Umarah Al Sati
Umarah Al Sati, Senior Broker
Prelude[edit]
Umarah was born in a corporate power couple, from an Arab father with an interstellar megacorporate career and a Vilani mother who balanced running a pharmaceutical business with a famous desert/urban gardening media empire. He only sporadically saw both parents at home at the same time, and was essentially raised by the Muslim Arab servants. While he never converted to Islam, he has a far more sympathetic view of the religion than most of the Vilani on Hebrin (Empty Quarter 1930) … or even his father, who long ago abandoned any faith in Allah, preferring to worship his ancestors in the Vilani fashion.
His elder siblings chose to follow in their parents footsteps, into various megacorporations or as administrators of their mother’s various business, but Umarah chose to strike out in a different direction, at first studying Geo-ecology (which he dropped), then studying Mechatronic Engineering (successfully getting his degree here). His science career got sidetracked, though, when his supervisors realized that he had far better sales talent than most of the nerdy engineers did.
Profits[edit]
Umarah had a way to gain talent, hiring people from his clients (rather than poaching his competitor’s staff) who value the increased status and pay he can offer them. Always looking for a way up, Umarah worked for various Solomani corporations. (The Vilani ones all insisted on lifetime contracts – with hefty penalties for quitting – that Umarah just couldn’t stomach.) Rising to a senior sales manager with his current employer, Intaj Electronics, Umarah began to criss-cross Hebrin Subsector, working with local agents: he picked up customers portfolios they lost, built up his business intelligence on the issue, sniffed out what went wrong, and was able to win back the old customer three times out of four.
Problems[edit]
Nowadays, though, Umarah has an increasing problem on his hands. Intaj Eletronics is increasingly having to deal with well-made fakes: industrial equipment that looks exactly like the real thing on the outside, but with substandard components on the inside. The cheats can undercut Umarah, still make a profit, and leave Intaj with the ruined reputation. Most of the Industrial systems in the Quarter are dominated by a Vilani business culture, which is fiercely protective of copyright and IP rights. However, Kakhasaek (Empty Quarter ) is a Vargr industrial world, which couldn’t give a hoot about copyright…
Now, if Intaj Eletronics was a Vilani corporation, it would have access to assets – in-house or contract – which would be enforcing corporate copyrights in a rather forceful manner. But it’s a broadly Solomani corporation, so it never set aside the budget for such activity. Umarah is undeterred though, and has promised that he’ll find a way to fix the problem, which is where the Travellers come in.
Solomani corporations wail to their governments to protect their IP rights, allowing bureaucrats to lunch with each other for a decade while the competition devours their market. But for the Vilani, the corporations are the government, leading to rather different outcomes. It is better to assume that the IP rights of any lone inventor (or inventive Traaveller) will be stolen by batteries of corporate lawyers: so, release the rights into the public domain, and make your money as the top master and advisor in the field.
References and Contributors[edit]
- Alvin Plummer. "Personality Profiles III." Stellar Reaches 24 (2014): 101.
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