Date: Tue, 28 May 2013 10:26:54 -0700
From: Mark James <mjliterary45@gmail.com>
Subject: Trade 32 (Epilog) by Mark James

Trade 32 (Epilog) by Mark James


It has been 5 years since the world went to hell. The world population is
hovering at 4,000,000,000 - a 45% reduction.

The United States withdrew its troops from the rest of the world and
stopped being the world's policeman. It downsized its military and
mothballed most of its fleet and air force. It lost 50 million people in
nuclear attacks. It defaulted on its 14 trillion foreign debts. All of the
jobs which had been outsourced around the world came back in house. During
the period of martial law the army solved the illegal alien problem by
shooting them when they crossed the Mexican/U.S. border. Most of the
American expatriates and retirees that weren't killed by Mexican extremists
moved somewhere else. In actual fact it ended up being stronger
economically after the destruction than before but it still turned
isolationist. It is now a benevolent dictatorship.

Russia took advantage of the disarray in China and invaded it. It is still
there, mired down in a guerrilla war like it has never experienced and is
being drained dry economically.

Brazil and other South American countries became the grocers to the
world. In deference to its new economic status Brazil bought surplus ships,
planes and nuclear submarines from the U.S and greatly expanded its armed
forces.

South Korea and Germany are the new economic military strong men in Asia
and Europe and they are already using their status to bully other
countries. I guess people will never learn how to get along.

The Catholic Church is in disarray. They can't agree on where to locate the
papacy and have not elected a new Pope although there appears to be a self
appointed Pope on most continents. The self proclaimed Popes pop up, get
assassinated and are replaced with regularity. The Catholics lost their
historic documents, their legitimacy and billions of dollars in assets when
the Vatican was bombed.

The internet came back as other servers replaced those that had been
destroyed.

Since the super rich do not advertise their wealth it is hard to know but
we may be one of the richest families in the world. Me, Bill and Greg came
out of the world wide apocalypse with 250 billion dollars, but 70 billion
of that went to taxes which left us with 180 billion. Bobby and Gene
parlayed their money into almost a billion dollars and Barry ended up with
almost a half a billion. The chance to do that again may not happen for
another 1,000 years. Many people who had invested in gold got in at the top
of the cycle and took a bath as the price of gold and silver fell from a
high of $30,000 an ounce back to the $300 dollar range. We replaced our 104
tons of gold which we sold off when gold reached $30,000 an ounce at its
current price of $300.00 an ounce.

Yielding to the exigencies of wealth and power we created our own army and
secret service. We have funded the election of politicians all over South
and Central America for our protection and for the good of the country.

We have 6 children, 3 girls and 3 boys, Bobby and Gene have 4 children, 2
boys and 2 girls. And Barry and Julio have 4 also, 2 boys and 2 girls.

Who is Julio you ask?

He is Barry's life partner.

Barry temporarily paired up with a lot of guys until he found Felix. Felix
was handsome, well built and rich and Barry was hopelessly in love. We knew
he was the guy when Barry brought him to dinner to meet us all. He had
never done that before. Everybody was very impressed, but Gene wasn't
there.

Barry went looking for him and found him in the library.

"Come on I want you to meet Felix."

"I can't," Gene said, "He Is going to break your heart."

"What do you mean?"

Gene told us later he was furious with Gene and then Gene wasn't there
anymore and he was channeling in a different voice. The voice told Barry
all about Felix, who he said was a spy and described what Felix would end
up doing if Barry continued the relationship.

Gene told us when he came out of his trance not knowing what he had said
that Barry was sitting there as white as a sheet and coldly furious.

"I'm sorry, what did I say?"

Barry just waved at him and went to the phone and called Major General
Alvarez.

Barry was on the phone for a while and what he had told Barry filtered back
into his memory. When Barry came back he hugged Gene and said, "I love you,
thank you."

Gene told us he sat back down and was uncontrollably crying.

