The Chip Ch 01

Peter sighed and stared out the window beyond his desk in his office. His life wasn't going the way he wanted it to even though he seemingly had everything he could ever want. Last week had been his 55th birthday and he'd be alone. Well at the very end of the night at least. He'd already been through 4 wives, with each relationship seemingly becoming shallower than the last. As the founder and CEO of a major investment firm that umbrellaed the operations of several major tech, biotech, and manufacturing companies, Peter had all the money he could ever want. And after each wife left or he let them know he was finished, another incredibly beautiful, plastic surgery filled, covered in makeup gold-digger would show up in his life looking for a good time. The relationships weren't that bad if he was being honest with himself, he just got bored, and so did his ex-wives; he'd throw himself into work and distance himself even more, and they would distance themselves too.

Plus, there was the worst detail of all: no babies. As Peter got older and older, he longed for regular family. He wanted his own children, especially a son - someone to pass along all of his knowledge, his company, the empire he spent his lifetime building too. Someone to love and guide. But each wife was unable to conceive. He'd been to various doctors over the years and tried different procedures - none of them worked for him or any of his ex-wives. One of his ex's had even gone on to have 2 kids with her next husband. Oh, he'd been hurt when he learned that.

Deciding he needed to take a break and get some fresh air, he stepped out of his office building to go for a walk. "Just clear your head then get back to it," he thought to himself. As he walked down the street, his mind wandered from work again, "Maybe I just need to get laid. How long has it been again?" Lost in his own thoughts, Peter just kept walking and didn't notice the oddly dressed old lady beckoning him into her store that he was walking by.

"Oh, it's a baby you want, eh? Better come in son" The older, grey-haired lady told him as she looked him in the eye and gestured into her small store. Peter, jerked out of his thoughts and back to reality, stopped in his tracks. Looking at the front of the store, he saw that the store front was labeled "Enda's Fortune Telling: Nothin' but the Truth!" With advertisements on the window for seemingly all the different mumbo jumbo: "Palm Reading, Chakra Alignment, Crystal Healing Sessions, Crystal Ball Reading, Dream Interpretations..."

Too shocked for words, Peter took a step towards the shop and the old lady and got gestured into the store again. "That's it dear, come in and let's chat" the old lady said.

"Oh well, what's the harm?" Peter thought to himself and stepped in the store.

Taking a seat in a big cushy looking old armchair just inside the store, the old lady - Edna apparently - sat in an armchair opposite him.

"Sorry, how?..." Peter started to say to Edna

Edna quickly waved him off and interjected, "Oh don't worry about those details, son. Let's get to the good stuff!" Peter just stared at her.

"It's easy to see you want a baby - especially a boy." Edna started "But you haven't been able to find a woman to conceive a baby with yet." Edna gave him an intense stare back. "Only one woman is out there who will naturally conceive with you but she will not do willingly. If you can impregnate her and keep her as she grows your child, by the time the child is born, she will love you and will bear you more children as well as never leave you."

"What?..." Started Peter.

"Now, you'll know her when you see her and she'll appear before you soon. She'll be younger than any of your ex-wives and so naturally beautiful, it'll be obvious to you when you see her."

"That's crazy..." Peter interjected.

"Isn't it?" Edna said genuinely while looking at Peter. "You have a very interesting and different path in life Peter but that doesn't take away from it's truth." Edna stood up after a bell rang that someone had just stepped in the shop. Turning to Peter to gesture him out of the store, she said to him, "Oh, remember dear, you must keep her close until your baby is born and don't worry about my payment until after your son arrives."

Peter found himself shood out of the store just a quickly as he was shood in by Edna. "How bizarre..." he thought. On his walk back to his office, he couldn't help but think, "How did she know my name? How did she know I've been unable to have kids with my ex-wives? And how did know I still want a baby?"

He tried to plunge back into work for the day but couldn't stop thinking about what Edna had told him.

Two days later, his work was interrupted by his secretary, Meredith, calling in to tell him she was sending in 10 of the new college aged summer interns the investment firm had hired so he could personally greet them. "Ugghh" he thought. He hated interruptions to his work but this was part of being CEO, trying to be as personable as possible to every employee, even his summer interns. A few minutes later, and the 10 college kids streamed into his large corner office, most of them in very new looking professional clothes, some of them wearing clothes that looked like they got them at Goodwill.

"Hello and welcome" Peter started to tell them and then he stopped and stared. Two people in along the line was the most striking woman he'd ever seen. College aged, the 5'6" natural blonde looked up at him with soft, blue grey eyes. She had freckles across her face and her skin looked a little naturally tanned, she was slim but her body still gently curved in all the places it should. "Could this be?" Peter thought. Quickly spraying out the rest of his welcome he asked each intern to introduce themselves with name and where they were from. Not caring about anyone's answers other than hers, Peter waited with baited breath down the line each of the college interns said what he asked until they finally reached her.

"Hi, my name is Julie," she said lightly, more towards the other interns than towards Peter. And she quickly mentioned another city where she was from. Peter almost shocked himself by being instantly relieved she was from a city close to 500 miles away. "She won't be with her parents then." He thought.

After they were ushered out he tried to wait a polite amount of time before asking Meredith to send him all 10 of the intern's new assignments, employee profiles, and applications; even though he only cared about one.

"This is perverse and crazy" he thought. As he dug through them in the privacy of his office. Coming across Julie's he quickly found her information - age 20, from the city 500 miles away, the address she listed in her profile, he quickly googled and found the old Craigslist posting for a student to sublet an apartment for the summer. The apartment was a 20 min walk or a 10 min bus ride away. He also found out she was studying marketing and advertisement at school and had been paired with his marketing team.

As Peter's day progressed, he started worrying about himself obsessing over Julie - he had barely met her - but he couldn't help himself. All of sudden, she was all he wanted to think about. He thought about her body, he thought about having sex with her. And he thought about what Edna had told him.

The next day, he walked into his office hoping he would run into Julie but no luck - instead he walked into a man in a nice business suit already waiting for him in a chair across his desk. "Hello" he said, he'd forgotten he had a slotted one on one meeting with a bio technology investment opportunity through one of his companies. The man was here to pitch a new bio technology product and Peter would decide to fund it and / or manufacture it.

The pitch turned out to be relatively short: the man had come up with a new bio technology he called "The Chip." A small micro SD card size chip with small attached wires would be surgically implanted in the back of the neck / back of the skull. The chip would then send wired electrical signals to both the brain and the spine to make "suggestions" to the person. The idea was it could help with behavioral and mental health and especially addiction treatment by "suggesting" the desired behaviors. The man said he even had a working protype and that preliminary testing at his old lab on rats and monkeys had been very successful. He was coming to Peter because he needed a bigger lab, more funding, and ultimately his manufacturing capabilities.

Peter was interested in the technology but then suddenly, an idea bloomed in his head. At the end of the pitch, Peter told the man, "I'll be happy to invest in this and give you everything you're asking but I need a personal and private favor first..."