(Introducing our new map-maker, Wilcoxchar!
)
Los Angeles, 2014
Walter Wilcox held all of his belongings in a single, cardboard box...and he couldn't breathe.
Dropping his box back on the desk, Walter slowly lowered his 400-pound frame into a wooden chair, which creaked in protest (only because it lacked the vocal chords to scream.)
He just needed a moment to catch his breath. Well...a moment to catch his breath, and something to eat. His blood sugar was probably low. Yeah, that was it. Low blood sugar.
Walter dumped his cardboard box out, spilling contents across the desk, until he found what he was looking for.
A box of powdered donuts, purchased back when Walter thought he still had a job to eat them at.
As he engulfed the first donut, Walter looked around the room at the other men and women just like him. Well...a little thinner, of course, but each carrying a cardboard box nearly identical to his own.
They'd had a good ride...but the dream was over.
They had comforted him for these past few weeks, assuring him that they'd been through this before, following The Incident. They had been so sure that The Incident was the end...but then The Kid turned things around. They knew The Kid was brilliant, of course, but didn't realize that that brilliance spilled over into more than one field.
One of The Kid's first brilliant moves following the Incident, was to hire
him.
Walter was hired to save them. To
literally save them, in one particular case, but they had all believed that between The Kid's overall brilliance, and Walter's expertise in this one particular field, they would be an unstoppable force.
Walter failed.
Oh, they'd all be fine, of course. Every person in this room would have a better-paying job before the end of the week, and Walter was certainly no exception. He did worry about The Kid, of course, who had dropped out of school and poured every dime of his own personal fortune into this, long before Walter had even heard of it...but even The Kid would eventually bounce back. Bouncing back is what brilliant people do best.
But while they'd all be fine...they'd never be the same.
To have had a role in this...to have had the opportunity to truly change the world...how could they step back? How could they take their jobs at Microsoft and Apple and all those other high-tech jobs, knowing that while they'd have riches beyond their wildest imaginations...they'd never again have the opportunity to...
...to
matter.
Walter had been hired to save them. To help them achieve their destiny.
And Walter had failed.
Walter wiped away a tear, inadvertently rubbing the donut across his face and covering his beard in powdered sugar. With a heart even heavier than normal, Walter slowly repacked his belongings, stood up, and started toward the door, never to return.
Until he heard a soft beeping sound.
Walter waddled towards The Receiver, annoyed. The damned thing had never worked...the first of Walter's many failures...and now, in this last moment, it felt the need to mock him as he walked out the door?
Enraged...and re-energized by the powdered donuts...Walter leaned against the wall, ready to kick The Receiver so hard that it would never beep at him again...
When he heard the engine start to power up.
What...what could this...
And then papers began to spill from it's mouth.
Walter dropped his box, the contents spilling once more across the floor, and bent down to gather the falling papers.
He examined them for nearly five seconds, before lurching through the hallway, nearly bowling over the secretary, screaming The Kid's name.
"JOHANN BRAUN-KENNEDY!!!"
