The ISDA Protocol
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The Adventures of Opco Boone, Legal Ace™
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Background
When they signed the armistice the remaining banking superpowers resolved that never again would they engage in such futile destructive behaviour.
By BCB accord, use of FWMDs was forever banned, the superpowers agreeing, by conference at Bretton Woods, to create a multi-partite peacekeeping force with wide-ranging powers of inspection. Peacetime use of controlled derivative devices to power and heat for the world’s financial markets was, of course, permitted, but a pan-global regulatory force could inspect at any time.
Meanwhile, the BCBH established five-sigma exclusion zones around the still-smouldering ruins left over from the great financial war, while massive IOSCO transport helicopters flew continuous missions over the “Lehman sarcophagus,” dumping gigatons of flame-retardant liquidity upon it and similar sites for years after the armistice.
Gradually, the financial world returned to stability and progress. The were, of course, flare-ups: no one expected a hiccup during routine testing at the massive BBA-LIBOR facilities in E14 in 2010 to cause a reactor meltdown, but the chain-reaction was swift and before it could be brought under control the gigantic IRS generators that powered much of London were knocked out for months. By the time the situation finally normalised, there had been significant casualties: not least when a transporter carrying upper management team ran out of plausibility and crash-landed on the very building housing the BOE’s crisis headquarters. The crash site was swiftly isolated and neutralised with credibility derivatives.
Interlude - the Rake’s Progress of Private Melvin, part 1: The crooked E. The Early interaction with Graeber, whom Melvin bullies.
The Baker Street shakedown
Graeber is sitting in a squad-car waiting for his partner to return with coffee. An APB comes across the wireless about a cache of FWMDs in a grey car in the Baker Street area. At that moment a grey GMRA sedan runs a red light and Graeber knows he’s got his man. He pulls it over, demands to see in the trunk, and finds ... nothing. He shakes down the driver and his VIP passenger, with a 92 LFC in the solar plexus and demands to strip search the whole car. He rousts the trunk, throwing stuff into the street, then opens the back door and — there is this androgynous, youthful, dolphin-like being — Graeber is smitten, and is stammering an apology when his partner, Officer Melvin R Melvin, arrives with the coffees and donuts, horrified and recognises that the VIP is none other than Julian Wickliffe, chairman of the WHAMDAQ and politically connected guy. He quickly lets the car go, apologising profusely. Wickliffe is complementary about him as he goes, to his great relief.
If course the dolphin is/is concealing the weapons cache
They return to base, Melvin warning Graeber he had better prepare himself for a bollocking.
The Vega den
Across the squad room, Boone hears the group commander’s booming voice.
“GRAEBERRRRRR!”
Opco leaves for an investigation.
Boone follows lead [NEEDS EVENT] that takes him undercover and into a “Vega Dens”, where supposedly legal synthetic alpha generators operate. underground clubs in London’s West End.
The Vega dealer, or “prime”, skims cash “commission” from clients but never partakes in its own product. “It’s just business.”
Not wanting to blow his cover, Boone accepts the offer of an alpha tray. It is served by a beautiful, otherworldly child. The child seems curiously unengaged. Dissociated. Boone goes to ask the child for more information but as it does the alpha takes hold and Boone falls deep into the well.
As Boone sleeps, The Romanian enters his chamber and arranges compromising pictures with the youth, then says, allright, Signa, get this schmuck out of here.
Boone wakes up in a strange room, realises he is late for an all hands meeting at the office and makes haste back to the office.
The desk job
Meanwhile things slowly turned to normal for commando Opco Boone of the I.S.D.A.’s crack drafting squad.
Though still shell-shocked, he has a desk job now as a once promising career ran stale and drifted into dead end — netting compliance — but he quietly bridles at the timidity of his role, the department, and the uneasy peace of the post-crisis world. His hand still shakes and he has PTSD whenever anyone says “margin”.
His coo asks for his report. He follows him into the office and lays it down: unkempt, stuffed with scraps of paper, scrawled notes, faxed sheets.
