Trillion Dollar Eden

By Jim Bowden

Set in the year 2047, this literary intrigue is strongly themed around overpopulation and environmental degradation. The government offers the Near Death Experience (NDE) as part of the health system, to encourage voluntary euthanasia among the old and sick. Women must get a permit to bear a child, based on someone else’s death. The United Nations has established quotas for the number of people sustainable by each nation. Some countries, particularly those in Africa, consistently violate their quota allotments. The continent is an ecological disaster. Wildlife has been decimated and mass starvation is only avoided through United Nations food shipments. A trillionaire playboy, Barry Morgan, decides to set up a foundation to create a “New Eden” in Africa, which will redeem his decadent behaviors, but first he must find a way to get rid of the excess population which is blocking the environmental restoration he envisions. He invites a reporter and two young women to the Bohemian Grove in California, where the Lycurgeans are meeting to find ways to stabilize the population. When the reporter gets wind of
Morgan’s real plans, he is about to reveal all. However, the playboy forestalls him and teaches him a lesson in his Museum of the Inquisition. The reporter understands that he must promote Morgan’s foundation, not smear it. In the end, the foundation begins to carry out its laudable but unsavory task.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jim Bowden
• Release date: Jul 7, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301454105

Jim Bowden

I love to write stories of romance, intrigue, and sexual titillation--having spent most of my life programming computers! Now, in between writing novels, I create short videos which are either weird or serious attempts to document the artists who share Sonoma with my wife and me. Please visit the website mentioned below.

Book preview

Chapter 1

The petite young woman sulked on a lounge-chair, enjoying the Mediterranean sun but not much else. Her dark tresses fell about her shoulders like a shroud. The deck hands kept their distance, under strict orders. Had it been a good idea to take Algernon up on his invitation to tour the Greek islands? Outside of the crew there was no one on board but herself and the man who had invited her, and he was passed out a good bit of the time, napping or drunk.

It hadn’t been a difficult choice, she remembered, there on the beach near Athens when he approached her. The guy was probably twenty years older than she, attractive in a way, topped with a shock of unruly hair but dissipated looking. He claimed to own a yacht which he pointed to, moored just off shore. She was on vacation, bored, and tired of fending off the many young men who approached her. It wasn’t a short-term romance she had been looking for, but a week in the sun, on the sand, and in the waves. Suddenly he was there on the sand next to her without even being invited. His name was Algernon Rossmoor, he was lonely, and maybe she would enjoy visiting a few of the scenic Greek islands. There would be gourmet meals served by the crew.

Why not? The guy was obviously rich. Without a doubt he’d expect favors in return. She could live with that. She would have to send an email message to her boss telling him she would be late returning, unavoidably delayed, and make up a story later.

They had visited Santorini and Crete and it was all getting to be quite dreary. He liked to drink, engage in lovemaking, and fall asleep afterward. He never wanted to get off the boat. She wished she had never agreed to his proposal, which was more in the nature of a proposition.

Presently she got up and peered into the room where he was sleeping, snoring lustily. His jacket was hanging on the bedpost of the giant bed. Moving quickly and quietly she lifted the wallet out of his breast pocket and opened it.

So! It appeared he was not Algernon Rossmoor after all, but Barry Morgan! She gasped and hurriedly restored the wallet to its pocket, then exited the room. Could it be true? Barry was known as the trillionaire playboy of the Western World—and the Eastern one as well. How had the paparazzi managed to miss this little voyage? Or maybe their telephoto lenses had been there all along, aiming through portholes in smaller yachts. She blushed furiously, thinking of the possible consequences. At the same time she experienced a little thrill of excitement, picturing the people she—little nobody Mimi Pettigrew—would now be associated with.

Later, when he had awakened, she confronted him with the knowledge of his true identity, pretending to recognize him from pictures on the Internet. He readily confessed, but said he was only trying to protect her. The knowledge of who he was could have overwhelmed her emotionally. She didn’t quite agree with that possibility, but gave him credit for considering her feelings.

She saw him writing in a little leather-covered book the next morning. Later, as he went below decks, she followed him discretely and watched as he got a cluster of keys out of his pocket and unlocked a small cabinet in the galley, where he stowed the book. When he turned around suddenly she said, Don’t mind me, I was just going to get a snack.

Next time ask the steward. He’ll bring you whatever you want.

