DOWN TO THE LAST DAY, even the last hour now. I'm an old man, lonely and
unloved, sick and hurting and tired of living. I am ready for the hereafter; it has to be
better than this.
I own the tall glass building in which I sit, and 97 percent of the company housed in it,
below me, and the land around it half a mile in three directions, and the two thousand
people who work here and the other twenty thousand who do not, and I own the pipeline
under the land that brings gas to the building from my fields in Texas, and I own the
utility lines that deliver electricity, and I lease the satellite unseen miles above by which I
once barked commands to my empire flung far around the world. My assets exceed
eleven billion dollars. I own silver in Nevada and copper in Montana and coffee in Kenya
and coal in Angola and rubber in Malaysia and natural gas in Texas and crude oil in
Indonesia and steel in China. My company owns companies that produce electricity and
make computers and build dams and print paperbacks and broadcast signals to my
satellite. I have subsidiaries with divisions in more countries than anyone can find.
I once owned all the appropriate toys-the yachts and jets and blondes, the homes in
Europe, farms in Argentina, an island in the Pacific, thoroughbreds, even a hockey team.
But I've grown too old for toys.
The money is the root of my misery.
I had three families-three ex-wives who bore seven children, six of whom are still alive
and doing all they can to torment me. To the best of my knowledge, I fathered all seven,
and buried one. I should say his mother buried him. I was out of the country.
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