Up

My mom's dad dreamed of a better life. Born in Hell's Kitchen, he permanently damaged his heart swimming in the polluted rivers as a child. They sent him on a charity cruise for dying children to give him one nice experience before he kicked it, but he's the one child that lived.

My mother dreamed of a better life. She hates mint ice cream. Once her family ran out of money, and used the last five dollars to buy a gallon of it for dinner. She's never told me what happened after that. She chose a career at my age to support her dying father and lives a reasonable middle-class life now.

I lived a sheltered and comfortable life. My father was out of work intermittently, but I didn't know. My parents, two siblings, and I would split one can of spam and a pot of rice for dinner, but for a kid my age that combination of grease, overprocessed meat, and carbohydrates was one of the coolest meals around. It wasn't until my mother announced one day that dad had a job and we wouldn't be having spam anymore that I figured anything out. I went to college, graduated into a respectable cube farm career that paid more than my parents made combined some years, and settled down to wonder if there was anything better.

Enron always wears polo shirts, says it's just what happens to you when you go to prep school. I give him no end of shit about it. He too was the poor kid in his highschool, but mostly because his family didn't have a jet.

***

"You're almost at the end!" I hugged him.

Jace didn't look up from screen and his keyboard, "The end?"

"You're level 54 now, you'll be level 60 soon. That's the highest level."

"See, that's the difference. Some people think they're hot shit when the reach 30, or 50, or 60, but for each person who considers something a goal, there's a better player who shrugs it off as a simple prerequisite. Those girls you coach dream of getting into college. You consider it a simple rite of passage on your way to the next thing, and always assumed you'd go."

"It's... still an achievement?"

Click click click went the mouse. He sighed and rolled his eyes, "The game starts at 60."

***

I sat on the deck of the Torii with Enron.

"I'm thinking of running for the board."

"Why?"

"I dunno, seems like a thing to do. I'm not sure what to do with myself anymore. I achieved most of my major goals. There is obviously more out there than a cube farm and toys, but I haven't any idea what it is, let alone how to get it."

"There's lots more,"

"Your life isn't interesting to me. There has to be another path 'up' other than the useless socialites."

He shrugged.

***

Six months later we, the four cofounders, are standing in a mall on a Monday afternoon staring.

"Neutral colors, all the products are very brightly colored, so the backgrounds are all very neutral to let them pop."

"Floors have busy patterns."

"Mmm, casinos are like that too."

"Let's go in the bookstore. Pretty dense product display there..."

***

"This has the potential to make us all life-changingly rich"

"I was looking for life-changing-lulz, but I also accept cash."

"That puts each of us past the only phase change in real wealth: buying your freedom. Below that is all gradations of slavery, and above that is all gradations of rich."

***

In a white suit coat he looked strangely out of place in the party. When he took us outside to talk to him, suddenly I begrudged Bluebeery and Enron a lot less for constantly wearing those damn polo shirts. Now I was the one who looked out of place, and they both needed me to make a good impression on the Angel.

"You guys are working on something pretty exciting," he said.

***

We're in a pool at a, for lack of a better term, corporate mansion. The pool is full of eager biologists playing water volleyball, and the garage is filled probably over a million dollars in lab equipment.

Enron taps me on the shoulder and laughs, "This, this is 'up.'"