Agangly tarantula wriggled through the empty cubicle maze.

It crept along the fabric dividers, limbs twitching with suspicion, hunting for prey. But there was nothing to feed on this morning. No workers. No phones ringing. No one to entrap in the ill-conceived innovation-web he’d spun five seconds earlier.

Even Brad Rogbin hadn’t shown up.

Where the hell was everyone? Rich probably wondered, after quickly deducing it must be their fault. He scanned the work areas for excuses, but nothing seemed amiss, aside from the total absence of his staff and all their personal belongings. 

“We must have been robbed.” He probably suspected. He tried to summon his imagination to speculate why someone would steal Chris Anderson’s photos of his family vacation, or Laurie King's kitten calendar. But imagining hurt. He didn’t like it. It was weird when a thought didn’t have him in it.

There were no signs of a murderous coup, so he nearly abandoned the theory. But he wasn’t ready to rule it out yet

“This is what happens when you let a female in the henhouse.” Rich snarled, remembering Nina had been the first to officially quit.

He opened the QQB and scribbled some chicken scratch. 

This is what happens when you let a female in the henhouse.

RR

But this didn’t explain what happened to his beloved car three weeks prior. So Nina being a “female” probably had something to do with it, but not entirely. No. This is likely an attack from a clandestine terrorist group which included MS-13, Islamic radicals, and Antifa. Probably funded by George Soros and timed to align directly with Nina’s rag. If only females weren’t born with the weird missing piece in their crotch, maybe they’d be whole people. Maybe they wouldn’t do things like this. 

Please excuse how disgusting this all is, and don’t shoot the messenger. I’m only reporting to you Rich’s thoughts according to what I think they are.

Anyway, the soulless void inside women’s cunts really disgusted and angered him. But he avoided any self-reflection over those feelings. Deep down inside his shivering crying frail little ego he knew confronting it would dig up the true reason: fear and inadequacy. 

He scurried back to his miserable little office like the lanky insect-rodent he was, desperate to pick up the phone and yell at… someone. He hadn’t screamed at anyone in at least twenty minutes, and if it hadn’t been the drive-thru girl at McDonald’s, it would’ve been since yesterday. He was depleted. He needed nourishment.

Then it hit him: he had no one to call. 

He flipped through a rolodex. He was traditional in that way, meaning in the way I imagine his office as void of any modern technological advancement he was too stupid to learn. He opened the top of the rolodex. A blank card. The next one was blank. He flipped through some more. All blank. 

And then one, finally. A single card.

Block letters. No context. No number. Simply:

NO ONE LOVES YOU.

The next. 

AND YOU DO NOT MATTER.

He flipped. 

BUT THERE IS A WAY YOU CAN. 

He quickly flipped. Blank. Flipped again. Blank. He frantically yanked out the cards. 

“TELL ME ROLODEX! HOW CAN MY LIFE MATTER? PLEASE!” 

Rich’s world was collapsing, not figuratively, not emotionally, but ontologically. He was unraveling through snot and saltwater, clutching for the thinnest thread of meaning as a vast and bottomless pit of insignificance yawned open beneath him, eager to consume what little remained of his bloated, brittle egg shell of an ego.

This wasn’t simply a breakdown. It was a precision-engineered psychological event, a full-spectrum assault aimed squarely at the soft, unprotected core of his being.

And make no mistake: not even the sharpest, most fortified human consciousness could withstand this masterclass in identity destabilization. Certainly not Rich, who had built his entire personality atop outdated sales tactics and toxic management techniques. He was not mentally prepared for such an onslaught of psychological warfare by Rolodex logic.

He was, in every measurable way, finished. 

He flopped into his chair, slumped, beaten, an empty rolodex of nothingness in his hand. He had no one. 

A handful of black orbs rolled out of the rolodex chamber and into his bony, sad lap. ANTIDROME printed clearly on them. It didn’t take long for him to consider it, thinking it was some kind of poison which would end his miserable weight on the world. And the world agreed it would be better off, and it would feel a little bit lighter.

He took two. 

Rich didn’t fidget and tongue-tickle the balls like he would the balls of a millionaire. He swallowed them whole with an eager gulp, like he would the balls of a billionaire, skipping the foreplay and gag reflex.

They slid down his gullet with sterility, he closed his eyes believing he had ingested some new industrial cleaner tablet - merciful, final, tasteless. No hesitation. No final prayer. Only raw, unfiltered surrender to his annihilation. 

And this is exactly how it happened according to the way I want to tell it.

