Stepfather Bank — D.C. Poyer

“A highly original cautionary tale...on more levels than the reader might first suspect.” -- Analog “A jaunty, corkscrew ride through a skewed future.” -- Alan Dean Foster “First-rate satire, with a serious core" - Library Journal The year is 2110, and the Bank owns everything.. It's called simply The Bank because its full name is six hundred and sixty-six words long. Over its first ten years it secretly gained controlling interests in Alphabet, Disney, China National Petroleum, Deutsche Bank, Colombia, Fox, CNN, Egypt, and the Mafia -- among many other international corporations, cartels, and governments. After the Last War and the Big Overheat, The Bank finally emerged into the open, to exercise what had long been predicted as the final stage of economic evolution: monopoly. By the year 2110 it has owned Earth (et cetera) for four generations. It's eliminated armies and armaments, governments and war, cash and crime, discrimination and religion. It's transformed the world genetically, scientifically, culturally, and economically. It employs, is owed by, and so rules everyone. Everyone in the world. Except Monaghan Burlew. Burlew's styled himself as a freelance poet since the day he completed minimum schooling and became of Working Age. Since that day he's never earned a currency unit. Therefore, by law -- and the Bank is rigidly legalistic -- he pays no percentages and owes no taxes. He owns nothing, and buys nothing, so the Bank can't “assist the client in question to find the most suitable employment” -- i.e., tell him where and at what to work. He's the only man on the planet outside the System. The only one who's free. He has no idea that very shortly, he will be Earth's last hope of surviving an interplanetary catastrophe....