The Words - An Autobiography

Lives of the Rich and Famous

With the primary intention of eliminating my wife's commute, we purchased a penthouse occupying the top two floors of a beautifully architected high-rise building in the city, only a few minute's walk from her lab. The views of the city at night were breathtaking. Occasionally, we even took a moment to appreciate them.

I also acquired an extensive property along the coast, south of the city. In the literature I received from the same real estate agent - who'd sold us the mansion, now a real estate broker for the rich and famous - the property was an 'Ocean Front Estate.' I chuckled, thinking back to her informing us that the entryway to the mansion was the 'Grand Foyer.' As for the 'Ocean Front Estate,' even though we could afford nearly anything - a private island or a small country - certain expenditures still seemed extravagant. But something about this stretch of property spoke to me, and I determined that it would be mine. However, I was not the only one who wanted it, and there was a brief but intense bidding war. I decided I wanted it more, no matter how high the others were willing to go.

As with the old mansion that we'd purchased ten years earlier, the Ocean Front Estate was also – to use the term in a legal sense - part of the estate of a family matriarch who'd recently passed. Unlike the old mansion, the location of the Ocean Front Estate was not a depressed real estate market. There were two miles of ocean front, more than a mile of which was a broad, gorgeous sandy beach. The estate extended inland to a road that ran from a mile to two from the shore. Many relatives desperately wanted to keep the property since it had hosted family functions for years. Some of them had grown up on the property. However, property values along the coast had multiplied many times since the estate's purchase by their long-deceased family patriarch several generations before. None of the heirs could afford to buy the property from the others. None could agree on a plan where several of them would share ownership, principally since they discovered, even as a group, they could never have afforded the ever-inflating property taxes.

The house sat atop a rise that terminated in a sheer drop to the foaming rocks several hundred feet below, just as did the southern seaside end of the property, the rise there considerably higher. The house was far enough back from the edge that there seemed no imminent danger of erosion tumbling it into the sea. A gazebo a bit further south, not to obstruct the view from the house, was nearer the edge providing a spectacular spot for gazing out over the ocean and watching the setting sun. It was also a wonderful location for enjoying cool breezes that blew in from the sea in the evening. A path not far beyond the gazebo wound its way down to a beach in a sequence of switchbacks.

I fell in love with the place. My wife agreed it was beautiful but seemed a tremendous waste of money. To which I'd tossed my hands in the air and reminded her how little that mattered anymore. Of course, in her mind, until the purchase of her lab was an accomplished fact, any other thing we acquired was a waste of money. And, from a more practical perspective, the property was over twenty miles from our offices, which, given the hours we both worked, the coming and going would be a waste of what precious little time we had at the end of each day. My wife refused the use of the helicopter, another waste of money, and the commute would still be a waste of time since she worked only a few minute's walk from our penthouse. But, when I insisted that I was buying the property just because I wanted it and envisioned it as our 'forever home,' she finally agreed to spend every other weekend there. Nearly every waking hour of those weekends would eventually be spent connected to our corporate networks through twenty miles of dedicated, high-speed, fiber optic cables, the last five miles of which I'd personally born the expense. But, on Sunday evenings, she would often join me in the gazebo near the edge of the cliff, listen to the surf pound the rocks below, watching the sunset over the ocean while engaged in tantric sex.

Bob and his girlfriend had married several years earlier. My wife and I had stood for them. They still lived in the apartment above the garage behind the mansion. But Bob's wife was expecting their first child, and they were looking for a larger place. I suggested that they move into the mansion, where there was plenty of space. They could even take our old wing. I doubted they would ever play naked hide and seek, but people were full of surprises, and Bob had managed to get her pregnant. Of course, my wife would need to have her extensive collection of lingerie and wigs and things removed.

My new corporate campus was also within walking distance of our penthouse, on property adjacent to where my wife's worked. Our research facility was functional, if not complete, but the executive offices remained across town, in the office park where we'd relocated to move the business from the mansion. Not nearly as frugally constrained as my wife, I did use the helicopter I'd bought - although I hadn't yet learned to fly - to take me from our penthouse to the executive offices in the morning, then to the new research facility in the evening. My concession was to walk home from the research facility to the penthouse. On rare occasions, my wife and I would walk home together.

I'd been seriously considering stepping down as CEO and returning to the more innovative side of the business while I still had innovative brain cells remaining. I didn't feel I'd done anything creative for a long time. Although, my brother would argue that building a company worth seventy-five billion dollars, and creating billions of dollars of personal wealth, was pretty damn creative. That was not the inherent orientation of my mind. But it was his, which was why I was about to offer for him to be CEO while I moved back full-time to research. I'd remain chairman of the board.

The company had become a monster of a money-making machine. It would require true ineptitude to stop it from spewing profits or even slowing it down. My brother was not likely to do either. If there was anything he knew, it was how to make money. I figured he'd do a far better job of that than I could or had any burning desire to do at that point. He would be in his element. He would be loving life. He was currently our Chief Operating Officer and second in command, a title and responsibilities Bob had happily handed over several years earlier.

In addition to our money-making machine, our monster had born dozens of offspring, conceived through brilliant former employees, who'd cashed in, but hadn't been ready to check out. There were some exciting ventures of theirs underway with our technology as their foundation. I found a virtual sports training facility particularly intriguing. It provided clients with the telepathic extension of visualization. Athletes could perfect their strokes or throwing motions and practice in virtual reality. Although their play in the 'Real' was guaranteed to see significant improvement through this process, it would always remain imperfect. Nothing could overcome the limitations of their physical bodies completely. Old injuries. Old age. Ergonomic imperfections in their skeletal structure, for which they could thank their ancestors, and their nutrition as infants. Some gave up playing in the 'Real' to enjoy the luxury of what they'd always strove to experience: Playing as well as they could in their minds. Some took the experience to the pinnacle, competing against old rivals, both playing as well as they could imagine. So, even when they lost the match, 'most' had the satisfaction of knowing that they couldn't have played better. Smarter, maybe. Strategically. So, there was something to look forward to the next time. Of course, some poor sports still had tantrums and threw their golf clubs, racquets, or bats.