Location: "Bernstein" Suite, Hôtel de Crillon, Place de la Concorde, Paris
Date: Night of January 2 to 3, 1990
Point of view: Omniscient (Focus on Lazare Bonaparte and Jerry Sanders)
The silence of the Bernstein Suite was broken only by the clatter of a pen tapping nervously on the mahogany wood and the quiet hum of secure telephone lines. Outside, beyond the thick double-glazed windows, the Place de la Concorde slept under the biting January frost. The Obelisk pointed to a starless sky, surrounded by the yellowish halos of Parisian street lamps.
But inside, the air was saturated with nervous electricity, a mixture of ozone, cooled black coffee, and the pungent smell of thermal paper escaping from a rented industrial fax machine.
Jerry Sanders, the flamboyant CEO of Advanced Micro Devices, was no longer the appeased guest who had enjoyed a grand cru at the Taillevent a few hours earlier. The adrenaline of the impending war had transformed him. He paced the vast living room with the step of a caged feline. He had thrown his silk jacket over a velvet armchair, rolled up the sleeves of his tailor-made shirt, and loosened his tie. In front of him, a huge topographical and economic map of the United States had been pinned to a heavy cork board brought by the hotel staff. The map was studded with red dots, representing the factories and headquarters of the American computer giants.
The pact of death had been sealed since the morning: each chip melted down by AMD would impose the VoltaOS operating system. Hardware and software were inseparable. The poison and the syringe. The only question that remained to be decided that night, the most crucial of all, was to know in which vein to inject it first to strike Silicon Valley before it could secrete its antibodies.
"My sales team is in the starting blocks, Lazarus," Sanders said, his voice vibrating with excitement, pointing his pen at the studded card." As soon as my jet lands in San Francisco tomorrow, I give the order for general mobilization. IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Compaq, Gateway and Tandy are contacted at the same time. Their purchasing directors are summoned. We put our bundle under their noses. The first to sign wins the bid, the others will follow for fear of missing the train. It's the gold rush, and we're the only ones selling shovels!"
Lazare Bonaparte, seated in a deep winged armchair with floral motifs, remained as immobile as a statue. His black eyes, unfathomable and ageless, stared at the map of the United States with the coldness of an imperial general preparing a campaign of annihilation. The twenty-three-year-old Frenchman did not share the euphoria of the sixty-year-old American. He knew too well the mechanics of monopolies.
"No," replied Lazare gently, his voice gliding through the silence of the room like a blade on velvet. A scattered attack is a weak attack.
Sanders stopped short. He frowned, mechanically crumpling a financial listing he held in his left hand.
"What do you mean, don't you?" the American almost took offense. That's the basic rule of the market, Lazarus! The watering can! The more manufacturers we have that release our chip at the same time, the more massive the impact. If you convince three or four major brands to adopt Volta at once, the consumer will have nowhere to run.
"That's the rule of a peacetime bargain, Jerry," corrected the former secret agent with chilling patience. But we are in total war against a hydra." If you go to see all the manufacturers at the same time, the industrial secret will be revealed in less than twenty-four hours. Do you think these purchasing managers are keeping secrets? They all play golf together. Andy Grove will know about it before you've even finished your tour."
Lazarus got up. His steps were silent on the thick Persian carpet. He approached the map, towering over Sanders not by size, but by an aura of absolute authority, forged in the DGSE's fiery years and the prescience of his previous life.
"Intel will instantly deploy its army of lawyers," Lazare continued. Grove will personally call each CEO. "He will threaten to cut off their supplies of 386 and 486 chips if they dare to sign with AMD. And what do you think will happen, Jerry? All these manufacturers will panic together. The pack effect will work against us. They will meet, discuss behind the scenes, and unanimously decide to delay the evaluation of our machine so as not to offend the master of Santa Clara.They will form a front of cowardice. Intel will have time to call the Pentagon, to get the Justice Department to intervene, and our offensive will get bogged down in a bureaucratic quagmire."
Sanders pursed his lips. The Frenchman's vision was cynical, dark, but frighteningly accurate. This was exactly how Intel had been managing its vassals for a decade. By collective terror.
"We're not going to give everyone the absolute weapon," Lazarus said, his finger resting on the North American continent. The epidemic needs a Patient Zero.
