End Game

Part I -- So long, and thanks ...

On the eve of the day I left the world behind, I called my people together. My colleagues and supporters. The fixers and the opinion-formers, the well-connected time servers. A few waifs and strays to make up the numbers.

I served them up a banquet. Waited until that sweet spot – the quiet moment after the dessert course: bellies replete with fine food, minds marinated in good wine. That moment of respite before the evening's pranks and disputations resume.

"Ladies," I proclaimed, standing to address them. "Gentlemen," I added in a smaller voice. "You have known me for my accomplishments." I stared them down – but really, this was not a point of dispute. "You have watched my rise, witnessed my fall, seen me rise again." I spoke with a rising cadence. "My autobiography was a best seller. My tweets can move markets." A pause here (for effect). "Even my video game was well received, at least by the discerning critics ... And by discerning, I mean of course those who knew what was good for them." Scattered nervous giggles.

"Perhaps you thought game-over when my electric car business crashed. It wasn't. Perhaps you were one of those who laughed when I first proposed it? 'Flying cars?' you said. 'That'll never get off the ground.' Well, who knows? Perhaps there is another reality out there where they never did. Where a man like me never emerged to make mockery of the government and its ridiculous safety laws. Tens of thousands die from motor accidents each year – what's a few hundred more from flying cars?" I spread my hands and smiled like a preacher. Responding to this cue, a sprinkling of tentative laughter passed over the room, like cloud-shadow on a windy day.

I let my pose relax, become conversational. "I lobbied like a demon for that decision. Indeed, I sometimes wondered if the man I hired to help with that lobbying was in fact a demon. Exactly what sort of deal had I got myself in for? Then I remembered how much I'd had to pay the bastard. You can't be selling your soul, can you – if you're the one footing the bill?"

"The rest, you know. Flying cars are ubiquitous and now we call ourselves the Jetsons generation." A wave of the hand dismissed these facts to history. I resumed a preacher's pose. "This is the world I have delivered unto you, my people. But friends, these achievements are as nothing!" Big emphasis on that final word. I leaned forward on the podium, lowered my voice. "If what I believe is true there exists another new world, one beyond this veil of illusion we currently inhabit. A new answer that renders past questions irrelevant. One we can reach if only we make the sacrifice needed." I straightened my stance. "It is called the future, ladies and gentlemen, and I plan to take us there."

I surveyed my audience, steely eyed.

Their response? Well-fed bewilderment. Much as expected.

"I have called you here tonight to bid you a temporary farewell. To inform you of my intention to embark upon a new project. One that will overturn everything I have done before. Perhaps, overturn everything there is." A slow turn of the head to scan the room. A smile and a nod.

"Details forthcoming in due course. I expect to be away for some time. Thank you and good bye."

I gave a small bow, then stepped down. As the uproar built, my minders stepped in. Then I slipped away, never to be seen again, no doubt to be forgotten. Until I made my return.

*

Where did I go? I went bush. Forty days and forty nights, I believe, is the customary time to spend wandering in the wilderness. I was out there for much longer than that.

Okay, I checked into an exclusive five-star mountain retreat with a very strict attitude to guest privacy. And extensive hiking trails. I did a lot of walking and a lot of thinking.

What I had in mind would take some time to arrange, but nothing like three years. Those years were not a deadline so much as a cooling-off period, a chance for me to talk myself out of what I planned to do. I was also giving the world one last chance. Highly unlikely though it might sound, there was always a remote possibility the world would save itself in the interim. Of course, we all know that didn't happen.

*

That was how I left this world. My re-entry was to be a lot more discreet. Or so I planned.