He looked up to the ceiling, maybe waiting for some god to open it up and send an escalator down. But there was only a cheap office ceiling fan. 

He watched the blades. Whup. Whup. 

“Get some,” he muttered. 

Whup. Whup. Whup. Whup. Whup. 

A helicopter soared through the Vietnamese countryside. Rich, Door Gunnery Sgt 2nd class, manned the gun of a Sikorsky H-34 Choctaw. His mission: shoot at any and every random person on the ground, young, old, civilian or otherwise, shooting back at him or fleeing. It didn’t matter. They were all VC to him.

“How can you kill women and children?” some joker asked. 

“Easy! I hate them more.” Rich laughed. “Ain’t war fun?” 

Then, with glee only he could manufacture, he opened fire on a child running barefoot through a rice paddy.

“Get some!” he shouted

“You guys should do a story about me sometime!”

Rich grinned like a lunatic.

“I was part of this platoon of POWs I rescued with dynamite arrows. We were all hopped up on government-grade crystal meth or something, and we viciously murdered each other in a panicked fever dream.”

He chuckled.

“Another time I saved an entire unit ‘cause I was lookin’ for my best friend. That act of valor got me the Medal of Honor!”

He puffed up his chest.

“I’m so fuckin’ good. I’m a poet warrior… in the most classic sense.”

Rich was clear in his soul, but his mind was mad. He had a special anger for the Vietcong army after what he had endured days before. 

He looked down.

The pistol finished its spin on a table littered with bills and coins. The betting was done. The muzzle pointed at him.

“Three bullets,” Rich demanded. “Three.”

They slapped him. 

“Now!”

They slapped him again.

“Now!”

Rich stared at the guard, rage in his eyes.

He raised the pistol to his temple. Pulled the trigger. 

Click.

He didn’t flinch.

He knew the chamber was empty.

No. Hold up. 

This didn’t happen to him.

He had never been to Vietnam. He protested the war. 

He was a hippie, through and through. 

Riding the wave of enlightenment with counter-culture pop art. Cosmic vibes. 

He was at Woodstock, man. 

In fact, he was a frontman for a band in ‘68. 

Rich stood in the smoke-filled bar, staring through the souls of his followers, with the gaze of a man haunted by djinns. He stood with a slight lean, shirt off, leather pants, and signature long brown curls. 

There had been a beat since his last lyric.

And now, with his third eye opened, he deciphered the message descended through the centuries, passed down from Mayan priests, transcendental shamans, and ancient alien gods. 

Rich, the prophet, would translate extinct tongues to the receivers of gifted wisdom below.

“Shit, man,” someone whispered, elbowing his friend. “He’s about to say something profound.”

Rich moved toward the mic, still in a trance. 

Gripped it. 

♫

“The salesman woke up at dawn. He put his pants on…And walked down a hall…”

“Holy. Shit.” The crowd silently agreed.

♫

“He said good morning to his sister, and he…

went to his brother's room and was like, “hey.” And he…

Said something shocking to his parents that later generations would find pretty tame. And he…

Walked down a hall!”

Their collective minds exploded. This was the inception of the low-potency LSD induced pseudo-philosophical revolution of the 60’s, and it continued:

♫

“The blue bus is calling us

The red car can drive real far

That green bike belongs to Mike.

Where are you off to, Mike?”

Mike was tucking his pant leg into his sock, and was, in fact, off to the store. 

Then, out of nowhere, unprovoked.

“YOU’RE ALL A BUNCH OF FUCKIN’ SLAVES.” Rich scolded.

Wait… 

This didn’t happen either. It was a song he had heard. He wasn’t at Woodstock, in 1969 Rich would have only been five or six years old.

Oh wait, now he remembered. 

Hong Kong. 1988.

In an abandoned warehouse deep in the city’s underbelly, Rich competed in an underground full-contact martial arts tournament known as the Kumite. 

At first, his blatant appropriation of their culture was met with skepticism. But after performing the Dim Mak death touch the judges were convinced. 

Chong Li had killed his last opponent and called Rich out directly. Now he had gained the upper hand by throwing a salt pill into Rich’s face, temporarily blinding him. 

Rich screamed … really strangely. 

For a long time.

Too long, if he was being honest. 

His defeat was near inevitable.

But then, an epiphany. 

He had trained, for some reason, to fight better while blind. 

Which was both convenient and dramatic. 

He won, and the rest was unverified history.

Wait… 

That was Van Damme.

Shit.

Did he have any real memories of his own?

The thought worried him.

