Osaka

“For as strikingly different as we are, we are all remarkably the same.”

Julian Hartsock. “Osaka: The Man Who Wouldn’t Be King” Precipice: The Autobiographical Ramblings of Julian Hartsock. (Chapter) A & A Publications, 2123.

Agreeableness (Politeness)—(Hartsock, Julian Q.) 37^th Percentile: Politeness (AP) is the psychometric score assigned to an individual’s proclivity to adhere to sociocultural behavioral norms; demonstrate deference to the feelings of others in interpersonal interactions; and show respect for institutions and authorities. Individuals moderately low in Politeness tend to be slightly less deferential than most while generally not exhibiting noticeably rude or aggressive behavior. They typically adhere to commonly accepted rules of etiquette while not being so bounded by conventions that stepping out of line is particularly bothersome for them. People moderately low in Politeness tend to be unlikely to go out of their way to appease the feelings of others and are fairly quick to give in to aggressive impulses.

A score in the (37^th) percentile, coupled with the distribution profile of psychometric measures herein—notably extremely low Enthusiasm (EE, 2^nd percentile); low Compassion (AC 20^th percentile); and moderately high Assertiveness (EA 84^th percentile)–represents the possibility of a personality that manifests the appearance of cold, aggressive behavior with minimal concern for the feelings of others. While mediating factors are present, the tendency toward Dark Triad traits may manifest in the subject’s personality as well.

I thought I was more polite than MM³ did. Dad was pretty rigid about observing manners. Please and thank you. Even “yes, sir” “no, sir” to a large extent. But, in reading about the trait, I learned that Politeness was about far more than manners. It’s about how people perceive your willingness to play nice with others, and particularly, how you mediate aggression. Have you learned to suppress the animal urge to smack dumb assholes in the face, or something like that. Gladstone et al. weren’t impressed by my impeccable manners either, scoring me at 35. Their feedback read as follows: Moderately low Politeness.

For several years before I made my first trip to Osaka, we had a total cutthroat bastard of a lawyer who negotiated contracts for us with subsidiaries, large contractors, and partners. His name was Duane Everett, and he’d come to A & A in the early days with one of the original board members, Chauncy Offerman, an elderly financier who was one of the sweetest people you could ever meet, very smart, very contemplative and thoughtful, yet he had this shark in his back pocket that he was nice enough to bring with him to A & A. I’d crossed paths with Everett a few times, and I hated the sight of the guy—I mean hated his guts. He exuded this cocky asshole energy that was so powerful I found myself constantly suppressing the urge to either curse the guy out or outright punch him in the face. I almost never had to deal with Everett, but both Chauncey and Flor told me he was invaluable.

A & A’s HR department was largely out of my hands, which was a good thing, because I had no idea how to deal with people in that way. Everyone on the board told me we had the best HR department in the world, though—fair in legal workplace matters, shrewd in PR, and absolutely committed to drawing the best talent in the world to A & A. And best of all, I almost never had to deal with any problems under their purview.

It was about four years into the Florida Space Ladder build when Everett got himself into this altercation with a barista over lukewarm coffee that got recorded and posted. He was such a bastard to this poor girl, who’d politely made him a second cup only to get told that she should go to school, get a real job, and stop dressing like a whore, because everyone already knew she was a shitty barista who obviously couldn’t figure out how to do her “midwit” job correctly. And, that altercation went viral enough that people figured out who Everett was and sent the video to HR, and before long, half the company had seen it. PR wanted him fired, and HR knew he was Offerman’s guy, so they told PR to take down his profile and issue a statement that A & A was looking into the matter, taking it seriously, et cetera, et cetera. But they had no intention of firing Everett.

Somehow PR got so worked up about it that someone in their department went all the way around about seven layers of management and forwarded the internal thread to me. Of course, I was just itching to fire that bastard. The barista altercation looked bad for the company, sure, but frankly, it would have felt good to fire him just because I hated the guy.

At the time I barely knew Flor, just the few odd conversations here and there, plus how she acted in board meetings, but it was well known on the board that one of her many areas of expertise was in top-level personnel. So I asked her advice on the matter of firing Everett.

“Absolutely not,” she told me.

“I hate that asshole, though.”

“Yeah, you do. I do. Everybody hates Everett, but you don’t fire him for the same reason sports teams don’t cut their star players. Everett’s a guy you can’t cut. Trust HR, let them feign concern, and wait for it to blow over.”

So I listened to Flor and put the PR people back in their place.

Probably about six weeks later, which was an eternity on our operational timeline, Cass started having problems with one of our contractors working on the Allegis Array. Or, more rightly, Cass had been having problems with this company for some time, but it started to bubble over to the point that it was affecting his scheduling. And Cass was nobody to tangle with when anyone messed with a timeline. But it got so bad that it came to my attention, and when I asked Cass about it, he grumbled and got this disgusted look on his face and went into a rant about the people at that company and how he detested interacting with them. Flor happened to be on that call. She listened, asked a few questions about the problems, and then promised to look into the situation.

The following afternoon, the three people Cass had complained about—their CEO, OO, and FO—all appeared down on the 16^th floor, which was where most of our legal offices were. Flor called me and told me to pull up the stream.

“Why would I want to watch that?” I asked her.

“No,” she said. “You’ve got to watch, Julian.”

“What exactly am I watching for here, Florence?”

“You’re about to witness what happens when their assholes meet our asshole.”

Damn, Florence. Great line, I thought. It was so good I decided to flip on the stream. I fully expected to watch for a few minutes before switching the stream back off in disgust, both out of a very specific animus toward Everett and a very general underlying lament over the state of humanity. I didn’t, though. The damn stream was riveting. It was like art, one of the purest expressions of it I can remember seeing. It seemed impossible that someone could be so awful to three other people, and at the same time, even though I knew Everett’s interests were nakedly self-serving, somehow, he’d found a way to put his unique talent for being nasty and vicious in service of a radically amazing goal. I knew that in a few years, when the Allegis Array went online on time, our engineers would pop champagne and celebrate and talk about all the unsung heroes in their groups, maybe the logisticians, maybe even the management. But nobody would talk about Duane Everett, who sat in that room for nearly two hours berating, humiliating, and instilling the fear of God into that management group. He knew their children’s names. He painted the picture of the future he envisioned for those kids if their parents couldn’t get their act together and deliver on the contract their company had signed. He told the COO he’d show up at the open house when he and his wife were forced to sell and shit in his pool. He had an AI generate pictures of the CFO’s wife with her next husband. What would their worlds be like when their kids all realized their parents were hopeless losers who’d been drummed so far out of their own industry that they couldn’t get a job anywhere but Nebraska?

