Altimexis

Without giving too much away, this is a really pivotal chapter. First of all, there's Dave and the unanswered question of what he's been through. Secondly, there's the mysterious Franklin, who happens to be a Facebook friend of Henry who already knows a fair bit about J.J. Since he and his parents live in New York and J.J.'s probably moving to NYC, we'll undoubtedly be seeing him again. Finally, there's the revelation from Franklin that Henry's in love with J.J. Could Henry be the boyfriend Roberto told Simon about in the Day of the Dead short story? I'm not going to answer that one, but suffice to say, we won't find out until J.J. returns from his lengthy Midwestern Trip, which takes up five more chapters. There will be more hookups and a newfound hobby that will send J.J. off in yet another direction - one that will bring endless frustration when he encounters a problem he can't solve on his own.

“A Tesla,” the young man at the valet desk exclaimed as I got out of my car. “We don’t get too many of these. I can take it to the fast-charging station nearby and then park it for you, or you can park it in the public garage at one of the metered spaces with a charging station, if you prefer.” Laughing, I replied, “I know there’s a limited-liability clause of some sort, but that’s a thousand percent better than the no-liability clause if I park it myself. I know the talk about crime is pro

In the author’s serial novel, Brilliant Boy Billionaire, Chapter 34, J.J. remembered how he was taken in by the Rodriguez family, seemingly by fate. Known to them as Simon, he learned the true meaning of All Hallows Eve as they celebrated the Day of the Dead and remembered the son they’d lost in Afghanistan. In the end, J.J. learned that his suspicion of having a guardian angel was true.

Look for a short story to be posted at midnight tonight. It’s posted separately because it is a stand-alone Halloween story, but it relates directly to BBB. Called Día de los Muertos, it chronicles Simon’s first Halloween after running away, a Day of the Dead celebration with the Rodriguez family. If you believe in dreams and ghosts, we learn a possible answer to the question of whether or not J.J. has or had a guardian angel.

With nothing else on my schedule, I asked Jitendra if he wanted me to return to Seattle or maybe help out in the data centers in Omaha while waiting for a decision on the position in New York. Jitendra didn’t mince words. “J.J.,” he began, “I love it that you feel responsible and are willing to go back into the trenches to do your duty to the organization, but your skills are far too valuable to waste on mundane tasks. We have more than enough data-center technicians now, thanks to your pioneeri

“You never went trick-or-treating, Simon?” Steve asked as we went about doing the prep work on a house we were painting. Late October was just about the end of the outdoor painting season and Papi had already started lining up interior paint jobs, starting in November. Steve, of course, was back in school – his first semester of high school – and so he was only available to help with painting on the weekends. As a runaway, I couldn’t go back to school, and I was just happy to have a roof over my

Yes, there have been clues, but there are even more clues ahead, some of them confusing. Just when you think you have it all figured out, something even more starling will be revealed, and I doubt any of you will see it coming.

“How was your day, J.J.?” Jeff asked. He was escorting me from my interviews at Columbia University back to the hotel, where I’d have a chance to freshen up and rest before dinner. I wasn’t sure where I’d be having dinner other than that it was a high-end restaurant at Hudson Yards, and I’d be having dinner with the key executives who would make the decision on whether or not to hire me. I wasn’t looking forward to dinner at all and frankly would’ve preferred skipping it altogether. I hadn’t bee

Actually, I have no idea what Amazon's or Apple's actual policy might be. My only experience was in Academia and even as a department chair, International travel required sign-off by the dean and the CFO, and Domestic Business class wasn't allowed except for medical exceptions. However, this was a job recruitment situation, and I have some experience with that. It depends very much on the position, the distance and the priority of the recruitment. I had colleagues who had a policy of not interviewing for any job that wouldn't fly him first class. He thought he was worth it. Most potential employers did not. Now if J.J. were being recruited from outside of Applazon for a department directorship, they would almost certainly fly him in first class and put him up at a top hotel. However, we don't know if J.J. is being considered for the directorship and besides which, he's an internal candidate and internal candidates are generally subject to company travel restrictions, regardless of whether or not it's for an internal interview for a high-level position. There's another thing in this case - New York is coordinating the recruitment and they're not likely to view an internal candidate foisted upon them with favor. Indeed, a candidate sent to them by the CEO, outside of the normal recruitment process, is likely to garner a fair bit of resentment.

