deathcloset's Journal: Chapter 12 proper

"dude, I could have made a way better mars rover than the JPL labs". Bill Gates said between bites of his hotdog.

"HA! RIGHT!" I spewed relish and mustard over the exposed circuts of the space-nazi battlecruiser's communication backbone.

"DUDE!" my brother threw a 1/3rd empty can of mountain dew at my head. "DON't DO THAT!"

Bill and I stopped out little argument and I felt a little bit ashamed. "I'm sorry dude, I know you are counting on me not to get us killed. I'll try harder, really I will."

"good," my brother said kurtly, "I've almost got a backdoor installed on this bad boy".

My brother scraped away a few miniscule cubes of vegetable and rubbed the yellow condiment off of the lcd readout.

Bill and I silently watched and waited....

"I totally could have..." Bill piped up.

"Dude, NO you COULDN't have!" I turned my head toward him in frustration.

Bill muttered under his breath, "could'ave" and took a last bite of his hot dog.

My brother now turned his head in frustration, "you guys stop arguing and get serious!"

We were again quieted. My brother spoke, "have those burritos cooled down yet?"

"Oh, yeah the burritos" I had completely forgotten about the microwave burritos. I reached in my pack and extracted 3 microwave burritos wrapped in paper towels. "Cool, their cool. here ya go".

"Hey Bill, you want to put the final touches on this?"

Bill smiled, "oh you bet!" Bill gates took the small handheld from my brother and gripped the stylus. He signed, "bill gates" in his trademark average font.

Some red lights on the glowing circutry turned green, and some green lights turned red, then some purple lights appeared... then some mustard caught on fire, but it went out really fast, and didn't smell that bad.

"With my rover I would have had it flying and taking MOVIES in 3d, yeah! that's what I would have done. That's WAY better than what JPL has done." Bill stood up in the cramped access tunnel. "And it would have been easier to use too." he dusted himself off.

"well?" my brother questioned. "why didn't you then?! the rovers were only like 300 mil apiece! you have billions!" he threw up his arms to emphasize the point.

Bill turned his eyes away, "my idea was too expensive...."

"What!?" I asked. "HUH?" my brother further implored.

"look guys, I have a crapload of money right?" Bill stared at us.

"right." in unison.

"but I just can't bring myself to spend more than exactly 1/10,000th of my net worth on any one thing."

"......." my brother and I looked at each other. "WHAT?"

"well, in my younger days our class was asked to make a list of what we most wanted. I started on my list and a few weeks later I had exactly 10,000 items on the list. So I decided that I would never want something that cost more tha 1/10000th of my net worth."

"you knew what net worth was in elementary school?" I asked.

"pre-school" Bill corrected.

"you made a list of 10,000 things! in pre-school!?" my brother boggled.

"Well, 10,000 things I wanted...it's not really that hard...in fact.." BIll was having an obviously disturbing thought, "maybe I want more..." A troubled look was growing on Bills face as he began counting on his fingers.

a loud noise erupted, it was an alarm.

"intruder detection on zone b 1020304, service access. autonomous security active".

Bills troubled look changed to curiousity and then back to troubled and then to terrified.

Thousands of robotic poof-balls appeared and enveloped us. Within 10 seconds they dissapeared but we were now in some kind of spacecraft hanger. Alone.

It was quiet. My brother asked.

"What was the first item on your list Bill?"

"Oh, a hotdog".

Then a door flew open and a beautiful gigantic blonde woman stood in the opening.

"SUSAN!?" Bill gates look of terror could never be matched...it was a terrifying chapter to be sure.