Galactic Energies (3 page)

S.P.: “Bravo, bravo! If you go after them for laundering dirty money, they'll disappear in the blink of an eye.”

L.B.: “Don't worry, we'll take care of them. Nobody will remember them in two months.”

S.P.: “Ok, keep me in the loop.”

L.B.: “As always! And don't forget about the favor, my wife wants to go to Bora Bora this year.”

“Enough, I can't take it anymore! These guys make me vomit. Can you believe this? Bank tycoons, TV directors, the prime minister, magistrates...they higher up you go, the more corrupt they are!” Alessio is reading the wiretaps published in the newspapers this morning.

Since Sabauda Bank disappeared six months ago, its main competitor, Sorgente Bank, thought it was omnipotent. The birth of Star Bank caught them unprepared, as we thought it would.

“I told you they'd come after us any way they could.
Hit hard, hit fast.
That's how these people think. We got off easy here. If Stefano Pellini wasn't being tapped, he probably would have massacred us,” I respond.

“No, he wouldn't have gotten us. We don't know anyone in the mafia!” Alessio protests.

“Look, Pellini wasn't exactly wrong: we don't need to go to lunch downtown with the Mafia every day in front of everyone else. All he needed was for it to
seem
like we knew them and they could cover us in mud all they wanted. Anyway, an investigation in Italy takes twenty years. Maybe in the end you could prove your innocence, but what good would it be then?”

“At least I'd be reimbursed!”

“Yes, by the government, not by the people who put you under investigation. They'd get off scot-free. So in the meantime they've already finished up their brilliant careers and started enjoying a fantastic pension.”

“All of this just makes me sick to my stomach.”

I should feel relieved that we escaped danger, but I can't relax. I feel that something is still wrong, but I can't figure out what.

“Listen, Alessio, do you ever get the feeling that things are going a little too well for us?”

I realize my words are absurd, but I feel really strange thinking about how things worked out.

“Too well? Every time we turn around there's another mess!” Alessio retorts.

“Sure, but think about it for a moment. Every time something bad happens, not only do we come out the winners, but we come out even stronger than before.”

“If anything, that just means we know how to take advantage of every opportunity,” Alessio responds.

“You're right, but are we really that good? We have some good ideas, of course! But there are a lot of people out there who are smarter than us who would come out much worse!”

“Maybe we're better at putting our ideas into practice. Look at Apple with the first iPhone. For years, they just copied everyone else's ideas. Nokia had launched smartphones with touchscreens a few years earlier, and they were horrible. But the iPhone became a must. It's not enough to have good ideas, you need to master their implementation.”

I'm not all that convinced. I still feel that something weird is going on. But I let it go: Alessio had been under a lot of stress over the past few weeks, and now that he's finally feeling more relaxed, I don't want to give him more to worry about. And not even I (fully) understand what's behind this bizarre feeling.

We track the numbers of our new creature over the next few days, completely amazed. Star Bank racked up some impressive numbers pretty quickly. The mangers we hired are working nonstop to keep up with all of the requests.

What's most surprising, though, is the climate of collaboration created with account holders. The transparency we based our bank on generated unlimited trust from our customers.

The interview – September 11, 2015

“We're back now with our guest Alberto Ferrari, CEO of Starweb. Alberto, I think we'd all like to have a fairytale career like yours: you started off with a small web agency and now you run a global IT giant, with branches in several new sectors. But things aren't going so well for everyone else in our country. The crisis doesn't seem to be ending anytime soon and many people are losing faith in the solutions proposed by politicians. We're in the thick of campaign season, only two more months until elections. What do you think of the candidates and what do you expect from them?”

It's Sunday afternoon, and I'm in the Channel 1 studios being interviewed by Maddalena Alessi. I remember thinking, when I used to watch TV, that studio stages were much bigger than what they are in reality. It's really hot, but nobody except for me seems to be suffering.