He strained, hard, trying to turn the rusted cranks of the few brain cells left which weren’t solely dedicated to micromanagement and television.

Rich sat in his living room recliner. Beer in hand.

The room was empty, except for the chair and the television, replaying Bloodsport. 

Behind him, in the fuzzy, half-lit kitchen, two shadowy figures moved.

Hazy.

Their voices muffled, like they were speaking from the far end of a long, echoing cave.

“Get out of my house!” one barked. 

Rich stumbled to get a clear view, like a reflection through a foggy mirror. 

“Fine!” the younger man snapped. “You’ll never see me again!”

He stormed out.

The door slammed.

The refracted figure reached into the fridge, opened a beer, returning to the recliner. 

Sat down to merge himself with Rich, continuing to watch the television.

“Tonight, on the History channel, In their own words. DMs from the past. April, 2024. The rain had not stopped for days. Zac Whitaker of New Jersey sat alone in the dim glow of his phone. A soldier of solitude, waging a private war against his own loneliness.

The air was heavy with longing. His thumbs, trembling with purpose, began to type upon an image.

“Here’s my dick and balls, bitch! ROFLLOL. WHORE.”

He paused, as if to consider the weight of history itself… then punctuated his declaration with symbols of fertility and bravado.

Eggplant, water splash, peach.

Her reply would never co

me.

Yet his words… endure.

DMs From the Past — tonight at nine.
Only on The History Channel.”

“Erstwhile on Fargo, our showrunner found the word erstwhile and really needed to make sure you know he knows it. This is a true story, the events depicted are an incredibly shitty carbon copy of a half-decent movie. Out of respect for the dead, we regret this show drove you to suicide.”

Fortunately, Fargo’s pretentious plot device clichés were drowned beneath the operatic crescendo of crimson emergency strobes and apocalyptic klaxon.

“REMAIN CALM.” a voice said. Rich’s home began to shake. The TV went to static, his beer spilled. 

“THE ANTIDROME APPLICATION PROCESS IS ABOUT TO BEGIN.” 

Rich snapped out of his daydream, thinking this was it. The pills were finally about to do their job. 

“OH GREAT ONE, I AM READY TO BE TAKEN FROM THIS WORLD!” Rich yelled to the sky, falling to his knees in repentance. 

An intense pressure from inside his skull began from a microscopic singularity split into two, both inflating to consume all the perceivable space around him. Growing static snow encompassed his vision.

The pain stopped. The alarms stopped. It became tranquil. It was an oil painting of lackluster gray carpeted cubicle walls and generic sublimated pattern flooring. A labyrinth of workplace productivity space. There were personal belongings hung in each office, all praiseworthy of Rich and his management style. Rich stood in bewilderment and awe, he had never seen such a beautifully oppressive working environment. It was heaven. A fax machine was spitting out money, and a banner tacked up along the top edge of the office wall had the acronym;

RRITMIUMMITU

“Rich Ricchezza is the most intelligent upper middle manager in the universe.”  

A memo blew in from the back conference room and gently landed at his tarsi. Yes, I meant to say tarsi.

ANTIDROME. 

“Good morning Mr. Ricchezza. You’re about to succeed at an application process for Antidrome, a forward-thinking company.” A disembodied voice said. It was masculine, tough, with the right mix of attitude and a chumminess which didn’t trigger Rich’s homophobia.

“Did he say ‘succeed?’ A very similar but different voice spoke up, “Because that’s putting it mildly. You’re gonna fucking blow this out of the water Rich. Your application and qualification assessment is dependent on your own imagination. So, kick back at your big ass boss chair, and check this shit out.” 

First though, you should relax. Take a big breath in.” Rich did. 

“Now take a big breath out.” Rich did. 

“Your qualification test will begin - now.” 

The lights blacked out but for one intense spotlight directed at Rich. He was on a grand stage, with faceless underlings in full attention to him. He was 14 feet tall, and everyone else was a mere 3 inches. This disproportion was important for Rich’s imagination so they would be slightly smaller than his manhood, which now boasted a stature equivalently proportionate to his new height, at a surprising 3 inches. As did his other penis. He had two? And together they could combine to a slightly under average penis for a man 8 feet shorter than he currently was. 

Four men entered the balcony seats, two on each side of the stage. 

“Hello Rich. Don’t be alarmed. I'm a talent acquisitionist for Antidrome, Fred. And on stage left over there is Qualifications Acknowledger, Allan. We’ll perform your value assessment and share some things about the company culture. How’s that sound?”  Both Freds said at the same time.