"A patient zero?" Sanders repeated, testing the expression.
"A single, massive, aggressive host," the Builder explained. "An assassin that we will arm to the teeth and unleash in the arena with total and indisputable exclusivity. A single company that will have the monopoly of the Volta miracle. When this Patient Zero starts slaughtering the market share of others, panic will take hold of the industry. Other manufacturers will realize that Intel is unable to protect them. They will then come and beg us on their knees to sell them our chip at any price."
Sanders remained silent for a long minute. His analytical mind, forged in patent wars, was digesting the psychological brutality of strategy. It was the deliberate creation of an artificial scarcity. An exclusivity that would make the competitors crazy with jealousy and terrified for their own survival. Rather than confront the entire industry, Lazarus proposed to fragment it by arming one of its own members.
"An icebreaker... murmured the American, a ferocious smile slowly stretching his wrinkled lips. A single bridgehead. I love it. It's pure vice. All right, Lazarus. Who do we choose to carry the infection?
Sanders stepped forward and pointed his red marker at the East Coast, on the New York State side.
"Let's start at the top. IBM? He is the undisputed king. Armonk is the center of gravity of the business world. If "Big Blue" adopts Volta, legitimacy is immediate. Banks, insurance companies, the government... everyone will follow.
"IBM is a corpse on borrowed time," Lazare slashed without an ounce of hesitation, brushing the behemoth aside with the back of his hand. He is a bureaucratic dinosaur mired in his own arrogance. It took them six months of meetings to validate the design of a screw. In addition, they are currently obsessed with their own closed architecture, the PS/2, and their OS/2 system that they are trying to develop with Microsoft. If they see our technology, they will try to steal from us. They will demand the source code of VoltaOS. They are too slow for a blitzkrieg. We forget.
Sanders nodded, crossing out IBM's red dot on the map.
"Hewlett-Packard, in California?"
"Too cautious." Too bourgeois. They are risk-averse in the consumer market and focus on their cash cows: printers and large enterprise servers. They will never have the audacity to stick a knife in Intel's back overnight.
Sanders' finger slid south, crossing the Great Plains to rest on Texas.
"Then we have the wolves of the South," said the American, his eyes shining. "I know a kid in Austin. Michael Dell. He founded his company in his student room just a few years ago. He died of hunger, his teeth scratch the floor, and he sells directly to slash all the prices. If he gets the opportunity to kill IBM, he'll sign with his own blood."
Lazarus looked at the landmark in the city of Austin. His memory of the future was activated. He knew that by the end of the 90s, Michael Dell would become the absolute titan of the industry, the master of the global supply chain. But in January 1990, the reality was different.
"Dell is promising," the Builder admitted, measuring his words. "He's a killer. But it doesn't yet have what we desperately need for our first strike: a physical distribution network. He sells by catalogue and by telephone. For the devastating psychological impact I want to unleash in the spring, a catalogue is not enough. The public needs to see our machines. People need to touch them, and VoltaOS's graphical interface needs to shine in the windows."
Lazarus' finger fell precisely on the map, a few hundred miles east of Austin, on the sprawling city of Houston.
"There is our guest," said Lazarus, in a voice without appeal. Compaq Computer Corporation.
Sanders widened his eyes, the marker hanging in the air, then nodded with deep respect for his young partner's analysis.
— Rod Canion and Eckhard Pfeiffer... whispered the CEO of AMD, referring to the founders of the company. The kings of the clone.
"Exactly," confirmed Lazarus. "They were the first to legally reverse engineer IBM's PC in the 80s. They have no respect for the East Coast aristocracy. They are aggressive, they are swimming in billions in cash, and above all, they have the largest dealer network in the country. If Compaq decides to push a product, every computer store in America, every branch of ComputerLand and Sears, will put it at the top of the list."
"They're at the height of their glory," Sanders added, his mind seething. "But they know that IBM wants to kill them with the PS/2, and they feel Dell's breath in the back of their necks. They are desperately looking for the weapon that will guarantee them dominance for the next decade. They want to free themselves from the dependence on Intel that restricts them."
"We will bring them this weapon," said Lazarus. The world exclusive of the fastest processor in human history and the only operating system capable of exploiting it.