Opco is following a series of odd coincidences which are turning him to a view that mysterious forces are gathering in the shadows, and is privately collecting evidence to assemble a theory and back his theory up. The Vega Dens of Soho are building up odd concentrations of correlation.
That is what you would expect, in Vega addicts, but Boone believes the dealers are getting correlated.
They point to the committees, models, and risk monitoring devices His nemesis in this theory is his commanding officer, Sir Stuart Palmer Jenkins, who encourages the team to embrace the technological devices and process that will replace seat-of-the-pants old style policing. Chatbots, Google glass, distributed ledgers, even though he is not really sure what any of those things are. He has a gift for the acronym, and a well developed sense of bluff. COO cautions him to stick to his remit. “Look after the pounds and the pennies take care of themselves.”
“But — ”
“I know, Opco, but that is not in within our mandate.”
“But — ”
“Opco.” A stridency, now, to her voice. Impatience. Dislike, even.
Opco gets up to go.
“Oh, one more thing. We have a new recruits into the department. I’d like you to be his buddy. Help him get acclimatised, oriented.
“since when did we have headcount?
“We don’t. It’s a secondment from the traffic unit.
“Who is it?”
The coo shuffled her papers awkwardly.
“Who?”
“It’s Graeber.”
Oh Jesus F. Christ! Why me?
“Get your account reconciliations in, Boone. We need them by Friday. You don’t want another disciplinary. Graeber can help you.
“Fat lot of good he’ll be.”
Boone meets with Graeber, and explains the role. Netting compliance. Suggests he start with something easy like Luxembourg.
Palmer-Jenkins, who is a drill-sergeant, police captain from central casting, dresses Boone down and assigns Kommandant Kurzweil of the Double-O unit to manage and supervise Eagle Squad. Anxious to avoid the kind of disruption or embarrassment that loose cannons might yield while the World Regulator Business Day Convention is in town, Palmer assigns Boone and weirdo and conspiracy theorist Officer Graeber to netting detail and put on the Belgian beat. “See if you two can’t stay out of trouble rousting Belgian avocats for a week.
As Palmer’s bad luck would have it, L’Hôtel des Grandes Moules Frites in Rue John F Kennedy in La Quartier Belgique happens to be hosting the Business Day Convention.
Boone and Graeber promenade about the Manneken Pis, Graeber harping on about his absurd (but consistently prescient) conspiracy theories, based on what he saw in Baker Street.
The pair shake down a Luxembourg netting counsel, who babbles insouciantly about aleatory contracts and is just about to launch into a lengthy description of what a company isn’t when, they are distracted by the VIPs and motorcades rolling up to the conference. Graeber spots the grey sedan and calls boone’s attention to it. Boone sees ... the child from the alpha den’’. She is dressed immaculately and bejeweled and in the company of ... Wickliffe.
Boone follows the pair into the L’Hôtel, where there is a surreal sequence like a ghost train of different sessions, plenary sessions, break out sessions, tea breaks and so on.
Boone accosts the child but she — or he: it is oddly hard to tell — feigns ignorance. But I saw you at the alpha den.... Boone says “for a young person you find yourself in some grown up places. Do your parents know you’re here?”. She says she doesn’t have any parents. She looks nervous, shifty. Says she has to leave. She presses a card into Boone’s hand. Barman gives a warning as Boone watched her melt into the crowd. “Careful sir. That is an agent.” He taps his nose and skies an eyebrow. “Strictly professional, if you know what I mean.” meanwhile Graeber tries unsuccessfully to liberate the waiting staff and gets thrown out.
Hacienda scene. The girl is dead. Liquidated. Regulator stands over body. Very weird. There are no creditors. No parents. No records. No police file. No-one recognises her. Only record ties her back to a boarding house for orphans. In the Cayman Islands.
CB radio interlude. It is Palmer-Jenkins. “Boone: you better get here fast. We’ve got a live ongoing situation. Suspected FWMD.