Problems became solutions. Things that couldn’t be done suddenly became possible. Deadlines that were absurd when they walked in the building suddenly became reasonable. The complaining and excuse-making stopped.

When those three executives had left, after Everett was finished with them, I’m sure he had no idea anyone was still on the stream—but he sighed and said under his breath, “God damn, I love my job.”

And he meant it. To his bones he meant it. He detested weakness as fiercely as Michelangelo loved beauty.

I also realized in that moment that I’d have detested doing his job. I’d have been terrible at it, gotten walked over by those three assholes, even though I held all the cards, and I’d have made concessions. And then, a couple months down the road, when they failed, I’d have had to cut up their company’s contract, sue them, and actually bring all those nasty possible futures Everett threatened them with into being. His cruelty ended up being a kindness. A special kindness Duane Everett lived to dish out.

The least polite person I’ve ever encountered was an artist in his own horrible, kind way.

I didn’t yet understand this light side of the dark side of politeness when I got a message from an assistant to one of the many princes, presidents, and premiers of nations, all angling for their piece of the Florida Space Ladder. It was from a gentleman named Nakami, who was on the staff of the Emperor of Japan.

Most of the time, I read such correspondences, smiled and set them aside. All they usually did was indicate the party’s desire to not be left out of the next paradigm. But, maybe much like Everett’s special talent, these messengers were so uniquely superlative in the field of ass-kissing, I couldn’t help but feel great about them and myself when I’d finished reading, very much inclined to do business with their respective corporations and dignitaries—inclined, but rarely surprised.

Nakami surprised me.

The subject line read: Julian Hartsock, the man who wouldn’t be king.

Okay, friend. Got my attention.

These were cursory messages usually. This one was not. It began by positing that we might very well live in a world where Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were the two most important figures of the twentieth century by dint of their disseminating monolithic, world-changing power, such that a multipolar world could emerge, likely tempering the worst instincts of a unipolar American Empire. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, and all that. Interestingly, Hiroshima and Nagasaki went entirely unmentioned. He also, interestingly, left the subtext entirely subtextual with the exception of that subject line. The message, though, in its entirely screamed the following two questions: How do you feel about your incorruptibility, Mr. Hartsock; and, are you prepared for your slice of absolute power?

These were questions I was very much contemplating as the Florida Space Ladder slowly climbed toward completion. This was in the second year of construction, with three more ahead of us before the space tower was finally complete—year seven of the project.

I actually felt pretty good about my incorruptibility. Not to pat myself on the back too hard or anything, but I think my motives were good. The economic and technological boon a working space elevator would be to humanity wasn’t incalculable. Actually, it was quite calculable, both in gross dollar value and growth models. And A & A had an amazing team in place to ensure access to the people, companies, and nations who could do the most good with said access, including ourselves. On top of that, I understood I was quickly becoming one of the richest, most powerful people in the history of the world; so what the hell was anyone going to bribe me with? All I wanted was to finish the project and be an equally good steward of it. Beyond that, all I really wanted to see was a human future in space become a present-day reality during my lifetime. Excelsior, assholes!

Nice try, Nakami San. You almost had me.

I sent him a reply that was polite and expressed my gratitude for sharing his perspectives in such a thought-provoking way.

“You need to come to Japan,” he responded to me. “There is far more to discuss, Mr. Hartsock. The Emperor would like to meet you.”

I thought about it for a few days, and there really wasn’t any way to politely blow off an Emperor. A king, sure. A president or an emir, no problem. But an Emperor? I guess I’d always wanted to see Japan anyway. There was something about the place.

The build was largely on autopilot at that stage. There was an inordinate amount of work that ensured it stayed on autopilot, and there were a million other projects that were vital to our getting a space economy going once the Space Ladder was in operation. But I hadn’t taken a vacation since grad school, which was basically a years-long vacation in itself. Since A & A secured its first funding tranche, though, I couldn’t recall a break of more than a couple days here and there. So I cleared time in my schedule, called up my friend Brock Anderson for a plane and a pilot—the actual human kind—and I started compiling some useful research about Japan. There were sure to be some serious cultural intricacies I needed to know about if I was going to meet the Emperor. I figured I could get a good head start on the flight. Then I fell asleep and woke up about an hour outside Osaka with no idea how to speak the language or the slightest idea how to act.

Fortunately, I was greeted at the private terminal in Osaka by a pair of Nakami’s people. My guess was that Nakami was well prepared for my American obliviousness and had sent these two docents to offset it. I’m not sure exactly what their jobs were, but while I was there, they were assigned to me as personal assistants. They were impeccably dressed, extraordinarily polite and deferential, attended to my every whim, and made my first trip to Japan an enjoyable experience from the second I stepped foot off the plane. The young lady, Shinobu, spoke English almost as a native speaker, as she’d attended College in Pennsylvania. The young man, Hideki, told me he was an Engineer by trade but that he was happy to serve as docent to the man responsible for the space elevator. And every conversation I had with Hideki about engineering proved he wasn’t an imposter. He’d done his homework on the Space Ladder.

“Why are we meeting in Osaka?” I asked them. “Nakami San invited me to meet the Emperor, who, if I’m not mistaken, lives in Tokyo.”

“He does, yes,” Shinobu answered. “Other people would like to meet you as well.”

“First, we thought you might like a tour of some beautiful places here in Osaka,” Hideki said. “It is a very beautiful and ancient city.”

“I’m sure it is. I’d love to see it.”

