King Kong wished to stop.
He already made his wealth from stealing. Now he wished he could retire in style amidst tall coconut trees and white sandy beaches of Bali.
He had always liked Bali. The hot sunny weather was the complete opposite of the gloomy fog infested London where he grew up. He lived with a foster family who took interest in his aptitude for technology. They provided him with extra classes and undergraduate tutors. They never complained about him blowing up the basement when his attempt at building a supercomputer met an early demise. They loved him as their own child and he grew up not thinking about his true parents too much. He could hardly recall how they looked like. The one thing he remembered of his mother was her long brown hair and green eyes. His father wore thick black glasses and had grey hair. The last memory he had of them was his parents waving him off. He was in a blue car with a lady in a suit. He remembered crying and the lady comforting him. He was five years old.
Bali brought back good memories of him being young and without care of life’s misfortunes. He was there on a semester break, in his early 20’s with youth oozing out of his tanned skin. He found his call in life when he met Raoul, an art dealer looking for a partner in business.
“What sort of venture are we talking about? I’m not into arts. My vocation is computers. There’s big money in computers. Someday we would all be slaves to computers. Mark my words,” said Kong.
“That is where you come in my friend. You look like a man in search of adventure. What I’m offering you is a chance to see the world, meet beautiful women in exotic locales and on the side make an unbelievable amount of money you could do whatever you want to do in life,” said Raoul.
Kong took the job without ever looking back. Folly is the youth who thought money brings about happiness. You cannot buy happiness. Happiness is in the doing. You make yourself happy doing things you love. In Kong’s case he believed he was doing something he loved. Breaking into heavy security systems of top museums seemed fun and challenging in the beginning but as he got older, the technology grew along with him. It stopped becoming a passion when the one thing he used to enjoy doing felt like work.
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Tokyo hid her flaws underneath bright neon lights and the glittering glamour of cosmopolitan living. The criminal underworld bosses took tea in posh six stars hotels. They children were sent to expensive international schools and took foreign languages, groomed into becoming global citizens. Money traveled first class all over the world nowadays. The best method of cleaning dirty money is no longer buying expensive arts and gems. It was in making smart investments and reaping the rewards after 7 long years of waiting.
Everyone was there to witness the occasion. ULAM was returning home to its rightful owners. Everyone paid their dues either in monetary values, blood, sweat or tears. It took them this long to get here but the wait was worth it.
This King Kong, they were told that he was one of the best. They have been watching his development since early childhood. Recognizing his potentials, they placed him under the care of the best minds they could buy with their combined wealth. It was all done in the name of ULAM. And tonight everything would be theirs again.