Melvin’s short squeeze
Boone and Graeber hasten to a strip mall on the outskirts of the city where Melvin is holed up, barricaded in the GameStop premises. It’s in the old Blockbuster building. Melvin’s flagship fund vehicle — a twin-class 2/20 clipper out of Georgetown — is badly holed and leaking liquidity. He’s shipping fire from all sides but — weird — the conventional combatants’ artillery depots are all silent. Third Point, Icahn and Pershing Missile have actually sent down a peace-keeping detachment. Ackman is crying.
The GameStop situation isn't over. Melvin squeaks “my shorts! My shorts! As the promontory on which he is marooned is thrust higher. The rate of ascent is slower but it is clear there is no way down
Opco is scarred from his experience at the battle for Cayman brac when, as a young communications officer in the famous Eagle Squad, led by the celebrated derivatives commander David Bundie, was all but wiped out
Deltaview Force
Timeline:
Characters: Opco, Algy, Janice Henderson, A.J., Roly Punchface, Squidboy Renfield, Annabel Lecteur [E?]
Style:
Summary: Eagle Squad goes undercover into demilitarised zone to clear out derelict building [WHY/WHERE] with its device for searching for material differences. They detect movement with the deltaview, thinking they have found a Biggs particle. Behind them, they find a live squidboy in the rubble. He is booby-trapped with red herrings and unapproved pitchbooks. Squad radios back to base to get a Chinese wall thrown up. There is a CBT countdown alert. EVentually he gives up the pitchbook: Lexrifyly IPO. AJ picks it up to browse. He gets sucked in by the mesmerising text. Squidboy burbles about how clever the technology is, A.J. gets sucked into the vortex. Opco grabs the squidboy and goes in after him
Text: Deltaview Force: An Opco Boone Adventure
Enigma Variations
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Summary: For years GCHQ has protected sensitive communications with a syntactic scrambler code language. Arrayed with sophisticated defensive systems such as prolixity dumps and syntactical contortion arrays — GCHQ has forged an impregnable iron dome of textual impenetrability that has permitted vital communications to take place uninterrupted, un intercepted, in real-time.
But in recent weeks it is as if the enemy can anticipate our every move. Legal Squad agents are getting intercepted during what should have been routine courier drops.
And at the same time the double-oh command has changed up its own encryption. Central interpretation units — the Eagle Squad “Enigma Machine” has been struggling to decipher COO communications. Whatever they run through it turns up banal, random words, or cancels down to nothing at all — like there is no content in the message at all.
For months engineers work on the codebreaker but cannot improve the results. Just utter, face-slapping, moronic gibberish, however we render it. The double Ohs are communicating freely though this impenetrable channel, and we can’t do a thing to stop them.
Boone suddenly sees it: the overwhelming scale of the challenge that faced the team. “Lines and lines of utter gibberish...That’s... it. That’s exactly it. It’s .... GENIUS”.
Boone barked into his wristcomm. “Algy! Janice! Let’s go!”
Text: Enigma Variations: An Opco Boone Adventure
NAV Trigger Point
Timeline:
Characters: Boone, Denning, A.J.
Style: Philip K Dick
Summary: Boone floats above a planet, a legal eagle unchained and at the peak of his powers, surveilling the flickering taxo-grid below. Delirious, and egged on to do it by his Digital Voice Assistant Denning, he unshackles himself from his flight harness and floats free of all constraints, before feeling himself falling to earth, as the tranquil operations of the Risk management matrix collapse into reds and burst into flames. Denning won’t — can’t — override the control settings, and placidly watches as Boone falls and the planet is engulfed in disaster. Boone snaps out of a delirious dream with J-Rod and A.J frantically trying to wake him. There is an emergency scramble. Legal Squad is mobilising.