It was mid-morning by the time we got to the city itself. The car was automatic, of course, but what I wasn’t prepared for was the motorcade our limo filed into and then the security detail awaiting us the second I stepped out of the car. Like an idiot, I’d thought for some reason that because it wasn’t America, I’d just be able to walk around like some hapless, anonymous American tourist. I suppose I could have done so in some places in America still, but my life had become so insular back in Clearwater—house, office, house, office, occasional boat, office, house—that I didn’t think much about the fact I had 24/7 security I almost never interacted with. Mostly I thought of it as the company’s security. I guess it was both. These broad-shouldered, white-gloved Japanese security toughs were something, though—properly aggressive clearing a path wherever Shinobu and Hideki pointed us, which brought us to Osaka Castle, then around the grounds. And Shinobu was so naturally charming, the conversation offset any discomfort I felt about walking around that castle surrounded by a phalanx of security guards that were just about as aggressive and effective as the Miami Dolphins offensive line, making sure the common folk didn’t ever get within spitting distance of the space elevator man.

By lunch time, I was getting hungry, and both Shinobu and Hideki had dropped a few hints about a “very special lunch.” And silly me, I thought they were talking about the food. They took me up to a large room on the upper floors of the castle overlooking the gardens. It was spectacularly beautiful. They handed me an earpiece and told me they’d be back after lunch, showing in a middle-aged gentleman who greeted me with a handshake and a gentle smile.

“Mr. Hartsock, it is an honor to finally meet you. I am Nakami Shue.”

“Ah, Nakami San?”

“Yes. So. I am so grateful you came, Mr. Hartsock. We have much to discuss.”

I wasn’t just a little ignorant. What I came to learn later about how Japan worked was that despite it being a democratic society in one sense, the country was very cohesive at the top—the major corporations worked very closely with the government leaders at all levels, and not just to create feedback loops of corruption and bureaucracy in the grand American tradition, mind you. The Japanese tradition was very much one of functionality first. But this was strange to me, so it was no wonder I didn’t understand what exactly was going on at first. Nakami was there at the behest of the Emperor, who’d been heavily lobbied by a number of interests, both corporate and public, to get me to come to Japan so they could pitch me on the idea about to be dropped on me in that lunch. Nakami San was just the Emperor’s point man.

“There is an apocryphal story about George Washington being asked if he would be king,” Nakami said. “I’m certain you must have heard. The story is often told that Washington turned down the crown.”

“He was very much against a monarchy,” I answered.

“It is not so great a story, I think,” Nakami posited, looking very contemplative. “I suspect Washington would have been very insulted if someone offered him a kingship. Did he not fight his whole life for the very opposite. It’s a strange story, no?”

“Yes and no,” I answered. “I think it might be useful as a simple way for Americans to think their way through the idea of representative government—if the first great American is seen as outright rejecting centralized power in that way, he becomes an example of the ideal necessary in a republic. Shared power distribution. Denunciation of nobility. In a way the story encapsulates his life, fighting with his entire being on the line to reject monarchy and spread sovereignty of the individual citizen. If you don’t take the story literally, it makes sense.”

“What if I asked you to take it literally?” Nakami San asked me. “What could be said about the burden?”

“Perhaps your Emperor could educate us both on that topic. I imagine he has access to history few living people share.”

“His post, as I’m sure you know, is largely ceremonial. Yours, Mr. Hartsock, is quite the opposite.”

I suddenly realized there was far more going on in that conversation than I knew about. Until that point, I’d thought Nakami was just being philosophical, making interesting conversation, exploring cultural differences.

He walked with me over to the windows so we could look down on the gardens. “Did your docents discuss the lunch with you?”

“Nothing specific.”

“Very influential people will be there. It will be in Japanese, hence the earpiece. You should have no troubles. These people are very eager to meet you. The future may depend on it.”

“The future?”

“Not just Japan’s, if that is what you are asking, Mr. Hartsock. I speak of humanity’s future.”

“Small talk isn’t much of a custom here in Japan, I guess.”

“Not with a man such as yourself, no. We understand how valuable your time is. The Emperor didn’t spend years positioning us to approach you so we could discuss the weather.”

“I don’t suppose he did, no.”

A gentleman who was clearly a servant of some kind—maybe a palace employee—entered the great room at the far side and clamped his feet down on the floor like a soldier, standing at attention. He said something in Japanese I obviously couldn’t understand.

“They are ready for us,” Nakami San said, gesturing back toward that gentleman. “Dozo. You know the courtesy? People will stand and bow to you and you bow back.”

“That much I can handle. Is the Emperor here now?”

“No! Oh, no, Mr. Hartsock. These are the ministers and business leaders. Your docents will brief you in detail on the formalities before you travel to the Imperial Palace.”

When we got to the doorway at the other side of the room, the gentlemen at attention gestured for us to remove our shoes before entering an area of the castle I presumed was closed to the public.

“That’s a relief, Nakami San,” I said. “Meeting the Emperor—I wouldn’t want to enter that meeting feeling unprepared. I wouldn’t want to give offense.”

“The Emperor is a very good man, Mr. Hartsock. Very wise,” Nakami said, leading the way to a smaller back hallway where he gestured for me to enter first. “Dozo, and please, to wear the earpiece would be best. Our ministers will speak in Japanese to be certain no one is misunderstood.”

“Very good,” I said, putting in the earpiece and stepping into the hallway.

We were greeted at the door to the tearoom by two very beautiful young ladies dressed in all white kimonos. There were fifteen or so people inside the tearoom standing around a very large table at about knee height. Everyone, one by one, bowed, and we sat. I was totally unprepared for the nature of the meeting. Once we were seated, the people in the room began to formally introduce themselves. The Prime Minister and major cabinet ministers—commerce, infrastructure, trade, energy, the foreign secretary, you name it. The heads of the prefecture’s three largest construction firms were there as well, along with the heads of the nation’s two largest banks, and, of course, the only two people I’d met before—the head of the Japanese space agency and the CEO of Mishima, the largest private space outfit based in Japan. It was everybody. To say I was unprepared for such a welcome put it mildly, but at least I’d had a good night’s sleep on the plane and was able to focus with the attention such a gathering warranted.

I felt compelled to introduce myself after everyone else had done so. I knew they all knew who I was, but it felt like the proper way to signal that I viewed myself as being on level footing with them. I never felt comfortable as a guest of honor or keynote speaker, certainly not in this gorgeous gem of a tearoom in an ancient Japanese castle.

We sat after my introduction was well received, and once tea was served, Nakami San ran the meeting. It was so stunningly coordinated, like a living white paper, impeccably written, each person’s section flowing into the next with precision and weight, not a single wasted word or moment.

