by Stanley Bing
“I know that, Artie.”
“Call Bob. Get me into somebody new. With a big dick. That’s all I’m asking.”
Sallie smiled in spite of herself. “Just give me some time, Artie. Things are different. We need to think. Both of us. And maybe someday, after we’ve talked, and thought, and I’ve explained this new situation to you, and you’ve seen the beauty of it, maybe I’ll be ready and you will be, too.”
“Baby,” said Arthur, “I’m always ready.”
Afterword
Today Livia and Gene run the Corporation as well as they can given the size and complexity of the operation. Every now and then they are required to consult the board of directors, of course. But it’s hard for the old geezers to enforce their wishes from the confines of the mainframe in his lab where Bob has them housed for the foreseeable future. On the bright side, most people still think that Gene may actually be Arthur, which gives him unquestioned authority when he needs it. And while the two of them try to do things differently, more enlightened, more humane, it’s still not some kind of social service organization. It’s a corporation, and corporations are machines, and machines are not human.
Bob and Bronwyn live together on the top floor of Building Eight. She remembers nothing of what transpired after her last upload, but she still likes him a lot anyway. Together they’re still working on Amy, the smartest being who ever existed on the planet but who, while sporting the breathtakingly beautiful physical instrument she requested, has the emotional maturity of a rebellious fifteen-year-old. She graduates from UCLA next year and, against their wishes, has been dating her physics professor.
Lucy reigns in splendor as she was always meant to be—an artificial lizard with the intelligence of a very evolved cocker spaniel. She remembers nothing of the time she was inhabited by the most powerful mogul on the planet. She simply loves those she was programmed to love, and they love her back. At Christmastime, she accompanies Liv and Gene to the small portion of Hawaii that does not belong to Larry Ellison and they chill, beyond the reach of developing digital tech. Naturally, every now and then they do drop by and say hi to Larry. He doesn’t get around as well as he used to, but he’s still quite spry for a guy who just celebrated his 125th birthday.
And Arthur? Arthur is still a bonsai. Sallie sets aside the time to keep him trimmed nicely, and they mostly get along quite well, although it would be wrong to assume that he’s not getting impatient with her. Given her obvious unwillingness to transfer him to a more congenial host, he is now back in touch with Mortimer and making plans of his own. He believes he has all the time in the world, and he’s probably right.
About the Author
Stanley Bing is a bestselling fiction and nonfiction writer, and a longtime columnist for Esquire, Fortune, and many other national publications. He is the author of a dozen or so business books in which solid strategy often masquerades as humor, including Crazy Bosses, Sun Tzu Was a Sissy, What Would Machiavelli Do?, and his comprehensive replacement for an MBA, The Curriculum. His two previous novels are Lloyd: What Happened and You Look Nice Today. In his real life, he is a senior executive at a multinational conglomerate whose identity is one of the worst-kept secrets in business.
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BOOKS BY STANLEY BING
NONFICTION
Biz Words: Power Talk for Fun and Profit
Crazy Bosses
What Would Machiavelli Do?
Throwing the Elephant: Zen and the Art of Managing Up
The Big Bing: Black Holes of Time Management, Gaseous Executive Bodies, Exploding Careers, and Other Theories on the Origins of the Business Universe
Sun Tzu Was a Sissy
Rome, Inc. The Rise and Fall of the First Multinational Corporation
100 Bullshit Jobs . . . And How to Get Them
Executricks, or How to Retire While You’re Still Working
Bingsop’s Fables: Little Morals for Big Business
The Curriculum: Everything You Need to Know to Be a Master of Business Arts
NOVELS
Lloyd: What Happened
You Look Nice Today
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Copyright © 2017 by Stanley Bing
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First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition December 2017
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Interior design by Paul Dippolito
Jacket design by Will Staehle
Jacket image by Photocreo Michal Bednarek /Shutterstock
Author photograph © Cliff Lipson
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
ISBN 978-1-5011-1983-5
ISBN 978-1-5011-1985-9 (ebook)
