Nathan Weismuller: the rise of ecosocialist de-growth regimes in Middle-Europe had countless detractors railing against radical economic controls imposed in the name of curbing rapid biodiversity loss and fighting rampaging floods from the Palatinate to Chernivtsi. While waging war on pollution would eventually become a unanimous regional consensus, in the early years dissident thinkers left the continent en masse, heading to the nation where free enterprise was the watchword of the day. Taking with them a love of liberty in their hearts, their ironclad philosophies in their minds, and all of the capital they could in their flight, Centuropan exiles descended upon the United States.
Like the Forty-Eighters who had fled the titular failed 19th century German revolution to become ranchers in Texas, the Grünemarktskeptikers headed west, which, while no longer as much of a frontier as it used to be, reverted to as wild as its saloon and six-gun days. Even as Southern California burst into the flames of water war and large wodges of the Southwest burst into literal flames under super-drought conditions, the federal government gratefully waved in these new immigrants. America was happy to replenish its tumbling numbers with Middle-European iconoclasts even as other regions' expats chose vibrant (newly-)United Corea, boisterous bustling Hy-Brasil, or, if they could bribe their way past immigration and customs, the idyllically isolationist Oceanian Alliance.
And so, Nathan Weismuller was born on the American West Coast to a tenured Epistemology of Economics professor at the University of Vienna and the financial news anchor at Holo Liberty Salzburg. Encouraged to engage in private enterprise and the sciences from an early age. Built a self-dispensing lemonade stand servicing the neighborhood at age ten. Automat later converted to sell first aid kits during the civil unrest of the 2029 Orchard Gang-Bhattara Boys Feud in New Los Angeles. Family relocated north shortly after clashes spilled over into Century City, state guard called in when NLAPD positions overrun. Attended Lowell High School in San Francisco. Created amateur design for quick-setup urban dwelling using recycled shipping containers modified with latest metal foldforming techniques. Won recognition after open-source layout was posted to public datalinks in the wake of 2033 Mount Umunhum Earthquake and adapted for emergency shelters by state guard relief mission. Praised by Mission District locals for alleviating crisis conditions. Subsequent designs to adapt the quickset homes for long-term use declined by SF Housing Authority.
Attended Albert Gallatin University to study Business Management and Economics, dropping out in sophomore year to found Brightweaver, a startup specializing in providing AI-driven financial analysis to small and medium-sized businesses. A pivot to creating lawyer programs to help SMBs skirt tax laws and onerous regulations led to the company's demise, thanks to a combination of IRS investigation threats, investor panic, and insufficient runway to move upmarket. Despite this setback, it became an industry cause célèbre, a case of rampant regulator hypocrisy snuffing out a promising firm while megacorps and gigacorps had free rein in the increasingly hands-off economy. After six years of leading his own company, at times A/B testing quant models and QAing lawprogs himself, Weismuller's star had risen. Shortly after Brightweaver folded, the enigmatic founder of the prestigious Eru Fund invited him south to the new city of Tomorrow Bay.
Eru had been created by an ex-Togra founding engineer to redistribute his immense RSU wealth into young companies with spirits distinct from the calcified culture he believed his organization had fallen prey to. The premier multi-stage venture capital firm sought to build beyond the tech truisms of Silicon Valley, Pearl River, and Nova Skolkovo, and put its money where its mouth was by headquartering in Tomorrow Bay. Weismuller was flown down by vertcar down to the shining brand new conurbation at the heart of the Californian coast. Perched in the middle of the state, where north is north and south is south, never the twain shall meet, the city corporate board dreamt of a new municipality free of the troubles of both NoCal and SoCal. Far away from lingering aftershocks and water wars, this new metropolis would allow their firms to drive unlimited possibility and shareholder value free of the rest of the state- and the country itself. This smart city had been engineered from the ground up and the top down to preemptively avoid problems, solutions emerging middle-out. The Eru Fund was a board member, eagerly spotting startups of promise and inviting them to incorporate in Tomorrow Bay, the better to build up the city's revenues and legitimacy.
Following a whirlwind tour from the stately human hive of Industry Row to the prototype thorium reactor power plant and finally to the heights of the Morningstar Spire, the aged founder approached Weismuller at last. Recognizing the former Brightweaver CEO's talents in determining economic trends while dual-wielding both BI and AI, he offered him a job as an analyst for the fund. Outside the office's two-story tall glass, Tomorrow Bay's burgeoning spaceport loomed in the distance. A bevy of aerospace companies had already set up shop in town, their rockets reflecting the sunlight as orbital tourists and planetary express cargo were prepared for boarding. On the other side of the skyline, across the water, stood Morro Rock, silent and steadfast, the sole reminder of the city's prehistory.
Weismuller looked to the founder and declined the offer. A series of feigned shock, secret looks of approval, counter-offers and counter-rejections after, he walked away as the newest junior partner of the Eru Fund.
