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hy Sol Yurick
It was the last Thursday of the Cruel-
est Month, 1985. Eighty of the w0rld’s
leading central bankers and finance
ministers were traveling in secrecy
from New York, Washington, Basel,
London, Paris, Luxembourg, Tokyo,  
Hong Kong .... They were on their
way to the paradisical island of St.
‘ Cunegonde to play the Balances Game.
The Balances Game is played
twice a year. It’s a situation-room sce-
nario modeled on real-world, real-time
financial crises. In 1981 and 1982 the
game was nicknamed “Pulling the
Third World Out of the Black Hole."
In 1983, it was called "Emerging Out
Through the White Hole" or "Coming
Up with a Rose and Smelling Sweet." . l
This year, whether they knew it or not,
the bankers were going to play "The
King of Malaputa."
St. Cunegonde, which is close
to Sardinia, is, in a sense, totally artifi-
cial: the whole island is gardened. The
bankers, having flown into such assem-
bly points as Rome, Naples, Milan,
and Marseilles, were helicoptered for
the last miles to the barge that serves
as a landing platform for the island.
From there it was a short ride--15
minutes—to the island. They were met
by servants who took their baggage _,
and escorted them to the island’s one ey
building, a chateau incongruously Li
topped by a large dish antenna. There  
they assembled for the first of many  
ceremonial cocktail parties. Drinks `f`
were served on a marble terrace, be- 1]
side a neatly trimmed lawn that sloped  
down to the sca. Flanking the lawn  
were two tree-shaded walkways along T r
which the bankers, in twos or threes- i

promenaded. Concealed speakers filled the
air with music.
High technology notwithstanding,
these meetings had ancient ritualistic con-
ventions said to have begun with Renais-
sance bankerd They all knew one another,
and each player made sure he talked to ev-
ery other player. According to protocol,
they began by asking about one another’s
families, then they traded financial gossip,
and then they moved on. "A frank and
open exchange of views" was the rubric
they used. Pumping one another for infor-
mation —was another way of looking at it. It
was possible to be honest—well, about
75% honest. While they all had a common
interest, their theories about the way the
world’s monetary problems should be
solved and their competitiveness ensured
exciting play. Roughly speaking, they
could be divided into two factions: free
traders and regulators.
Mr. Clitson of the Cividei Group, in
contention for the title of largest financial
institution in the world, gravitated to Mr.
Sasagawa of the R6ichi, who, seeing his old
friend, turned away from Mr. Portinarii of
Banco Spirito del Valore e Lavoro, to greet
him. They had met under regrettable cir-
cumstances 42 years before.
"How’s your health?" Mr. Clitson
asked, for Sasagawa had been wounded on
Guadalcanal.
"Except for minor complaints, it’s
fine. How’s yours?" For Mr. Clitson had
also been wounded on Guadalcanal. It was
their conceit that they had personally du-
eled and wounded one another. That they
were now talking in these luxurious sur-
roundings was a sign of the world’s prog- i
ress, the ability of commerce to heal all
wounds and do away with more primitive
ways of contention. Indeed, there were
those whose Balances strategy was to make
large-scale war impossible: one or two
points of interest can dampen the weapons
market considerably.
They talked for a few minutes about
investing in a mining consortium in Colom-
bia. Clitson wondered if Sasagawa’s bank
wanted to participate. Mr. Sasagawa said
he found the proposal curious, considering
Colombia’s debt. Did Clitson know some-
thing he didn’t? V
"Such a beautiful place," Mr. Sas-
agawa said.
"Very much like Malaputa," Mr.
Clitson replied.
"I’ve never heard of it."
"You will. That’s peculiar music to
be playing/’
"I’m not familiar with it."
"Wagner. Die Gbtterddmmerung. "
They separated and moved on.