Barry came back to the dining room, said Gene was indisposed and we
continued the dinner. 30 minutes later General Alveraz arrived and was
ushered in by the butler.

"To what do we owe the honor General? You are just in time to meet Barry's
special friend. This is Felix Torres."

They shook hands and General Alvarez suddenly got him in an arm lock and
said "Felix Torres, you are under arrest for treason."

Two soldiers appeared and took him into custody.

"You son of a bitch I ought to kill you," said Barry.

"Fucking faggot," Felix said.

Barry decked him and said, "Get him out of here."

Gene appeared at the dining room door looking haggard and spent and said,
"I'm so sorry Barry."

Barry got him in a bear hug and said, "It wasn't your fault."

"Will somebody please tell us what is going on," I said.

So Barry described his meeting with Gene and what he had been told by Gene
(or whoever it was he was channeling) and then he went to pieces and
started sobbing.

"I almost got us all killed. How could I have been so stupid," he wailed.

We finally got him settled down, but that was when we realized we needed
our own secret service. Background checks suddenly became routine for
anybody who had contact with the family.

Of course Barry recovered and had many more boyfriends but whenever it got
serious with one of them he introduced them to Gene. He lost a lot of
boyfriends that way until Julio came along. When Julio met Gene, Gene could
hot have been more receptive unless he had stamped "This is the one" on
Julio's forehead. The rest, of course is history. It was a small, quiet
wedding. We had finally come to terms with the fact that our fortunes had
made us targets and large gatherings of any kind were to be avoided.

They bought a horse ranch that specialized in polo ponies.

Bill, Gary and I had moved to the beach house as we started having children
to avoid disturbing the others. Nannies, nurses and screaming kids do not
made for the contentment of others. When Bobby and Gene had children they
moved to the beach with us and when Barry and Julio started there wasn't
room so we bought a much larger estate and everybody moved there.

It was summer in the Condor's nest and winter in Rio although it was like
moving an army each time we relocated.

We renovated a large skyscraper that we had purchased for a song in down
town Rio during the troubles and used it as the focus of a huge
redevelopment in downtown, most of which we owned. All of our various
companies and facilities were relocated to there. But everything on our
computers was backed up in at least 2 different off-site places every day.

We spun off all of our electronic assets into a separate company and Gene
became the President. Neither Gene nor Bobby went back to school. Bobby
bought an old, tired architectural firm and brought it back to life. There
is nothing like starting at the top. When you are worth in excess of a
billion dollars you can pretty much do what you want to do. What was
surprising was that his firm won the contract for the design of our Rio
redevelopment effort. Nobody believes it but there was absolutely no
favoritism in the awarding of the contract.

We had a lot of homes and the third time Henry fired a butler we asked him
if he would be willing to take over our hospitality and housekeeping
function as a Vice President. We offered him 10 million dollars as a
signing bonus and a million dollars a year. He declined saying that he
would rather remain with the family. We asked him what if we get somebody
else to do the day to day work and they report to you but you get the same
salary. He agreed. He went through more than a few assistants at the
beginning who thought he was unnecessary until he found Miguel. He married
him. We couldn't be in better hands.

I don't think he bargained for 14 children and all the extra people that
went with them but that's what he got and he loves it. Everybody calls him
Uncle Henry and he doesn't let anybody get away with anything. And then he
and Miguel had 4 children of their own. The more the merrier, but we had to
move to a much larger estate.

In our business dealings we run across the name A. Lee occasionally as a
competitor and we always drop out of whatever the deal is and leave it
clear for Mr. Lee. I am sure that some day I will open the door and he will
be standing there. It would be nice to see him again.

None of Bobby or Gene's family wanted to move to Brazil. I still don't know
if they are hurt or happy about it. It can't be fun living in the USA
today.

