The Words - An Autobiography

The Prodigal Son

It took me months to get Virtuality straightened at the top and end rumors of a sale or merger. It required several days to gather the board of directors for a meeting. They were unused to traveling to physically attend meetings, which almost exclusively took place in Virtuality, like everything else those days. But I'd insisted that they attended in the flesh since I wanted them to witness me in the flesh and eliminate any future questions about my identity and being alive.

It also required days to acclimate to my new Magick Hat. I'd also had to upgrade my Pixie Dust, including having the old obsolete Pixie Dust flushed from my body. Fortunately, just as Pixie Dust particles could be directed to specific locations in the brain, removing them was simply directing them through my bloodstream to my kidneys, where nature took over. Then I drank another Kool-Aid, and the new Pixie Dust began its journey through my digestive tract, blood, and eventually my left ventricle, from where it took an express ride directly to my brain. The technicians told me I was imagining the sensation of ants crawling through my brain, during which I proved to have an excellent imagination. It also wasn't my first time around.

So, it was no surprise that I immediately vomited when I activated my new Magick Hat and re-entered Virtuality for the first time in over a decade. Once my vertigo and disorientation were under control, I needed to learn to function in this new version of Virtuality. It was a far different place than when I'd been there last. It was like returning to a quaint little fishing village to find that it had grown into a resort and major tourist attraction.

As it turned out, the Chairman of the Board had been sailing in the Caribbean with my former executive assistant. They'd been having an affair since shortly after I'd asked my brother to groom a replacement for himself. I'd departed for the oceanfront estate, began walking, and no longer needed my executive assistant's services. I wanted to be left alone and knew I'd just have resumed the cycle of firing her daily. My brother suggested she take the same position with the man he was grooming to replace him. Then she'd soon resume her position as assistant to the CEO.

It took considerable enticement to lure them back from their sailing adventure. I was ready to offer them both forever, but the promised money eventually proved sufficient, so I never brought up the procedure. Then with all in order at Virtuality, it was time for me to head home, or what had once been home.

My mother no longer recognized me. She believed me to be a fraud trying to steal her money or somehow get her son's money through her. I wasn't her son. She hadn't heard from him in over ten years. The last she heard, he was a broken-hearted old man with a beard. I was approximately the right age to be her grandson or great-grandson. And I looked enough like her son had when he was younger, but her son never had any children, at least not with his wife, and she'd raised him never to be a cheater.

It was a short and uncomfortable visit before she demanded that I leave. I'd asked if she had the chance, would she want to be young again and live forever. She laughed, not a friendly laugh, and was certain I was a scam artist now and was calling the police. Once again, as she had so often in my youth, she told me, "You ought to be ashamed of yourself."

I nearly responded, "Mom, I'm not even playing with myself and don't have any dirty pictures under my mattress." In retrospect, that may have swayed her conclusion of my identity. Instead, I left sad, frustrated, and convinced of the futility of any further efforts. In my defense, I was still not back to full strength emotionally, so it didn't require too much resistance to dissuade me. I'd already expended what little reserve I'd had, staring down and firing the CEO trying to steal the largest company in the world from me.

That was the last time I saw my mother.

Of course, the oldest of my brothers was gone. His funeral had been months earlier. I felt bad that I hadn't been there. We'd never been close as children, but in adulthood, he'd become as close as anyone but my wife and Bob. In the end, he'd been the only person I knew in the world with whom I'd maintained regular contact. Besides my wife, he'd arguably been my most invaluable advisor since my grandmother. And it was primarily thanks to him that I got the gold she'd advised me to find. I owed him an immense debt of gratitude. I'd have to think of something appropriate to honor his memory - my grandmother's too.

My sister was a strange woman, just as she'd been an odd and annoying kid. She didn't believe I was who I claimed to be any more than my mother. Her answer had been, "Let's assume that everything you told me is true; you are who you claim, and you can do what you say. I believe God intends for us to live forever, but not on this earth and not until this life is concluded. End of subject. Please leave. Get out. And don't come back."

I nearly asked if she ever planned to confess where she'd hidden my basketball – which may have led her to ask how I knew she'd hidden that basketball. But I was no more prepared for a long-drawn-out debate with my sister than I'd been with my mother.

My brother, who was next to the youngest, was also gone. He'd led an off-the-grid, fringe existence, where he'd removed himself from our family and most of society. No one knew where he'd been for a decade or more or whether he'd still been alive. It turned out he'd been living in a trailer park with a small community of people who also didn't fit into the world most of us occupied. They'd formed a large extended family.

When my wife and I flew back for his funeral, every person living at the trailer park came to the funeral home to mourn him. Someone mentioned the group gathered outside to me, so I investigated. I talked with a young man who stepped forward and was the only one who spoke. Most looked at the ground or one another, avoiding eye contact with me.

I immediately invited them in. They had been my brother's family for the past twenty years. They had as much business being there as any of his blood relatives. They were very grateful. They were mostly nice people, odd but nice.

My youngest brother, my baby brother, was the only one to recognize me. I didn't need to introduce myself. He immediately pulled me into a hug and said he'd missed me. He'd had his share of life's difficulties, including a slew of recent health issues. It was strange seeing that he'd become an old man. He was seven years younger, but even if I'd still looked my actual age, he would have appeared a decade older. When I made him the offer of forever, he told me, he figured when the good Lord was ready, he would be too. Life had worn him down. Why would he want more of it? He didn't figure heaven was in his future, so forever sounded a lot like hell to him.

After I left him, I looked up some old friends. And that was who I found: old people I'd known fifty years earlier. Most of them had much the same perspective as my mother. They didn't know who I was or what scam I was trying to pull. They didn't trust me.

As I was returning to the airport, I spotted an old woman making her way down the street with a walker and realized she'd once been the tall, beautiful blonde-haired girl I'd fallen for so hard in high school. I didn't try to convince her of who I was or wave as I passed. But, seeing her filled me with profound sadness. For a moment, I felt my age.