Lazarus returned to the coffee table, which was covered with files. He grabbed a notepad with a gilded Crillon letterhead and uncorked his silver fountain pen. The time had come to dictate the temporality of the war. He never left anything to chance; in the mind of the former secret agent, each date was a nail in the coffin of Silicon Valley, each deadline a weapon of psychological pressure.
"Listen to me, Jerry, for that is exactly what you are going to tell them tomorrow," Lazare ordered. You land, you convene Compaq's board of directors in Houston, and you put the deal in their hands. You offer them the absolute exclusivity of the North American launch of the AMD-Volta V-1 architecture. But this exclusivity is not a gift. It is accompanied by a military ultimatum.
Lazarus drew a long straight line on the wove paper, marking the beginning of the year.
"The lithographic engraving masks are arriving at your premises in Texas today, thanks to the diplomatic bag. Tomorrow morning, January 4th, your foundries in Austin will begin mass printing. You're a little less than a month old, Jerry. On February 1, 1990, at midnight sharp, you must deliver this first batch of one hundred thousand chips and encrypted motherboards to Compaq's assembly plants.
Sanders swallowed his saliva with difficulty. The deadline was brutal. Producing a hundred thousand chips of this complexity in less than four weeks was industrial magic, but he knew that his engineers, whipped by the instinct for survival, would succeed.
"From that date," said Lazare, marking a large red dot on his timeline, "Compaq has exactly seventy-five days. Seventy-five days to design the chassis, integrate our boards, test the power supplies, check the monitors, and pack the finished machines. Seventy-five days to build up a blind reserve stock of two hundred thousand units spread across their warehouses across the country. It's a hellish pace for them. They will have to put their assembly lines under martial law."
"And the launch date?" Sanders asked, his heart rate racing, sweat beading on his forehead despite the freshness of the sequel. "When do we unleash hell?"
"Monday, April 16, 1990," announced Lazare, his voice metallic, irrevocable.
Sanders held his breath. He knew this date by heart.
— On the opening day of the COMDEX trade show in Chicago... murmured the American.
"Yes." The day Andy Grove planned to announce that his 486 is the absolute master of the world. The day Bill Gates introduces Windows 3.0 with the arrogance of a Roman emperor.
Lazarus leaned forward, his black eyes plunging into the American's soul, probing his determination.
"Here's the cleaver, Jerry. This is the performance clause of our contract. You will inform Compaq management that on April 16, the precise time when Grove and Gates will take the stage to open the show, their machines equipped with our system must be physically available for sale in all electronics stores in the country. I don't want a glossy ad. I don't want any loose pre-orders or promises of summer delivery. I want a massive, immediate, simultaneous hardware launch.
Sanders sat heavily on the edge of the couch, stunned by the logistical violence of the demand.
"It's a hostage-taking, Lazare!" he exclaimed, half frightened, half fascinated. If one of their Taiwanese subcontractors falls behind on the plastic injection of the housings, or if a snowstorm blocks their trucks, they miss the window of opportunity!
"It's the price of sovereignty," said the Frenchman, insensitive to climatic or industrial hazards. Absolute power does not suffer from any delay. And you'll add this, Jerry. Listen carefully.
Lazarus pointed his pen at him like a bladed weapon.
"If they postpone the launch by a single day..." If they get scared of Intel's threats at the last minute. If they decide to delay the release of our machine to sell off their old stocks of DOS computers or to protect their good relations with Microsoft... the contract is null and void at the very second. If they fail, we immediately seize the following shipments at your Austin plants, and give them to Michael Dell at a thirty percent discount.
Sanders let out a nervous, jerky, almost jubilant laugh. Lazare Bonaparte's contract engineering was an absolute masterpiece of corporatist sadism. He offered Compaq the nuclear weapon that would guarantee them empire, but at the same time he put a gun to their head to force them to press the button at the desired second. The visceral terror of seeing their worst enemy, Dell, inherit this technology would force them to stick to the schedule, no matter what it takes. They would burn their own factories rather than cede Volta exclusivity to the competition.
"It's the mechanics of inverted terror," Sanders theorized, amazed. "Andy Grove terrorizes them with a stick so that they don't move. We are going to terrorize them with a mountain of gold to attack. I know Eckhard Pfeiffer at Compaq. He is a mercenary, a killer in a three-piece suit. When he sees the performance of the OS on our silicon, and when he understands the deadly threat of the "Dell clause", he will put his workers to work day and night. They will be ready for April 16th."