Alessi is splendid. She's wearing a very short red dress with a plunging neckline. Her copper hair is styled in long ringlets, a style that recently came back into fashion. She nonchalantly shifts in her chair, as if she was in her own living room.

I try to take my eyes off of her crossed legs: I really shouldn't leer like a creep in front of millions of viewers.

I think about Jasmine Fantini.
Too bad she's not interviewing me!
It's not that Alessi isn't cute, Jasmine is just from a whole other planet. But she's not working as an anchorwoman anymore, and she's almost always in the United States.

Okay, concentrate on the question: politics!

“I'd rather not talk about individual candidates. I think that our country has enormous potential. Everyone would agree on that point. But it's difficult to be successful...” I start to say.

Maddalena interrupts me: “It seems to me you've figured that out.”

“True, but we've been really fortunate. People trust us, and not everyone has that kind of luck. It's difficult to work in Italy with all of the bureaucracy and taxes holding you back. This pushes a lot of people out of the country. When somebody leaves, the country grows weaker. I believe that this vicious cycle needs to be broken.”

“That sounds like the sort of thing everyone is saying these days.”

“Yes, and in fact I think everyone can clearly see what needs to happen. But whoever gets elected will probably start paying more attention to their own interests than the public's interest. And then people always try to cover up what they're really doing, which of course the public doesn't like.”

“So what would you do?”

“Well, for example, when we decided to create Star Bank, we based it on a simple idea: complete transparency. Today anyone can go online and download any type of data on any sector of our business. Sure, this might make it easier for our competitors to copy us, but our customers like it. They know exactly what's working and what could be done better. Most of all, they know what we're doing with their money.”

“And do you think this could be applied on the national scale?”

“Of course! We all know that politicians use our money in really shady ways. Look at what we've done with Star Bank: you can make a sort of analogy with how the government should work. Whoever logs in online should be able to understand in a clear and unambiguous way what topics are being discussed, where the public money is going and why. Then voters would stop allowing the nation's budget to get eaten up by a thousand side interests. Politicians would be required to release billions of Euro in resources that were previously used the wrong way.”

“You don't think your point of view is a little too idealistic?”

Her chestnut eyes shine, reflecting the studio lights. Her words flow freely, breezily. I start doubting that my rant was very convincing. Actually I've never really been much into politics. Maddalena is probably right: it's not that easy to implement the ideas I was going on about once you get mixed up in the complex logic of politics.

“You're probably right, Maddalena, but that's at least what I would try to do.”

“I'd recommend that you don't say it too loud, unless you want to find your Twitter flooded with the hashtag #
AlbertoForPresident.”

“Don't worry, Maddalena, I've already had enough excitement with a couple banks this year. I'd say that's enough for now.”

“Thank you, Alberto, for taking the time to visit with us. We're happy to have role models like you out there to inspire young people who want to create successful businesses.”

“Thanks for having me.”

“Now for the latest sports news, let's go to the soccer fields and see how the Sunday games are going...”

While Maddalena introduces the sports news, I get up and head towards the exit. Away from the video cameras, I stop to watch the dancers get ready to go on stage after the sports news. As the segment airs, I lock eyes again with Maddalena.

“Later,” she gestures with her hand.

She really is beautiful live.

Elections – December 10, 2015

“Shhh, Alberto, not so loud!” Alessio protests, annoyed because I'm bouncing a ball against the wall.

The big LCD screen shines a blue light on his face, which is focused on the figure of Maddalena Alessi.

“Come on! Turn that stuff off, it makes me anxious!” I reply.

“Really? Alessi does something more than make me anxious. She's ridiculously hot.”

“We're live now at the Ministry of the Interior, where the Star Party has jumped to fifty point four percent of voter preference, with ninety percent of polling stations surveyed,” announces Maddalena, radiant, on Channel 1.

For me, the news is like a punch in the stomach.

“I can't believe we're winning an electoral campaign run entirely on the Internet!” I exclaim, incredulous.

