Featured image by DarkmoonArt_de from Pixabay

Gina sat at her desk, or what was called a desk in today’s trendy open floor plan kind of world. Office furniture companies called it a shell so they could charge more, but it was really a glorified table. Instead of fixed pedestals with drawers she had a pair of wheeled pedestals she could pull out from under it to get more surface area and for people to sit on while they were talking with her. Unlike the bulk of her employees she had an actual office. They had low walled islands of work areas with a great view out the floor to ceiling windows. She was not a believer in the “festival seating” which was trendy in Silicon Valley but some of her workers wanted it so half of the floor was unassigned work spaces and the rest were assigned to workers who came in most days. The unassigned spaces did not have wheeled pedestals where people could keep belongings.

In truth, for this company, the split seating worked out well. She owned a lot of companies. More than anyone working here would ever fully know about. Some of the people working for her flew in from overseas for a few weeks at a time. She also owned some condos nearby where they would stay. The regular employees had learned not to ask about the other companies. Oh, they would chat and socialize with the new faces, but other than asking where they were from and what it was like to live there, they didn’t probe with questions about what they did for the company. Her best performers were the least social, they lived for their job. She did have to speak to a few about their hygiene practices when they were going to be around others, but they did good work.

Then there was her brother. He could disappear in a lab for days, but when he came out he was an HR and PR nightmare. She had to play the heavy with him more than once. He had gotten better about it recently. Oh, he still mounted anything with a pulse, but he no longer hit on every skirt in her employ. He could never be fired. He knew too much. In truth Gina was somewhat responsible for the way he was and he was responsible for the bulk of her wealth. Not directly, but without him she could not have made it.

Bobby was the typical 23 year old multi-millionaire around Silicon Valley. He had the mansion, the parties, the far too expensive sports car and the yacht. While Gina had built a mansion up in the hills it was primarily for seclusion and investment. She drove a six year old Camry Hybrid with an odometer that seemed to keep pace with the growth of her businesses. It always amazed Gina that here of all places, Bobby’s dick had not rotted off or brought him AIDS. He had manage to contract several forms of VD which Gina knew about and probably more times than she knew, but he had not gotten AIDS or anything incurable. Yet.

It was no secret that many of Silicon Valley’s richest and brightest were working on a cure for AIDS. They had to fund it. Too many of them had sweated out a test and even more of them had lost some of their best programmers to it. The cost of employee health insurance in this town was currently hovering in geosynchronous orbit around the planet with no possibility of coming down until there was a drug to cure AIDS like a week’s worth of Penicillin could cure the STDs of the 1970s.

Gina turned her chair to look out the window at the city. Her employees preferred ocean views and Gina preferred looking at the city. “Ah, my unsuspecting minions. Every one of you makes me money and none of you know it. I’m the only person in the world who knows more about you than Google and Facebook combined.” At 26 she was quite possibly the richest person living here yet nobody knew that, not even Bobby. Oh he knew she was far richer than she let on. Believe it or not, so was he, even if he did carry an unlimited black card. Gina refused hers. Carrying something like that makes you a target. Letting any company know that much about you made you a target. Gina knew this well because everybody was her target.

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