The Japanese were proposing that they be considered as stewards for the world’s second space elevator here in Osaka. It was an idea I hadn’t considered. And I don’t mean I hadn’t considered a space elevator in Japan, mind you. I hadn’t considered a second space elevator anywhere. Why? What would be the point? The space economy didn’t even justify the one yet, much less a second one, especially on the absurd scale the Japanese were proposing.

Of course, at some point, I thought as they were speaking, yes, there would come a day where the needs of humanity outstripped the Florida Space Ladder’s capacity to keep up. But that day wouldn’t occur for decades—a century maybe. There were points in the presentation where I had to suppress the urge to laugh or scoff or appear to be visibly puzzled.

Still, the case they made was economically sound. They could supply all of East Asia with their considerable maritime infrastructure—the same way Clearwater was going to be an excellent port for the entire eastern coast of North, South, and Central America. Russia, too, would greatly benefit from a Japanese space elevator, and the need to cooperate on a centralized footing would help to ensure stability in the region. Dating back to after the second world war, no nation had been such a stabilizing force for so long in the region. They were a nation of import, export, and maritime prowess. Similarly, they’d proven capable in space in an outsized manner.

By the time they’d gotten nearly around the table, they’d largely convinced me that if I were considering building a second space elevator, Japan would be a leading candidate for the site with one glaring exception. I set aside that massive structural obstacle for the moment in order to suspend disbelief enough to listen to the presentation carefully.

A second tower would inevitably lead to a third tower soon after. By the end of the twenty-second century, with the birth of the first space tower already immanent, they believed an orbital ring was a certainty, a thought that immediately came to my mind as well. Additionally, a tower of this magnitude opened up the possibility of smaller tethered rings suspended from the main tower, which would open up regional access to nearby nations. I couldn’t help but do the math in my head, Clearwater to Osaka, and then varying the height and diameter of the tethered rings, some very interesting trade routes and partnerships could be developed here in Asia. My mind followed the track of an orbital ring around the globe. More tower sites came to mind. The Japanese were already looking at sites and possible partners to help finance Osaka. Multiple orbital rings might even be feasible after that. It was quite a vision—one I must confess, I’d rarely thought about as a genuine possibility, simply because of the difficulty it had been securing funding for the Clearwater Project.

Things were different now, though, the bankers insisted in their presentation. Lunar titanium and orbital assembly made an Osaka tower much more financially feasible, especially with the prospect of multinational partnerships backing private capital. Once the concept was already operating and returning immediately on investment in Florida, securing funding at that scale would be a far smaller obstacle, especially with prospects for a global network of space towers and rings on the horizon. An era of megastructures backed by automated lunar mining outfits, and as they were talking it through, given where we were, it didn’t seem sci-fi. It was all feasible, with the exception of that one glaring problem.

When they’d all finished, they looked at me. I hadn’t prepared any remarks, because I had no idea they had something so wild and Earth-changing to present. Without exception, every other nation or corporate group’s proposition to me was always about access to our not-yet-complete Florida Space Ladder. These legends didn’t so much as ask for an invite to the opening gala. They wanted me to help them build a space tower ten times bigger. What do you say to that?

I opted for something very Japanese, as it turned out. I told them all how honored I was to be invited to such a special place with such obvious history and congratulated them on a unique and remarkable presentation. I complimented the expertise and innovative thinking of the presenters. And I begged their pardon for not being able to make any immediate remarks, in light of the scale of the proposition and my reluctance to respond without due consideration.

Then, when I’d done my best impression of what an honored guest should say, I told them I had one major question for them that was absent from their presentation. The room seemed to smile as one.

“Please, Mr. Hartsock,” Nakami said in English.

“I am wondering whether your engineers have explored the very real geological problem of regularly occurring earthquakes in the eight or nine range on the Richter scale? Such events are common all across Japan.”

Nakami was still grinning.

“I will answer in English,” he announced to the room, who all seemed to nod as one. “Mr. Hartsock, you may not know the Emperor well yet, but it seems he knows you. He anticipated you would ask only the most critical questions, and he suggested that to invite the world’s most enterprising inventor to our shores having solved all the engineering problems would be an insult of similar size as presuming you couldn’t solve such a problem. He is looking forward to hearing what sort of ingenious solutions you and your team can invent.”

Following the tea and the presentation, the staff brought in an exquisite lunch. Fortunately, I’d been to enough sushi restaurants in grad school that I didn’t embarrass myself with the hashi, as I learned was the Japanese word for chopsticks, nor did I need to call for a fork. And surprisingly, at least to me, the dignitaries in the room didn’t mention the business at hand at all. We talked about a million other things, we exchanged various childhood stories, discussed how things were progressing in Clearwater, debated the rising space elevator’s impacts on the economy worldwide, in Asia, in Japan specifically. It was one of the best experiences I’ve ever had around a table of strangers in my entire life, so unique, in fact, in the moment I recall thinking that I would never have another memory like this again.

Everyone bowed politely as Nakami announced that it was time for the lunch to adjourn. I returned an earnest bow and thanked everyone again for their presentation and their company during the meal. As Nakami returned me to the guidance of my two docents, walking through this magnificent ancient castle, I had a feeling well up in me, a sort of frisson that sat just beneath my skin for the rest of the trip waiting for the smallest spark to draw it out. It was the same feeling that great art evokes in a person who feels art deeply. It humbles you with its beauty and impossibility while simultaneously lifting you up by reminding you that the same spark of humanity is in you. And it wasn’t any one thing they’d said or even the totality of what they’d said. It was the human energy behind it, an intangible certainty that carried the weight of an entire ancient, proud culture. In a word, I felt the sublime there within those walls, amidst the plants in those gardens, radiating from the intentions of those people. And I was well aware that I hadn’t even met the Emperor yet.

Hideki and Shinobu offered me a few options. We were scheduled to depart for Tokyo by shinkansen the following morning. I wasn’t so much interested in visiting the busy shopping districts or tourist destinations. Instead, I opted for a tour of several local shrines, that similar to the castle, reached back in time to ancient epochs in Japanese history, where the temple walls and gardens stood in consonance beside each other. I guess I was a typical American tourist in one sense here—feeling not religious but spiritual, experiencing intangible parts of me vibrating on an old wavelength, very much unlike my usual self.

