Christopher Golde
Chapter thirteen
The Tycoon
"He also compelled all, the small and the great, the rich and the poor, the freemen and the slaves to have a mark put on their right hands or on their foreheads, so that no-one might be able to buy or sell unless he bore the mark of the beasts name or the number corresponding to his name"
John: Revelation 13. 16
Date: 25th December 1999
Location: Massachusetts, USA
Bill Gatwick stood hands in pockets, gazing out of his enormous living room window into a starlit northern night sky. It was the last Christmas of the millennia and he was a happy man. His excitement had nothing to do with the festive season, it was about money and power; it was always about money and power. Even as one of the world’s richest men, Gatwick would never be satisfied. In just six more days, he would control the most powerful corporation the world had ever known, or for that matter, may ever know, if he got his way.
Sally Ann Gatwick sprawled out on a sofa some twenty yards away. She stared blankly at a huge television screen that completely covered the furthest wall of the mansions largest room. Her bleach blonde hair fell upon hunched but perfectly rounded bare shoulders. She never bothered to dress when they were home alone at night; she enjoyed too much watching herself in the numerous mirrored surfaces of the enormous house.
As she walked about, she would twist and turn her naked torso, moving her legs and arms in erotic maneuvers over her voluptuous breasts. It was her game. She imagined that hidden cameras snapped voyeuristically from behind the mirrored surfaces that held her image. For some reason, she found it satisfied her sexual needs.
She had always been a very sexual person, even as a young girl growing up as one of five girls in a very conservative Texan family, in an even more conservative country town. She also knew that was one of the main reasons her billionaire husband had been attracted to her.
The only problem was that nowadays he was just too pre-occupied with his global domination. That’s how her game had started. It would often bring her to climax and that she needed to do at least four times a day.
If her husband was at home, which these days were rare events, he took little notice of her exhibitionist antics. Occasionally though, he needed her sexuality to give him a break from the intense thought processes that consumed most of his life, and this she didn’t mind at all. That was one less orgasm she would have to give herself.
"Billy, what are you doin," she said, not even bothering to look in his direction?
She would often talk to him purely for the sake of saying something, anything to break the boredom. She continued to stare at the television screen, her right hand, in a reflex action, stroking the curve of her right buttock.
“What?”
Gatwick's attention snapped from his deep thoughts back to the surface.
"What are you doin over there, come and give me a rub?"
His first reaction was to ignore her, and then on second thought, maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea. At least he could talk to her at the same time and release some of his pent-up excitement.
‘Who knows she might even understand some of it,’ he thought.
"Ok, I'll get some oil."
"Here baby, I already have some, pull up the footrest."
Gatwick sat down on the rest, his naked wife before him. She pulled her long blonde hair over her shoulder, wrapping it around her neck, leaving her bare back free to be indulged.
Her lips crested into a smile, as she rested the left side of her face to the soft cushions of the sofa. He picked up the bottle of scented oil from the table, squeezing some of the aromatic drops to the palm of his left hand.
She breathed in suddenly at his touch, then exhaled long and relaxed, as his hands gently massaged the droplets of oil over her perfectly smooth, pure milk white skin. His hands followed the curve of her spine, from the crack of her rounded buttocks to the nape of her exquisite neck. He slid his perfectly manicured fingers over her shoulders, and gently squeezed her relaxed muscles into small folded ripples.
"Merry Christmas darling," he whispered, more for his own benefit than hers, "and what a Christmas it will be," he said, still consumed by his own megalomaniacal thoughts.
She didn’t answer, only smiled, as her senses melted beneath the rhythmic movements of his fingers on her firm young body.
"In six days it will be the last day of this millennia my darling and the world will start a new page in its history."
He smirked to himself at the innuendo of the word page. It was his all-important electronic pages that had evolved the modern world into what it was today. The electronic pages of the 'World Wide Web' had changed mankind forever and Gatwick saw himself as a fisherman, casting his giant net to catch all who dared enter.
He secretly compared himself to the most masterful fisherman of all time, now worshipped by millions as the son of a God. The man, who two thousand years ago, had instructed his disciples, to cast their nets out over the waters of humanity and gather in the thoughts of their fellow men, so he could teach them the wisdom of peace and equality. Now, in Gatwick's mind, a new world was coming; a world where he was a God, where he could mold humanity to suit his own beliefs.
"At the last second of this year, the world will be poised at the precipice of eternal change and its master will be technology," he continued, more like he was talking to his boardroom than his wife. She lay half asleep on the couch in front him, too absorbed in her own sexual thoughts to be taking much notice of what he was saying.
Sally Ann, without opening her eyes only murmured softly.
"That's good darling; will that be good for your company?"
Gatwick expected a relatively lame response but welcomed the opportunity to continue.
"Our company controls ninety percent of the world’s software development now and our 'Millennium Software' will make sure it stays that way. The very second those clocks tick over into the year 2000, their choices will be gone. Either they use our software, or it will cost them billions! "
Gatwick’s corporation, Macram, had developed software some twenty years ago, that was now used by a majority of the world’s computers. It had made Gatwick a billionaire, and one of the richest men on Earth, but now, that was not enough for the technology guru. He had a vision of how the world should be, and he would not rest until his dream became a reality.
There was just one thing stopping him at the moment; the fact that he only controlled one part of the technological pie. True, his software seemed to be the most important piece, but he was a realist and knew that one did not work without the other. He wanted it all; he needed it all if his dreams were to become a reality.
He knew that it was only a matter of time before the hardware and software difference blurred. One day, hardware would have its own intellect, with less need for his software and its add-ons. He needed to control the hardware-software combination. Others had tried and failed, but he was determined to succeed.
With the approaching new millennium, he had used the fear of the unknown as a weapon. It had presented him with the perfect opportunity to enforce upon the world’s big corporations and governments, software that they would need to protect their established, but outdated, systems. Software that one day would become an integral and indispensable part of their hardware, without them even realizing it.
Now, all he needed was the hardware that would make the difference between the two indistinguishable. He would mass-produce his new software-hardware combination and almost give it away, just to make sure no one else could compete. All going well, he would create an almost total dependency on his software, which would never again be contested.
With a satisfied smirk on his face, Gatwick stared at his wife’s naked and inviting body before him on the sofa. He needed more, he needed to dominate and at this moment he wanted to dominate her.
“How’s that darling?” he asked softly.
“Beautiful,” she groaned from beneath the hair that covered her face.
“Why don’t you roll over now and I can do your front?”
After more oil and a little more caressing, Gatwick removed his clothes and continued by using his own body to massage her. They made love, forcefully and passionately. Gatwick seized on the pinnacle of his climax to fulfill his own powerful urge to dominate and screamed the word, “Yes!” triumphantly.
With her fantasies fulfilled, she collapsed beneath him gasping with exhaustion. Gatwick rolled off his naked wife and sat on the edge of the sofa. He looked again towards the night sky and his thoughts returned to the prospect of global domination.
Somewhere in the complex wiring of the rooms remote control system a microscopic bugging device automatically switched itself off triggered by the prolonged silence and then proceeded automatically to transmit.