Marvella Joins A Team

Marvella Joins A Team
part 1
draft 1

fiction
edward w pritchard

Marvella was a strange addition to the team.

Marvella was a failed exotic dancer at a men's club near the expressway just outside of Youngstown, Ohio. The other girls made fun of her, and joked at her expense, because she couldn't keep herself from tripping and falling off the long bar counters, and several times she had tumbled awkwardly and heavily to the floor. The patrons didn't accept her clumsiness well, because they were embarrassed to see one of the girls as needing even if momentarily the milk of human kindness and therefore it was a mood killer. Although Marvella had blamed the tripping on customers poking her with dollar bills and upsetting her balance, her employer saw it different. The employer blamed the falls on her nearsightedness, lack of coordination, and in her 30 day review warned her that she was about to be sacked from her job. This job for Marvella was then destined to be another in a history of short term employments.

Her background at the club or inability to dance was of no concern to Mr. Sophia. Mr. Sophia wanted her on the team and he was rich enough and influential enough to get what he wanted. Some of the other team members who technically worked for Mr. Sophia, and hadn't yet met Marvella, objected to her based on her resume, in which they found a lack of class and sophistication. As the other team members were all highly educated their impression was probably spot on about Marvella. But Mr Sophia didn't want her on board for her class or sophistication, he needed her for her unique background and abilities. He felt she could be the spark to help solve a huge pressing problem that the existing group, which included himself, although extremely talented and educated, were unable to solve.

The team included Mr. Sophia and three others, and Marvella would make the fifth team member. The team had been recruited by Mr. Sophia and its objective was to make and then donate large sums of money to charity and other humanitarian causes that he choose. He took no compensation, but the other team members, being young, needed money and they were very well compensated for their successful efforts. Mr. Sophia was a retired multimillionaire, not yet 40 who had made his fortune from a broadband company he had started and lead successfully for over ten years. Eventually Mr Sophia was forced out by institutional shareholders and lost control of the company he founded. Mr. Sophia lead his team to keep busy and support charity, a cause that he strongly believed in; but there was also a part of him that was anti business and anti-Wall Street and he enjoyed successfully beating the big money players at their own game, a game which he felt they cheated at.

The current project that Marvella was recruited for was the largest bond trading opportunity of the last several hundred years. For one 3 hour period by agreement of all the major money centers and governments, ALL bond trading would stop worldwide and three hours later Synchronized and simultaneous bond trading would re-open at six distinct locations simultaneously quoting bond prices. The locations were New York, Los Angele's, Hong Kong, Tokyo, London and Dubai. A seventh location, on an orbiting Russian space station, was hoped to be brought on line in three to five years. The significance of the simultaneous trading was that going forward there would be no opportunity for arbitrage, creating a level playing field and saving hundreds of billions in interest costs to the major governments and major bond issuers of the world. Trading would stop at 4PM New York time and the bond price at that time would be frozen. No trading would then be allowed and would reopened at unknown price set by a small secret group of the IMF International Monetary Fund] three hours later. Thereafter, all quotes would be simultaneous at all the six locations, linked by computer. Mr Sophia, hoped to accurately predict the new bond trading price of the 10 year US treasury bond , and using derivatives, the team would take a 25 billion dollar position [ highly leveraged] and generate 1 to 2 billion in the profits in the first few hours of trading.

Marvella was recruited because of her expertise in time theory, which based on the work of the team over the last eight weeks was thought the key to determining the new spot price on the bonds. As of the date of Marvell'a recruitment the team was deadlocked on how time theory effected the spot price, being basically divided by specialty, ie, scientist, mathematician/statisticians, psychologist/bond trader and Mr Sophia being appointed the philosopher; something Mr. Sophia admitted to be weak at, although he had an undergraduate degree from an Ivy league school in philosophy.

Mr. Sophia had found Marvella on the internet when doing arcane research for the project on time theory and philosophy. While a freshman at Youngstown State University, in a College English course, that she had received a D in, Marvella had written a two page paper, that now appeared on scholarly web sites devoted to the question of the reality of time. Mr. Sophia had journeyed to Ohio, interviewed her at work on a 15 minute break and left convinced she had the ability to do A Priori theorizing on time theory. Additionally Marvella was passionate and interested and excited by the subject of time theory in a way that no one else on the team was. Mr. Sophia offered Marvella a position on the project, as a full partner, which meant she had an opportunity to make a lot of money if they were successful.

As a formality Mr. Sophia had offered the rest of the group an opportunity to veto his choice in deference to the fact that they had spent eight weeks of full time intense research and discussion on the bond project already and stood to make up to several million dollars each if they were successful.


The team had been recruited to make consensus difficult, and it was mildly ironic that the three members were all opposed to Marvella. Particularly it was ironic since if the bond project was canceled by the team, that is if the team [ read Mr Sophia] choose not to speculate on the deal, and time was running out, each of the three members stood to leave a large amount of money on the table. Potentially at least, and for various reasons that will be touched on later, each team member wanted and needed money badly, not to just live on but to live well.

Tony, was a statistician, expert in probability, had worked on Wall Street as a derivatives trader. Tony objected to Marvella because she had no college credentials, was from the Provinces [Ohio] and seemed to have only a moderate IQ [ less than 140]. Kate the psychologist and MBA in business objected to Marvella simply based on her lack of formal education. Rory who was the physics genius, was direct, she would taint the team with her presence.


Mr. Sophia didn't have much time to reach a consensus from the group so as he often did he threw money at the problem. He called the three together to his home and declared a special dividend. While they ate fine gourmet food and wines he had a large stack of hundred dollar bills present and as they discussed Marvella, Mr. Sophia began to light his expensive cigars from a stacks of hundred dollar bills. First, of course, he told the group the bills would be theirs at the end of the meeting, their dividend for past services on the project to date. There is no verification of how many bills were on the table that day, or how many were burned , but it was confirmed that there were three stacks of hundreds, over 4 inches high each, and Mr Sophia, for a while when angry in the discussion, would burn a stack with as many bills as would stay lit.

