The Black Swans

PROLOGUE

Who are we? What I can tell you is who we are not. We are not anarchists, terrorists, capitalists, or socialists. Or to this matter, any political identity that you have ever heard of. People speak of secret organizations such as the Bilderberg Group or Oreo Templi Orientis. Trust me when I say you have never heard of us, never will, and we have no real name.

And yet there are always rumors of some secret society that is so well hidden that it only exists in darkness. That such a society rejects established laws and institutions.

None of this is truth. We are merely skeptics and walk openly in the light. We advise hundreds and they in turn advise the institutions and create the laws. But mostly we exist to protect the few from black swan events. We are invisible, an unseen force.

While eight of us exist at any given time, one of us is required to disagree with the consensus of the other seven. Sometimes this is me. Usually, it is me. I am good at this. I can see the unintended consequences that might play out. But our focus is to protect the few. No, we are not protecting some group of elites, we are protecting those that would be harmed by the unintended consequences of actions that some would see as good intentions. It is this focus that allows the herd to survive but it requires change in all crevices of society. We make this happen, or at least we try.

We take the names of colors, but the skeptic is always known as black. Sometimes I am red, sometimes black. Today I am black. Today, the other colors want to know black’s solution to prepare for black’s prophecy of a particular black swan event. As always, the seven do not agree that it can occur. But as always, black will be correct. This is black’s job; to see what others do not. With a solution, we will advise the hundreds to protect the few. Sometimes this requires convincing governments to print money to build, erect, or legislate our needs. Sometimes it means twisting a religion to control the masses. Sometimes it means building hysteria in one direction to make these institutions do as we desire.

Always to protect the few. Who are the few? Even they do not know who they are, nor that we exist.

CHAPTER 1 ~ WHAT ARE THE ODDS? ~ RED

There are six of us at the table, plus the dealer. Seven cards for each of us and I place the best possible five cards, a pair of threes and a pair of fours, king high, across the bottom: and then the remaining two across the top, a six and a nine. Pai gow poker. I beat the dealer with the five but lose the top two. A draw. No money is won or lost. I let my hundred dollars ride. I lose. I place my last hundred in chips in front. Again, a draw.

“What is it that you are attempting to teach me?” she asks.

“Risk,” I reply.

“Have you read my CV?”

“Why do you think I am here?”

“Maybe wasting your time with a statistically even game just to get free drinks,” she responds and takes a sip from her vodka martini that really is just straight vodka in a chilled martini glass.

I place my cards according to the rules. The dealer once again draws. I have no more chips to add, and I reach into my pocket and remove a large money clip from within. I add two c-notes to the chip stack. The dealer quickly coverts the cash into chips, placing the cash into a slot that sweeps the currency to the casino’s vault through a pneumatic tube.

“Why did you increase your wager?”

“A feeling that this hand will go my way?”

“Statistically speaking, with this game, that would be wrong. I am just going to stay with my twenty dollars in chips and order another drink.”

“Watch.”

The dealer then distributes seven cards to each of us. I sort my cards and place them accordingly. The dealer reveals his cards.

“You won,” she says surprised.

“Yes, but the dealer will keep a cut of the winnings to keep the house ahead of a statistically even game. It is the only way the house wins at this table.”

“Which means?”

“It means that if I stay with the same wager, at the end of night I will lose a small portion of my funds. The game is statistically even, but the house erects the rules to ensure it wins. The only way I can win is by doing what I just did.”

“Shall we try blackjack? We can discuss risk analysis better there,” she suggests.

“Roulette, I think.”

“Very well, but there is no skill involved.”

“Guessing is not skill,” I reply.

As we approach the roulette tables, I choose the one with a tote board indicating the last three spins landed on red. I remove my money clip and place a hundred-dollar bill on black. The croupier takes the note and places a marker in its place. Again, the currency disappears into a slot and is whisked away to the vault.

