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I knew who I had become – an internet mogul, a tech giant, a powerful son of a bitch.
But what was my history? My biological history? Where did I come from?
It shouldn’t have mattered. After all, I had everything. Literally, I could p
ossess any physical object short of the moon. But somehow, there was a gaping hole inside, filled with questions.
So I did what any billionaire did. I hired a private investigator to answer them. Even though he was the best PI in the Bay Area, I doubted he’d come up with anything. My birth records were sealed.
Stupid bureaucracy. But money could fix it all.
In my office, I held a large manila envelope that was labeled, “Theo Wainwright - Birth Parents.” I tossed the envelope onto my desk and just stared at it in disbelief. Everything I’d always wondered about was right there in that envelope.
So close.
And yet my heart hammered hard.
In the orphanage, I’d wondered who my real parents were, but I was an adult now. Not just fully grown, but a tech mogul and a billionaire. Shouldn’t this identity crisis have been over by now? Did it even matter anymore?
Deep down inside, I knew what I was afraid of: learning why my parents had given me up. Whatever their reasons, they’d rejected me as a baby. Forty-five years ago, they’d looked down at me and decided to give me up. I didn’t even know who my parents were, but that fact hurt me. It still hurt me all these years.
Spinning around in my chair, I looked out the window and stared at the sky. It was still early. The sun had just begun to show herself. Turning back around to face the envelope, I tucked it into a desk drawer. I wasn’t ready to face the truth. Would I ever be?
Shuffling papers around on my desk, I stood up, looking for my phone. Yesterday, I’d received an email from some asshole named Anonimo. This hacker wannabe urged me to change Pictogram’s user privacy policies or else I’d pay.
Mr. Wainwright,
Pictogram’s privacy policies violate the trust and loyalty of its users.
Do you know what it feels like to be violated?
Change your company’s policies or else you will pay.
-Anonimo
I’d laughed out loud reading the email. Pay what? I was a billionaire. Untouchable. Powerful. Brilliant. From my phone, I quickly wrote an email back: Try and get me to pay, asshole.
Anonimo,
Go fuck yourself.
Theodore Wainwright
Founder and CEO of Pictogram
Sent from my iPhone
Perfect. That’d light a fire under their ass.
As a kid with nothing better to do with my time, I would hack into various organizations and play pranks for fun. Like the time, I’d broken into The Oakland Gazette’s website and scrambled all the news stories so images and stories didn’t match. I did stupid things like that out of boredom and mainly to see if I could do it.
Whoever Anonimo was clearly didn’t know who he was dealing with. In my mind, I imagined some bored pimply face kid sending me emails just to fuck with me.
From what I gathered about my users and I liked to think I knew my users well, they posted on Pictogram with the hope of rising to stardom. People were dying to become the next Picto-famous star. A few of my users had spun their Picto-fame into reality shows, movie roles, and ad campaigns for internationally recognized brands. Whoever this kid was probably had a sad Pictogram account with five followers.
I almost felt sorry for him, but the kid needed to learn not to fuck with the big boys. I was Theodore Wainwright who built an empire with my own two hands and a laptop. If anything, my terse and direct email response was helping this kid out. He needed to direct his hacking skills to something more useful.
To get my mind off that ridiculous boob, I’d scrolled through Pictogram right before falling asleep. One of Pictogram’s trending photos of a remarkably beautiful girl stood out to me. Her striking face was the last thing in my mind before falling asleep. I had to see it again to make sure it hadn’t been a dream.
