“Well, you know, the goal is not to be the richest man in the cemetery. It’s not my goal anyway.” — Steve Jobs

Steve Dobbs sighed and stopped reading Ellen’s memorandum. He wouldn’t bother to sign it, as this would annoy her. Annoying people was his favorite hobby in old age. Besides, there was another problem: his suspension tank’s automatic heater must have developed a malfunction, for he was a bit chilly. A bit solid, too, as Bactrion™ lost plasticity at room temperature. The air in the tank was normally kept at precisely seventy-nine degrees to meet the demands of silicone-immersion treatment.

Longevity was not just expensive, but also time-consuming. The mainline into his most recent liver thrummed. IVs in either hand ticked saline fluids and precision-doses of painkiller into his body. Packet switches in satellites monitored every vital sign; telemetry appeared on the iPads and wallscreens of his medical team in adjoining rooms of the mansion. For six hours out of every day for the last thirty thousand days, Steve Dobbs had soaked in the bio-activated silicone to prevent skin lesions and maintain healthy, young, vital skin. His goop-tank, which had cost nearly five hundred million dollars to design, build, and install, was breaking. He had outlasted everyone else in Silicone Valley, even Bill Tate, by lying in this ceramic chamber every day to let the grayish Bactrion™ gel pour warmly over his body from phallic spigots that depended from the ceiling, and now the damn thing was breaking.

He cued his lip-microphone with a loud, pursing pop. He did this to annoy the new nurse. The program that made her YouPad V37® blink for attention was just a convenient way to make her jump.

She appeared a moment later when the hatch opened. Steve Dobbs had hired her personally, but not just for her looks — she was a ten, yes, but tens were easy for billionaires to find, especially in the era of forty percent unemployment. He had picked her from the hundreds of needy, unemployed applicants because her name was Melinda. At his age, being able to pester a pretty nurse was the most fun you could have with your clothes off — especially when she had to wear a nice swimsuit and scrub him with brushes. Having your dead enemy’s wife for her namesake? That was too precious.

Removing his VR goggles slowly in the white light from his half-billion dollar medical bay, Steve Dobbs smiled a practiced, kindly smile that included just the right amount of malicious coot.

The chime rang. It was Ellen calling.

“What is it,” he growled, having long ago lost the ability to sound like anything other than an angry 129-year old man when the emotion struck him. It was the same outraged tone he’d used the time back in 2011 when the techies had come to explain why his damn YouPhone was on fire. It was the same tone he’d used to crush the revolt of the app developers in ’21. He grinned, momentarily lost in the memory of ruined enemies…

“We need to talk about Anna Hathaway,” Ellen said.

Steve Dobbs’ eyes flared. “What about her?” He demanded. That was old business — very old business. Also, black-bag business. “She died in Beijing.”

“She was never confirmed dead,” Ellen said.

“They’re just rumors!” Steve Dobbs roared. Or tried to roar — it emerged from his ossifying chest as a phlegm-filled rattle. His newest liver shook inside him uncomfortably.

“No sir,” she challenged him. “They’re not. In fact, she’s gotten very close to you. Closer than you realize. And she’s dead-set on revenge.”

Steve Dobbs heard the goop drain humming. The liquid surface level fell below his chest, leaving him covered by a thin film of the stuff, which suddenly turned harder from a terrific breeze blowing into the chamber. The air vents kicked on high suction, further cooling the goop too fast for comfort. The billionaire yelped, for the silicone goop was now too hardened to move. He attempted to sit up, found it impossible, and then attempted to beat his arms from side to side and roll off the Ikea PlastiCloth© couch on which he lay inside the tank.

“Steve, we’ve worked together for a long time. I’ve been a cinch to follow in your footsteps for almost fifty years. And you know what? It’s time for an older generation to let go.”

Nurse Miranda stepped into view with the backup hose. She arched her back seductively, presenting the outline of her pendulous bosom so pleasingly presented by the smallest of bikinis. Giving the trigger a perfect, manicured squeeze, she sent a single jet of silicone goop arcing up and onto his genitals, loosening the waxy dried goop thereupon.

