Talk:The ISDA Protocol

Opco Backstory

Prompt

INFANCY

1. Opco Boone was born in switzerland, the son of confidentiality lawyers.
2. Opco's parents were killed in a structured investment vehicle crash with a vega-addict.
3. Opco was adopted by a Caribbean philanthropist who ran a home for orphaned companies.
4. Opco was fixated by the paradoxical nature of his parent's death

SCHOOL

1. Ooco made friends with Janice Henderson, Algy Farquhar and JT Palmer.
2. Janice was madly in love with Opco, who had no idea.
3. JT was madly in love Janice, who had no idea
4. JT began to bitterly resent Opco.
5. An fat rich kid called Roly Punchface pestered the others. JT took kindly to Roly.
6. Professor Dilbert, FWMD teacher taught them about "the Rent Seeker" a mythical shape-shifting figure who gaslights the world and has lived for millennia. Originally from romania and called "Oleg Paripasu". Opco is captivated. So, for different reasons, is JT.

ADULTHOOD

1. Opco, a commander of "Eagle Squad", a private detective agency specialising in seeking out FWMD.
2. JT is a section leader at the future intelligence agency (FIA) the government's financial terrorism enforcement body.
3. FIA is constantly frustrated at Eagle Squad's success in solving crimes they cannot.
4. Britain is in the throes of an alpha epidemic. Tens of thousands of people hooked on synthetic chemicals that give an outperformance buzz.
5. Synthetic alpha seems harmless in the small doses everyone is taking - people can only hurt themselves.
6. Eagle Squad shakes down a car driven by a politically connected VIP. There is an strange androgynous orphan in it who looks strangely like Opco.
7. JT

Opco Boone had always felt different from the other kids at the orphanage. He had a knack for legal paradoxes and impossible conundrums, and a curiosity about the world that often got him into trouble. He also had nightmares that haunted him every night, nightmares of furry little animals with sharp teeth who suddenly turn on their owners and overthrow the world. He didn't know where these dreams came from, or what they meant, but they filled him with dread and despair.

One day, he received a letter from a prestigious academy for the gifted, inviting him to join their ranks. He was overjoyed, thinking that he had finally found a place where he could belong and learn. He packed his bags and boarded a train to his new destination, leaving behind the orphanage and its memories.

At the academy, he met his mentor, Professor Havid Dilbert, an eccentric genius who taught him everything he knew about the international law of financial weapons of mass destruction. These were complex and dangerous financial instruments that could cause global economic collapse and social chaos if misused. Professor Dilbert warned him of a master criminal known as "The Romanian", who was rumored to be behind many of the most notorious financial crimes in history. The Romanian was a shadowy figure who never showed his face, but who had a vast network of agents and accomplices around the world. He was also said to be immortal and descended from the great trickster of the First Men, Oleg Paripasu.

Professor Dilbert had a theory that The Romanian was developing a new type of financial weapon that was unlike anything ever seen before. It was a network of interconnected micro financial bombs buried in the investment portfolios of ordinary, unsuspecting and innocent people, all around the world. The bombs were designed to be set off by the people themselves, without them knowing it. All it would take was a trigger event, such as a market crash, a political crisis, or a natural disaster, that would cause them to panic and sell their assets at a loss. This would create a chain reaction of losses that would spread like wildfire across the global financial system, wiping out trillions of dollars in wealth and plunging the world into chaos.

Professor Dilbert had been working on a way to detect and defuse these bombs before they could explode. He had created a device called the Deltaview, which could scan any financial document or contract and reveal its hidden risks and liabilities. He had also recruited a team of young and talented students to help him in his mission. They were known as the Eagle Squad, and they were sworn to protect the world from the evils of synthetic vega, a measure of the sensitivity of the price of a derivative to changes in volatility.

Opco Boone was one of them. He had proven himself to be a brilliant and courageous student, who could solve any paradox and crack any conundrum. He had also made friends with his fellow squad members: Algernon Farquhar, Janice Henderson, J.T. Palmer, and A.J. Sweeney. They were all martial arts magicians, dirt bike supremos, ace fighter pilots and counsel when Opco needed them.

Together, they embarked on many adventures and challenges, facing dangers and enemies along the way. They infiltrated secret bases, hacked into secure networks, chased down rogue traders, and foiled many plots by The Romanian and his agents. They also learned more about their own pasts and their connection to the Eagle Squad legacy.

Opco Boone discovered that his parents were not the pointless confidentiality experts he had been brought up to believe, but were undercover agents working for the Eagle Squad. They had been on a mission to infiltrate the software-as-a-service legaltech company owned by The Romanian when they were killed by a hijacked truck that crashed into their car. Their death was no accident; it was orchestrated by The Romanian himself.

Opco Boone vowed to continue his parents' legacy and stop The Romanian from taking over the world. He also found out that one of his friends was not who he seemed to be: J.T. Palmer was actually an agent of the F.I.A., a regulatory enforcement agency that was supposed to monitor and prevent financial crimes. However, Palmer had been corrupted by The Romanian and was secretly working for him. Palmer was arrogant, ruthless and manipulative, and he tried to sabotage Opco's career at every turn.

Opco Boone ultimately confronted Palmer and The Romanian in a climactic showdown that would determine the fate of humanity.

Roly keeps his affiliation with the Romanian secret. Now, J.T., who became Opco's nemesis as part of the FIA, is invited (so he thinks) to be a partner in the Romanian's firm, which is called Tenant Shower. Having overcome Opco, he heads to headquarters to what he thinks will be his initiation ceremony. Instead he is led into a dark room and - well, we are never told. But he is not seen again. And only one person emerges from that room: Roly Punchface.

Deltaview Force

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.

Enigma Variations

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!”

NAV Trigger Point

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.

SIV Endgame

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.

The Armourer

Young AJ is learning from [Palmer] 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”.

The Gathering Storm

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.

The Last SPV

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.

The Taxonomy of Doom

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.

Where Legal Eagles Dare

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.

Raptor Patrol

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.