"Perfect," concluded Lazare, closing his fountain pen with a sharp click. The calendar is locked. The host is chosen. Compaq will be our vector of infection.
Lazare looked at the American business leader, a man thirty years his senior who, in a few hours, was preparing to become the general-in-chief of his armies across the Atlantic. The deployment strategy, the choice of the partner and the execution deadlines were definitively decided. The armada was ready to set sail.
But before letting Sanders leave to confront the lords of American computing, the Builder had one last requirement. A requirement that had nothing to do with silicon lithography yields, code lines, or delivery truck logistics.
It was a condition that was purely a matter of ego, symbolic perception, and the psychological domination of the crowds. Lazarus was not only fighting to destroy Silicon Valley's monopoly on balance sheets; he was fighting to make history, to imprint French sovereignty on the world's collective unconscious.
The former DGSE agent walked around the coffee table, approached his dark jacket still on the chair, and slipped his hand into the inside pocket.
"We have one last detail to sort out, Jerry," Lazarus announced softly, turning around, holding a small envelope of wove paper between his long, pale fingers. The ultimate detail. The one that will guarantee that, in ten years' time, no one on this planet will have forgotten who the world belongs to.
Location: "Bernstein" Suite, Hôtel de Crillon, Place de la Concorde, Paris
Date: Night of January 2 to 3, 1990
Point of view: Omniscient (Focus on Lazare Bonaparte and Jerry Sanders)
The young CEO of Volta S.A. approached the coffee table cluttered with financial reports. With a slow and measured gesture, Lazarus tilted the small envelope of wove paper and slid its contents onto the dark leather of the desk pad.
Jerry Sanders leaned forward.
He expected to see a floppy disk of encryption codes, a revolutionary micro-component, or perhaps the key to an offshore bank account. He was deeply disconcerted.
It was a simple adhesive sticker. A square of polymer in a matte black, the size of a postage stamp.
But under the warm light of the suite's crystal chandelier, the vignette came to life. In the center of the dark square, a stylized flash of lightning forming a geometric "V" reflected powerful holographic silver reflections. Under this futuristic coat of arms, inscribed in letters of martial and imperious elegance, was a short sentence: Powered by Volta.
Sanders frowned, grabbing the small piece of plastic between his thumb and forefinger. He had it performed under the light.
"What's that?" asked the American, confusion tinting his voice. A label? We are about to sign a contract worth hundreds of millions of dollars that will reconfigure the world economy. We're not in the business of selling fruit and vegetables, Lazare.
"It is our seal, Jerry," replied Lazarus, his tone devoid of any irony. And that's my final marketing condition. Non-negotiable.
Lazare stared at the American with an intensity that seemed to absorb all the light in the room.
"Listen to me, Jerry. Tomorrow, when you put the knife to the throat of the Compaq board of directors, they will finally give in. They will accept our chips, they will accept our operating system, and they will accept our schedule. They will build the machines. And then... They will spend tens of millions of dollars on television advertising to make the whole world believe that it was their Texan genius who created this revolutionary computer. They will put the Compaq logo in huge form on the boxes, and they will try to make us forget."
The Builder placed an authoritative index finger on the table, pointing to the thumbnail between Sanders' fingers.
"I refuse to be the invisible cog in their success. I refuse to be a subcontractor in the shadows, hidden under a beige plastic hood, while an American company appropriates the prestige of my technology. I refuse to allow Volta to be the servant of Silicon Valley."
Sanders put the thumbnail back on the desk. He was beginning to understand what the Frenchman was getting at, and the audacity of the step left him speechless.
"Every computer assembled by Compaq," Lazare said in a cutting voice, "and later, every computer assembled by Dell, HP or IBM if they decide to submit..." will have to display this holographic seal on the façade of its chassis. Not in the back, not underneath. Right next to the keyboard. In front of the user's eyes."
"Lazarus, that's madness," Sanders said, shaking his head. "Manufacturers will hate it. Rod Canion and Eckhard Pfeiffer protect the Compaq brand like wolves protect their pack. Their chassis is their sovereign territory. They'll never want to share the visual spotlight with an internal component. It's an insult to their ego!"