Strangely, Steve Dobbs found himself aroused.

“I’ve put her this close to you for a reason,” Ellen said.

Steve Dobbs gazed not at Miranda now, but his chief of personal as well as corporate security. He could get his head to lift slightly, at least; but it was difficult holding it up with his ancient neck muscles, and he could feel the connective tissues of his cervical spine complaining.

Ellen had never been beautiful. He had ignored her talents too long, to be sure; she was a formidable foe. He ought to have killed her, or offered a cashiering decades ago, knowing her ambition. She gazed at him in two-way video conference mode with the lean and hungry look he’d recognized in her at hiring. He had enjoyed that look, seen himself in it, and guessed at the time she would follow him all the way to the end. Indeed, it made perfect sense that she would be his end.

He could move his mouth and fingers, and so tried to alert security. The 3-D holoscreen told him his system was betrayed, as nothing loaded except an error script.

“Very good,” he said, cackling. “I didn’t know you had mutiny in you.”

“Keep laughing,” Miranda – Anna Hathaway! – said. She grabbed up his right wrist. “Laugh for me while we check for hernias.”

The arousal was now complete. Steve Dobbs had not been such a man in decades. “Please,” he cackled, “stop it. You’re killing me!” He laughed the manic laughter of quaking realization, for his hand was now waxed into a death-grip on his shriveled penis. Anna was using a quiet, handheld blower to dry the mass of silicone.

“Look at me,” Ellen said. She might as well have been talking to a child, he realized, and indeed he suddenly remembered a time when his own mother, dead long before his murderers had been born, stood at his bedside to help him fight off a fever. Anna Hathaway hosed his neck in Bactrion™ and held his head still by grasping his hair. “You are a fossil,” Ellen continued. “A piece of natural history that ought to be in a museum for little children to gawk at in terror.”

“Ellen,” Steve Dobbs began, “we can…”

Anna cut him short with a spurt of Bactrion™ across his mouth, holding his chin with her hand and then drying it in place.

“I found her,” Ellen said. “I offered her revenge if she would accept her role in the plan. I paid for her plastic surgery.”

Eyeing the nurse sidelong from his affixed perspective, Steve Dobbs marveled at the sudden recognition. The breasts had silicone in them – that much was obvious – but her face had never seemed plastic before. The cheeks were different, and the nose, and perhaps the chin, but he could not doubt she was Anna Hathaway all grown up. And now she was covering his body in extra globs of youth-preserving gelatin, drying them, and setting him as solid as stone.

“The iCon is not just another product. The iCon will give Orange market supremacy. You have been ignoring my memos for too long, Steve.” Ellen shook her head. “This company cannot adapt with you remaining the largest shareholder. Retirement won’t work; you’ve retired six times already. You always come back. You can’t stay away.”

Except for his nostrils and eyes, Steve Dobbs was immobile.

“This is for my little brother,” Anna whispered. She moved the hose over him with slow ceremony, like a movie villain placing the last element of his superweapon into place, ready to trigger a final splurge across his face.

“Goodbye, Steve,” Ellen whispered.

Through the tears, Steve Dobbs chose to spend his final moment admiring her memorandum.

The iCon will be an all-in-one infotainment device wearable on the forehead or the hand for just $666. Available in many colors, it will be marketed with music and animation. It will sync with all integrated wireless systems. Models for kids can be made adaptable to appear as toys and other objects. The iCon can be marketed to the emerging American safety class. Because we have traded database access with the NSA, we will enjoy absolute information supremacy.

The first company to develop this product will enjoy eternal product dominance in secure and monetized bandwidth.

The marketing cretins are calling it “Singularity Project” for now. Ellen Markovits CSO, Orange

“Don’t worry,” Ellen said. “We’ll make you proud.” And then the end came in a hot, gooey blast.