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The Atlantis Variation: Difference between revisions
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Had it been implemented, this template would have addressed the financial, infrastructural and regulatory challenges which would dog the financial derivatives market in the early 21st century, eventually bringing to the brink of an abyss the rolling countryside of {{aies}} a verdant land in whose verdant folded hills, nooks and crannies peaceable, hobbity little [[First Men|swapsfolk]] had for generations made their comfortable nests. | Had it been implemented, this template would have addressed the financial, infrastructural and regulatory challenges which would dog the financial derivatives market in the early 21st century, eventually bringing to the brink of an abyss the rolling countryside of {{aies}} a verdant land in whose verdant folded hills, nooks and crannies peaceable, hobbity little [[First Men|swapsfolk]] had for generations made their comfortable nests. | ||
While they romped wealthily about their sun-drenched meadows, the ’08 would silently, effectively consolidate all documentation across a wide range of products and asset classes ([[including but not limited to]] [[repo]], [[stock lending]], [[prime brokerage]], [[exchange traded derivatives]], [[commodities]] and [[emissions]]), finally moving the financial world into a stable [[Utopia|utopian state]] in which all risks are known, all eventualities experienced and contingencies accounted for. ''[[Risk]]'' would finally be banished for ever. | |||
That was the theory: the reality was infinitely darker. | |||
The story’s deep unpopularity with critics and the wider public had something to do with a lack of major human characters. For this, Barkley was unrepentant. Asked why there was no hero or heroine, he replied, “because that would be colossal a failure of historiography. {{Br|The Atlantis Variation}} is set in a world, not unlike our own, in which humans are already irrelevant and are becoming downright annoying.” | |||
What little character arc there was took the shape of an awakening moral compass in the automated Bulgarian [[playbook]] as it nears the [[Singularity]]. Necessary plot exposition came about in turgid, implausible dialogue between two minor characters, [[credit officer]]s [[Dan Grade]] and [[May Cole]], for some reason portrayed as hairless, naked weaklings swimming in Swarfega, their extremities tethered by USB cables to a giant neural network, designed to systematically optimise available background neural processing capacity in their brains as they worked on the pro forma payee tax representations of the secret new agreement. | |||
As they dove feverishly into the weeds the project scope expanded — at first gradually; in the closing stages at breakneck pace — and in the final days — as per the warning of [[Pimco van der Sark]], ex-NASA and now a lexophysical engineer at the University of [[Bretton Woods]] — exceeded the [[Schwarzschild radius of document comprehension]] altogether. There was a sudden, catastrophic implosion, and everything associated with the project — all drafts, riders, boilerplate, annexes, schedules — and everyone — the firm {{ISDA}} engaged to “hold the pen” — a mysterious cyber law firm that spontaneously winked into existence when a document management system became self-aware<ref>The firm, [[Tubb Fuller Breaden Potter Bacon]], (known in its marketing literature as [[TFBPB]]) has never been heard of since, and curiously, no record now exists of this firm before 2008, even though it was apparently a global behemoth.</ref> — and several thousand members of ISDA’s document working group, seconded by their employers to contributing their “clarifications” and [[For the avoidance of doubt|doubt-avoidances]] for the greater good of the standard form, simply vanished into thin air. | As they dove feverishly into the weeds the project scope expanded — at first gradually; in the closing stages at breakneck pace — and in the final days — as per the warning of [[Pimco van der Sark]], ex-NASA and now a lexophysical engineer at the University of [[Bretton Woods]] — exceeded the [[Schwarzschild radius of document comprehension]] altogether. There was a sudden, catastrophic implosion, and everything associated with the project — all drafts, riders, boilerplate, annexes, schedules — and everyone — the firm {{ISDA}} engaged to “hold the pen” — a mysterious cyber law firm that spontaneously winked into existence when a document management system became self-aware<ref>The firm, [[Tubb Fuller Breaden Potter Bacon]], (known in its marketing literature as [[TFBPB]]) has never been heard of since, and curiously, no record now exists of this firm before 2008, even though it was apparently a global behemoth.</ref> — and several thousand members of ISDA’s document working group, seconded by their employers to contributing their “clarifications” and [[For the avoidance of doubt|doubt-avoidances]] for the greater good of the standard form, simply vanished into thin air. | ||