Charles “Chip” Prime, Jr. has no previous connection to the University and was not considered a prospective donor prior to his contacting this Advancement Officer requesting an urgent meeting at the Quattro Bar of the Four Seasons in East Palo Alto, California. Chip contacted Officer directly by text message, and when Officer attempted to explain that the Bay Area was not part of his regional portfolio, offering to forward him to the relevant staff member, Chip replied that the Bay Area was not his region either, and that he only wished to speak with Officer, being familiar with certain work Officer had done before his association with the University. He wished for this meeting to be in person, on neutral territory. Chip immediately proceeded to forward Officer a first-class plane ticket from O’Hare to San Jose International departing later that same afternoon and did not hide his frustration when Officer informed him that he was not authorized to accept it, nor was Chip any more gracious when Officer informed him that, “due to scheduling difficulties,” he would not be able to get to Palo Alto in fewer than 72 hours. Nevertheless, the meeting was scheduled, and Officer arrived, sleepless and disheveled, promptly at 2 p.m. August 30.
Chip was no more sheveled than Officer. He is a large man of 62, with a brow so prominent this Officer feels dutybound to mention it lest any future officer who meets with him be caught gawking as Officer nearly did. It’s positively Rushmoric, and it makes his eyes, which are probably of average size, look small and demonic and warped behind the thick lenses of his glasses. Chip greeted Officer, and they sat down at an isolated table for two that Chip had requested.
Conversation was stilted and halting until a waiter arrived to attend them. Chip ordered a strawberry daiquiri and Officer a Laphroaig 15, double, neat. Conversation was again stilted, and halting, and Chip seemed preoccupied. This lasted an uncomfortably long time because the Quattro does not serve a strawberry daiquiri, but the restaurant staff knew better than to deny a man of Chip’s wealth and prominence his request. Officer mentions this so that any future officer might be spared the awkwardness. The drinks arrived at the same time, Chip took a long sip through the straw, which made his eyes look more crazed than demonic, and once they were left alone, conversation began to flow more naturally.
“I bet you know why I asked you here,” said Chip. Officer, not wishing to contradict him and, feeling that first flush of good, peaty scotch, grinned and said knowingly, “I think I have an idea.” Chip attempted to mirror Officer’s grin and the results were frankly gargoylesque, which, again, Officer is trying to prepare you for. “That’s right,” said Chip, “it’s time to solve the Hundred Years’ War.” “The Hundred Years’ War,” Officer nodded as he tried to rack his brain for what it would mean to “solve” it, and Chip mirrored his nod as well, saying, “That’s right.”
Chip went on to propose endowing professorships in computer science, materials engineering, and history, as well as funds for the operation and upkeep of the University’s quantum computing system in order to pursue this solution. Officer tried very hard to understand what kind of solution Charles “Chip” Prime, Jr. sought without betraying his ignorance.
Officer had the vague notion that the sheer carnage of the Hundred Years’ War had circuitously led to the rise of the middle class via both depopulation of the potential workforce and loss of faith among the peasantry in the divine mandate of the aristocracy. Officer understands the University’s position on the continued existence of the middle class and how it could be considered an obstacle to the University’s mission as we initiate the fourth industrial revolution, but when Officer hinted at this as a solution to the Hundred Years’ War, Chip was uninterested. His quest, he says, is neither political nor sociological. “Dad invented the Prime number,” he said. “I have to do something just as big.”
The University does not have a dossier on Chip, so Officer had taken the liberty of improvising one during his long Amtrak journey. Chip’s estimated net worth is in the area of seven billion dollars, placing him among the 400 richest Americans. He uses a conventional financial advisor with investments pegged directly to the market, which is, of course, unusual, but he has no apparent interest in investing qua investing, and his net worth has outperformed those of his nearest peers over time. He has no partner and no heirs. All of his wealth came directly from the inheritance he received on the death of his father, Charles Prime Sr.
Prime Sr.’s origins are murky at best. In 1984, a decade after his death, renowned Nazi hunters suggested that he had been born Karl Prim, better known as the Madman of Muritz, a conscientious objector during World War II who allegedly did not, however, object to randomly slaughtering fellow German citizens throughout the Mecklenburg Lake District, and who disappeared from Germany around the same time as a number of war criminals, possibly in their company, hence the theory that he was Gestapo, and was rumored to have entered the U.S. over the southern border sometime before Japan’s surrender. None of this was ever established, though, and the first evidence of the man who would amass Charles Prime Sr.’s fortune appears on a 1947 trademark application.
Inspired by the Lanham Act of 1946, Prime Sr. attempted to trademark the very concept “prime number,” which he claimed to have invented, and which he insisted should be capitalized, as it was named for him. The application was, of course, denied quickly and flatly, but that did not deter Prime Sr. He formed an LLC, Prime Industries, that existed solely to bill any business entity that might conceivably use prime numbers, which is to say all business entities, for the use of Prime Numbers. He simply sent an invoice on official-looking letterhead to every corporation, nonprofit, and educational institution he could think of. The trick, he believed, was to set the price high enough that a license for using Prime Numbers seemed important and necessary, without making it expensive enough to trigger alarms in Accounts. His intuitions proved correct, and the money poured in. For this he is credited with pioneering the dynamic pricing with which contemporary retailers are currently experimenting, as well as with laying the groundwork for our contemporary information economy and the managerial state. When an organization failed to pay its annual fee by his arbitrary deadline, which was surprisingly rare, he didn’t threaten legal action but merely sent another invoice with “Second Notice” stamped prominently in red ink at the top, and that usually produced the intended results. If it didn’t, he continued to send second notices, never a third or a final.
It’s estimated that at Prime Industries’ peak, 11 percent of all businesses in the United States were renting the right to use numbers from him. When word of what he was doing finally began to spread, the consequences were few. There was nothing illegal in sending his invoices, as he neither claimed to offer any services nor warned of consequences for refusing. Some blue chip corporations even continued to send checks, monitoring them for further innovations in rent collection. When they finally accepted that no further innovations were forthcoming, they eventually let their licenses expire. Still, he is credited with inspiring, and even modeling, the global pivot to financialization, and to this day, voting board members are known to ask, “Is this another Prime Number?” when considering new imaginary products and properties that would likely have baffled Prime Sr. himself. Many out-of-the-way libraries and churches, on the other hand, paid their fees like tithes until he died and the invoices stopped arriving.
This is a classic iteration of the American Dream. The young immigrant, lunatic or Nazi or not, arrives in the country and flourishes so thoroughly as a confidence man among confidence men that he not only comes to be perceived as legitimate, but the world warps itself around him to legitimize him. However, as in other versions, the hustle and, hopefully, alleged National Socialism have skipped a generation while the madness has not.
Charles “Chip” Prime Jr. has no idea what he’s talking about, and his grasp on reality is tenuous. By the time his straw slurped the daiquiri dregs from the bottom of his fishbowl, he had become loud and erratic. “Sieges lifted!” he was shouting. “Heads off pikes! Oil unboiled! Who needs one point 21 Gigawatts,” Officer noted that he pronounced Gigawatt correctly, “when you have one million error-corrected qubits!” As Officer stumbled out of the Four Seasons Silicon Valley into the blinding sunlight of Palo Alto, he could still hear Chip hollering about the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting from his corner in the bar. It would be unethical to accept his fortune with the purpose of pursuing his goal of solving the Hundred Years’ War, and if the University chooses to do so, this Officer refuses to be involved.