“Uh…uh… “Rich stuttered, “I don’t know if I can handle whatever's happening here. This is weird.”

“Oh. Alright.” The Freds looked over at the Allans, who both shrugged. “We can prepare a more comfortable setting for you, so you aren’t overloaded with distractions, if you’d like?” 

“Yes, please. This is strange.”

Rich shrunk down to his normal height, and alas, so did his penis… and the other was gone. The stage and theater were also gone, and they sat in a cluttered and drab conference room. 

“Oh… this is much more relaxing.” Rich said. 

“Agreed.” Fred said, “I’m too acrophobic for the balcony, anyway.” 

“Acrophobic? Afraid of acrobats?” Rich winked in his cleverness for what he thought were puns.

They all gave a courtesy “Ha, ha.” Flat and obligated. 

“I’m afraid to be an acrobat.” Fred quipped back. No one laughed, because yeah… more reasonably logical than a joke.

Rich gave his signature chuckle, through seething teeth, bitter over a one-upmanship defeat.

“Let's begin. The Allans are going to read off some questions for you from The Official Orientation Packet v.7.9.1 in PDF format, it will be printed for your convenience.”

“Wow! Nice title for a packet,” Rich said, impressed. 

“Thanks!” Allan responded, “We all contributed.” 

“Before we start… what is this exactly?” Rich asked. 

“Do you not know?” Freds asked. 

“No.” 

“Did you not read the instructions that came with the pill?” 

“No.” 

“So, you swallowed a strange black pill not knowing what it did?” 

“I thought it would kill me. I was having a bad day. Is this heaven?” 

“No.” 

“Oh fuck, this isn’t… “

“You’re not dead, Rich. You ingested a highly technical piece of modern nanobot technology which connects your mind to a server, where we all collaborate, called Antidrome. Right now, we are in an evaluation program. We are recruiting people to input their dreams in a portal called Somnesthia, where those dreams are then provided to AI training modules.” 

“Oo-ooh.” Rich said, acting like he understood the words. “Makes sense.”  

And it did, finally. A long-awaited explanation cleared it all up. Or so he thought, the level of understanding for Rich, and probably others, was still in a state of cluelessness. 

Freds continued, “The first stage of this program which is now coursing through your cerebral cortex and receptors is assessing the value you might bring to this company.” 

“Let’s dive in,” the Allans said, flipping pages. 

“Question one: In your own words, how would you describe leadership to someone who is very dumb?”

“I’ll tell you exactly what leadership is. I came up with this. It’s in my quote book: Leadership is to LEAD.”

There was a pause. Rich let the gravity of his answer suspend in the air like an atomic bomb above the metropolis of their minds, helpless before the looming inevitability of annihilation by his sheer wit.

The Allans and Freds looked at each other, then back to Rich, “Is that it, or…”

“No. LEAD. L. E. A. D. it’s a “stands for.” 

“Oh, an acronym,” one Fred offered.

“Again, with this?” Rich muttered, “can we stop talking about acrobats? I’m trying to answer the questions.” 

“The L stands for Leader. There’s your step one. You can’t have Leadership without a Leader, can ya? Then ya’ve got your E, which is Expectations. A Leader must have expectations his team is gonna do exactly what I tell ‘em - because I’m their leader. A is for Authority. A leader is an authority. Like a king.”

All four of the Freds and Allans blinked at once, mouths slightly open.

“And D… as in Damn, now that’s a leader.”

Rich sat back, satisfied, having leveled civilization into a mushroom cloud of genius. The fallout survivors gazed with incredulous eyes at the pulverized wasteland, wondering why they deserved such irradiated brain damage.

“I… don’t think we need to do the next questions, do we?” one Allan asked.

They all shook their heads.

“We’ll be in touch, Rich. Please, uh… feel free to…um, leave. There are two doors over there, please use the one labeled GTFO.”

“I nailed this, didn’t I?” Rich grinned.

“You… ha. Yeah. You … alright, good bye!” They answered

But for Rich, everything was doubled, merging and not merging, overlapping like a series of Venn diagrams, each circle labeled “YOU NAILED IT.”

The left door read GTFO.

The right read GFTO

Which stood for “Go Further To Onboarding” 

He wasn’t sure which one he opened. But in the next room everyone yelled:

“Surprise!”

Balloons fell.

Someone crowned him. 

Banners unrolled from the ceiling, glitter-stamped and misaligned:

WELCOME ABOARD

RICH RICCHEZZA

Scantily clad bikini models kissed him on each cheek. Champagne shot from bottles like a Vegas fountain. 