In the end, they reached a consensus, Marvella was on the team, and there was one more good story for the magazines about the ex-boy genius.

Naturally, there was still some animosity toward Marvella, and to break the ice a brief get together was planned on the back deck of her house the evening after the cigar incident. Time was the essence from this point on with the group as they had only 8 days now until the bond blackout. Earlier in the day, before the gathering each was given the following synopsis of the project to date supplied by the four members of the team and the last several sentences of Marvella's distant English paper on 'The Reality of Time".

Each was expected to read each synopsis on the plane to Marvella's house in Warren, Ohio.

Synopsis One
Tony
The Problem at hand with the bond price set, at the reopen price, following the three hour closure
then is best described by paraphrasing Keynes:[ when he compared picking a winning investment or stock to a beauty contest:] Rather than pick the prettiest girl[ in a beauty contest] one is successful who most accurately surmises and predicts the girl that the majority or other traders think will be the winner.

Therefore using games theory and probability theory we, the team must try to predict the criteria the IMF [ International Monetary Fund] will use, to peg the bond price, while being aware that they are glorified civil servants. As civil servants, in most likelihood, the IMF people will probably let their computers set the price based on the programming given to the computers.

It is of course impossible to know what the exact price will be, as no one can accurately predict the future, but half in jest, I observe the new bond price can only be higher, lower or the same. -Easy huh-Hence.

While I have little use for philosophy or Physics, I agree with and concur with the groups general direction concerning the bond trading problem as one involving time, duration and change.

These are the first and last paragraphs from Marvella's English Paper:
first paragraph
Is time Real?

This paper will survey what various well known philosophers throughout history have written on the subject of time, starting with Plato, and running the usual gamut through Aristotle, Plotinus, Thomas Aquinas, the Newtonian synthesis, and of course Berkley, Hume, Kant and even touch on Bergson before ending with Einstein and his critics.
Then a modern theory of time using both an allegorical and scientific methodology will be given. Then the paper will examine the possibility of simultaneous time with and without a human observer, and briefly touch on artificial intelligence and time.
Then philosophically the paper will ask did time have a beginning, and without using metaphysical arguments, the paper will survey the question of how the observer, human or non-human is" in time" and the paper will end where it started with a brief look at can anything real be independent of time. In the end the paper will again ask the 64,000 dollar question is time real.

last paragraph

Therefore, in conclusion the author must be excused for mercilessly summarizing the genius of so many learned men, but after 2600 years of thought man comes back to the same questions - is time real- and did time begin and -will it end. While the average man on the street thinks he knows time, and will if pressed insist that time is real, at some point we must ask-is time knowable only because of change and motion, and duration, that is only through sensation. As we discussed in the paper, can time be known by humans intellectually only, therefore, can we ask is it possible to be not be in time only in our minds [ or in spirit like a yoga or guru], and how will the future conclusions of man's artificial intelligence effect the human view of time. Will a definitive view on time's reality be finally reached.

Well, only time will tell but Let us conclude with this writer's prediction that philosophy and physics will clash like never before because of advances in technology allowing us view time and space in a geometrically larger context and of artificial intelligence being used to logically survey time without the usual human limitations.
end

Synopsis-2 How humans experience time
Kate
Time is experienced by humans as change through the senses. We all crave stability and safety, and maybe even animals resist change because a lot of bad things happen when things change. The wish for Permanence seeks to freeze time, stop it, have it never exist, or exist only in our minds, or only go, or not go, in one direction..
Time can also be conceptualized intellectually based on prior sense perceptions.

Time is usually thought to be real, and generally thought to imprison everything but God.

Time cannot be reduced to simpler components so in confusion people equate measurement of time with understanding of time. We scoff at our ancestors dancing to bring back the sun each morning or the medieval early fascination with clocks, but as moderns we are fascinated by quarks and debate can time go backwards at a small scale, or as astronomers "cry out " wait until we can look really far out in the Universe then we will know the answers about time.

Time is real to our senses, end of discussion. Intellectually, allegorically and metaphysically we can be out of " Time", we can change it's arrow, or have it stop or never start, but like anything that exists from the largest unit, the universe[ or collection of universes,] to the smallest unit that will ever exist, everything is in time because it starts and has duration and will end. Time is real to our senses.

Concerning our bond problem I say we decide what we are sure of with a very high probability based on our data and take a limited position based on the risk/reward agreed before hand by the group.

Synopsis-3
Rory-
science, physics and time

Ignoring a historical listing of sciences progress in dealing with the problem of Time, after Newton's synthesis, two areas of modern science provide an understanding of time, the theory of relativity[ Einstein] and it's criticism's and enhancements to date,
and the use of mathematical tools to explain the physics of existence [ this includes formal logic from agreed on mathematical certainties]

In terms of our [ the team's] agreed upon parameters of how to approach the bond problem, the above two areas of science impact us with these three questions:

How is the observer related to time,
Does place effect time[ simultaneousness],
and if the equations of science do not gibe with the speculations of philosophy, how do we proceed.

To date, my recommendations have been we let Tony using his probability models attempt to predict how the IMF will conclude and decide if the risk to us being wrong is acceptable based on the potential reward. Then using the techniques of logic we pick a position.

Synopsis 4
Mr. Sophia

We must be highly certain to proceed with our project.

No one can accurately predict the future. To sweeten the pot i will guarantee 1.5 million of compensation to each team member if i am convinced we have garnered the best course of action and will pay win or lose.

We must be highly certain to proceed with our project


End of part 1