The wheel spins, the ball turns in the opposite direction and finally the momentum slows and the ball drops.

“Red 32,” calls the croupier.

“You lost.”

I place another note on black. Again, I lose. This continues for several more spins. I am now down eight-hundred dollars.

“That is eleven reds in a row,” she says.

“So, what are the odds that it will be black this next spin?”

“The same as it has been for the previous eleven spins. Each spin is independent of each other.”

“Do you think you can do better?” I ask and I hand her a note.

“If I win, I will use the proceeds to purchase the green dress I saw earlier in the boutique window, just off from the lobby.”

“Black and red only pay one to one,” I say.

She takes my note and places it on green zero and gives me a sly look. The ball spins and drops on green zero.

“Thirty-five hundred dollars,” she calmly says and scoops up the chips and gives me the original $100 chip to place the wager.

We walk to the cashier’s window and exchange the chips. And then to the shop in the lobby. “I would like to try the dress in the window,” she says to the clerk.

“What size, mam?”

“A six.”

With the dress in hand, along with the cash, she steps into the dressing room. Stepping back out of the dressing room she stops in front of the mirror and makes sure that the dress fits in all the right places. It is a green dress with thin straps and reveals her cleavage. “I’ll take it.”

“Yes mam. Would you like for me to deliver it to your room?”

“I will just wear it for the rest of the evening. Can you send my other garments to my room?”

“Yes mam.”

The clerk rings up the total, $1899.00. She gives the clerk $2,000 in one-hundred-dollar bills. “Keep the change as a thank you for tending to my other garments.”

“Yes mam,” the young girl says excitedly and smiling wide.

“I am amazed that any dress sells for that amount with the economy just now stabilizing. What will you do with the remainder?” I ask.

“Only in places like this do they sell dresses like this.” She hands eight bills to me. “That should cover your loses.” She then folds the remaining seven notes and places them under the dress and against her left breast. “I think I should keep them close.”

“You were lucky with the green.”

“I believe you were initially explaining to me that the position you wish to recruit me for requires seeing the unseen. Finding a black swan, I believe.”

“Yes.”

“One cannot find a black swan if one’s vision is rooted in the expected. One must see a choice other than those presented.”

“When can you begin?”

“I will need to make arrangements with the university.”

“We will simply be another private foundation providing a generous sum in research grant money.”

“I think the university president will be pleased.”

“From now on Dr. Kelly, you will be known as Green.”

CHAPTER 2 ~A FAILURE OF IMAGINATION ~ GREEN

> Forward Two Years <

I am about to finish with today’s lecture to my graduate students. My specialty is statistical improbabilities and many a student consider my class the toughest on campus. As they should, for I ask the impossible. And yet it is always full. I allow just twelve students – who must apply for it – and I only teach this course once on alternate semesters.

“Class, your next assignment, working in teams of four, is to use your imagination of something that might go wrong. I have already posted online, six current topics of current trends that everyone seems to agree upon: as well as any data and your team assignment. There will be no substitutions regarding the teams for I have carefully chosen your teams based upon the psychological profiles that you completed in your application to enroll in this class. Make your schedules work together, I hope this is clear. Your team will pick one of the trends and then confer with each other. Someone within your group must deduce something that will go wrong that the other three do not agree with. That one person must create an argument of what and why and the other three have a counter argument. You have three weeks to complete this assignment and each team will have twenty minutes to present both sides in class. Please submit all materials and statistical observations, if there are any, online by midnight prior to your presentation.”

I now click the button on the remote and the last slide appears. “I leave you with this quote to inspire you in your work. Until the next lecture, get busy.”

“A failure of imagination. We’ve always known there was the possibility of fire in a spacecraft. But the fear was that it would happen in space, when you’re 180 miles from terra firma and the nearest fire station. That was the worry. No one ever imagined it could happen on the ground. If anyone had thought of it, the test would’ve been classified as hazardous. But it wasn’t. We just didn’t think of it. Now who’s fault is that? Well, it’s North American’s fault. It’s NASA’s fault. It’s the fault of every person who ever worked on Apollo. It’s my fault. I didn’t think the test was hazardous. No one did. I wish to God we had”

~ Frank Borman

One hand pops up.