Streamers and quarterly reports rained from the ceiling, shredded spreadsheets fluttering down like corporate confetti.

“Yuna!” Rich gasped, genuinely stunned.

It was his second of four ex-wives. He scrambled to her, arms open.

The one who got away… with half his inheritance.

“You fucking bitch!” he screamed.

Without hesitation, Rich grabbed Yuna by the hips and slammed her into a nearby paper shredder.

It was an unnecessarily large paper shredder. Well… I guess it would depend on what you’re shredding. In this case, its size was absolutely necessary.

The machine hummed to life, rattled, then roared, spitting her out the other side like a woodchipper.

Long red ribbons of paper and viscera sprayed across the room, soaking the crowd in celebratory gore.

The crowd erupted in applause graffitied in Yuna’s blood. 

“Rich, your son is here!” someone said.

“What son?” Rich laughed. “My son is dead to me. This is the best day of my life!” Rich yelled to the crowd, pumping his fists. 

The crowd began chanting his name. 

In the back of the room, his son’s face dropped. His husband wrapped a consoling arm around his shoulders. Together, they turned toward the exit. 

“Rich! Rich! Rich!”

A large sheet cake was wheeled out with an image of his face screen-printed in edible ink, arguably the best photograph of him to date. His hair was fuller, and deeply black with a fresh, thick coat of shoe polish. His mustache looked much less like dead cricket legs and more like recently dead cricket legs. 

They had even smoothed out all the wrinkles hardened by forty years of chain-smoking and fifty-five years of never being applauded.

But now. His day seemed to have come.

“Rich. Rich. Rich.” they chanted, louder with enormous respect. 

Fifty hands plunged into the cake, ripping out chunks as large as they could grab. A single piece in the center of the soggy crumbs and icing gore remained. Square, clean-cut and clear. It was his left eye. He reached for it but snapped his hand back when it blinked. 

“Rich. Rich. Rich. Rich. Rich. Rich Rich. Rich. Rich.” started to get repetitive, even sinister. 

He exalted in the celebration of these new strangers who he’d never met. 

As he tried to recognize these faces, they blurred, then vanished. The crowd shrunk. One by one until there was no one. He was by himself. 

No balloons. No crown. No spreadsheet confetti. No champagne. 

Only a single computer on a desk, at the far end of a vast white room.

The cursor blinked. Whup. Whup. 

He approached.

A single line glowed on the screen:

• YOU ARE ALONE.

He hit Esc.

The message blinked and reappeared.

• YOU ARE ALONE.

He frantically hit Esc. Again. Again.

Until the message changed:

• THERE IS NO ESCAPE.

Rich looked around the room, the door he had walked through was gone, any possible exit, if there ever was one, was invisible. 

He looked back at the screen. 

• Who are you? 

He stared at the prompt.

• Who are you? 

Behind it, a shape.

Vaguely human.

Possibly him.

Possibly not.

He typed.

"Rich Ricchezza."

He hit Submit.

The screen blinked.

• Who are you? 

The same screen had refreshed. 

He typed, “RICH Ricchezza. OWNER OF TRITE ESSENTIALS L.L.C.” 

Submit. 

• Who are you? 

Rich attempted many different answers - President of Trite Essentials. CEO of Trite Essentials. Person at Trite Essentials. Over and over.

Nothing changed.

Eventually, the words began to lose meaning.

He began to feel like he was a trite essential himself, something forgettable, technically necessary…

Or was he even necessary?

He was direct-to-trash.

The tab you pull from the battery which keeps it from working. 

The wire holding the cork when the cork is already doing its job. 

Rich fell inward.

He’d broken through to a profound, life-changing moment.

What a thought.

Cork wires… the wires holding the corks on wine bottles.

He could definitely sell this.

Rich owned a warehouse full of metal bag wires. All the materials he would need to make cork wires. 

He was in tears. 

• Who are you? 

Rich typed, ‘A REVOLUTIONARY” 

The room collapsed upon itself. 

Black. 

He shot up from his chair, back at Trite Essentials.

“Cork... Wire,” he intoned, addressing each hand like ancient relics.

“Cork,” to his left.

“Wire,” to his right.

He brought them together, fingers locking with reverence.

“WIRECORKHOLDER.”

Rich quickly ripped a letterhead printed sheet from his stack. 

“To the office of the United States Patent and Trademark Office. 

WIRECORKHOLDER™

Signed, 

Rich Ricchezza, 

C.E…

He scribbled it out. 

