Social Network (3)
David looked surprised.
“I agree that there are vulnerabilities in FaceNote’s business model. But you’re saying you want to short all of your assets, even though we don’t know whether Enple will actually impose sanctions, or when it might do so?”
“That’s exactly why we’re only shorting. If I knew for certain, I’d have gone after options first.”
There was no guarantee that everything ahead would unfold exactly as I remembered it from the future. From here on out, I needed to manage risk to some degree.
I told David, “Well, how much higher can FaceNote really go from here? On the other hand, there are plenty of reasons for it to fall. Shorting it is the rational move, don’t you think? Let’s try it first, and if the loss exceeds 30 percent, we’ll stop.”
After a moment’s thought, David nodded.
“Understood. We’ll proceed that way.”
I stayed at the hotel and went to Continue Capital HQ every day.
Walking down Wall Street in a suit and overcoat, going to work every morning, it almost felt like I’d just started a new job. For some reason, it also reminded me of my days as a rookie at DA Securities.
David told me I could use the CEO’s office, but I said I’d just take any empty desk.
I sat down by the window.
If I lifted my head, I could see the office stretching out before me, and outside the glass, Wall Street lay spread below.
That was more than enough to count as the best seat in the house.
The first thing I did was write an internal report on FaceNote. The reason I was bothering with it at all was to leave a paper trail for the short position.
Recalling the mindset I’d had back when I was an RA, I laid out FaceNote’s various problems one by one in meticulous detail.
I was deep in the work when someone came up beside me and held out a paper cup.
“Have this while you work.”
I turned my head.
He looked to be in his mid-thirties, a white man with curly hair and glasses. He had the kind of face that practically screamed that he was a straight-A student.
Smiling, he said, “I heard you mostly drink Americano. Is that right?”
“Yes.”
“I’m glad.”
“Though I usually drink iced coffee.”
You know, ice forever.
He jumped, flustered.
“Ah! I’ll switch it right away.”
“It’s fine. I appreciate it.”
He bowed his head. “Sorry, I should have introduced myself sooner. My name is Joseph Klein. If there’s anything you need or any work you want done, just tell me.”
“Ah, yes.”
David had said he’d assign someone to help me, and this must have been that person.
He looked like he wanted to keep talking, so I asked him a question.
“How long have you been at Continue Capital?”
“This is my second month. I transferred from my previous firm.”
“Really? Where did you work before?”
“I spent five years at Goldman Sachs as a derivatives trader.”
I thought for a moment, then asked, “Did they pay you more here?”
“No. The salary is about the same.”
“Then why bother changing firms?”
“Because I fell in love with Continue Capital’s investment style. Ever since Thomas Motors, I’d wanted to work here someday. When I told people I was transferring, even the other employees said they were jealous.”
His face and tone were full of respect.
Since he was older than me and had been in the business longer, it was a little awkward.
I remembered the stock-market maxim Senior Dongho had once taught me.
If you make money, you’re the hyung. Always.
Really, what did age or seniority matter?
“I watched your GL Chemical and GL Entech investments with my heart in my throat. When you sold on options expiration day and the profits came in, everyone applauded.”
“Wasn’t it the middle of the night here?”
“Nobody went home. There was no way we could miss a scene like that.”
“I see.”
Well, if I’d been there, I probably would’ve stayed too.
His eyes shone as he said, “Please teach me as much as you can.”
“Sure.”
He was intense about learning.
Though I wasn’t sure there was much I could teach him.
I handed him the list of items from the report I was drafting.
“By tomorrow, find articles and supporting materials on the issues I pointed out and organize them. It’s fine if they’re unclear or unproven—just find as much as you can.”
“Even if they’re not fully verified?”
“Yes. It’s an internal report, so only a few people will see it. Even things people posted online are fine. Ah—and don’t tell anyone else. Do it alone.”
At my instruction, he answered briskly, “Understood.”
The next day, Joseph brought me a finished report.
As I read through it, he waited nervously for my reaction, like I used to when I’d submit a report to my manager back in the day.
But damn, it was good.
Goldman Sachs, huh.
Seeing this made me realize just how much garbage I’d been writing all this time.
“This is good. Well done.”
Joseph looked delighted at my words.
“Thank you.”
“From now on, don’t do anything else. Just find the materials I mention, organize them, and send them to me.”
“Understood.”
I organized the report first and uploaded it to our private cloud.
For reference, Continue Capital used Snow Crash’s fast and highly stable enterprise cloud service.
Then I looked over the materials from Link Labs.
“We absolutely have to acquire this company, but…”
Maybe a few years from now it would be different, but at this point in time, there was no chance of winning an acquisition war against FaceNote.
The best outcome would be for FaceNote to develop problems of its own and fall apart without any help from us.
Enple’s user-tracking ban would definitely hit FaceNote hard. After the actual measure was announced, the stock dropped by more than 10 percent.
At present, the U.S. digital advertising market was worth $110 billion. That was twice the size of TV advertising.
And while TV ad revenue was shrinking, the digital ad market was growing by double digits every year.
The leaders in that market were FaceNote, and then Guble.
But Enple was also eyeing the space, which was why it placed limits on FaceNote’s collection of personal data.
Afraid that ad revenue would fall, FaceNote pushed back hard, but after that Guble took the same measure too.
The problem was that none of this was enough to shake CEO Goldenberg’s determination to buy Link Labs.
No, if anything, the incident only made him more determined.
He believed that only by securing VR technology on top of social media could he truly compete with the platform companies.
“Honestly, we really need an internal whistleblower to blow the lid off this…”
I had a rough idea of what the accusations were, so I could have written the report myself and launched a direct attack.
But the problem was that the contents weren’t some impossible secret nobody had ever heard of.
