Microstory 2258: Loyal and Protective

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So the reporters are gone, but that doesn’t mean people have stopped coming to our house. We’re still getting harassers, but not because they want to know our story. What they want is money. Kelly, despite being so young, has known a lot of people throughout her life. She took a wide array of classes in high school, and participated in a ton of extracurricular activities. She’s easy to get along with, and is well-liked by her peers. But she only had a small group of real friends. They know who they are, and they’ve supported her during this crazy ordeal. Others just want a payday, and they’re contriving deeper relationships with her in their respective headcanons in order to leverage them for personal gain. I’m rich now, and so are Dutch and Kelly. Many of the latter’s former contacts have been showing up, suddenly showing interest in her life, and they could not be more transparent. Their motives are obvious, to me, to Kelly, and most importantly, to our security team. These people aren’t camping out on the lawn, fortunately, but they do keep ringing that bell. They wouldn’t be able to do that, of course, without the reporters having doxxed us, but I don’t want to get into another rant about that. I just need to clear the air. The money that we now have is not for fun. It’s not so we can buy a private jet, and a megayacht. It’s not so we can start adding caviar to every meal. We have a job to do, and this capital allows us to do it. Our house is as big as it is because there are three of us, we’re not romantically linked, and we need room for live-in security, as well as some home office space. We see it as an investment in our well-being and responsibilities, not as a status symbol. We’re giving money away to charities, and social programs, not to just random individuals, no matter how big of a crush they purportedly had on one of us in ninth grade history class. I hope that all makes sense, because I’m loyal and protective, and if you start making one of my people feel uncomfortable and unsafe, then you’ll find yourself feeling the same things. Understood? Okay, then I don’t think we need to talk about it again.

Microstory 2257: And He Paid It

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The money is in. Our bank account is so full, money is spilling out of it. I mean that in the most literal sense while still not talking about physical cash. Knowing that the funds would be in there by the end of the day, I set an autopayment for a number of various charities, so the full amount was only available for a few minutes before a chunk of it was gone. I’m laughing now, reading all of the replies and comments from readers who were under the impression that I was getting scammed. Oh, so many of you thought that it was never gonna happen; that I was just setting myself up for failure. We kept mentioning all the things we had to do at the bank, and whatever. You were convinced that it was going to come back to bite us in the ass. I suppose I can see where you could have guessed that. In an alternate reality, that’s what would happen; us becoming the victims of a long con. The thing is, though, even though I’m not telling you who commissioned me to give up my specimens, he’s not just some random guy who claimed to have a bunch of money. He’s fully on the books, and can’t run from me. The FBI, and other agencies, were fully aware that this was all happening, and they could have easily gone after him if he hadn’t been on the up and up. I know that a lot of scams work by telling you that they’ll give you a whole lot of money if you just give them a tiny bit up front, and the idea is that they’ll accept the tiny bit, and just run away with it, because to them, it was better than zero. But this guy didn’t ask me for a cent, and like I said, he’s a public figure with a life to lead. Taking my index and bone marrow probably won’t do much for him, especially since as I’ve been trying to tell everyone, they’re not the key to immortality. Risking going to prison by stealing them? That would have been even more absurd. He set the price, and he paid it. He paid it today, and now that business is done. I’m keeping enough of it for the three of us to live comfortably in this house, and to pay my security detail and publicist. Everything else should be spent on things that help the community, and maybe the world.