Oddly enough I had a call from Sheriff Amos yesterday. He is coming for a
visit to see if he wants to live here. We sent a plane up to get him

The house is in turmoil today because it is swim day. All of the kids are
going to learn how to swim. It is best to learn how to swim very young
because then it is second nature as you grow up. Some are excited, some are
scared and some don't know what is going on. Everybody is here, which is
unusual, but the parents have to be here to be with and encourage the kids.

Next they are going to learn how to ride a horse, again the younger the
better. We bought a second horse ranch, which Barry and Julio manage to
provide horses for the family. We all try to be in the audience when Barry
or Julio is competing in a polo match. Talk about a logistical nightmare.

Speaking of kids, we dumped 5 billion dollars into the equality foundation
in the U.S. It now has a presence in all of the major U. S. cities. We have
rescued at least 400,000 gay kids from the streets, given them a place to
live and a chance to finish their education through college. We are even
the employer of last resort if they can't find jobs with anybody else.

We have similar foundations here in Brazil and in Europe. They are also
doing a fine job. It turned out that we were the owners and operators of
the largest escort service in Brazil. The first thing we did was to rescue
those people who were forced into the business and wanted out. Surprisingly
there weren't that many. Sex is looked on a different way down here and the
business was operated entirely above board.

We posted a reward of 50 million reals for an HIV vaccine and an equivalent
amount for an HIV cure and set up a 5 billion real charity to provide the
funds for any likely avenues of attack. We have high hopes.

It fact we have funded so many charities that we had to have two additional
skyscrapers to house their offices.

It turns out that when you try to help people you need a thick skin. Our
efforts at helping gay children forced onto the streets became so
successful that we were accused of discrimination against non-gays. It was
so unfair and so mean minded that I was really pissed off.  I was persuaded
to set up a sister foundation to help anybody involuntarily on the streets
who needed help regardless of their sexual orientation. Of course the
critics just thought of something else to criticize, but I learned to
ignore them.

I spend most of my time dealing with the charities. But none of us really
spend a lot of time on business any more. We have the art of delegation
down to a fine science. We spend a lot of time with our children and each
other.

There is a dark side to life however. Bill wasn't surprised but I
was. Malicious lawsuits, blackmail, physical threats, cyber attacks, there
were lots of things that the legal system couldn't or wouldn't
handle. Brazil has no death penalty but we do. Street gangs and organized
crime tried a comeback in Rio. Somehow the ring leaders died. Cyber attacks
were tracked back to their originators and they were never heard from
again. Malicious lawsuits got mysteriously terminated. Physical threats
were not tolerated. Religious and political demagogues arose spewing hate
and intolerance and always ended up dying in some kind of accident sooner
than later, before their pernicious message could do permanent damage. Bill
always handled it.

It reminded me of "The Godfather." I was too squeamish until our children
were threatened and then I was ready to kill anybody or destroy anything if
that was what it took to keep them safe. Bill again handled it but that
time he let me see how it was done. I had forgotten that Bill's wealth was
derived from illegal activities and that he had taken it all legal. He had
put together a small elite super secret highly efficient organization
buried so deeply and under so many cutouts that it could never be traced
back to us, but it was in fact just a highly visible social club located on
a public street that anybody could just walk in to from the street. It was
the perfect camouflage.

There were super encrypted computers, passwords and ties with a myriad of
other similar government and private organizations. Bill had begun putting
all of this in place before we had even moved down here. The latest threat
had come from an offshoot of a branch of the Catholic Church attempting to
reconstitute the inquisition. Among the many things they were against, they
were violently anti-gay. That had a lot of people upset not just us. Nobody
died, at least not directly, the movers and shakers in the movement just
disappeared.

There are whole groups of people to whom ordinary laws don't apply. (Of
course they don't apply to us either but we like to think we are the good
guys.) They can eliminate or buy witnesses and obfuscate the law and
evidence. In this case a Cardinal of the Catholic Church wrapped himself in
the mantle of the church and did whatever he and his minions wanted to do
to whomever they wanted to, using the wealth and power of the church. He
thought he was inviolate and he was to ordinary law but the Brazilian
government had figured out how to deal with such people.