“If you would enjoy,” Shinobu said as the motorcade was bringing me to my suite for the night, “we can arrange a tour of Kyoto for you after you meet with the Emperor.”

“I think I’d enjoy that very much,” I answered. “As you know, I’m from a country that still feels very young by comparison. Yet there’s so much modernity here stacked on top of this history. It’s quite a place.”

“We are very happy to hear you are enjoying the visit so far.”

“Very much so,” I said. “Very much.”

I had a pleasant dinner alone that evening on the terrace of the hotel suite overlooking the lights of the city, watching the planes far in the distance, taking off and landing. There was too much light pollution, of course, to see the stars or satellites overhead, but I couldn’t help but think of it—a glimmering, gossamer line in the night sky above, linked to the Earth by a gargantuan tower that seemed to stretch into eternity. Accustomed as I’d become by then to living in the shadow of the steadily-climbing Florida Space Ladder, still, I struggled to envision the enormity of it, the effects on an already massive metropolis. I kept coming back to the thought that people have always felt small—before the mountains, before the ocean, before the cosmos, before the gods. And surely the megastructures we were just beginning to build were the natural progression of stone monoliths, pyramids, cathedrals, bridges and sky scrapers. This is what we do, I kept reminding myself—the natural modern extension of our most ancient traditions.

The Osaka Space Lift. Even the name sounded right to me.

I also found myself thinking, as I drifted off to sleep that night, that every second of this trip had been planned out with similar precision to that presentation in the castle, and that I’d haplessly bumbled myself into the middle of a pitch. Even so, I also found myself rationalizing that every good idea gets pitched. It’s hard for an American to think of a time that the Statue of Liberty didn’t stand watch over New York Bay, but for over a century after my nation was instantiated, that iconic symbol wasn’t even an idea. And for several centuries before that, when the nation wasn’t a nation but a colony, such a monument was inconceivable. Now, few can conceive of New York without it or a time when Liberty Island was just nondescript little Bedloe’s Island. It took a mad Frenchman with an idea and an epic pitch to bring that glorious creation into being. I drifted off to sleep very much looking forward to meeting this mad Emperor. I was genuinely hoping he could close.

My briefing began with breakfast in my suite. Shinobu and Hideki were very pleasant teachers. “I am happy to observe the courtesies,” I explained to them, “but I hope the Emperor doesn’t take offense, I am American, and I do believe in the original principles of my country. I have no superior, and similarly, therefore, no inferiors.”

“You are not the first American the Emperor has met, Mr. Hartsock,” Shinobu said, grinning. “He is very cognizant of the cultural differences. Even for us Japanese, the Emperor is really a living embodiment of a ceremonial past. We are all equal too.”

“Of course,” I replied, feeling a little embarrassed and boorish. At the same time, though, I wasn’t going to be mistaken for a subject.

They could have put me on a plane and an aircar. It would have been faster. However, like the meeting, the tour of the castle, and the visits to the shrines, the trip up to Tokyo on the shinkansen was purposeful. This bullet train was a fourth-generation mag-lev that was un-enclosed, gliding through the verdant Japanese countryside, along the cerulean coast, across the foot of snow-capped Mount Fuji, and into one of the world’s greatest cities, all in a little less than two hours. This land was breathtaking.

By the time my Tokyo motorcade arrived at the private entrance to the Imperial Palace, the trip had softened me up for the Emperor. I had that same feeling bubbling beneath my skin, and it occurred to me that if this meeting went well, for centuries maybe, this very morning’s discussion would be taught in Japanese history classes, and perhaps history classes all around the world.

Right before we stepped out of the car, I remember thinking that A & A’s board would be pissed. All I’d told anyone was that I was taking a trip to Japan. I’m sure they had visions of hot springs and cherry blossoms, a few visits to some idyllic little shrines in the mountains. Green tea. Nope. Just the boss and the Emperor talking space towers. Serves them right for letting me go on vacation, I thought.

Hideki and Shinobu informed me that the Emperor’s English was excellent but that he preferred to speak in Japanese. Similar to the business leaders, the Emperor considered the subject to be of such importance that he trusted the AI’s translation of his native tongue more than his ability in English. We came to the edge of a courtyard beside the palace residence, and they left me there alone, inviting me to walk forward through the gate where the Emperor would meet me.

He was a man in his late fifties wearing a very nicely tailored suit, and on that front, we began on level footing. We bowed at about five feet and then shook hands. He greeted me with a wide smile. I noticed that he wasn’t wearing an earpiece, so I assumed he would need no translation to catch my meaning.

“Welcome, and thank you for coming,” he said to me in English, and then immediately transitioned to his native tongue. “In many ways I consider you an opposite to me, Mr. Hartsock, but I am hopeful that we can strike a balance. I very much admire what you are doing, but I would be lying if I told you I didn’t have concerns about the path you have set yourself on.”

“I am eager to hear those concerns,” I replied genuinely. “We can only see what we see, and even then, we sometimes fail to see what was right in front of us. Your perspective would be most welcome.”

“Nakami San has been speaking with you some on the matter of my main concern. My staff and I did quite a lot of research on the legal intricacies of your patent holdings and the structure of your corporations. From a personal standpoint, you have guarded your interests very well. It’s a significant achievement that you were able to secure the funding your companies did while maintaining the level of control you have.”

“I had excellent lawyers and even better advisors,” I told him.

“Of that I have no doubt.”

“I did notice they weren’t invited,” I said, smiling to signal I was at least half joking.

He smiled back. “I hope that wasn’t a problem for you. I would not wish for you to feel pressured or deceived in any way, but as I said, I have followed your career and read a lot about your life. You strike me as a man who makes his own decisions in his own time.”

“I wouldn’t lease any of the relevant licenses to you without proper vetting, if that’s what you mean.”

“No, of course not. All that is secondary to the real decisions, those details. The big picture, though, you see that before anyone else does, certainly before your lawyers.”

“I didn’t see this coming, I must say, your Majesty.”

He smiled.

“This pleases you, I can see?” I asked him.

We were walking in a private area of the palace, completely alone. He gestured to a courtyard in front of us where three very old, magnificent-looking traditional buildings greeted us.

