Phoenix Rising: Read Free Page A

them.
    â€œThanks,” Jake said. He held up the can of root beer. “Did you hear? Deon found a source for this.”
    â€œThis is your wedding day, but you’re excited because you’ve got root beer?” Bob teased.
    â€œBob, you wouldn’t tease if you knew how addicted he was to the stuff,” Karen said.
    â€œWell, yeah, but you’ve had almost two years to go cold turkey. You’d think it would have kicked the habit by now.”
    â€œYou’d think,” Jake said.

C HAPTER T WO
    Taney County, Missouri
    To anyone who might happen by, the little cabin that sat on top of the hill was typical of many of the structures in the Ozark Mountains of southwest Missouri. Far enough in distance from the major metropolises of the country, this area had been spared the riots and the encroachment of the Moqaddas Sirata. People who lived here were as self-supporting now as they had been 150 years ago.
    The house was small, with wide, weathered-gray board siding. The asphalt shingle roof was missing a few of the shingles, and on the front porch was an old sofa with some of the stuffing and springs exposed. A wheelbarrow, without the wheel, was leaning against the front porch, and a 1998 Chevrolet Silverado pickup truck, once blue but now rusted and faded, without hood, engine, or wheels, sat on cinder blocks in the front yard. Under the window was a flower box with carefully tended flowers. A sign in front read:

    DON’T TRY TO SELL NOTHING HERE
WE GOT NO MONEY

    The little house was a ruse. Inside the house, a hidden button would open a trapdoor in the floor that led down to an elevator chamber. The elevator went on down one hundred feet into the mountain where there was a 10,000 square foot living area, completely self-sustained with a small, nuclear power plant, a deep well, a radar alert system, cold storage of foods, with satellite Internet coverage that fed a dozen computer monitors. The numbers on the dedicated monitors reported the latest stock reports from the stock exchanges of Tokyo, London, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Toronto, BM&F, Bovespa, Australian Securities, and Deutsche Borse. In addition there was an entertainment system of more than 10,000 movies.
    This was the home of Warren Sorroto, the wealthiest man in the world.
    Warren Sorroto had been born Greygor Sorkosky in Hungry, in 1930. His Jewish family was killed by the Nazis, but before they were caught up in the pogrom they managed to put their son with a non-Jewish family. During the war Sorroto, who was using the name of his adoptive family, earned money by helping the Nazis locate Jews who were trying to survive by assuming new identities.
    In 1947, Sorroto went to college in England. After graduating from college, he immigrated to the United States where he began working in various financial companies, rising in importance and investing wisely until he started his own company, SIM, or Sorroto Investment Management. He began making massive amounts of money by manipulating currency. When he sold short some ten billion British Pounds, he created a financial crisis that shook England to its core, bankrupting businesses and families. But Sorroto profited to the tune of two billion dollars, in one day.
    By the time Ohmshidi ran for president, Sorroto was worth twenty billion dollars, but in Ohmshidi, he saw an opportunity to make an unheard of amount of money. Sorroto manipulated the stock market, creating a crash that reflected badly on the outgoing president, who was of the opposite party, and he put a billion dollars into Ohmshidi’s campaign, both by direct and bundled contribution. His Visible People Foundation and News Freedom Group managed to influence the Mainstream Media to produce and publish news stories that presented Ohmshidi in the most favorable light, but were detrimental to his opponent.
    Writers for the late night talk shows were paid by Sorroto to write jokes that were critical of the man running against