Brazil has a lot of jungle. The Cardinal was just scooped up in his regal
vestments and deposited in a very isolated camp with 30 others that
constituted the leadership of his movement. They just couldn't leave
because the only way in or out was by air. They and the others who were
there before them could farm and hunt to survive or die. Mostly they killed
each other.

The Cardinal was highly incensed and immediately tried to exert his
supposed influence on the people who were already in the camp. He and his
followers were quickly disabused of such notions, stripped of their
clothes, beaten into submission and put to work in the fields as farm
laborers.

This was all known because the camp had audio and visual surveillance
although the people maintaining the surveillance did not interfere in the
camp's operations.

For you much maligned conspiracy theorists out there I just want to go on
record as saying you were right on the mark. Most of the things that happen
in the world are the result of a gentlemen's agreement by the rich and
powerful. You can call those agreements conspiracies if you like. Bill had
told me early on that money was nice but that if I did not use it to
accumulate power then somebody else who did would take it away from me
eventually.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Three more years have gone by and the world is still going to hell.

After losing Tokyo and the Imperial family to an atomic bomb attack from
North Korea, Japan scrapped its constitutional prohibition against
maintaining a standing army and has rearmed. South Korea has united with
the old North Korea and is the dominant force in Asia. There is no love
lost between Japan and Korea.

China stalemated Russia in its attempt to conquer the country. It converted
missile warheads into satchel bombs, hand delivered them to Russia and
destroyed Russian cities, military facilities and manufacturing
centers. Russia attempted to sue for peace but China ignored them and
chewed up the occupying armies which could no longer be supported by the
Russian homeland. In a last desperate attempt to stop the Chinese Russia
used its last missiles to drop dirty bombs on the few areas that China had
where crops could be grown. Russia ceased to exist as a cohesive country.
China's population had been reduced to 300,000,000 people from a high of
1.5 billion 8 years ago. Korea Japan and India started moving into what
used to be Chinese territory. Japan captured Vladivostok and moved to take
the riches of Siberia. Germany parachuted troops onto the oil fields of
Russia to insure its supply of oil.

The United States did not interfere with what was happening around the
world. The United Nations had ceased to exist when New York was destroyed
by nuclear weapons. The new US capital is in St. Louis, Missouri. All
foreign aid was stopped. There was no outpouring of aid to other counties
to help them cope with the starvation and disease that had become rampant
in the rest of the world. Immigration was effectively stopped except for
selected individuals who had valuable skills of use to the nation.  The US
is entirely isolationist even though it has the largest number of
operational nuclear weapons on the planet.

Israel, freed of the specter of annihilation by militant Islam, fed by
continuing immigration of Jews from around the world expanded by leaps and
bound into the surrounding vacant country side.

We added 2 more adults to our family. We reached the 9 people that had been
forecast by Gene. Bobby and Gene found Harry and Barry and Julio fell in
love with Nick. The laws allowing multiple marriage partners had never been
repealed, so Bobby, Gene and Harry got married and so did Barry, Julio and
Nick.

Dealing with business took first place, family second and sex third. But we
were all young men in our twenties or early thirties so coming in third was
a relative term, but we took time out with each addition to our family to
have a group orgy to cement our family relationships. The addition of 2
more adults resulted in the creation of 4 more children. I don't really
know how many millions of dollars Harry and Nick brought with them because
it really didn't matter, but I am sure Greg knows down to the dime.

Most of the kids have started school. They are all being home schooled so
we had to build a separate building just for that. We also added a fully
equipped hospital because there are a couple of hundred people who live
full time on the estate. We all have valets, social secretaries and varying
numbers of personal assistants. We ended up building a couple of luxury
apartment buildings to house them and their families. The rent is free as
part of each individual's compensation packages.

We do discriminate in employment. We don't employ anyone who has a
homophobic bias. We don't discriminate on the basis of sex and therefore
there are a lot of straight women and men employed on the estate. Some of
them get married and a lot of their children play with our children. What
kids wouldn't want to play with kids who have a Disneyland in the back
yard.