“I like to come here to contemplate many different matters,” he told me. “These are the palace sanctuaries. I like to walk here to be alone. There are no cameras, no eyes and ears, no voices other than my thoughts. Here it is very difficult not to think about the past. But lately, as I’m sure you can guess, I have been thinking very much about the future—the future of Japan and the future of humanity.”

“The space elevator concerns you?”

“I am certain you are clever enough to intuit how my people’s proposition is very much a response to my concerns.”

“It sounded personal too, though,” I said, “or at least the way Nakami probed sounded personal in many ways.”

“Hmm,” the Emperor replied, furrowing his brow. “It is less concern about you than concern for you, Mr. Hartsock. I hope you understand. As someone who has been raised to perform the function of a monarch, including studying my predecessors in intricate detail, I must tell you I am extremely impressed by your temperament. Many business leaders—especially self-made success stories—seldom do they possess the temperament to be a proper steward of the very business they built, much less a major portion of the civilization. I have few such concerns about you, Mr. Hartsock.”

“But for me, I understand. I’d love for you to elaborate on that. I must confess I don’t give a lot of thought to these matters beyond the day-to-day decisions. The rest of my time is in the details of running the corporation or solving engineering or design problems that arise.”

“Just so. The men before me who were conferred the power of a nation in these buildings held the reigns of an entire country in their hands.” The Emperor gestured to the three sacred shrines where the nation’s ancient treasures resided. “But not one of these monarchs held a fraction of the power you command guiding a corporation like A & A. Still, if I concede that you are the man best suited to that job on Earth, and I am willing to consider that may be true, what other possibilities arise if you are managing the one functioning space elevator on Earth? You become the keeper of the only bridge to the stars. Sure, there are rockets, but they will become much rarer as you lower the cost to transport people and goods to orbit exponentially. Fewer rockets will get built. How many people take a ferry across a river once there is a bridge?”

“Not many,” I conceded.

“So, we consider that you hold that power and stipulate that you do it fairly. What would you do if the United States government decided that your giving access to a nation they deemed adversarial constituted treason? Or worse, what would happen if a newly-elected and emboldened administration sent the military down to Clearwater to take public possession of the tower? How would you stop them?”

I shrugged. I hadn’t even considered the possibility. “I suppose I wouldn’t stop them in the short term. Long term, maybe I’d be able to get the courts to uphold the letter of the law and recognize A & A’s corporate rights.”

“Let’s say that happens. In the interim, how would such an administration steward the resource you built? Fairly, you think?”

“Not our best administration on its best day, no.”

“So, a concern. That one power will pull the power-hungry to it like a magnet.”

I sighed. “I don’t think that’s a major concern.”

“It may not be for decades. But we can’t foresee international dynamics a few years in advance. Give that tower two decades to work, the international landscape will change in ways not even the wisest and most discerning of us can imagine. I have been raised to think in centuries. Most don’t think this way. That is merely one of my major concerns.”

“Please continue,” I said.

“Mr. Hartsock, you are a bachelor. Again I am your counter-pole. Monarchs obsess about the line of succession because it was once the same line as the transfer of power. Do you have any idea how many people would like to kill you?”

“It’s not zero.”

He laughed. “No, no, no. It certainly isn’t. And, that’s to say nothing of the heart attack that may kill you suddenly, the fluke accident, or any other such thing. You have your affairs in order?”

“I think technically I do have a next of kin.”

“Your father, is it?”

“I suppose it would be.”

“I have read he is a smart and capable farmer. A very honorable profession. In many ways I envy him. All around me, I have the most beautiful plants tended to by Japan’s most skillful gardeners. I have always wanted to try to grow a garden of my own. Sadly, such things are not possible on these sacred grounds. Amateurs not allowed,” the Emperor said, laughing at his own joke. “I digress, but the true question is whether your father would be prepared for the burden?”

“No. I don’t suppose he would.”

“I imagine, even with your advisors around him, he would wish to divest himself of this burden as quickly as possible.”

“I would hope so,” I said. “Meaning no disrespect to my father. I wouldn’t want that burden for him.”

“No.”

“You make a cogent point, your Majesty, and as a result of this conversation, a point I will address in short order.”

“You have no children.”

“No.”

“In a family such as mine, the children are born to the burden and raised to assume it. That type of pre-determined legacy is certainly not ubiquitous in powerful families in the West.”

“It’s far more common that the business gets sold and the board or a trust runs the company in the name of the children.”

“Yes. No chance for corruption there,” the Emperor joked.

“And no monarch has ever gone mad or been megalomaniacal or was simply a mean, mean bastard,” I retorted.

“Quite true. You hit exactly on my point, Mr. Hartsock. The danger isn’t in the identity of the person wielding an absolute power. It’s the nature of the power itself. There is no way to ensure its wise stewardship except to spread that power thin enough among competing parties that the potential disaster of a poorly mediated unilateral control is no longer a threat. If there are four space towers and one is controlled by an out-of-control US government who has taken possession of the Clearwater tower, the rest of the world can turn to the other three and leave America to sort itself out. The other nations may even intervene to help in some ways. If there is only one tower, the act of taking control of it becomes much more strategically consequential. My purpose today is not to convince you that we Japanese want a second space elevator, Mr. Hartsock, my purpose is to convince you that you do.”

“You present a convincing argument, your Majesty. You really do.”

“The details, as you say, should be left to the negotiators. Primarily, I wanted to make this most important case to you myself. I know my representatives touched on the fact that we would seek partners in finance from entities interested in the next site. I also, today, wanted you to understand that I am committed to doing the same as I am asking you to do now. I believe the American way of expressing this, and a very beautiful one to my mine, I must say, but we intend to pay it forward. You understand?”

“Yes, I hear you.”

“Humanity needs your genius in the stars, creating the infrastructure for the next hundred years, laying the foundation for our space-faring civilizations to come, not mediating squabbles over access to a structure you have already built. You are not destined to be a bridge-keeper. That is a job for kings and emperors, and, as you can see, wiser men than us have decided that the days of solitary imperial power vested in one all-powerful monarch, thankfully, are the days of the past.”

“It’s a lot to think about, your Majesty. The bridge to space.”

“You can make or break kings. That will make for many jealous kings, presidents, and potentates. You must feel this, I suppose?”

“As much as I try to ignore it and focus on building the company and the structure, it’s pretty hard to ignore. I’d be honored to have you visit Clearwater to see it for yourself.”