"The ego is a luxury that only those who are not threatened with bankruptcy can afford," Lazare retorted, brushing aside the objection with the cold cynicism of a military strategist. If they refuse the label, they refuse the contract. They'll hate sharing the front of their machine, yes. But they will hate to see Michael Dell display this seal and take the crown from them.
The former DGSE agent leaned against the marble fireplace. His prescience, his memories of the future and the "Intel Inside" campaign that should have seen the light of day a few years later, guided his strategy. He was not only going to copy Grove's marketing genius, he was going to sublimate it and impose it by brute force.
"That seal is not a decoration, Jerry. It's psychological conditioning. This is the label of absolute power. I want every time an accountant on Wall Street, a secretary in Ohio, or a student in California puts his hands on his keyboard, the holographic flash catches his eye. I want to create a Pavlovian reflex in the brain of the planet: if the machine doesn't have the Powered by Volta seal, it's because it's an antique. A harmless toy."
Sanders remained silent. The air in the Bernstein suite seemed to have suddenly become thinner.
He looked at the young man in the dark suit. Lazarus did not sell technology. He was selling an ideology. He sold the certainty that the machine no longer belonged to the person who assembled the sheet metal, but to the person who breathed life into it.
"We're going to short-circuit them," Sanders whispered, his eyes riveted on the small holographic square.
"Exactly," confirmed Lazarus. We're going to talk directly to the consumer's brain. Soon, people will no longer walk into a store asking, "Do you have the latest Compaq?" or "Do you have the new Dell?" They will come in and ask, "Do you have a Volta machine?" Manufacturers will be nothing more than vulgar interchangeable coachbuilders. We will be the engine, the fuel and the brain. We are going to vassalize them publicly.
The AMD CEO let out a long, shaky breath. He had just measured the depth of the abyss into which Lazare Bonaparte was preparing to plunge the American computer industry. The humiliation would not only be financial for Intel and Microsoft. It would be total, visible on every desk in the Western world. The French seal would mark the end of the independence of the American giants.
A broad smile, an absolute predator's grin, suddenly tore through Jerry Sanders' tired face.
— Powered by Volta... repeated the American, savoring the syllables like a great wine. It's brilliant, Lazarus. It's monstrously arrogant, and it's absolutely brilliant. It was the public admission of their defeat even before the first round. You force them to bear the mark of their own submission.
Sanders stepped forward, picked up the holographic vignette with newfound delicacy, and carefully slipped it into the inside pocket of his shirt, close to his heart.
"I'm taking the first flight to Houston tomorrow morning," Sanders said, his eyes ablaze with the prospect of the coming carnage. Eckhard Pfeiffer will have the contract on his desk. The seventy-five-day ultimatum, the mandatory bundle with the OS, and the etiquette clause. If he hesitates for more than ten seconds, I get up and call Dell from his own desk.
"He will not hesitate," assured Lazarus. The fear of heights is the most powerful of all engines.
Jerry Sanders put on his suit jacket, buttoned up his waistcoat, and readjusted his silk tie. The old marketing king of Silicon Valley, who thought he had come to France to save his own skin, returned to America as the herald of the apocalypse.
He held out his hand to Lazarus.
— On the 16th of April, Lazarus. At COMDEX.
Lazare Bonaparte seized the American's hand. The grip of the twenty-three-year-old engineer was that of a man who already held the world in his palms.
"Good flight, Jerry. Spring will be ours.
Sanders left the Bernstein suite without another word, letting the heavy door close in a muffled hiss.
Left alone in the vast deserted living room, in the middle of the cards riddled with tacks and the war listings, Lazare Bonaparte approached the huge bay window.
Below, the Place de la Concorde was slowly waking up under the first pale light of winter dawn. Paris was shivering.
The former agent of the DGSE's Action Service thought back to the Bali attack. To the warmth of the flames, to the smell of his adopted daughter's blood, to the chaos of the digitized world he had left behind in 2026. America had created this chaos out of greed and lack of vision. It had let its algorithms devour humanity to sell advertising.
Lazarus rested his palm against the cold window.
They won't have it, the Builder thought with a certainty of steel. This time, the foundations belong to me. And no one will cross my walls.
The assault on Silicon Valley was underway, and the world of technology was going to wake up, in a few months, under a silicon sky in the colors of Volta.