Hubertus Bigend

Relatively tiny in terms of permanent staff, globally distributed, more post-geographic than multinational, the agency has from the beginning billed itself as a high-speed, low-drag life-form in an advertising ecology of lumbering herbivores.

Or perhaps as some non-carbon based life-form, entirely sprung from the smooth and ironic brow of its founder, Hubertus Bigend, a nominal Belgian who looks like Tom Cruise on a diet of virgins' blood and truffled chocolates.Bigend hires Pollard to track down the source of haunting film fragments known as "the footage" that have been appearing anonymously online,[1][6] though she loathes him and suspects that his motivation is mercenary;[7] the exploitation of the art as a marketable commodity.

[6] Again seeking out the origin of a new artwork (in this instance locative), Bigend hires protagonist Hollis Henry for the ostensible purpose of writing a magazine article on it.

Bigend is described by Times Union reviewer Michael Janairo as a "hyper-connected, ever curious, multigazillionaire",[6] and by biopunk writer Paul Di Filippo as amoral and egocentric.

[13] Other appellations include "imperious" (SFGate),[8] "enigmatic" (St. Louis Post-Dispatch),[14] "pontifical Belgian ad mogul" (The Village Voice),[15] "filthy-rich man-behind-the-curtain" (Seattle Times),[16] "untrustworthy corporate spiv" (The Guardian),[17] "accentless Machiavellian fixer with unnervingly white teeth" (New Statesman),[18] and "information-sucking android-like advertising guru and godgame magus" (John Clute, Sci Fi Weekly).