Tomasz Szponder is an oligarch in Wloclawek society. Much older than the sitting Chairman of the RON, he'd been one of the Chairman's father's (Wlodzimierz Ziomkowski) graduate students ten years before he was ever born. Mr. Szponder is the owner of the Ladowisko Gazety i Kurier, Ladowisko's (the Wloclawek capital city) most widely followed newsfax. He's also head of a publishing house named Wydawnictwo Zielone Wzorgza (Green Hills Publishing), which distributes thousands of copies of old-fashioned hardcopy and electronic books to kids of working-class families all over the star system.