QQMPUTERS Beneath the mansion on
NOT ON St. Cunegonde, a huge
ISLAND cave has been converted,
l1ned, and made into a
conference and game center. There are no
computers on the island itself. The termi-
nals the bankers use are connected to an
array of Crays run by the National Security
Agency, which uses data from the world’s
banking system. Since eminent people do
not operate terminals, technicians are
flown in every morning. They follow verbal
instructions from the main players, who re-
main free to wander around and make
deals and feverish adjustments between
sessions.
After an afternoon of medical and
psychological examinations (the game is
stressful) the 80 players assembled at 10
a.m. the next day in the auditorium, where
the briefing was to take place. They sat in
comfortable chairs that could recline or
swivel. At the side of each chair was a mi-
crophone and a small monitor. There was a
huge screen behind the speaker’s podium
upon which charts, illustrations, films, or
the latest quotations could be displayed. As
they settled into their seats, most of the
bankers were conspicuously relaxed, as if
they were athletes conserving their energy
for the main event.
The first speaker was Herr Von Al-
berich, the new director of the Bank For
International Settlements (Bis), the central
banker to the central banks. The players
expected him to merely review the usual
problems: world debt, political unrest, the
danger to international economic stability,
the alarming growth of the noncomputable
underground economy. They were a bit
bored.
The director was a tall, spare man.
He was tacitum, and his black eyes glowed
with the fervor of the convert. It was ru-
mored that in his youth the director had
been a Marxist, perhaps even a terrorist,
dedicated to the overthrow of capitalism.
No one was sure what had changed his
mind. In fact, it was technology that had
converted him. At a young age, Von Alber-
ich had learned much of what there was to
know about financial networks. One night,
from London, he penetrated the SWIFT
wires and had a golden, blinding insight.
He saw the world’s financial condition, laid
out like a spreadsheeted patient etherized
on a table. It was an experience similar to
Paul’s on the road to Damascus. He saw
the light; he understood the ineluctable
ways of the Invisible Hand. He defected,
changed names and sides. Using connec-
tions—his was a prestigious, ancient Teu-
tonic family—he got a job in a bank and
worked his way up the ladder quickly.

Von Alberich began with a dry
statement, clearing his throat frequently:
"Gentlemen. I don’t have to remind you of
the wondrous works we have wrought in
the past 20 years. We are well on the way to
solving the mysteries of matter, energy, and
life. We have made the transition from a
primitive to a modern financial system. The
financial markets are indissolubly linked,
seconds apart. In a few more years we
would have escaped earthly time and had
universal, 24-hour trading."
There was a murmur."We would
have?"
"We are more than banks: we are
communications companies, we are clocks.
And while very few of us are mere comput-
er technicians, we know that the world’s fi-
nancial system is like some vast BIOS. And
the accidental conjunction of the acronym
BIOS and the word bios, meaning life, is per-
haps very much to the point. We—not the
politicians, the soldiers—are life itself, the
blood, genes, hormones, nerves of the glob-
al political economy. And yet our world
body is at war with itself."
He shuffled his papers, looked up
into space, and cleared his throat. The
bankers were getting restless. Mr. Petta-
compt, the retired, eminent, and revered
emeritus, a man who loathed high technol-
ogy, muttered to himself. He hated these
windy and speculative discussions. You did
deals with people, not machines. He won-
dered if the BIS man had ever really divest-
ed himself of his Marxist and regulatory
ways.
“w|·|A'|' WE "We live with third
DREAD HAS world debt from day to
HAPPENEDH day. We face the danger
of default. We make tech-
nical adjustments and hope they will get us
out of this morass. We have stabilized in-
stability: a holding action. But the thing we
have feared the most is an intrusion—a
break-in by someone who understands fi-
nance and computers. Well, what we have
all dreaded has happened."
The bankers were no longer bored.
"Like some virus, invading a body
and changing the DNA microcode, our elec-
tronic body has a new Black Plague, a can-
cer. There is an invisible presence among us
today, an intruder, an unholy ghost. A ser-
pent has been sent among us to eat of the
apple of` our knowledge.
"T his is not a game! We have a pre-
sentation today. You’re ready?" he asked
someone offstage. An indistinct reply
came, and the back screen lit up.
The first image was that of the head
of` a man. No one knew who he was. "Meet
King Mellon."

The second was of a false-color
Landsat image of an almost circular island.
"This is the island of Malaputa as it looked
three years ago. It is in the Indian Ocean-
there’s India, and Madagascar. You will
not find Malaputa in your atlases. You
may, however, find its presence, concealed
under many names, in your portfolios. If
you tried to buy this image from the EROS
center in South Dakota, you would
succeed.
’ "Malaputa is the ultimate free-trade
zone, the final offshore platform, the last
lawless frontier, haven for the wildest of
wildcat bankers. Mr. Mellon has anointed
himself King of Malaputa. It also may be
said that Mellon Lv Malaputa."
That brought some murmurs, and a
clear voice asking, "What the hell is he
talking about?" One of the bankers had for-
gotten to turn his microphone off.
The third image was a spreadsheet
whose numbers kept changing so fast that
no one could really follow the figures. A
frozen frame showed the bottom line, and

