The I.P.O. (4 page)

She was a bona fide child-whisperer by profession, but all of her training was currently locked far away in her superego; in this moment she simply couldn’t contain her joy.  She finally had a child.

Despite every means known to 21st century medicine she would never be able to experience the magic of being handed a newborn baby in the delivery room, but it couldn’t have exceeded what she was currently feeling.

Her husband Thomas, less expressive, couldn’t quite hold back a single tear which he hastily erased with his knuckle.  Then he firmed up his expression and gave Ryan a confident man-to-man nod, which Ryan seemed to appreciate.

“I’m Ryan,” he said, feeling the need to say something to break the silence, yet knowing full well that they already knew his name.

Giggling and sniffling and smiling, Sara attempted to compose herself.  “How would you like to get out of here?” she said, stooping to his height, taking no shame in the joyful tears that remained on her cheeks.

“Where?” Ryan asked guardedly, not sharing her enthusiasm.

“C’mon.  We’ll show you,” she said, offering him her hand.

Ryan looked up at the headmistress, on her way back from the lobby, who smiled and nodded as if to tell him it was okay.  Then he looked down at his bed and his trunk before taking a long last look around the barracks. 

Hesitantly, he extended his hand to hers and followed the two complete strangers out of the orphanage, unsure if he’d ever return.

He didn’t know what to feel at the sight of his departing bus, as he continued to follow his new caretakers through the pick-up area and on toward their shiny silver Lexus SUV, with the entirety of his former life packed neatly into his backpack.  This was really happening.

Ryan leaned his forehead against the rear passenger-side window and stared out at the houses going by, which seemed to grow progressively larger as they traveled.  After about twenty minutes, the car came to a stop on a short stretch of red brick road. 

Thomas and Sara gave a familiar wave to a uniformed guard, who nodded respectfully and triggered the slow opening of a heavy wrought iron gate
.
 
Ryan lifted his head off the window for the first time, craning his neck toward the middle of the car to get a better view as they passed through.  He didn’t know places like this existed.  And he couldn’t help but be impressed. 

A spotless white bike path snaked through the lush emerald-green grass, so perfect he had to squint as they drove by to convince himself it was real.  Islands of deep black mulch, outlined by brilliant red, white and purple pansies surrounded Bradford pear, Japanese maple, and flowering weeping cherry trees in each yard.  Even the sky seemed bluer inside these gates.  And set in the back of each lot at the end of a long driveway was a colossal custom house, each more impressive than the next.

But halfway down the second cul de sac, Ryan was rocked by another unsettling wave of
déjà vus
as he caught sight of the brick house he’d seen on TV.  He wasn’t actually surprised this time, but he wasn’t prepared for it either.  He leaned back with a pit in his stomach, slumping into his top-of-the-line booster seat.  One of the four garage doors opened as they pulled into the drive.

Sara and Thomas led Ryan on an abbreviated tour of the 8000 square-foot mansion, focusing on the playroom, basement and office, which featured a miniaturized mahogany replica of Thomas’s desk for Ryan.  They finished the tour on the second floor.

“And this is your room,” Sara said, nudging the door open with the back of her forearm.

Ryan’s eyes widened, and his expression brightened as he scanned the room.  But he quickly checked himself, hit with a twinge of guilt for allowing himself a moment of happiness in his parents’ absence.  He owed it to them not be content with this house; this room; these people.

“Go ahead,” Sara said, sensing his hesitation.  “It’s yours.”

He loosened his grip on his backpack, allowing it to fall gently to the ground beside him, as he walked timidly toward a bed in the shape of a pirate ship in the corner.  He stopped at the bow to peek up a ladder that led up to a crow’s nest which featured a round table in the middle with miniature built-in seating all around.  At the stern was a knotty treasure chest loaded with unopened toys.  In the opposite corner stood an L-shaped desk with a computer, a tablet and a smartphone.