I still don't understand why I let myself be convinced to get involved in the electoral circus.

After the interview with Alessi two months ago, thousands of people asked me to join the race as a candidate.

For weeks, I refused interviews and public or TV appearances. I finally explained on my blog why I didn't think I was the right person for that role, with the opposite result of creating incredible anticipation that I would indeed enter the race.

But then I began to understand what my candidacy would mean to people: hope. I read thousands of messages from people who saw me as a beacon of hope for the future, for themselves and for their children, messages from people who wanted to go back to having a government they could believe in, people who needed me to once again feel proud of their own country.

I tried to resist, but in the end the people's will got the better of me and I entered the ring.

We decided to create a party, the Star Party, and make no compromises.

Every meeting among management was broadcast through Google+ Hangouts. People debated with us, gave us suggestions and helped us grow.

Every Euro used in the electoral campaign was traced, and the data was published online.

Candidates were placed under the scrutiny of the online community and anyone could express their own opinion.

People participated en masse and the results were surprising. Everything was discussed, created and improved in plain daylight.

Although TV appearances where reduced to the absolute minimum, every candidate in the party accepted debates continuously on a wide variety of media platforms, either with opponents or with the public. For our candidates, it was like playing on home turf. Most of them started out with a thorough understanding of new forms of communication, while the majority of their opponents hobbled along pretending they knew how to use these technologies while they were actually trying to figure out what they were.

We refused any alliance with traditional parties, aware that this would probably lead us to defeat.

The Star Party was modeled along the exact same principles that we proposed to use in the country's government. Alessio, increasingly excited, moves his eyes between the TV screen and the computer display.

He interrupts my contemplation, bringing me back to the present moment: “Alberto, try to focus, you're winning the 2015 elections!”

“Alessio, if I do win, it'll be a joint victory.
I
won't be the winner,
we'll
be the winners!”

“Yes, but you're the one who gets to be the new prime minister in Palazzo Chigi!”

“You're not going to just walk away from this scot-free.”

“But who'll stay in cold Milan to run the company while you enjoy the warm weather in the capital?”

“But who will lead the country into the future?”

“The one who was screwed over live on TV by Alessi!”

“Come on, you know I didn't even know what I was talking about! I was trying to stare at her legs without anybody noticing and then I got distracted.”

“Bravo! A real genius! Now go tell that to sixty million citizens!”

“We have the definitive information here. Ladies and gentlemen, this is surely a landmark day in the history of Italy. The Star Party, a party that didn't even exist a few months ago, has won the absolute majority of votes in Parliament. The head of state will give Alberto Ferrari the job of creating a new government. Let's go to the headquarters of the Star Party, where they're telling us that the prime minister elect is not yet available for interview. Knowing him, we'll probably get a tweet pretty soon.”

“Alessio, please, turn it off.”

“Ok, ok!”

Alessio gets up and comes over to hug me. I like the idea of him running Starweb for a while. He's grown up a lot over the past few years and I'm sure he'll figure out how to deal with the sharks in the market without compromising what we stand for.

“And now what?” he asks me. “Time to face the crowd?”

I look at my Galaxy. I have a few tens of thousands of mentions on Twitter.

“@AlbertoForPresident is this the end of the Second Republic?” @goblinta asks me.

“@goblinta, it's the end of the Italy of political parties. It's the beginning of YOUR republic,” I respond.

Capri – January 5, 2015

“Alberto, Maddalena Alessi on line three.”

“Thanks, Anita.”

I'm in Palazzo Chigi, the seat of the President of the Council of Ministers of the Italian Republic.

I got rid of most of the furniture and spruced up the presidential office a little so that I'd feel more at home. I hung a few works of contemporary art that I liked on the walls. I cleared off the desk, leaving just the screen of my Dell, sometimes joined by a tablet and a smartphone. It helps me feel a little less uncomfortable.