We also have quite a number of incredibly handsome, intelligent homosexual
employees and quite a few others who are as ordinary as mud except for the
fact that they are gay. So you probably want to know if we rich, privileged
homosexual capitalists exert the right of "droit du seigneur" on our
employees. Actually we don't. It is generally the employee who tries to
seduce us.

If we respond and we may because sex is sex and if sex is likely to occur
we explain that it won't change anything unless they expect to benefit from
it or try some form of blackmail and then it will cost them their
job. Generally we try to avoid such situations and generally promotions are
based on job performance not sexual performance. It is never just that
simple but that is generally the way we try to handle it. Nobody has fallen
in love with an employee yet, lust maybe, but not love.

I teach all of our kid's martial arts starting when they are very
young. Just as with swimming and riding it is easier that way.

We decided to stay part of the year at the estancia in Argentina. We had to
duplicate the building we had in Rio to be able to house everyone and had
to expand the airport to accommodate larger planes.

It must have been fate that had me stop in to see Bobby on my way to visit
my home town otherwise I would have never met Gene and we would probably
all be dead by now. His psychic gift pops up every now and then to the
benefit of us all.  As an example one evening we; 20 kids and 20 adults,
were all going to the theater to see a program for kids. It wasn't often
that we all went anywhere together because it was a logistical nightmare
but this was one of those times.

We were all getting in the cars to leave when Gene suddenly said "Everybody
out, lets go back in the house. We can't go."

Talk about making yourself unpopular

You never heard such a racket, kids screaming and crying, refusing to get
out of the car, yelling, "Why can't we go." You would have thought it was
the end of the world, but after about 45 minutes we finally got everybody
back in the house.  All of the nannies were as upset as the kids because
they didn't understand. Everybody looked at Gene for an explanation.

Gene got all of us parents in a separate room and said, "Somebody will kill
all of us tonight if we go to the theater."

That got our attention in a hurry. We had all been through Gene's psychic
warnings before and none of were inclined to argue with him.

Gene said, "I know we shouldn't go but I don't want to tell the kids the
real reason. Anybody have any ideas?"

Bill's phone rang but we could only hear on side of the conversation.

"Yeah we are fine. Why?"

"Yeah but Gene wouldn't let us leave. He just told us that somebody would
try to kill us if we went, so we didn't go. You know we always listen to
Gene."

"You are kidding. It did. That's terrible."

Bill looked at us and said, "It is General Alvarez. He said somebody just
bombed the theater and over 100 people were killed or injured. He knew we
were planning to go and he was calling in the hope that we had not been in
the theater."

It took 6 months for us and the General Alvarez's organization to discover
who was behind the attack and to identify the people involved. We were
getting ready to scoop them up when they stuck first at General Alvarez.

Gene came to the rescue again, this time by acting as a channel for another
entity. We were sitting at breakfast one morning about 10:00 A. M. and
everybody was laughing at a joke somebody had made, when Gene turned white,
grabbed his head and screamed in pain. There was instant silence and then
pandemonium as everybody reacted in a different way.

"Bill, Gene said, in a voice totally unlike his own, "Get General Alvarez
on the phone, he is about to be assassinated."

Of course then there was just another kind of pandemonium until Bill
yelled, "Quiet," took out his cell phone and called the general.

"General this is Bill."

"No, it can't wait. Gene just had a psychic premonition that you are about
to be assassinated. Let me put the phone on speaker."

Gene said in his alternate persona voice, "General, there is only a 3 %
chance that you will survive the next 10 minutes unless you do exactly what
I say immediately. If you do there is a 90 % chance that your will survive.
Do not trust anyone except one of your security detail named Ramon. Send
your security off to do something. There is a restroom just to your
right. You and Ramon go in there and dispose of your cell phones. They can
be used to track you. There is a door to another corridor on the other side
of the room. 50 feet down the hall there is a service elevator. Get on it
and go to the basement. Exit to the right and leave the building through
the open door where deliveries are received. Walk to the street and flag
down the first green taxi you see. It has to be a green taxi. Have him
bring you here to Gene's estate. They won't expect this move. Now go and
hurry."