produced a gasp from the audience. A $120
billion deficit! "This is Malaputa’s debt as
of half an hour ago."
Another image. Malaputa ‘had
grown and was occupying a good part of
the Indian Ocean. "This was the island’s
position as of 1984."
"What position?" demanded one of
the players.
"The presentation isn’t finished. A
little patience," the director of the BIS said.
"We have a guest speaker who will brief us
further: Mr. Macey from the U.S. Central
Intelligence Agency. He joins us via satel-
lite, to give us a little background on this
King of Malaputa, Mr. Mellon the First-
and let us hope the Last."
The head of a man appeared on the
screen behind the director of the BIS. The
man was in his fifties, blandly good look-
ing, with one of those intelligence opera-
tive’s faces that is hard to remember. His
eyes were turned downward and he seemed
to be reading from a paper, or courting
anonymity.

"The information I’m about to give
you," he began,"is, of course, highly confi-
dential. It’s been collated from a variety of
agencies around the world: Interpol, FBI,
Deuxieme Bureau, NSA, British Signal In-
telligence, CIA .... " He paused.
“KGB .... ”
There was an outraged murmur.
"We would like to acknowledge the
cooperation of the Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics and the People’s Republic of
China in this emergency situation.
"De1bert Mellon is 42 years old.
He’s six feet, one inch tall, has black hair.
Mellon has a doctorate in philosophy from
the University of Texas, specializing in
symbolic logic and semiotics.
"Instead of becoming an academic,
Mellon went into the Foreign Service and
became a low-level intelligence agent, do-
ing economic analysis. His task was to in-
vestigate and evaluate the delicate and
troublesome offshore banking question
from a diplomatic perspective .... "
Q|7|·'$|·|QR[ More murmurs. Offshore
BANKING banking and flighé czwlgal
were not game . o
Noir GAMED knew how much money
passed through these centers? And after all,
some of the players had their own money to
consider. Was Von Alberich, known to fa-
vor a regulated world system, setting them
up?
"He was fairly promising. How
promising we didn’t realize. Mellon might
have risen to be a high-ranking Foreign
Service officer, even an ambassador, but
one day, in 1980, he was invited to play in
the twice-yearly political component of
your game, which, as you know, is called
the Game of the Four Corners. We’re as-
suming that his participation gave him
strange and interesting ideas.
"Playing the game Mellon learned
that false information could count as real, if
people believed in it. He also seemed to un-
derstand that at a deep level, machine code
could represent any discipline, all knowl-
edge. Simulations of bodies, the cosmos,
bank statements, and real estate become
the same. Everything converts to every-
thing else. No need to tell you gentlemen."
Some of the bankers had participat-
ed in the political game. The results of the gr
Game of the Four Corners created interest- g
ing nonbank risks and contraints every O
banker had to be aware of. é
"Mellon quit the service and went E
to work for a small investment bank in >
New York. What happened next we’re not Q
sure; we don’t know what was on his mind, 8
or exactly what he did. But I can offer you E
a reconstruction. 0

"Mellon began to dream two
dreams. The first was the perfect offshore
facility, the ultimate free-trade zone. Not
offshore in the usual sense, on, let us say,
an island in the Caribbean. No; Mellon
asked himself, ‘Why must a financial center
be in a place?’ He conceived of a facilita-
tion, a financial entity that is pure informa-
tion in constant motion, one that never
comes to earth. The second dream, which
was integral to the first, was to penetrate
various financial networks and use them as
an insider."
"We think he tried to sell his con-
cepts to organized crime. The trouble was
that his ideas were too advanced, too ab-
stract. These people are still bound to
earth. They carry suitcases full of money.
Mellon needed something to show. He
found a man named Milton Bimstein, a
man who, as far as we can tell, is a kind of
information hustler, an ex-poet, a futurist."
A picture appeared. Bimstein was
unruly looking, bearded; he wore glasses, a
green jumpsuit, and a cap with the word
cat on it.
"Bimstein ran a small simulations
and consulting company called DBM, for
Digitized Byzantine Mosaics. He had con-
tacts in the computer underground, the
world of hackers, penetrators, freaks, pass-
word thieves, planters of Trojan horses.
Among their number were some very so-
phisticated programmers—pe0ple who
know their way around many networks as
if they were suburban backyards. Bimstein
had a different agenda from Mellor1’s."
Mr. Macey went through a compen-
dium of Mellon’s moves. How, after Bim-
stein had placed the simulation of
Malaputa in the EROS files, Mellon bought
copies of the island’s image and used it to
raise money. How the organized crime peo-
ple, always on the lookout for the perfect
laundry, believed they had found it in the
Central Bank of Malaputa. How Mellon
created a maze of holding companies, trad-
ing firms, joint ventures, consortia, all of
them apparently based in real places but ul-
timately dependent upon Malaputian char-
ters seen only by a few data entry clerks.
M|$$|()N; Mellon bought equip-
HACK INT0 §nent—VAXs,(-EBM mainé
rames, a ray—an
NETWORKS situated it in a dusty town
in Kansas, Josephson’s Junction. The com-
plex was staffed by this underground riff-
raff, this detritus of renegade programmers,
communications specialists——even, I regret
to say, a few ex-government intelligence
employees. The pay was good but the en-
ticement was even better. We all know that
the freaks seek recognition of their genius.