“That would be a thrill, Mr. Hartsock. Truly. The pictures are ...” the Emperor paused for a moment, shaking his head. “It is difficult to fathom what you are doing.”

“I am very grateful to you, your Majesty, for inviting me here and for the careful consideration and wisdom you’ve brought to the matter. Of course, I cannot give you any definitive responses, as much as I would like to pretend I’m in charge of my own company.”

He laughed again, “You suppose I do not understand?” The Emperor gestured to the magnificent grounds around us, as though to say, none of this is truly mine.

“In any case, I will give this matter the attention it deserves,” I told him. “This includes directing the attention of my top advisors as well.”

“I, my representatives, and the Japanese people are most grateful, Mr. Hartsock. And truly, I think all people will be someday.”

“Let’s hope so.”

“I do have one further question,” he said, looking at me with a subtle grin.

“Please,” I said.

“I am wondering if you have any inkling on how to approach the earthquake problem. It’s a much smaller problem in Clearwater, but I understand it is not non-existent there.”

“We have measures in place for geological activity commensurate with the area. Tsunami measures as well, even though we’re on a bay, relatively speaking.”

“I’ve spoken with top Japanese engineers. We have some of the best in the world with respect to the issue.”

“No doubt you do,” I replied. “I have thoughts. They’re only nascent at this point, though.”

“You don’t foresee this as an insurmountable barrier, though, do you?” He smiled.

“No, I do not, your Majesty. I don’t know how you’ve managed to read me so accurately without ever having met me before, but it’s just as Nakami San said, a puzzle like this is a gift to a mind like mine. It might be the greatest enticement you could’ve put before me.”

“I hope very deeply for a continued friendship, Mr. Hartsock, even more than I hope for a future partnership.”

“I’m grateful and honored, your Majesty. This entire brief journey has been a tremendous gift to me.”

We walked a bit farther on the grounds of the private residence. The Emperor had some duties to attend to but invited me to a private dinner in the evening with the royal family and suggested in the interim, I allow my docents to show me around the palace grounds. Again, how do you say no to an Emperor?

The entire experience simultaneously was incredibly invigorating while also leaving me outwardly subdued. In reading my manner, Shinobu and Hideki were concerned that the meeting with the Emperor hadn’t gone well. “To the contrary,” I told them. “It was an excellent meeting, very thought provoking. What you’re reading is my personality plus my processing of your Emperor’s wise counsel.” They seemed to like how I put it.

The palace grounds, of course, were magnificent.

The royal family was similarly as kind and genteel as the Emperor himself. Perfectly dignified dignitaries. The types of people you would be proud to represent your nation. We shared a very pleasant dinner together.

I stayed the night in Tokyo, opting for another low-key night in, rather than going out to experience the nightlife Tokyo was famous for. Hideki and Shinobu seemed to know me well enough already that this wasn’t a surprise to them.

The following morning, we returned south to Kyoto. Again, the same feeling of sublime ancient energy seemed ready to overwhelm me throughout the day. I could also tell, even as I felt like I was just taking things in, observing the ancient civilizational beauty as it folded into the natural beauty of the landscape, both sides of my brain were working subconsciously. My left brain was hacking away at the earthquake problem, assessing, testing, calculating, postulating, even as I was slowly progressing through these ancient sacred monuments unfolding before me. My right brain, meanwhile, was furiously philosophizing over the merits of the Emperor’s arguments. Power on that scale, even in the hands of the noblest of people? Was I the noblest of people? I certainly hoped not. Then again, with the very real prospect of near-unlimited power and wealth right in front of me, the Emperor was able to see from halfway around the world exactly how easy it would be to entice me to give up something other people wouldn’t give up for anything. And what had the Emperor offered but the freedom to solve more problems in space?

Consciously, I was thinking about what I’d tell the board—how I could sell it. Our choke-hold on access represented a massive financial and competitive advantage for the company. Technically, I retained the patent rights on the magnetics to lease as I pleased. I also had a fiduciary responsibility to A & A’s shareholders. I just had to find a way to make Osaka more lucrative than the chokehold in Clearwater. That would be the easiest hurdle.

“I want to see Osaka from the air,” I told my docents at the end of our two days in Kyoto. “I need to see it, to visualize.”

“Certainly,” Shinobu said with a now familiar smile. “We will have Nakami San hire an aircar for tomorrow. We can go wherever you like.”

I spent the evening looking at relief maps, satellite imagery, and geological surveys of the region. I didn’t sleep much.

The aircar Nakami hired for us was more like a yacht. It came with windows in the floor, attendants, food and drinks, and was somehow the quietest ariel vehicle I’d ever been inside, with the exception of one hot air balloon ride. “No balcony?” I joked with Hideki. He scrunched up his face and nodded as though he thought it was something to consider for the next model.

I gave Shinobu my list of sites to examine from the air. Nakami San had also gotten back to me with their survey sites. The Emperor’s team had four prospective locations but were keen to hear from A & A’s geologists before investing more resources in site selection.

“We could arrange to pick up members of the Emperor’s survey team,” Hideki offered. “I am no expert. A poor companion.”

“Perhaps not an expert, my friend,” I told him, “but never a poor companion.”

I did my best to explain to Shinobu what we were looking for, considerations, problems, signs we could see in the landscape below. I was certainly not the final word on the geology, that’s for sure. But Florida had taught me a fair amount.

“I cannot restrain my curiosity from asking, Mr. Hartsock, perhaps it is inappropriate,” Hideki stated about halfway through our flight. “The engineer in me is dying to know about the earthquake problem, how you intend to solve it.”

“I will need to confer with A & A’s and the Emperor’s geologists to get a true scope of the problem. I’m estimating a maximum safe buffer of ten meters, just for a large, round number. It’s probably overkill, but we’re probably going to have to overkill it. We don’t want to be short on that margin.”

“Hai, so,” Hideki agreed. “That would be a big problem for Osaka.”

“And a lot of other people, most likely,” I conceded. “That means we more or less need to levitate an object that might be the mass of Mount Fuji ten meters off the quaking earth for the entire duration of the event, for maybe a couple minutes. Have you any sense of the energy needed to generate a magnetic field of that strength, Hideki?”