Once people actually heard them, they’d just think, Oh, so that’s what it was. I knew those bastards were up to something. There had already been plenty of papers and articles on the subject.
In the end, without solid proof, it would be hard to do real damage.
So how was I supposed to draw out FaceNote’s whistleblower?
I thought about it hard, but no good answer came to me.
Truthfully, it wasn’t even the kind of problem I could solve just by worrying over it. For now, all I could do was wait.
Over the next few days, while I went to work and handled my tasks, Continue Capital quietly began shorting FaceNote.
$42 billion.
That was more than 45 trillion won.
Normally, a short position that size should’ve rattled the stock. But FaceNote’s market cap was $1 trillion.
A mere $42 billion in shorts barely made a dent.
In fact, because the Nasdaq was climbing, the stock even edged up slightly despite the short pressure.
I hadn’t done anything especially notable, but time passed quickly, and before I knew it, it was already time to leave work.
I stood up without worrying about how it looked.
I was the CEO—whose approval did I need?
“I’m heading out first. See you tomorrow.”
I met Trish at a café nearby.
She was dressed as always: jeans, a T-shirt, and sneakers. She still looked like a college student.
“Have you been waiting long?”
“No.”
“Come on, let’s go get dinner.”
It was nice to have a friend to eat with in a foreign land.
I headed to a nearby restaurant with Trish.
Tonight’s menu was Mexican food.
“I’m not wasting your time, am I?”
“What are you talking about? Next time I go to Korea, Miru, you can show me around.”
I tilted my head.
“Will you even have a reason to come to Korea?”
She looked a little flustered at my question.
“I-I could go as a correspondent later.”
“Would a local internet paper even send correspondents?”
“O-of course! WST is getting bigger and bigger. Someday we’ll have correspondents all over the world.”
The odds were slim, but I nodded.
Anyone was allowed to have hope.
After dinner, Trish took me to a pub she said she frequented.
In the quiet basement bar, young men and women were drinking and talking over the soft music. When we walked in, a man in his thirties behind the counter greeted her warmly.
“Hey, Trish.”
“Hi, Tommy.”
“How was your day?”
“Same as always.”
“The usual?”
Trish held up two fingers, and the bartender extended a hand to me.
“Nice to meet you. I’m Thomas Mayners. Just call me Tommy.”
“Nice to meet you. I’m Han Miru.”
That easy familiarity with strangers was a very American thing.
We took our beers and sat down.
Looking around the pub, I said, “This is nice.”
“Right? It’s one of my favorite places in New York. If I don’t feel like going straight home after work, I come here for a drink.”
“It feels a lot like that sitcom I used to watch. You know, the one about young men and women in New York always meeting at a pub like this, laughing and chatting every episode. The main character was a writer, and one of his friends worked at an IT company.”
Trish brightened.
“Oh! I love that sitcom. You watched it too, Miru?”
“Of course. It ended with the main character getting married, didn’t it? Still, I’m glad he found true love in the end.”
She looked at me, puzzled.
“Huh? It ended? It should still be in season 6.”
“Ah…”
Then they hadn’t revealed who he ended up marrying yet.
I said smoothly, “Oh, right. I must’ve mixed it up with another show.”
“Pfft, what are you talking about? Who do you think the main character will marry, Shirley or Yena?”
“……”
Nope, neither.
The guy actually married the woman introduced in season 9.
“Wait, who was Yena again?”
Surely not the daughter of Seongjeong, right?
“Yekaterina. The others all call her Yena.”
“Ah, right.”
We clinked our glasses.
“How was work today? Did your reporting go well?”
Trish leaned back against the table, looking exhausted.
“No. I spent the whole day glued to my monitor, reviewing tips that came in.”
WST had grown from a local internet news site into a national-level financial outlet. Thanks to that, tips were pouring in from all over the United States.
“Do you have any good leads?”
“Most of them are useless.”
Filtering out the few useful tips from the countless useless ones was part of a reporter’s job.
“What kind of stuff?”
“Well, things like a woman next door eating three whole pizzas in one sitting, so she must be an alien; or spotting a UFO on the mountain behind my house; or vaccines putting a berry chip in your body; or the Democratic Party running an organized election fraud scheme in the midterms…”
There really were all kinds of tips coming in.
“Wouldn’t the UFO on the mountain be worth looking into?”
“There’s more than that.”
Trish kept talking as she drank.
“A ghost ship while out fishing, or the cat next door having six kittens, or somebody insisting their son is a genius, or an octopus at the aquarium correctly predicting the Super Bowl winner, or a famous male actor having done gay porn in the past, or FaceNote encouraging hatred…”
At that, I was taken aback.
“Wait! Hold on. What did you just say?”
Trish stared at me, eyes wide.
“Huh? Gay porn? D-don’t tell me you’re into that?”
“No, no.”
If it had just been porn, maybe. But gay porn? Why on earth would I be interested in that?
What kind of pointless misunderstanding was this?
“Not that part. The last one.”
“FaceNote?”
“Yeah. That.”
Trish made a face like she was trying to recall something.
“It was an anonymous tip. What was it again? Something about FaceNote’s AI algorithm being designed to provoke anger and hatred, and encouraging all kinds of crimes, even war and massacres.”
“……”
Why was that here?
What she was describing was the FaceNote whistleblower incident from my first life.
An anonymous insider had tipped off Jane Ganitor, a famous reporter at WSJ, and WSJ had launched a full-scale investigative report.
But this time, it had been sent to WST?
I could guess the reason well enough.
Over the past year, Trish O’Connor had broken a number of major stories exposing the rot and corruption of famous corporations.
If you were the kind of person looking to expose corporate wrongdoing, would there be many journalists more trustworthy than her?
“Huh…”
I looked at Trish and thought,
So it connects like that?
It looks like all that effort I put into raising her paid off.