They were persuaded that the NSA had been
interdicted by the Soviets, and that the
Russian electromoles were using the NSA to
destabilize the West’s financial networks.
The mission of the pseudo-NSA staff was to
hack its way into our complex, build up a
vast library of access codes, and hunt for
signs of the Soviets’ work. They insinuated
their way into such networks as SWIFT,
Fedwire, Euronet, the telex complexes, In-
telsat, Citicorp’s system, the Bank of En-
gland, and many others.
"By this time, Mellon had attracted
a great deal of money; you would be sur-
prised at the names of some of the people
who invested in his schemes. He traded
currency, commodities, everything imagin-
able. He invented wild new instruments.
Mellon was moderately successful, but the
scam remained essentially a pyramid
scheme, and couldn’t continue forever. . .
"Bimstein knew this. He also
thought he had a solution to the problem,
and that the solution would give him power
over Mellon. So he secretly started work on
the most daring of all these schemes: the
perfect automated account, a wise and pre-
scient self-trading portfolio. He put his
pseudo-NSA operatives to work on the
project.
"Now, the time when all markets-
stocks, bonds, futures, commodities, real
estate, indices, options, insurance, CMAS,
time deposits, money markets, treasuries,
currencies-will be linked up hasn’t come
yet. Bimstein had a problem. How could
the portfolio trade if it came across barri-
ers? You have to identify yourself to the
institution you do business with. A human
initiates transactions.
"So Bimstein had his people create
intrusive devices—to penetrate other ma-
chines, to alter and destroy other pro-
grams. Since some financial establishments
now accept data instead of actual currency
or certificates, Bimstein could move data
that were both funds and instructions.
What’s more, all the verification and paper-
work could be done automatically. His pro-
grams worked their way from complex to
complex, altering them as they traveled.
But the trading programs had bugs. Mellon
began to lose money at a greater rate.
Strange glitches and crashes began to ap-
pear. Bimstein had to tell Mellon what he
was doing.
"Bimstein disappeared from the
face of the earth.
"Now the Malaputa complex faced
imminent collapse, which led Mellon to at-
tempt his boldest gambit yet. He sought
safety in debt, believing that if he could ac-
quire enough he would be safe. For the
really big debtor metamorphoses into a

partner! Therefore it was ‘discovered’ that
Malaputa, which had grown enormously,
and was almost a continent, had valuable
minerals. Minerals? Mellon had the Land-
sat photos to prove it, and he borrowed de-
velopment funds to build an infrastructure.
Because Malaputa possessed a viable bank,
did business all over the world, paid its in-
terest on time, made loans, had a track rec-
ord, Mellon could borrow in Hong Kong,
Tokyo, Moscow, New York—wherever he
wished.
"Still, the day of reckoning was to
come, for the penetrative programs that
Bimstein had set loose couldn’t be stopped.
I should say, can’t be stopped. They have
mutated out of control, and no one knows
what they are, where they are, or how they
function .... "
There was a long pause after the
presentation. The image of Macey faded
from the big screen.
ANAR¢|·|Y, Von Alberich spoke into
CHAOS this cathedral hush. "It
AHEAD would take auditors., pro-
grammers, and engineers
a hundred years to straighten things out-
if the situation were stable. We face a crisis
of confidence, anarchy, destruction, a black
hole, an interregnum that will last much
longer than the Middle Ages." Von Alber-
ich intoned the historic and ritual words,
"What is to be done?"
Pandemonium reigned. Solutions
were yelled out. Some were for getting out
from under. Others were for battling this
person, this Mellon, this island, this entity,
this whatever it was, through the game.
There were those who were for letting the
free market forces work. Everything would
balance out. The weak would go under.
Survival of the fittest.
Some of the bankers got up and
started to leave. Others followed. It became
a panic. It was as if they were fleeing the
room, the game itself, as if, somehow, they
could be seen, overheard, spied on through
the terminals by an omnipresent Mellon.
Some ran as far as the sea, and stopped.
There was nowhere else to go.
The sunlit air of the Mediterranean
calmed them. They began to cool down and
stroll, in twos, in threes, in fours, talking
the situation over. Von Alberich was sur-
rounded by a vociferous group of 10.
"Why weren’t we protected? Why
do we hire all these ex-spooks, anyway?"
"Shouldn’t we put hunter programs
to work?"
"Those measures have been imple-
mented, but what about now?"
"What’s the problem? We can al-
ways adjust the books."