The phone went dead in Bill's hand.

Somebody, probably Nick said, "Will he do it?"

The voice said, "He is already in motion. He knows enough about Gene's
predictions that he won't hesitate."

The voice said through Gene to Bill. "Send a military force to his house to
protect his family. There is no present danger but that is the first thing
he will ask about when he arrives. Just have them in the area, don't get in
a fire fight with his home security detail. When he arrives he can talk to
his security people about bringing them here. Many others in the building
he was in are dead or dying. Here are the names of the people in his agency
who were involved in the plot."

He recited the name of 5 people which Bill recorded with his phone.

"Gene will be fine after a while. I was just a little abrupt with my entry
this time."

Gene's body slumped in his chair and slid onto the floor. Those closest to
him hurriedly picked him up and laid him on a couch.

Gene roused and said, "What happened? God my head hurts, I need an
aspirin."

He tried to sit up and couldn't make it. Somebody handed him an aspirin and
a glass of water. Bobby and Harry had set him upright and had their arms
around him and were crying.

Bill was on the phone to our head of security dispatching security
personnel and informing the gate guard of the General's imminent arrival.

Henry had brandy brought in although it was only 11:00 in the morning
because everybody was in shock.

When the General arrived Gene and Bill met him on the porch. He hugged Gene
and kissed him on both cheeks.

"Thank you for my life. According to the radio it was a bloodbath."

"You are welcome, although I had little to do with it."

"Without your willingness to act as a channel there would have been no
warning.  You look like hell, by the way, so don't tell me it was nothing.
"I'm worried about my family."

"We dispatched a security force to seal off your house. We just need you to
contact your security force so we can approach without engaging in a fire
fight. We will bring your wife and family here."

Bill handed him his cell phone.

That night 300 people were picked up and the 8 principals behind both
attacks were arrested. The 8 principles were prosecuted and convicted under
the Brazilian anti-terrorism statutes and their wealth amounting to 40
billion dollars between them was confiscated and they were executed. Most
of the other 300 people went to one of the Jungle camps.

Except for events like those we seem to live an idyllic life and I always
wonder how long it will last before tragedy actually strikes. I am sure
life will get a lot more interesting when all of the kids we have become
teenagers at the same time. I am really surprised that the 9 of us continue
to live together so amicably. I thought sure that we would long since have
broken up into individual family units in separate households.

We decided early on that we would be involved in out kid's lives as they
grew up, so our primary estate by default became a kid's zone. We didn't
have to go to work or to make more money so we stayed home
essentially. People who wanted to deal with us had to come to us. We had
lots of domestic help and couldn't have done it without them but we were
always there for the kids. We were involved in their schooling, taught them
games, played with them and watched them when they played. Although in was
a domestic nightmare for the staff most of the time we all ate at least one
meal together every day.

We eventually had to get triple size king size beds because we would always
wake up with kids in bed with us. Sometimes there would be we three and our
six kids in the bed in the morning, sometimes it would be us and up to 14
other kids in bed when we woke up. The number always got larger on the
nights when we watched scary movies. Those nights were usually sleep-over
nights and there would be larger numbers of kids in the house. We would go
to bed and then there would be a steady stream of kids coming down the hall
and climbing into bed with us. We were usually asleep and might not even
know they were there until the next morning.

I remember waking up in the night one time. I was on the edge of the bed
with my arm hanging off and was going to turn over but my arm wouldn't
move. Sam Jr. was sitting on my hand and was wrapped around my arm. I
carefully lifted him up, turned over, lay him on the bed without waking him
and went back to sleep. When I woke up he was nestled under my arm.