Text: NAV Trigger Point: An Opco Boone Adventure
===SIV Endgame===
Timeline:
Characters: Bundie and his Unit (Frenchie, Chipstowe, Biff, Tucker, Swart, and a young private named Obadiah Boone, together with radio operator at base Cassie Lieberman [COULD BE E/Annabel Lecteur]
Style: Battle/All Quiet on Western Front.
Summary: MCA drops remaining irregulars unit on the beach at Cayman brac. The mission is to liberate is a detachment of SICAVs help captive by enemy stock lending counterparts who are using it as a cheap source of sales credits. Tucker shows off his new “Liquidator” weapon. Chippy sets it off and Bundie shouts at them to be quiet. A huge mechanical SIV bursts through the trees and advances on them. The unit engages with the SICAV using several FWMDs such as self-referencing CLNs, CSAs and a sawn-off repo The SICAV doesn’t seem to be weakening under fire. They begin to realise this is no ordinary SICAV. Bundie bids young Obadiah take cover behind a tree stump and he bravely goes in to fight for his men. But it is a losing battle. Slowly the boys in the unit succumb: Tucker, Chipper, Swart and then Frenchie is blown apart from close range.
Text: SIV Endgame: An Opco Boone Adventure
The Armourer
Timeline: 13
Characters: Hare, AJ, Burke
Style:
Summary: Young AJ is learning from Hare [Palmer Jenkins] how to strip a Calc Agent Appointment Side Letter. He graduates to an Engagement Letter with an NDA “Silencer”. The Kid catches a number of defects Hare hadn’t noticed. Irritated, Hare sends him out to the Armoury for a long weight. Burke meets him [Annabel Lecteur/E/Cassie Lieberman]. Burke sends him to the stacks for a long weight, where A.J. finds all the classics of the FWMD Canon including a Biggs hoson. The Biggs is missing, “removed for security purposes”.
Text: The Armourer: An Opco Boone Adventure
The Gathering Storm
Timeline: 15
Characters: Sweeney, Roly Punchface, A.J. Paul
Style: hary poter
Summary: Sweeney is stuck in a dead-end clerical job at Barringtons. Getting rings runaround him by Roly Punchface. AJ accosts him with the challenge of the call of adventure.
Text: The Gathering Storm: An Opco Boone Adventure
The Last SPV
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Summary: Espievies are dying out. Global regulatory warming is making their usual habitats hostile. Traditional breeding grounds are becoming increasingly polluted by a parasite which feeds on them: the red tapeworm. There are some mature specimens with legacy Tax rulings, known as “the grand-fathers” — but these are a finite commodity, are protected against hunting, in designated wildlife sanctuaries and in any case trade at massive premia on the black market. Some poachers break into the sanctuaries of northern Europe where there experimental breeding programmes designed to reintroduce them for benign taxation planning .Suddenly there is talk of a new supply of synthetic SPVs flooding in from eastern Europe somewhere.
Onboarding in the Meadows outside Moor Gate. Young Roly arrives with a tote-bag of espievies he says he has caught in Bretton Wood. The onboarders are unimpressed, assigning them a three priority, being Portuguese SGPS. Throw out a non-netting Qatari vehicle, the dogs wolf it down. The last is a Panamanian tax vehicle. The onboarders freak and shout at Roly to take it away.
Text: The Last SPV: An Opco Boone Adventure
The Lion’s Den
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Summary: Opco tracks down old fellow vet Felix. As the owner of a chain of Vega Dens, Felix has underworld connections. Boone is looking for leads to whoever is importing N02 into the EU. He realises too late that it is Felix himself. Felix monologues. Felix’s henchmen disarm Boone and prepare to throw him to a Batman style doom where he is tied up and allowed the opportunity to escape while some unfeasibly gravitational process that will, eventually, kill him is allowed to run its course.