"How long would that sufiice?"
"We should never have left the gold
standard," Pettacompt said.
"We need a new Bretton Woods, a
new currency. We need to start from
scratch .... "
"Yes, but in the meantime, who’s
going to bear the weight of this debacle?"
"There must be a technical solu-
tion," Clitson said.
"Let me remind you: technical solu-
tions got us into this problem in the first
place. That’s what comes of placing secrets
in the hands of mere technocrats," Petta-
compt said.
"A few years of belt tightening and
it’s all over," Sasagawa told them. "My
people are always willing to make
sacrifices .... "
"We have a golden opportunity be-
fore us," Von Alberich said.
"Golden? Seems more leaden to
me," Pettacompt said.

"We depose the king .... Well, in
fact he’s dead," Von Alberich said. ~
"Dead?"
"Those in organized crime are noto-
riously short of patience. They don’t re-
structure debt: they restructure bodies." ‘
"Then there’s no problem."
"His ghost is the problem; it’s ‘
haunting the financial networks. But that, ·
too, can be remedied. Gentlemen, I suggest
that we freight the world’s finances to the 1
blessed island of Ma1aputa." 1
"What are you talking about? There 1
is no Malaputa," Pettacompt said.
"There is now. The Central Bank of j
Malaputa can become the central bank of
the world—free at last, free at last from na- 1
tional constraints. It will take time, to be `
sure, and persuasion, but think of the re-
wards! One world currency .... " `
Pettecompt started to object, but l
Von Alberich anticipated him. "And in the 1
meantime, we, us, those of use who are 1
1

here, being in constant touch with one an-
other, might hold things together for a few
years until the solution takes .... "
"More of your computer .... "
"No, sir," Von Alberich said. "By
telephone, by personal conferences .... "
"Are you suggesting we abandon
the technology, go back to primitive ways
of doing business?" Clitson asked.
"No. This is, however, an opportu-
nity to retool. A new generation of equip-
ment, new and impenetrable stan-
dards .... "
"There’s always a golden lining,"
Portinarii said.
"At the slightest sign of a break in
ranks, everything will descend into chaos,"
Von Alberich said.
Von Alberich retumed to his house over-
looking Lac Leman on Sunday. He had a
good meal, talked to his wife, then retired
to his office to smoke a cigar before turning
in for the night.
Progress had been made. It had tak-
en some doing but the players were finally
facing it. They would rise to the occasion.
Danger would bring them together, but
there was much hard work to be done.
After finishing the cigar, he rose,
stretched, and thought he might go to bed.
But he turned and sat down at his key-
board. "Let’s see how you’re doing tonight,
King Mellon," he murmured. He began to
key. His fingers summoned up this New
World, raising it from conceptual crypts.
The vast continent appeared to him
in topographic relief. Malaputa. How it
had grown. Growing even as he looked-
eating money, eating information, eating
energy.
Seated in front of the console, Von
Alberich looked, as if into a mirror. He saw
himself, if a spreadsheet could be said to
reflect his living, shifting thoughts. A vast,
thriving, amoeboid form, coruscating in
color, growing, growing, .ever expanding,
working to fill the world’s informatics sys-
tem, to become it. Yes, you and me, you,
myself, he thought, we’ll bring them to
their senses, won’t we?
The old financial system had died.
The new had risen from its ashes. He
looked upon his work and pronounced it
good. © E
  uc
Sol Yurick is a novelist living in Brooklyn, it
N.Y. l—le is the author of The Warriors and Q
Richard A., among other books, and is a g
Guggenheim Fellow. This story is adapt- >
ed from his forthcoming novel, The King CQ
of/Via/aputa, which will be published by 8
The Dial Press, Doubleday & Co., New EE
York. 5