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in more than a year of trying.
    And so Nero realized that he had made his decision.
    *
    Mornings on Doka were nature's show time.  The radiation of two suns created turbulence in the high atmosphere, and airborne dust painted each sunrise with deep red and purple.  With a couple of clouds, the show was glorious.  Nero's attention, however, was elsewhere:  After waking up, he had started preparing a reply for Kebe.
    There was no encoding gear on Doka, so Nero had to rig up makeshift equipment.  Manufacturing a wildcat card was even harder.  When he remixed his announcement, night had long since fallen and the next day was arriving:

    "The end of the universe is open for business.  Renovation has been slow, inactivity useless.  Hot potatoes are necessary to feed the hungry and lonely resident.  Hope to see you soon."

    Nero slept through another spectacular sunrise and on through the morning.
    *
    Boring days passed;  routines became a tease, the lack of meaning unendurable.  Nero's penance was now to wait:  The fuse was ignited, would the bomb go off?  Rook and Zochar played their eternal games of light and darkness.  Pook came and went.
    One day, a spike appeared on the power monitor.  Suddenly, the faithful cart that had carried Nero around for months on end became insufferably slow.  A parcel filled the mail tray.  Nero brought it to the tea table, blew the dust off, and opened it.
    The package contained a hardcover book with pages filled in fine handwriting, an optical card, and a small envelope.  He had no reader at hand for the card.  The cover of the book said  The Making of an Empire , and, on the next line: by Leonard Timothy Duskin.  The envelope was full with a deck of microfiches.  Nero turned to the first page in the book.

    “Power Sharing was created to reestablish the trust of the public in government.  After democracy failed to deliver its promise of participation, rethinking became a necessity.  Yet, regardless of its package, power always flows by the same rules.
    The danger from the collapse of democracy was the onset of anarchy, which is the greatest foe of power because of the absence of rule.  I admire how a few individuals who understand power can influence history:  The council of Bratislava perceived that a novel solution was needed to preserve global influence.  They understood that in due time, influence would become control.
    Public governments were lame champions of participation.  The lie they purported to defend, however, was appealing.  If too many idiots had not become so complacent in their zeal for corruption, they might still be in power.  Anyway, after the Disorder, public government yielded to private government.  The concept of private government seems close to that of empire, but this is not the case.  Private government as implemented by Power Sharing is not so dissimilar from its public predecessor, democracy.  Even if they are frauds, both entail the appearance of participation.
    The council defined the charter of Power Sharing and established the Institute for Private Government to implement it.  IPG was housed in the surviving Kenzo tower in Bologna, Italy.  Later, IPG became known as the Tower, after the site that housed it.
    IPG spawned the Guilds and the Corporations and endowed them with stock in government.  These allegedly private organizations sat at the voting table of IPG in proportion to their stock holdings.  IPG spread its rule to every known human settlement, and its power was shared by all voting members.
    Stock ownership in IPG became a valuable asset.  The political difficulty of generating new initial public offerings soon froze the dynamic of the process and established the root of its inevitable demise.
    Sometimes I wonder if the genius that inspired the beginning might be indeed moved by higher motives.  If so, then its weakness is lack of understanding of the fickleness of mankind.  It befuddles me how brilliant thinkers