A large closet stocked with more clothes and shoes than he’d ever seen in one place abutted an adjoining bathroom – his own private bathroom.  No more fighting for space or hot water in the shower.

“Sorry about all the clothes,” Thomas said, slipping his arm around Sara’s waist.  “Our families got a little excited when they heard you were coming.”

“There’s one other thing I want to show you,” Sara said, walking over to the ship and pressing a button at the base of a digital frame next to his bed.  “I’m hoping we can add a lot more memories to these in the years to come.”

Ryan ambled over, keeping his gaze fixed on the frame, as a slideshow of pictures of him with his birth parents began to play.  He stood there entranced as each new picture appeared.  When the fiftieth and final picture faded back into the first and the cycle started over, Ryan climbed into the ship and lay quietly on his side facing the frame, continuing to watch as his new parents slipped inconspicuously out the door.

~~~

Prescott discreetly glanced down at the phone peeking out of his right pants pocket to check a text he’d gotten from his VP Aaron Bradford before the cameras went back live
:
just landed in newark – researching JQJ issue
.
 
Perfect.

“And we’re back,” Blake beamed, oblivious to the tension in the air.  “Joining us now is Britt Herndon, chief financial correspondent for Bloomberg News.  Always great to see you Britt.”

Herndon nodded sternly.

Prescott’s smile grew noticeably brighter as he nodded back, knowing that the cheerier he appeared, the more exasperated Herndon would become.  Public opinion often had less to do with one’s position on an issue than with the appeal of the person espousing it.  If he could paint Herndon as an angry old man bent on stonewalling progress, this could be a good thing.

Blake got things rolling. “Mr. Prescott, some of your critics would say that you are planning on hand-picking only the most talented and most intelligent children for your market.  How do you respond?” he asked, tilting his head slightly, cradling his coffee mug in both palms.

“Well, we do preferentially choose children who are most likely to provide return for our investors, Blake.  Look, I wish that we could help every child who needed it.  I sincerely do.  But at the same time, even if we were able to help, let’s say, even one out of every thousand orphans in this country, wouldn’t that be better than not helping any at all, which is what we as a society have been doing – until yesterday?”

Herndon looked like he was going to vomit and couldn’t resist jumping in. “You love to cite statistics that show these kids are more likely to end up in jail than in college,” he said.  “Yet you hand pick the ones who are obviously not on that track, and saddle them with a life of indentured servitude.”

“Now Britt,” Prescott chuckled with a glint in his eye.  “I’m just going by statistics that we have for unselected orphans.  If you have more specific data, I’d love for you to share it with us.  And as for your claim of indentured servitude, well, that’s just absurd.  That’s like recommending against a student’s going to college to avoid being saddled with all of that debt they’ll eventually be forced to repay.”

Shaking his head, Herndon barked back, “If you look at the roughly one thousand living people who have at one time or another been part of the Forbes 400 – the wealthiest 400 people in the world, mind you – 25 of them were adopted.  Two point five percent!  That’s an
over
-representation of adoptees among the wealthiest people in the world!  I could say that you’re hand-picking from a population that’s
more
likely to overachieve!”

“Now here’s where we do have more specific data, Britt,” Prescott said without pause.  “Of those 25 people you referenced, 17 were adopted as infants, which we don’t touch.  That leaves eight who were adopted later in life.  Seven of those were adopted by extended family members and one by a close family friend.  Only one spent any time in an orphanage, which was purely transitional and only for a few days.  All of our kids, by law, must have spent a minimum of three months in an orphanage prior to joining the program.  So if you look at the population we’re drawing from, they represent precisely 0% of the Forbes 400.”

“Corporations are going to be making decisions about the way these kids are raised with future profitability as their only motivation – with no concern for their happiness!” Herndon seethed.

