Story The Black Angels

--------------Flashback ----------------

I was twenty one when I invented an algorithm that made my fortune. Ah, the days of staying up all night programming, partying, and playing video games. I miss those days.

Forget Gordon Gekko, the ruthless old school insider trader. I was a certified genius with a super-computer and I crushed the competition. Early in my time on Wall Street, I encountered the old guys who were hostile and downright dismissive of change. I was no longer making decisions to buy or sell stock based on analysts’ predictions. I had created a new method of using factors to evaluate opportunities and seize them. During that time, I developed Sabermetric modeling.

After weeks of programming, I created “her.” ROBBIE was designed to build me a fortune. She analyzed world events, tweets, Facebook, and other social media. I managed to invest $134.89 and parlay it into a fortune.

I used those winnings to develop a more sophisticated A.I. which I still named ROBBIE2 for sentimental reasons. From there, I developed a Hedge Fund. To the world, I was a Wall Street Rock Star Wunderkind, in real life I was a data scientist also known as a Quantitative Analyst. I was a data scientist in my early days, or as Wall Street referred to me, I was the “Quant.” I had designed and implemented a complex A.i. to allow my relatively unknown company to price and trade securities.

I grew a steady consulting practice on the side, focusing on investment banks, hedge funds, commercial banks, insurance companies, military weapons development, and “consulting.” I developed Portfolio Theories that are still in use today. My derivatives created the housing market crash. My understanding of Calculus, Linear Algebra, and Probability Statistics gave me an edge in the growing field.

Nearly 80 percent of orders are now placed by software systems. I created the age of the algorithm and I was a mathematics super power. My Hedge Fund “Black Forrest” made me one of the richest men in the world. My net worth was in excess of $690 billion, 10 billion of which was legitimate. The rest was as a result of my Super Villainy. You see, I found that if you studied something you could make money off nearly anything.

I had exactly 201 employees in my building. To the outsider looking in, I had created the best physics and mathematics department in the world.

My team was composed of non-financial experts. Instead, I had an army of nerds. We worked in teams to solve problems. I had the brightest mathematicians, physicist, engineers, and programmers. Ah, yes my army of nerds was able to predict the markets like weather forecasters predict weather patterns.

I was using “Money ball” techniques to evaluate probability that the market would make money on short term movements. We were able to accurately evaluate success factors across industries and had radical ideas on dominating the market. My company was making millions of trades a day based on short-trading.

My server was exactly five feet from the DOW building, I located it in the sewer. Speed is critical in that line of work. I was able to anticipate the coming arms race before it occurred and I snatched up the land across the street from the DOW. Having a server in close proximity to the building allowed us to speed up our connection time and shave 1,000ths of seconds off the transmissions between the stock exchange and my server. I charge $50 million, a year, for companies to rent out my building and place their servers in it.

My love for science and math allowed me to solve problems that others couldn’t even see let alone quantify.

-------Present Day----------------------


The infected are everywhere. Running around psychotically killing the uninfected. The local police department was quickly over run. The National Guard units were being moved to quarantine the city, closing off the three bridges making it impossible to leave the city.

I was finally able to locate Fireball. Her distinctive power set finally flared. Her heat signature flared up on the screens and we locked in. Dark Titan hacked an NSA satellite to get a bird’s eye view of the location. As a team we discussed the situation, entry points, rules of engagement, and the fact that she was barricaded in a school with the entire school.

Knowing her, she must have chosen the school to protect the kids from the madness outside. We jocked up, getting ready for the fight of our lives.

The zombie apocalypse was here.

We were five of the smartest Super Villains on the planet and we were going to save humanity.

Sure we were older and wiser having retired five years ago. Looking around the room, I had a nostalgic feeling that it would take all of our talents to come out ahead of this and end the zombie apocalypse.

While we had all made a pact to retire at the same time, none of us actually did. Sure we retired from our traditional work. We had all created alts “alternate identities” which we used when we had that itch to blow something up or dominate space.

None of us gave up our competitive edge. When we met, to “hang out” we all talked of going soft and losing our edge. The truth is we all trained harder when we retired. Our tales of sandbagging it and drinking margaritas in wayward beaches was a ruse.

All of us continued to refine our workouts, techniques, strategies, and technology.We were more deadly now than we ever were before.

A couple of times a year, we would compete in Air-Soft competitions. We destroyed teams, our precision shooting, tactics, and fitness made us unbeatable. As quickly as we appeared, we would fade into the darkness.

Take five of the smartest, most competitive Super Villains of all time, and one does not just turn it off.

Instinctively, we all knew that the day would come when we would work together again.

Today just so happens to be that day and there is a zombie apocalypse.

I ran through my preflight checklist as AC/DC Thunderstruck played in the background. 5 minutes to take off and we were going in.

Time to cue the rock music, explosions, and cheerleaders......