Text: The Lion’s Den: An Opco Boone Adventure
The Taxonomy of Doom
Timeline:
Characters: Opco, Algy and Janice
Style: Hary poter
Summary: The children file into the Defence Against Indemnities classroom to find the professor is not there, and Imelda Skagghead taking the class instead. Professor Cavalier has been reassigned. Her teaching style has been found to be out-dated. It no longer accords with industry best practice. Skagghead presents the very latest in modern risk management! It calculates and monitors all risks, tabulates them, and provides an overall risk rating. Risk is assessed as ambient, but legal operating cost is too high. Roly asks how the machine can tell risk is ambient and legal cost too high: The answer: key performance indicators. This, says Imelda Skaghead, is why Professor was let go. He was just too expensive.
Text: The Taxonomy of Doom: An Opco Boone Adventure
Where Legal Eagles Dare
Timeline:
Characters: Boone, Algy, J-Rod. Kurzweil and Bugsy.
Style: Battle
Summary: Algy, Boone and J-Rod watch the COO battle truck roar across the dessert. After a wristcom argument with Chip, GC, Boone sends the dirt bikes off to intercept, and leaps off the cliff in his wingsuit. The Battletruck wipes out a couple of stray doc-jocks but otherwise can’t understand the imminent attack signal. Boone lands on the roof of the cab and fights Kurzweil. He prevails but there is a detonation counter ticking down on the dash. Kurzweil recovers and resumes the fight. Boone is knocked out. Kurzweil regains control of the battletruck and doubles down. Boone is in a semi-conscious stupor recalling his school days with Algy and J-Rod. Algy and Janice arrive on their bikes. Algy jumps the truck and lands on its roof. Kurzweil ties insensate Boone to the wheel and prepares to decamp as they approach the settlement. Kurzweil hears Algy in the back of the truck and goes to investigate. Algy cold cocks him and hoofs him out the door. He resets the counter, turns the truck back towards the COO compound and exits, walking back to the settlement.
Text: Where Legal Eagles Dare: An Opco Boone Adventure
Raptor Patrol
Timeline: 1997
Characters: M.T. Emsworth
Style: Blade Runner
Summary: Enron Trooper MT Emsworth lands her Raptor outside an abandoned strip mall, not far from the gushing torrent of the nascent information superhighway. After an argument with her droid, she goes in on a routine patrol. She finds tied up Blockbuster execs, and one dead body on a pile of rubble. It seems the CEO has gone rogue, killed his head of digital ventures and tied up the board. Emsworth lays out a plan for them to escape across the digital footbridge. It involves a forty-year broadband capacity swap, which Emsworth will mark to market.
Text: Raptor Patrol: An Opco Boone Adventure
Retail Wars
Timeline:
Characters: Melvin, E,
Style:
Summary: Melvin’s [ROLY?] tragic character arc from not terribly good soldier to preying on innocent retail victims, and eventually the retail victims ganging up on him in his personal apotheosis. Increasingly sordid episodes where Melvin’s lack of moral fibre and corruption become increasingly evident as he spirals into depravity. Starts with a routine patrol to clear out a brinks and mortar emplacement across the old information superhighway. Melvin reminisces about his brass barrelled OSLAS and falls into a reverie about his old commander Bundie, warning the class of the likely slip in standards in future weaponry by the I.S.D.A. And he was dead right. Melvin snaps back to patrolling the greyfield strip mall, with E in his comlink. He takes on a videodrome. Expecting it to be dead and deserted, Melvin is surprised to see the radiation is unusually high. Melvin goes on closer and finds a hopped out long-head retail partisan. Melvin shorts him, killing the stock, and closes out his short with the partisan’s open position. He makes a small turn and gets a feel for blood.
Days later Enron blows.
Meanwhile E tries to act as whistle-blower and is pooed by higher-ups who are enjoying the easy revenue. Far from being suspended, Palmer-Jenkins reassigns him and funds him. PJ quote “it seems this short selling business is not terribly difficult.”
Make it look that he was lured into a trap in.
Melvin moves on - his next mission he stumbles into the GameStop arcade.
Text: Retail Wars: An Opco Boone Adventure
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Text: An Opco Boone Adventure
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Text: An Opco Boone Adventure