When the kids were very young we would wake up and find them on the floor
around the bed because they couldn't climb up on the bed. We installed a
ladder device they could use to climb up on the bed. They just found a
spot, nestled in next to one of us and went to sleep.

It was not all peaches and cream though somebody had to be the bad guy. We
took turns when somebody had to be spanked, that way no one person was
always the villain. There were 11 parents including Henry and Miguel and
all of the kids knew they had to obey all of us, but it was the actual
parents of a particular child who had to responsibility to spank or
otherwise punish. I don't know who it hurt more, the child being punished
or the parent punishing. But we always knew everything was alright when we
woke up one morning and the punished child was snuggled up next to the
parent who had punished.

It wasn't just Bill, Greg and I who had a bed full of kids every morning. I
think it started with us but it spread to Bobby and Barry, so pretty soon
they were out buying larger beds.

This pretty well killed everybody's sex life so we bought another estate so
we had a place to have sex. We had to give parties and dinners so since we
had to have a separate kid free zone in which to entertain we bought
another estate for that. But after sex or entertaining we always went back
to our beds so the kids could find us. I don't know what we would tell them
when they were old enough to understand sex.

Our nid d'amour or love nest had rooms for anything one would want to
do. The Gladstone bag of sex toys we had received on our wedding day had
grown to a whole room full of whatever kind of instrument one wanted.

Sometime we all disappeared from home and had a group orgy. At other times
one set of parents would disappear for a few hours, a day or even a couple
of days. A couple, trio or quartet of parents might disappear for a
while. Among the 9 of us jealousy appeared to have disappeared. There was
variety enough among us for almost any of us to find someone to scratch an
itch when the need arose. Birthdays and anniversaries were both
opportunities to have an orgy or to have quiet threesome sex or both on the
same day.

It wasn't that we tried to hide our sexuality from the kids. We were always
kissing each other, holding or stroking each other, or watching television
with our head lying in our lovers lap. This last act didn't work to well
because as soon as a kid showed up they were in our lap also. We really
don't know what will happen when the kids find out their parents are
gay. We don't hide it but they aren't old enough yet to understand social
norms. Since they are home schooled they don't get exposed to a lot of
homophobic bias so who knows.

When General Alvarez was almost assassinated he and his family lived with
us for 9 months until all of the conspirators had been dealt with. They are
Catholic with its homophobic bias, but they treated our relationships as if
they were the most normal thing in the world. Their children were old
enough to know it was a gay household and it didn't seem to bother
them. They lived with us long enough to almost become family and were being
called aunt and uncle and their children were considered cousins by all of
our children. It was heart breaking for the children when the Alvarez's
moved back to their own house.

Speaking of birthdays, we had to hire a special event coordinator, whose
function was to keep track of everybody's birthdays and anniversaries, a
couple of buyers to buy presents, a special event planner to plan the
parties and a pastry cook who did nothing but make special event cakes and
Gene had one of his programmers design special software to keep track of it
all. The fact that we automated the system apparently didn't upset
anybody. We have hundreds of employees at the estate and our various
offices and everybody's special days get remembered.

I admit it started with just trying to remember all of the family's
birthdays and anniversaries and it grew from there. You don't really know
what being a heel feels like until you have forgotten one of your
children's birthdays or bought the wrong gift even if you didn't know the
right gift even existed because you had never heard of it and a disgruntled
aide or family member whose birthday you may have forgotten can lead to all
sorts of problems. It really doesn't matter to them that you have a whole
lot more important thing to remember than their birthdays.

Kids particularly expect you to remember not only their birthdays but all
of their friends birthdays also, no matter than today's friend may be
tomorrow's enemy and that tomorrow's best friend may be somebody you never
heard of before. Being able to keep track of all of those dates is one of
those times where having money definitely helps.

But all in all my life seems incredibly blessed even with all of the
security requirements around me and I am only 30 years old. I wouldn't
trade my live with anybody.

Finis