Microstory 1865: True Security

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This is the dumbest story from my life. Maybe that’s not the right word for it. Silly, I suppose. It’s certainly not the kind of thing a person should be thinking about as they’re on the brink of death. A normal person wouldn’t, anyway. I was known in my day as someone with an excellent memory. I didn’t have any supernatural ability, or even a diagnosable condition, like hyperthymesia or an eidetic memory, but I was good. In particular, I never forgot a name, and I never forgot a face. So it was a little jarring when a random woman came up to me in the bread aisle of the grocery store, acting like we were old pals. As she started talking, I was thinking that maybe she was mistaking me for someone else. I hear that sort of thing happens to other people. But while the things she was talking about didn’t make any sense, she used enough keywords for me to think that maybe we did know each other somehow, and I started questioning my confidence in my amazing mental faculties. Maybe I forgot people and things all the time, but they never came up again, so I never had the chance to even realize it. Perhaps this woman was tapping into a weakness that I was too blind to see I had at all. Was she a witch? A god? Was she still talking? I couldn’t understand most of what she was saying, her lips were moving so fast. She didn’t have an accent from my perspective, and she wasn’t mumbling, it was just too fast. I wished I had a little remote that would let me slow her down. But the more I thought about it, the more I thought I would probably just mute her, or turn her off. I didn’t need to talk to this person, except maybe I did, because she knew me, and I needed to know how! Yes, I had a cat when I was a child. No, his name wasn’t Mittens, it was Buttons. My first car? I made one up, because I don’t drive.

I keep trying to listen to her, but then I really did get bored of the “conversation” and wished that I could simply walk away. If I were anywhere else, I might have been able to, but I had this cart full of food. She would probably follow me, and skip the milk this week just so she wouldn’t have to end our little one-sided chat. Of course, I could have left my cart, and proceeded right to the exit, but that would have looked so weird, and again, what if she really did know me, and she tracked me down, and tried to spark a friendship? What was that about my mother’s maiden name? I still couldn’t—oh my God, she’s a scam artist. This woman was trying to get my bank information to steal my identity. Keep in mind that this was in the early days of the internet, so people were still mining for information in the real world. It was still bizarre. Joke’s on her, because of my great memory, all of my security answers were fake. I don’t find it any more difficult to recall a food that isn’t my favorite than one that is. It’s tomatoes, by the way, but I told her pizza, because that’s a normal answer. Then I just keep leading her on with her stupid little questions. I met my spouse in a city I had never been too, and also, I’m not married. The name of my first celebrity crush is an actor that I hate. My astrological sign? Really? I’ve never even seen that question before, and I would never use it, because it’s too easy to find out. I don’t even bother lying to her about that one. She went through so many questions, finding clever ways to sprinkle them in, I was almost impressed. Once she was satisfied, she claimed she had to get going, and we parted ways. It wasn’t until I tried to pay that I discovered my wallet missing. I realized that she wasn’t only probing for security answers. She was also distracting me from a pickpocket.

Microstory 1819: Biggest Mistake

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I could have had it all. A few years back, this random guy showed up at my door, and claimed to have the ability to heal any injury. He had heard that I was terminally ill, and also that I was rich. He knew that he could take care of cuts and bruises, but he wanted to see if it would work on something chronic. Obviously, I was skeptical. This dude just wanted some quick cash, and he was willing to play on my desperation. He gave me a demonstration by cutting his friend’s arm with a knife, and clearing it right up in a matter of minutes. I assumed that this was just some kind of special effect that I didn’t understand. It was close up magic. An illusion. It was nothing. And he wasn’t getting my money. I remember him saying I should give him a thousand dollars in case it worked, and then another 999,900 if it did end up working. He could apparently make quick work of a cut, but something like my issue might take longer to repair. Even if it turned out to be immediate, I would still have to verify it with my doctor. The down payment was for his troubles, and the rest of the money for the miracle. This guy wanted a million bucks, but he wasn’t getting a dime from me. No sirree, it was a trick, and a scam, and I wasn’t falling for it. I tossed him a nickel to show how much he was worth to me, and sent him on his way. A couple of months later, I’m watching the news, and I see one of my biggest rivals who also just so happened to be old and sick. He claimed to have been healed, and he presented the check to the healer on live television. Things started happening quickly after that. They set up a foundation together that was designed to heal as many as possible. Rich people pay, middle class people pay nothing, and the poor actually get paid. Can you believe that? It’s a nested charity; what an insane business model. Anyway, I’m the jackass for turning him down, because my rival is still alive, and more popular than any one-percenter I’ve ever heard of. I wish I had said yes. Not only would I not be dying today, but I would’ve been the first paying patient of his. I would have become famous for something good. Instead, I’ll go down in history as the biggest idiot ever. At least I don’t have to live with it. Here I go, into the great unknown!