Breckenridge "Breck" Scott's Interview

VOSTOK STATION: ANTARCTICA

 [In prewar times, this outpost was considered the most remote on Earth.
 Situated near the planet’s southern geomagnetic pole, atop the
four-kilometer ice crust of Lake Vostok, temperatures here have been
recorded at a world record negative eighty-nine degrees Celsius, with
the highs rarely reaching above negative twenty-two. This extreme cold,
and the fact that overland transport takes over a month to reach the
station, were what made Vostok so attractive to Breckinridge “Breck”
Scott.

 We meet in “The Dome,” the reinforced, geodesic greenhouse that draws
power from the station’s geothermal plant. These and many other
improvements were implemented by Mister Scott when he leased the station
 from the Russian government. He has not left it since the Great Panic.]

 Do you understand economics? I mean big-time, prewar, global
capitalism. Do you get how it worked? I don’t, and anyone who says they
do is full of shit. There are no rules, no scientific absolutes. You
win, you lose, it’s a total crapshoot. The only rule that ever made
sense to me I learned from a history, not an economics, professor at
Wharton. “Fear,” he used to say, “fear is the most valuable commodity in
 the universe.” That blew me away. “Turn on the TV,” he’d say. “What are
 you seeing? People selling their products? No. People selling the fear
of you having to live without their products.” Fuckin’ A, was he right.
Fear of aging, fear of loneliness, fear of poverty, fear of failure.
Fear is the most basic emotion we have. Fear is primal. Fear sells. That
 was my mantra. “Fear sells.”

 When I first heard about the outbreaks, back when it was still called
African rabies, I saw the opportunity of a lifetime. I’ll never forget
that first report, the Cape Town outbreak, only ten minutes of actual
reporting then a full hour of speculating about what would happen if the
 virus ever made it to America. God bless the news. I hit speed dial
thirty seconds later.

 I met with some of my nearest and dearest. They’d all seen the same
report. I was the first one to come up with a workable pitch: a vaccine,
 a real vaccine for rabies. Thank God there is no cure for rabies. A
cure would make people buy it only if they thought they were infected.
But a vaccine! That’s preventative! People will keep taking that as long
 as they’re afraid it’s out there!

 We had plenty of contacts in the biomed industry, with plenty more up
on the Hill and Penn Ave. We could have a working proto in less than a
month and a proposal written up within a couple of days. By the
eighteenth hole, it was handshakes all around.

 What about the FDA?

 Please, are you serious? Back then the FDA was one of the most
underfunded, mismanaged organizations in the country. I think they were
still high-fiving over getting Red No. 2 1 out of M&Ms. Plus, this
was one of the most business-friendly administrations in American
history. J. P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller were getting wood from
beyond the grave for this guy in the White House. His staff didn’t even
bother to read our cost assessment report. I think they were already
looking for a magic bullet. They railroaded it through the FDA in two
months. Remember the speech the prez made before Congress, how it had
been tested in Europe for some time and the only thing holding it up was
 our own “bloated bureaucracy”? Remember the whole thing about “people
don’t need big government, they need big protection, and they need it
big-time!” Jesus Christmas, I think half the country creamed their pants
 at that. How high did his approval rating go that night, 60 percent,
70? I just know that it jacked our IPO 389 percent on the first day!
Suck on that, Baidu dot-com!

 And you didn’t know if it would work?

 We knew it would work against rabies, and that’s what they said it was, right, just some weird strain of jungle rabies.

 Who said that?

 You know, “they,” like, the UN or the…somebody. That’s what everyone ended up calling it, right, “African rabies.”

 Was it ever tested on an actual victim?

 Why? People used to take flu shots all the time, never knowing if it was for the right strain. Why was this any different?

 But the damage…

 Who thought it was going to go that far? You know how many disease
scares there used to be. Jesus, you’d think the Black Death was sweeping
 the globe every three months or so…ebola, SARS, avian flu. You know how
 many people made money on those scares? Shit, I made my first million
on useless antiradiation pills during the dirty bomb scares.

 But if someone discovered…

 Discovered what? We never lied, you understand? They told us it was
rabies, so we made a vaccine for rabies. We said it had been tested in
Europe, and the drugs it was based on had been tested in Europe.
Technically, we never lied. Technically, we never did anything wrong.

 But if someone discovered that it wasn’t rabies…

 Who was going to blow the whistle? The medical profession? We made sure
 it was a prescription drug so doctors stood just as much to lose as us.
 Who else? The FDA who let it pass? The congressmen who all voted for
its acceptance? The surgeon general? The White House? This was a win-win
 situation! Everyone got to be heroes, everyone got to make money. Six
months after Phalanx hit the market, you started getting all these
cheaper, knockoff brands, all solid sellers as well as the other
ancillary stuff like home air purifiers.

 But the virus wasn’t airborne.

 It didn’t matter! It still had the same brand name! “From the Makers
of…” All I had to say was “May Prevent Some Viral Infections.” That was
it! Now I understand why it used to be illegal to shout fire in a
crowded theater. People weren’t going to say “Hey, I don’t smell smoke,
is there really a fire,” no, they say “Holy shit, there’s a fire! RUN!”
[Laughs.] I made money on home purifiers, car purifiers; my biggest
seller was this little doodad you wore around your neck when you got on a
 plane! I don’t know if it even filtered ragweed, but it sold.

 Things got so good, I started setting up these dummy companies, you
know, with plans to build manufacturing facilities all over the country.
 The shares from these dumbos sold almost as much as the real stuff. It
wasn’t even the idea of safety anymore, it was the idea of the idea of
safety! Remember when we started to get our first cases here in the
States, that guy in Florida who said he’d been bitten but survived
because he was taking Phalanx? OH! [He stands, mimes the act of frantic
fornication.] God freakin’ bless that dumbass, whoever he was.

 But that wasn’t because of Phalanx. Your drug didn’t protect people at all.

 It protected them from their fears. That’s all I was selling. Hell,
because of Phalanx, the biomed sector started to recover, which, in
turn, jump-started the stock market, which then gave the impression of a
 recovery, which then restored consumer confidence to stimulate an
actual recovery! Phalanx hands down ended the recession! I…I ended the
recession!

 And then? When the outbreaks became more serious, and the press finally reported that there was no wonder drug?

 Pre-fucking-cisely! That’s the alpha cunt who should be shot, what’s
her name, who first broke that story! Look what she did! Pulled the
f\*\*kin’ rug right out from under us all! She caused the spiral! She
caused the Great Panic!

 And you take no personal responsibility?

 For what? For making a little f\*\*kin’ cash…well, not a little
[giggles]. All I did was what any of us are ever supposed to do. I
chased my dream, and I got my slice. You wanna blame someone, blame
whoever first called it rabies, or who knew it wasn’t rabies and gave us
 the green light anyway. Shit, you wanna blame someone, why not start
with all the sheep who forked over their greenbacks without bothering to
 do a little responsible research. I never held a gun to their heads.
They made the choice themselves. They’re the bad guys, not me. I never
directly hurt anybody, and if anybody was too stupid to get themselves
hurt, boo-fuckin-hoo. Of course…

 If there’s a hell…[giggles as he talks]…I don’t want to think about how
 many of those dumb shits might be waiting for me. I just hope they
don’t want a refund.