He shook his head, his eyes wide.

“A phenomenal amount of energy,” I agreed. “It’s more than your country’s power grid could produce in a day, I’d imagine. We could offset the necessary draw with floating buffer plates several centimeters apart. I’m going to have to do a lot of math, but, still, even if we reduce the load by a factor of ten, it’s still going to require a phenomenal amount of power.”

“And, the first thing to happen in an earthquake—I don’t know if you know, Mr. Hartsock—the power goes right out. Tick tick,” he said, pointing at the lights overhead to indicate that the grid flickers at the very least, if not outright fails.

“An eight or nine would almost certainly kill the grid, yes,” I said. “I lived in California for several years. I’ve experienced it firsthand.”

“Ah, then you understand.”

“I do.”

“I feel like I am learning to know you well enough to read your face, Mr. Hartsock,” Hideki said, grinning slightly. “I think you have solved the problem.”

I smiled back at him. “All you need to do is ask yourself what could generate that much power for the exact duration of an earthquake perfectly concurrent with an earthquake?”

Hideki smiled and laughed, “The earthquake itself! Ehhhh! Sugoi na! Odorokubeki tensai!”

I smiled but shook my head enough that Shinobu detected some doubt about whether I’d caught his meaning, as neither of them had lapsed into their native tongue for more than a moment or two all week.

“He is very impressed,” she explained. “Hideki thinks you are a super genius, Mr. Hartsock. He says ‘WOW!’”

There would be thousands of engineering problems to solve, tests to run, solutions to troubleshoot, billions of yen to secure to get a working prototype built. Tremendous machines that fire by the movement of the very Earth! What an incredible challenge, but I had no doubt it could be done. The solution was a foregone conclusion.

My fascination with psychometrics has taught me much about the temperamental differences between individual people. The memory of these two extremely likeable guides—two of the politest, most agreeable people I’d ever met—inevitably brought Duane Everett back to mind. The contrast of these extremes in personality on that one dimension. Yet somehow both had found an immanently useful place in the world where they could maximize the usefulness of their natural social tendencies. The meanest bastard I’d ever met keeping deals on track, the nicest companions helping to get the next deal done. Thinking back on that trip makes me marvel once again at the human condition. At the individual level I sometimes wonder: how are we the same species?

Yet, for as strikingly different as we are, we are all remarkably the same. I give as evidence for this a not altogether unique experience, I’m sure, though an uncommon one.

At the time in my life I first visited Japan, I was in a period of transition. By then, I had become known. I was becoming a celebrity. As the Florida Space Ladder climbed, my renown grew. When it finally crested over the Earth, my face became instantly recognizable worldwide, in every nation and every town. But for most of my life, for as unique as I knew myself to be, other people had no idea who I was when they met me. As that changed, I came to see a side of people that only celebrities ever really see, as people meet you, usually for the first and only time in their lives. And, I can report from experience that people are remarkably the same and largely unoriginal. They say the same things, ask the same questions, make the same jokes, over and over and over. And in those moments, when I’m responding to a comment I’ve heard for the thousandth time from a person who thinks they’re being very clever and original, I find myself thinking, yet again about Duane Everett, reminding myself that the experience, though it may be tiresome for me, is one each of those people will remember for the rest of their lives. The time they met Julian Hartsock. And that story can go one of two ways—either they made him laugh and Mr. Hartsock was a really nice guy or he cut them down and was an arrogant asshole. So I think of Duane Everett and do my best to smile genuinely and behave as though it’s as exciting for me to meet them as they are excited to meet me, even though my temperament makes this task much more of an effort than it would be for my two highly agreeable Japanese escorts.

Even writing this now, honest as my account is, I’m bothered by the inevitable impression it will leave that I somehow look down upon these people with scorn or derision because they are not each supremely clever or original. I must state categorically, this is not the case. In fact, I account it a very good and necessary reality of the human condition.

One thing that was self-evident in my visit to Japan, despite the difference in language, in culture, in environment and perspective—the people are the same. They have the same needs: food, shelter, community, purpose. They have the same fears: death, pain, hardship, humiliation. They have the same joys: pleasure, friendship, laughter, love. They are enriched by the same forces: beauty, music, nature, art. It is merely a byproduct of my celebrity that I am exposed so repetitively to the sameness of humanity. In our own small communities, we individual people are all originals.

It didn’t matter the nation or the language, though. I would get two questions over and over again once I became Mr. Space Elevator. And I don’t say the following with any arrogance or disdain whatsoever, as I view intelligence as the largely inherent and immutable trait it is, like height or physical beauty. My intelligence is as much a fluke as the hyper-gigantism of an eight-foot-tall behemoth, if a bit more useful. But I can usually tell how intelligent the people I meet are by which of the two questions they ask me.

The first is almost always some variation of: “Julian, what’s it like to be the richest man in the history of the world?”

I have a long and a short answer for both questions, depending on the nature of the encounter. The long answer to that first question is usually something like: “Well, friend, I can only be on one boat at a time, reside in one house, sleep in one bed. And, I happen to care much more about solving problems than acquiring more stuff. Tremendous wealth makes many common problems disappear, which is great. It also presents other problems most people never have to deal with. On balance, though, it’s much better to be super wealthy than extremely poor.”

The short answer to that question is: “Being super rich is not everything it’s cracked up to be.”

The second question usually gets asked by more discerning people with higher IQs, who are equally as unoriginal yet operate on a higher intellectual tier. It is almost always some variation of: “Julian, what on Earth could have possibly motivated you to surrender your company’s largest competitive advantage the instant you’d completed the world’s first space elevator?”

This essay in its entirety is the long answer to that question. Every word of it. The full account. I’ve never publicly spoken on the question in depth before. Until now, I’ve only ever given some cheeky version of the short answer: “Even I couldn’t say no to an Emperor.”

I think of the view from that aircar over Osaka that day, the smile on Hideki’s face as we discussed locations and solutions, the incredible cityscape expanding into the green, green hills beneath us. All the people living in the time before the Osaka Space Lift forever altered the face of a nation and of a planet. A mad Emperor and an equally mad inventor. Partners in shaping the world.

With an AP in the 37^th percentile, I was blessed with enough of an inner asshole to be well inclined to speak up when my time was being wasted and just enough politeness to know exactly when to bow.