Again that afternoon he was out like a light, after the usual routine. Usually he would sleep for at least an hour and often two. Okay, buster, she thought. It’s time I knew more about you. In the bedroom she searched his jacket pockets and found the little bunch of keys he used to open various top-secret enclaves on the ship, such as the one containing his private telecommunications setup. She went down the stairs to the galley, unlocked the cabinet door, and got out the book. It took another key to unlatch the leather binding strap holding it closed. The entries were in a bold, easy-to-read cursive script. Without wasting time to find a more comfortable place to read, she flipped through the pages to the last entry and let her eyes gobble it up. It was dated May 27, 2047—today.

So here I am again, alone, writing in this goddamn journal—my secret cave. I’m usually with people, but as far as I’m concerned they might as well be invisible. When you’ve seen one person you’ve seen them all. The women wear stretch-velvet skirts and the men wear jackets with little epaulets on the shoulders. The faces are all basically the same: sensory organs grouped on the front of the skull, except for the ears, which are on the sides. The skull rests atop a skinny stem that lets it rotate, wag, and nod. I hate the fact that I am built exactly like everyone else. You would think that perhaps I would be different, somehow, since I am the center of the universe. Without me the entire universe would vanish, including all the people. It is pointless to say that everyone has the same experience of reality. There is only one me that I can know. Without that, I don’t exist and neither does anything else.

What garbage I do write! Always the same, trying to find one little escape hatch to prove I am unique, different from everyone else in some important way. It’s hopeless. My accountant tells me my net worth is rising by a hundred million dollars a day. I am not impressed. There are others far richer. Moreover, money has nothing to do with the matter.

I am writing this because I want to put down the boring facts of the past couple of weeks as a matter of record. Someday I may want to look back on my follies and weep. I met this little chickie named Mimi on the beach, really cute in a special kind of way. Of course I invited her to tour the islands with me. She agreed, which did not surprise me at all. Not one of my class, obviously—has to work a job. Not a rich bitch, really grateful, and I was grateful too.

She seems like an authentic person, whatever that means. For her it’s the adventure of a lifetime. For me it’s business as usual. In fact, the only fun thing that happened was when my drunken helmsman ran over a small fishing boat, swamping it. We managed to save the captain and crew but the boat was a total loss. I paid him more than it was worth, threw in another ten million for his trouble, and dropped them off on one of the islands. One of my crew took over as helmsman. In earlier times I would have had the drunkard walk the plank. Such is life in our times: a pale shadow of its former self.

Mimi turned out to be more intelligent than she looked. She quickly guessed my identity. I was only trying to keep her from being overwhelmed by my public image.

Now for today’s philosophical reflections: People miss the big picture. Existence! The absolute glory and mystery of it all. I think I must be an Existentialist. They believe the only real choice is suicide. Keep that door open and you’ll see the magic of the world: you compare the all-and-everything with total nothingness, and this may sustain you for another day. (One of these days I’ve got to have a near-death experience. Strange I haven’t asked for one yet. Too skeptical, I guess.)

When it comes to humanity, sometimes I think it would be good if a great plague hit us again. After the Black Plague, things were good. The wealth was divided among far fewer people. The survivors were well-off. Labor was in short supply; jobs were plentiful. In our time it would mean the earth’s ecology could recover.

Humanity needs its predators, to keep the herd thinned out! God knows, nature is doing its best, but humans wipe their predators out, one by one, large and small, from tigers to viruses. The human herd expands while its individuals weaken. People crawl like maggots over the dying planet. It’s an ugly scene to contemplate.

That’s it for today! I’m beginning to bore myself. I wish I could come up with some new visions. Maybe all the booze and drugs are destroying my brain. But I can’t stand living in the world as it is. It’s an affront to rationality. I need a buffer, an insulating wrap where people can’t get to me and I don’t have to look at their ugly faces, endlessly duplicated. Thus, this journal, my secret cave.

* * * *

Mimi hastily and guiltily restored the journal to its cabinet, slipped the packet of keys back in his jacket and exited the room, grateful he had not stirred during the four or five minutes it had taken to read the entry. She was puzzled. The man seemed so different in his writings than in person. As a rule he was polite to her but engaged in crudities from time to time and insisted on frequent sexual activity. He liked to brag that he could afford any type of luxury you could imagine, on demand. Once, he said, he had kept a stable of young women on tap to satisfy him whenever and however he liked. But that was in his younger days. These days he confessed to being jaded.

As for the philosophical stuff, she didn’t know what to make of it and decided just to file it for further reflection.

Chapter 2

The pert, pretty little girl of nine-going-on-ten, paused on her way home from school to tie her shoe, which caused her golden curls to fall forward over her face. As she knelt down, she was attracted by something glinting through a gap in the bushes next to the sidewalk. Then she heard a noise, periodic and harsh, coming from the area. Pushing the bushes aside, she crept along