“Yes.”

“Is the above a black swan event? Only three people died.”

“A black swan event is something that is unseen to everyone in a room. It may not be earth shattering to the masses, but that is not a requirement. In its simplest form, a black swan event is an unpredictable event that has potentially severe consequences. They are extremely rare, have a severe impact, and in hindsight there is widespread insistence that they were obvious. For those three astronauts, this was a black swan event. For NASA and the USA, it almost derailed a shot at the moon. NASA was thought by the public to have everything under control and that science and engineering can think of everything. And yet, Virgil “Gus” Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chafee were the victims of a lack of imagination, not a lack of science or engineering. It cost them their lives.”

I pause.

“Are there any further questions?”

No hands raise. “See you next Tuesday.”

As the class filters out of the room, my phone buzzes. When I open the text message there is a short cryptic message in red.

10 in 15

Location ten in fifteen minutes. Red was clear about one thing. We might operate in the open, but everything is cloak and dagger. Location Ten is a cafe just across from campus. Location One is home base, which is never the same location as the time before. So, it really isn’t home, it is just when all eight of us meet, wherever and whenever that might be.

***

I hurry across the street as the late winter wind that this city is known for bites through my outer garments. As I enter the cafe, I look around, Red chose a corner table in the back, his back facing the wall so that he can observe the door. His hands are cupped around a cup of coffee. This table is a L-shaped booth. This allows me to scoot in at a right angle and have a similar view of the door. I am certain this is why he chose this table.

“I wasn’t sure if I was giving you enough time,” he says.

“There was only one question at the end of today’s class.”

“Is this the most hated, but over requested class on campus?” and he knows it is as he knows my schedule.

I smile and reply, “you don’t really think I come up with all of those improbabilities on my own, do you?”

“A statistician with an imagination, highly improbable.”

“And yet, here we are.”

A waitress comes to our table. “What would you like to drink mam?”

“Coffee, same as his.”

“Do you need a few minutes to look at the menu?” she asks.

“Yes, thank you.”

As the waitress leaves, Red asks, “how is your project?”

“Finally, complete. I double checked everything. It is ready for publishing. It should be convincing, even to her.”

“No pronouns.”

“My error. I am still new at the ... well you know.”

The waitress returns with my coffee. I haven’t looked at the menu, but I noticed the specials on the blackboard as I entered. No time to be wasted on such trivial matters as menus. We order and she leaves.

“How is work dear?” I ask. This is code.

“You know, the usual,” which means in return they haven’t found a way to hack through the firewalls on my computer system.

Truthfully, we wouldn’t be having this conversation had the Black Swans found a way through. There is a protocol for this, should it ever happen. And, as Black Swans, we know that it will eventually happen.

“I understand.”

I scoot a little closer to Red in the corner and lift the coffee mug from his hands and sit it to the side. I take his hands across the table. We appear to be lovers to anyone looking. As I rub my fingers across his cupped hands, unseen to anyone is that I just handed an encrypted drive to him and softy I say, “I love you,” which is code, but if anyone is eavesdropping it adds to the projection of us being lovers. Which is true in a matter of perspective. Just not that type of lover.

“I think publication can occur shortly,” I say and now he smiles, just a bit.

“That is excellent news,” he replies.

We continue with the chatter, tell some jokes, and we laugh. Again, to anyone observing we appear as a couple. As we finish lunch, Red leans in, his left hand holding my right and kisses me on the cheek. “See you at home,” he says.

