Staccato

Fates Entwined

~*~

It is either an eerie twist of fate by the Universe, with some vital purpose hidden under it, or it is pure coincidence, that Efrim turned out to be a prodigy in programming.

Because do you know who else began as a computer whizz-kid?

My own dad, Stephen Williams.

Almost fifty years ago, in the capital city of Kingston in Jamaica.

My dad is, however, the polar opposite of Efrim except for this one stark similarity that they both share - their genius in programming.

Because for starters, my dad's roots are extremely humble, unlike Ethan. He was born into a poor family that struggled to make two ends meet. And when he was in college, he dropped out because neither he nor my grandfather (who worked at a meat market) could support the fee.

Though he was never much of a religious person, he used to visit a Hindu temple in New Jersey during his days at Princeton University, just to sit there in the calming premises of the place, amid the trees and the nature, or as mom likes to interpret it as 'try to accidentally bump into me'.

My dad was already developing a new software during this time, a time when the technology of 'personal computers' was on the rise, when he met Paul Eliasson, another brilliant mind, though not in developing softwares or in programming, but in managing corporations like nobody's business. Eliasson is a Harvard business school graduate and was the CEO of a then major tech company called Volta, and with his help, my dad was able introduce in Volta his breakthrough invention - the operating system EXIM. EXIM later found its way to IBM too, and today, it is the OS that runs almost every computer in the world.

Eliasson, whose company made computers, televisions, refrigerators and practically any electronic item you could name, took my dad in as a partner. By then my dad was already making millions off of the patent he issued on EXIM.

In the year 1982, Volta changed its name to Astral, and a year later, it became a corporation. Today, it is a conglomerate and a leader in electronics, cloud computing, cognitive computing, information technology, jet propulsion, aerospace engineering, and clean energy - with its silicon and solar technology and wind energy technology. The transition from computing to aerospace engineering, liquid fuels and jet propulsion was only recent, with my dad's increasing interest in space research.

Brian Tyler, on the other hand, is your quintessential born-with-a-silver-spoon businessman.

His father, and that would be Efrim's grandfather Fred Tyler, had, years ago, been to Russia, and with the help of Stalin himself (and that meant huge aids and funds), established 'Rock Island Oil and Refining Company' in the year 1940, which was incorporated two years later, and came to be called by the name that all are familiar with today, as Tyler Industries, Inc.

And then came along Efrim's father, Brian Tyler, a chemical engineer and a product of Princeton University (just like my father), manning the corporation that was rapidly growing into an empire, from 1980 to the present day.

Tyler Inc rose from an establishment that focused on one type of product to the conglomerate that it is today - spanning from paper mills, to plastic and resin manufacturing, to pipeline transportation and natural gas, to general purpose machinery manufacturing, and it witnessed only insanely increasing growth under Brian Tyler's management. Today, it serves worldwide, employing around 100,000 people, with an estimated yearly revenue of 250 billion plus dollars.

So there you have it. The staggering wealth and scale of the empires our fathers built around them.

Both changing the world in two very different ways -

One, and that would be Paul Eliasson and my father's Astral Corp, changing the world for the better (and I do not say that simply because it is my dad's company) - with its tireless efforts and research on clean energy, with its tryst (and if you consider my dad, the obsession) with artificial intelligence and space exploration.

And the other, Tyler Inc, an aggressive exploiter of the Earth and her resources, forever coming up with the shrewdest ways by which they could hoodwink the laws and bend the lawmakers to their favour.

Here's how bad they are - the scientists working in the R&D section of Tyler Inc were the ones to find out even before NASA did about global warming, and how humans are directly responsible for it. But Tyler Inc chose to keep it under wraps and undermine the extent of pollution they were contributing to Earth as a company, and lie and conceal the facts concerning this to their investors, thereby wilfully misleading them, and not only did they stop there - they tried to spread false concepts regarding how global warming is untrue and unjustifiable. They have paid think tanks, schools and universities to subtly introduce this concept among the public, and that is why you have global warming naysayers today, whom I would put right along with idiot flat earth believers.

Of course this elaborate stunt couldn't have been kept a secret for too long; Inside Climate News and the Los Angeles Times did a little clandestine investigation on them, and then shit went down as they were exposed, with people tweeting #TylerKnew left right and centre, about the fact that they knew the truth about global warming even before NASA did and yet chose to keep their mouths shut, and on top of that, mislead their investors, and Tyler Inc got embroiled in one lawsuit and subpoenas after another, with the New York Attorney General Douglas Schultz refusing to ever stop harassing them. One may think that the 250 billion-earning Tyler Inc might not have much to fear from a bunch of flowerchildren and tree huggers (mostly democrats like my dad and Mr. Schultz, Efrim's dad would probably like to say, for he is a staunch Republican), but my dad says something about the general trend of crashing oil prices these days, coupled with President Obama's decision to cancel the consent for a huge pipeline project Tyler Inc had nice plans for (what with the recent Paris summit) - and looking at all this, my dad says, Tyler Inc might have it pretty bad if Mr. Schultz succeeds to fuck Tyler Inc up and down, because that'd end with them paying billions as compensation for carbon pollution and shutting down a few toxic units for good.

But sadly for Mr. Schultz, and for everyone else who vouches for justice, including my dad, that hasn't happened to this day, as Brian Tyler has his ass constantly saved by the sharpest and slickest lawyers from Paul Weiss, which is the best law firm to ever exist in New York.

Mr. Schultz visits our home often, and he and my dad sometimes sit discussing behind closed doors for hours on end. My dad spills some of the secrets to us (which aren't that sensitive) during our usual after-dinner family time, and that's how we know that Brian Tyler is going full throttle these days to end the menace that hounds him.

By trying to lobby Congressmen.

We wouldn't even have been so deeply troubled by all this, and my parents would have only been following the unfolding Tyler Inc fracas over the cable news and the newspapers. 

But we are troubled deeply by Tyler Inc, because we are entwined intimately with them.

Because of the one major mistake my dad did three years ago, when he caved in and listened to his partner and the Chairman of his company, Paul Eliasson, and fell for the tremendous inflow of equity that came with accepting Brian Tyler as the thirty percent shareholder of Astral Corp.

~*~