one of the few people who recognized the value of offshore development, aren’t you?”
“!”
I waved the handful of documents in my hand.
///////
<Subsea Topography Map - Southern Waters off Long Island>
- Prepared by: Ethan Locke (Vice President, Black Vorg Energy Strategy)
- Target Area: 40 miles southeast of Garden Queens, depth 1,200m
- Estimated Reserve: 30 million bbl or more (conservative estimate)
- Estimated Value at the time’s oil price: Over 600 million dollars
- Note: Ignored after board submission
///////
I had obtained this map during the acquisition due diligence process.
Ethan was the man who had spent years trying to identify the locations of oil fields beneath the large river or seabed near Garden Queens, and working to develop them.
“Your technical team was incredibly capable, by the way.”
“That’s right. They’re the guys I used to drink with at that bar. Every one of them was seasoned by real field experience. I just compiled what they found.”
“Recognizing talent, placing it where it belongs, and earning people’s trust and loyalty—that’s the harder part. You’re one of the few people capable of doing that, Ethan.”
“Offshore drilling costs more than three times as much as onshore at the outset. In a deep-water field at 1,200 meters, just installing the BOP—the blowout preventer—costs over 20 million dollars, and building the riser system costs another 15 million. Drillship rental runs half a million dollars a day. Vanderbilt and his crowd hated risk. They only wanted what made guaranteed money. They squeezed existing fields, cut costs, delayed safety equipment investment…”
“I know. I know all of it. That’s exactly what led to the accident in Texas, isn’t it?”
“……Yes.”
“Black Vorg already has deep-sea drillships, underwater welding robots, and equipment for laying subsea pipelines. It would be a shame to use all that just to develop one small field in Garden Queens.”
“So what are you saying?”
I shared part of my future plan with Ethan.
“The 100-million-barrel field in Garden Queens is only the beginning. Starting there, I’m going to develop every inch of Texas—onshore and offshore—and dig out everything buried beneath it.”
“!”
“Go ahead and draw up your blueprint, Ethan. I’ll back you with everything I have.”
“Th-then the budget…”
“Unlimited. We’ve got plenty of gold bars sitting in bank vaults, so we’ll use those as collateral and take out low-interest loans. That way, the company keeps ownership of the bars, and for a trivial amount of interest, we gain the cash flow we need. Then once we pull crude out of the ground, we can use that as collateral for more loans, can’t we?”
A miracle of circular financing—possible only in a recession where credit had collapsed and only physical collateral still mattered.
At my words, Ethan’s fists trembled once at his sides.
“……I’ll make sure it succeeds. Chairman.”
“I’m counting on it.”
At the same time, the elevator opened.
Ethan stepped out and walked toward the Black Vorg CEO’s office.
And I followed one step behind him.
I didn’t know what Ethan saw when he looked at the CEO position of Black Vorg.
Dreams with his colleagues. His own ambition. The rush of having climbed to the highest seat in the organization…
But riding on his shoulders, I was looking farther and higher than that.
The Permian Basin in Texas, the Bakken Shale in North Dakota, Prudhoe Bay in Alaska, and countless offshore fields in the Gulf of Mexico…
Garden Queens was only one point among them.
From now on, I would develop every one of these underground resources, one by one.
Starting in Garden Queens, then Texas, Alaska, the Gulf of Mexico, and beyond that, the entire world.
And I would become a sovereign of underground resources greater than Rockefeller, who founded Standard Oil in the late nineteenth century and seized control of ninety percent of the American oil industry.
…Ah, but before that, there was something more important I had to do.
I checked my wristwatch.
It was almost time to have dinner with my family.
My mother had told me to buy eggs and tofu on the way home, so I should pick those up and head back.
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