“Britt, two suggestions.  One, look over our mission statement.  Two, try some decaf.”  He turned over to Blake, snickering, pointing a sideways thumb at Herndon’s image on the monitor. “Of course I’m only joking, Britt.  But we are very aware that successful adults are the products of happy childhoods.  They come from strong families, they have friends, and they’re involved in diverse extracurricular activities.  I’d also like to point out that short-selling on the Avillage Exchange is explicitly and permanently forbidden, so every investor will only have an interest in these kids’ values going up.”

“Ok, well why don’t you tell the people at home who the true legal guardians are?  Is it the ‘mom’ and ‘dad’ you referred to?” Britt asked, making quotation marks with his fingers as he spoke, leaning in almost on top of the camera.

“This is an entirely new paradigm where the legal guardians are not the parents but the corporation.  I know that’s become dirty word, but let’s be honest.  No investor would put a single cent into one of these kids if there were no legal bond.  And if you allow yourself to get past the media buzzword ‘corporation,’ I don’t think that’s such a bad thing.  The truth is most parents don’t know what they’re doing a lot of the time.  They really don’t – myself included.  We parents often wind up making emotional decisions without a lot of thought to the long-term consequences.  I hear parents say all the time, ‘There’s no handbook on how to raise a kid.’  Well, I’m hear to tell you there is.  Sort of.

“We have developed actuarial tables over the last 20 years that cover an amazing array of variables.  For instance, Blake,” Prescott posed, deliberately ignoring Herndon.  “Did you know that only-children have a 57% chance of choosing a profession in the field of their same-sex parent?  Or that lifetime earnings of piano and violin players is 73% higher than that of children who played any other instrument growing up?  Or that there is a direct correlation between lifetime health quality and educational level?”

“Fascinating,” Blake commented.

“I’ve got literally thousands of those,” Prescott said, back in coffee table chit-chat mode with Blake.

Herndon was nearly boiling over.  “Anytime you’ve got a system where a group of wealthy people
owns
another human being, that is a form of slavery, and I am shocked and ashamed that this is going on in the United States. It’s an abomination!”

“Britt, I respect your opinion on a lot of issues, but you’re way off base here,” Prescott said calmly. “No one
owns
these people.  Granted, while they’re minors, they don’t have the right to make all their own decisions, but no child does – their parents do. 

“Then once they’re grown, they have a financial obligation to the shareholders who’ve supported them and put them in position to be successful.  But they can choose to pursue whatever career their heart desires.  Plus they gradually accumulate shares themselves, so that they have an opportunity to buy out the shareholders by the time they’re 50 – or earlier in some instances.  By SEC regulation they’ll own 100% of their shares by the time they’re 63.  It really isn’t that different than having the military pay for your college and then owing them 4 years of service afterward.  Our arrangement is longer, but it’s actually much less restrictive.”

“Yeah, except they owe 90% of their after-tax income to the shareholders!”  Britt yelled, nearly hyperventilating.

“Come on, Britt.  You’re better than that.  That’s the highest appropriation level, which only applies to the portion of their annual after-tax income over one million dollars – those kinds of numbers would apply to less than one percent of the population,” Prescott said, his heart rate at an even 60.

“One final question,” Blake said, winding the segment down wearing his familiar morning-show smirk.  “Who’s next?”

“Sorry, folks.  Looks like we’re out of time,” Prescott said with the same casual demeanor he’d kept throughout the interview, all-in-all satisfied with how the spot had gone.

~~~

Ryan slowly opened his eyes and looked over at the clock.  He’d been asleep for almost 2 hours.  The pirate bed was infinitely more comfortable than his old metal-framed bed, and the room was incomparably quieter than the orphanage. 

Despite its short duration, the nap was the best sleep he’d had in months.  Finally waking up refreshed, he realized how chronically exhausted he’d been.

He climbed out of bed, walked over to his desk and picked up his new smartphone, not entirely sure how to use it.  J.R.’s number was already programmed into it.  With one quick tap, he heard the phone start to ring.  And ring.  And ring.  No answer.