For the next few years Weismuller worked to expand the fund's purview across a multitude of sectors. In time, the portfolio became a veritable army of halflings able to tussle with- or entreat with- ents. Even as Morgan Industries used its monolithic corporate command economics to batter its way into mega-project government contracts, he directed the fund to back smaller, sprightlier competitors from the plucky space miners of Mercury Moria to the next-gen Centuropan railmen of Thorondor Vactrains. While Knox-Yǎn played its market destabilizing games, leveraging buyouts of the nation's husk of a healthcare system and turning hospital networks into cheap mortician schools, he bade Eru make longtermist plays into speculative research firms working on longevity lengthening like Ainur Treatments. And even as Heid of Empire Management's Operation Gold Rush cut a swath through the desert in a private industry-led reconquista on behalf of the federal government, Weismuller cut deals for substantial startup equity in the burgeoning agricultural revitalization space. Many of these "Earthforming" firms were soon put to work reclaiming the devastated postwar areas to feed America's hungry masses, and Eru was well-satiated as ARC contracted to them or bought them up one by one, from Eregion Ecosystems to Orodruin Operations.
Even before his nine years of service at the fund was over, Weismuller began his travels. As beautiful as the new city was, and as instrumental as he became in its formation while Eru's influence expanded, he grew weary of the founder's increasingly meddlesome nature. The fund's finances were booming, but its leader was preoccupied with undercutting fellow industry titans based on ideological pique. Petty personal plays and quixotic crusades spilled out from the town's tabloid pages and into the national stage as the Eru Fund became a tool for higher office ambitions.
Despairing of the direction of the firm, and despising the constrictive nature of politics, Weismuller took upon side-projects abroad, ironically contracting for government bureaucracies. The regime in Honduras, desperately trying to fund its free-development economic zones through legal means, hired him to manage the municipal investment portfolio of the charter city of Ciudad Romer. The settlement authority in Xin Shanghai, fed up with Preston's unending influence and seeking leverage against both Knox-Yǎn, Great China, and the Corean chaebols, asked him to consult on blue sky strategies to shake free of foreign economic and research dependence.
And finally, the United Nations approached Weismuller to be a private industry advisor for their project to create a new form of citizenship. As governments faded in power, the people of the planet flocked to NGOs for sustenance, defense, and identity- the U.N. itself, the Red Cross and other aid organizations, the Catholic Church and other religious hierarchies, the Togra Academy, and the largest category of all: multinational corporations. Weismuller was invited to give his thoughts, and he did so at length, presenting arguments for allowing individuals to freely associate themselves with economic actors, as well as the capacity of free markets to promote the advancement of classical liberal values. In the end, corpo lobbyists from MicronSoft-Apple, Morgan Industries, the Coca-Cola Company, and the usual suspects shaped the proposal with arguments for corporate sovereignty, but Weismuller's piece made for a modest little patch within the quilt that was post-national citizenship.
His stint in Tomorrow Bay made him a rich man, but that wealth was only seed money for further endeavors. Weismuller left to found his own firm: Betelgeuse Capital, specializing in investing in the same youthful, clear-minded, free-spirited, hungry and foolish startups that Eru had left behind. (Following a failed independent Senate race, its founder had decamped to Oceania to bankroll an Extropian Party, leaving the fund in the hands of toadies and yes-men.) Based in sunny, flood-walled Miami but with investments spanning the world, thanks to contacts forged from Weismuller's international extracurriculars, Betelgeuse became a respected spotlight for the ever-increasing number of startups, winning away some from the declining Eru Fund.
And just like his former mentor, the more he excelled at economics, the more Weismuller slowly turned his thoughts towards other pursuits and passions. He returned to Gallatin U and finished his degree in full, even though he had already received an honorary award for his work on the U.N. Protocol of Universal Citizenship. He stayed and received a doctorate in Economic Sciences, specializing in Venture Relations. He began writing on the datalinks, publishing his thoughts on market issues of the day for all to see.
After lecturing at Gallatin and at the University of Chicago, Weismuller also became an advisor to the World Bank, where he advanced the so-called neo-Washington Consensus despite an increasingly market-skeptic international community. But his heart was always with Betelgeuse Capital, and to demonstrate his convictions by creating case studies himself, he directed his portfolio into strategic investments in technologies with no immediately foreseeable profit. Weismuller attempted to prove that pure research could be furthered by private means. Along the way his firm became a minority shareholder of the construction efforts of the Unity project. And for his private expertise, his public contracting, and his money, he won his ticket to Alpha Centauri.
Notes:
Lawyer programs are a concept from Earth, by David Brin.
Tomorrow Bay is a pretty obvious reference to another cyberpunk city built at Morro Bay.
Calling NorCal "NoCal" is a William Gibson thing.
In keeping with the original Firaxis SMAC website bios for the faction leaders, most side characters are left unnamed as they are not the focus. But the founder of the Eru Fund is loosely based upon a real-life venture capitalist whose identity is made obvious by the portfolio companies' naming convention.
The Extropians are a political organization from X-COM Apocalypse.