I have now received a return encrypted drive with something new to work on. It must be urgent as this does not occur frequently. The reference to home means there is also information about the next home meeting contained on it. I stand and bundle up for the race against the wind as I will return towards campus and to my lab. Red heads to the men’s room after leaving sufficient cash on the table, despite lingering fears of contact with cash after the pandemic. He always tips well, but never uses a credit card. Just something else to be traced.

CHAPTER 3 ~ ECHO IN THE DARKNESS ~ RED

It is three in the morning. I am re-reviewing Green’s statistical analysis of the last black swan event and discussing it with Yellow via teleconference.

“What do you think of Green’s work?” I ask.

“It confirms what I think we all knew.”

“In hindsight of course.”

“Of course,” replies Yellow. “Once again, a lack of imagination by government bureaucracies and politicians.”

“They fought to contain the forest fire, but left the forest weak and decaying,” I say.

“They were unable to see the unintended consequences of their decisions. That it would have been better to allow the fire to race through the forest quickly and burn the underbrush but leave the trees largely unharmed. That is why we exist.”

“Yes, but what do you think of Green’s algorithms?”

“Green is testing in hindsight. Would Green’s math really have access to the data from the field before those in the field even knew they are dealing with something new. And then the challenge is to quickly convince those bloated organizations to react before disaster?”

“I think it is compelling,” I state.

“Yes, to us. We are looking for these events. Every politician just hopes they occur on someone else’s watch; and bureaucracies, such as the CDC, just totally lack imagination, no matter how good they are with routine tasks.”

“So, we should ignore the work?”

“No. But we need to find a better way to convince those in power, and earlier. I have doubt that this can be accomplished. Remember, every health organization created procedures based upon a pandemic occurring, but one that would unfold upon a standard set of assumptions. Hence, the pandemic in and of itself was not a black swan event as they had run drills and simulations to prepare. It was the reaction of those in power, receiving the advice from the health officials, that was the black swan event.”

“But the genius in Green’s math is that it takes the smallest possibility and amplifies it, so imagination is the outcome. So, we can prepare for the improbabilities.”

“You mean so we can attempt to persuade others regarding the improbabilities.”

“Yes, of course.”

“We have a lot of projects on our plate. We are supposed to develop insight into the next black swan event, not worry with the past.”

“There have to be answers from the past. Without understanding what was missed, we are bound to make the same mistakes, or more importantly, new mistakes. We missed this one. We thought everything was in order, but we lacked imagination as well. Not to mention that what has taken place lays the roots of what will take place.”

“Red, I know you lost both of your parents during that pandemic, and that hundreds of thousands more succumbed to earlier deaths these past ten years due to the decisions made during the pandemic, not to mention the earlier death of millions more over the next twenty years if our analysis is correct. But maybe we should spend our resources elsewhere.”

“This is a long-term ripple effect that will last generations. I am theorizing where this will lead. It could result in the deaths of tens of millions and complete destruction of economic infrastructures. We need to make sure that unintended consequences are considered, and what this is implying is that it will occur within the next ten years.”

“You have yet to convince me of your theory. Not to mention, we would need more than eight of us to accomplish what you are asking; no matter our specialties, expertise and connections.”

“That is precisely why I recruited Green. Green has a small team in that lab.”

“And this creates a Catch-22. And you know it. We need more brain power, but we risk becoming uncovered. More importantly, if some of our prognostications became public, we could create pandemonium.”

“Green’s computers are secure,” I say.

“And it is here where I become Black,” says Yellow.

“Grey loaned a black op team to challenge those security systems.”

“What if they succeed? Are we certain that Green’s data will not be leaked by Grey’s team? Grey’s loaned cyber team is a part of a government agency. It seems someone always thinks they need to leak information for the good of the public.”

“What do you propose?

“Imagination.”

“You know,” I pause, “you sound like an echo in the darkness.”

“Was that a question?”

“No.”

“So, what are you going to do?” asks Yellow.

“Dream. Maybe the answer will come to me.”

“Goodnight.”

“See you at Home,” I say.