Krishna kumar Mani - SFS2 - Science Fiction Short Stories

During my time I came across a lot of founders who had ground breaking ideas. Some had excellent business plans. Some were environmental initiatives as well. But venture capital firms are only ready to fund based off of return on investment (ROI). So unfortunately I rejected a lot of great projects over time.

Even if they were going to invent a time machine, venture capitalists couldn’t care less. We’re not about advancing science. We’re about making money. If you don’t have a way to monetize it, you aren’t getting funded by us.

So you understand how funding works. Soon I forgot all my business school lessons. I understood that the new lessons from every day business were more important. I was a fast learner and I hardly made any mistakes until just recently.

After my eighth year with a stellar record, I got an offer from one of the top three internet companies. The benefits package and potential for bonuses were amazing. The salary wasn’t shabby either.

The position I was hired for is Product Acquisition Manager. Our average target is to acquire three potential companies per month. While some months we acquired only two, other months we would get four or even five. Finally at the end of the year we had acquired thirty-five companies. I was completely satisfied with my job. I’d changed the future of not only our company, but of every internet and mobile user as well.

After my first year, I got an attractive offer from a competitor company. They were only in the top ten, not the top three like my previous company but the salary and year-end bonus were almost double what I was making. I took it as a challenging task. I worked hard for six months and we acquired twenty companies. I was big competition to my previous company. Unfortunately, the money was drying up. My new company had poor brand management and the decisions of management were even worse.

Then without my involvement at all, management made a billion dollar deal. I looked at it and I could tell that it was a billion dollar mistake. But it wasn’t for the company’s growth. It was for the board member’s bank account’s growth. They cheated everyone who had invested. I’ve felt bad knowing that. And I’ve tried to do my best regardless of their corruption. Companies have contacted me for background on that acquisition deal since I had a decade of good deals behind me, but I simply tell them I wasn’t consulted.

One day I declined buying a mobile application startup that they valued at two million dollars. I didn’t think it was worth buying. It was a personalized mobile home screen application which shows related applications based on current time and place. Maybe it saves a few seconds or a minute worth of time per day. That is, if you were well organized and didn’t have many applications. I thought it was pretty useless to tell the truth.

Well, up until now I was the golden boy. But I wouldn’t be for much longer. After a couple days, my friend of a friend who works for another venture firm called and told me that the mobile application company was ready to pay 10% in cash if they were acquired. This is the first decision I made against my morals. But I figured if the management were in on the take, I was going to get my share as well. I talked up the mobile application company to management and they bought it. I got $200,000 in cash and immediately opened a foreign bank account to hold it.

After that, I started to do it more often. The friend of a friend got his cut and I got my larger share. He acted as my underground agent and I’ve made over $600,000 in the last four months alone. I wasn’t sure why I liked it. Maybe it was because management was so poor or there was little job satisfaction. I tried to reason with myself for whatever reason. I reasoned that the startups needed money and I was helping them. And that my company needed startups and I was helping them. But at the end of the day it was all to make me a little bit richer.

As I said before, luck plays a major role. All the talented people are not the winners. And all the winners are not talented people.

But I used my talent to fund some companies that I liked and also myself. I knew I was doing wrong, but my company was doing the same. If I don’t sound moral any more it’s because I’m not really the hero of the story. My focus is to get a few million and then retire. Well, maybe get a few million and then a few more million and then retire.

It came to a point where I was working on an acquisition deal for a virtual reality gaming setup. I gave an estimation of the maximum offer for seventy-five million dollars to my bosses, but opened the talks around forty-five million dollars. Management was ready to acquire. I knew the deal was genuine and worth acquiring so I didn’t think of a background deal. I only used background deals for non-potential companies.

Surprisingly I got a call from my friend of a friend. He said the virtual reality company is ready to talk business for one-hundred million and to give me ten percent. I thought that it was an amazing deal and that I would get ten million dollars in just one deal. I agreed with their offer and told management that I’d heard Microsoft planned to buy the company and that we should up our bid to a hundred million. Like always, management bit. The deal was completed but the VR company said that they’d give me cash only after the deal. Other than my first deal, all other deals I got were wire transferred to my Swiss bank account. I knew ten million was a huge amount so I hired a private detective agency to secure myself and monitor my home for a few days for safety reasons.

After the deal was completed, the Virtual Reality company invited me to a farm house. I went there with my handgun for safety. They first gave the commission to my agent. A suitcase. He opened it up and inside was a million dollars. They gave him the key, he locked it and took it and followed me into the next room when they brought me there. They gave me a key and a locked cart. They told me to open it, which I did.

That was the first time I had seen so much money. I randomly picked up a few bundles of cash and checked. I multiplied rows, columns and made sure the denominations were right. I concluded the trolley contained ten million dollars or so close that it wouldn’t make a difference. They helped me put the trolley into the backseat of my car and bid me good luck.

I drove away carefully. A few miles down the road I came upon a police checkpoint. They shined the light into my window and asked for my driver’s license, which I gave them without hesitation. They looked in the back and shined their light on the trolley but didn’t ask any questions. It seems like they were checking for drunk drivers. After running my license plate they let me go on my way.

I went to my house and pulled the trolley out of the car. The trolley was so heavy, but that was the weight of luxury. My security came with me and offered to help lift it but I rejected and wheeled it to my bedroom. I locked the house and even the bedroom. I then opened the trolley and took out the stacks of money. I set it on my bed and laid on it like I’d seen done in the movies. It wasn’t very comfortable but I felt like a millionaire. I saw myself in the mirror surrounded by money, money and money. I wanted to snap a picture and upload it to Facebook but I controlled that emotion really quickly. That would be the most dangerous thing I could do. So I packed it, locked it and put it beneath my bed. I didn’t fall asleep as I was watching TV and checking the trolley every ten minutes. I don’t know when I fell asleep but I woke up at 8 AM and panicked. I checked the trolley. It was in exactly the same place it had been.

I finished eating breakfast and once again wanted to see the money. This time in the daylight. I went to pull the heavy trolley from below the bed. It was weightless. I was shocked and checked the lock. It was locked as well. I searched for the key throughout the house to find it in my pocket. I opened the trolley. Empty. How? I felt crazy. I checked the locks on the house. Locked. Checked the security cameras, the detective agency, my agent, even the virtual reality company were no use. It seemed to be magic how I missed the ten million. My agent didn’t lose his money, it was only me.