REVOLUTIONARY, TRITE ESSENTIALS L.L.C.

Rich put it in his outgoing box, and ran quickly to the annexed warehouse. Out of the small office building and down the drab white stucco stairs. Across the cracked pavement of weed-filled veins and to the large gray box’s door. He hustled for the keys as if behind this door was a bathroom he desperately needed. 

He hit the main switch. 

CHUNK. CHUNK. CHUNK. 

The lights cachunked and fired up in succession, revealing massive domes of metallic splinters. The light glinted off their jagged edges, like steel gold. Direct-to-Trash Diamonds.

“My god, it’s made of stars.” 

He was no longer tied down in the arid desert of selling Metal Shard Bag Wires. 

Now he had a lifeboat, made of corks, and a massive inventory of scrap which would keep those corks from drifting away, like his metaphors did.

A twist tie, for corks.  

Today, the person who usually told him his inventions had already existed wasn’t at work. No one was, and they all did.

Rich took a small box of wire to his office. There, he switched his name plate saying, “Rich Ricchezza, President.” to “Rich Ricchezza, President and Inventor, R&D” 

Today, R&D stood for Revolutionary and Didn’t-think-of-a-D-word-yet.

He spent the rest of the afternoon engineering his product. 

Twisting, tying, tightening… uh, torquing? And humming to himself, 

♫

Totally taking today to tie together

Twisty ties to triumphant tiers

Tonight’s taco Tuesday,

Tomorrow tell the wor—

“God DAMN IT!”

The office entrance opened. 

“Rich?” a voice asked. 

“In here!” he replied. 

“Hey Rich, Brad Rogbin, former Senior Junior Sales Executive. I came by to—"

“I’m busy. You made your decision. Stick to it.”

“Oh… i’m not asking for my job back,” Brad laughed in incredulity. “I’m here to offer you one.” 

“I don’t need your charity.” he puffed, “I have this.” 

He unveiled it. A jumbled mess of metal which looked like chicken wire trampled into a ball, displayed high in the air by Rich’s shredded fingers.

“Dear god,” Brad recoiled, “you’re bleeding everywhere!”

“Yeah, yeah. So, I got a few puncture wounds. So what? You can’t paint the Sixteen Chapel without ruining the first fifteen chapels.” 

Brad scanned the office, it was covered in metal chicken wire balls, bloody tissues, and twistable metal wire shrapnel everywhere. 

“Are you okay? Did you also punch your mirror?” 

“It no longer reflects me.”  

Brad was stunned. 

He’d never seen Rich like this in the…

Well… he actually hadn’t known Rich very long.

About a few months.

Still, this was a new side.

“Who are you?” 

Rich snapped his head up, and grinned, eerily, eye twitching.

“You work for them, don’t you? And what are you, their errand boy sent by them to deliver a message?” 

“I’m not a mailman, Rich.” said Brad, “I can get you a job at Antidrome.” 

“HA!” Rich squealed, “I already got it. I nailed it.” 

“Yeah… no,” Brad shook his head. “You really didn’t.” 

“It’s why you had to take the GTFO door. 

Gather Trauma For Observational and Training Purposes Only. Upon Taking The Antidrome Pill, You Agreed To These Terms. The other letters are super small under the top four.

“But it doesn’t matter, somehow your name is still in the system as employable, but unassigned. I want you to be my right-hand guy.” 

Rich did not like the sound of it one bit. But it was maybe the old Rich’s instinct. The new Rich could see this as an opportunity. He could play this like Che Guevara, the revolutionary, who overthrew the authoritarian government oppressing him and installed himself as the drug kingpin warlord of the Mexican cartel. 

His plan was as flawless as his avowed history prowess.

He would simply have to reconcile Che’s revolution with the cocaine empire thing before the inevitable gunfight, avoiding the whole getting-shot-in-the-back-and-falling-into-his-own-fountain moment, symbolically representing his catastrophic plummet from high-velocity self-made momentum, lazily punch lined with a glowing neon, ever-so-subtle mockery: 

The World WAS Yours. 

But Now Look at Ya: Dead. 

Floating in a Pool Built Upon Ego

And Now It’s Filled With Your Own Blood And Unsatiable Hubris.

Why? 

Because You Couldn’t Restrain Yourself When It Was Obvious You Were on a Path of Self-Destruction. 

Idiot.

“The world is mine.” Rich whispered, “Brad will never see it coming.”

“I’ll never see what coming?” Brad asked, locking eyes with Rich.  

They stared in silence.