“Welcome to New York, Dr. Jeffries,” a young man holding a sign greeted me as I approached him holding out my hand. After a couple of years of social distancing, wearing masks and avoiding physical contact at all costs, going back to normal behavior still seemed strange. The young man took my bag from me as we shook hands and then headed into the airport proper at breakneck speed. I guess he figured that as a teenager, I’d have no problem keeping up, and I didn’t. However, I was still feeling th

“J.J.!” Henry shouted as he ran toward me and threw his arms around me, hugging me tightly. “I can’t believe you’re finally here!” “Damn, you’ve grown!” I exclaimed, and he had. I’d always been tall for my age and was now six feet, five inches at the real age of seventeen. Henry was nearly as tall now – maybe two inches shorter, but close – and he was only fifteen. I hadn’t seen him in a year, and the changes were striking. “You’ve got a real mustache now,” I added. “Yeah, do you like

The facts that led J.J. to this conclusion are spelled out in the next chapter. J.J. was born in 2005 and, supposedly his mother died in childbirth, according to his father. His father was supposedly raising a young child by himself when, in 2006-2007, the gun J.J. later used to shoot him was used in a string of bank robberies. That means that his father either 1) acquired the gun after it had been used in the robberies, 2) robbed banks while simultaneously caring for a baby or 3) robbed banks and then kidnapped J.J. from another family. J.J. simply came to the conclusion that of the three, that last was the most likely. We'll later learn just how severe and perverse the sexual abuse really was. Until now, J.J. never questioned what his so-called father had told him about his past, but suddenly confronted with contradictory evidence, he was forced to question what he'd been told and realized it was all probably a lie.

That's a good point about the possibility of Applazon torching the shack. Too bad I didn't think of it. Actually, the likelihood of a kitchen appliance starting the fire is high, given the active electronics in even a simple toaster, let alone a microwave. For that matter, televisions actually have a track record of starting house fires. Keep in mind that the electrical line was spliced into that of a neighboring farm, likely bypassing the usual protection of a master circuit breaker. Arson is a lot trickier than most people think, as accelerants are easily detected and a fire would draw the attention of law enforcement to a crime scene they didn't know existed. Better to let time do its thing and let the termites and worms destroy the evidence.

Come Monday, I dressed in a business suit, as I’d become accustomed to wearing, and exited the hotel to find the company limo that had been sent for me. I always wondered what kind of impression I made as a smartly dressed executive who was clearly only in his teens. The look on the driver’s face was priceless, however, and because he was obviously not that old himself, I greeted him with, “I know I’m strikingly handsome, but I’m undoubtedly too young for you.” Laughing hysterically, he rep

I went into a deep funk after the accident and barely even acknowledged Christmas as it happened around me. I’d already bought presents for everyone I knew, so at least I didn’t have to go about buying any after the accident. It was the first time in my life I was actually in a position to buy nice Christmas presents at all; I was still rather poor when I lived with the Rodriguez family. The presents I bought for Frank and Shaun, of course, were never given, nor did I ever take the time to retur

The only organized criminals in this story are the ones in the executive suite at Applazon, so to speak.

There’s more backstory to Shaun and some of it will come out in a few chapters. Shaun has a lot of issues to work through. We’re not done with Shaun by a long shot, but it may be a long time before he makes his next appearance. In the meantime, a mysterious respiratory virus will emerge in Wuhan and spread across the globe, and I probably don’t need to mention how that will affect Applazon’s business. J.J. is going to be rather busy for the next couple of years, but his travels will afford him the opportunity to solve one of the great mysteries of solid state physics. Since I know how much you love my technical descriptions of things, we’ll get that out of the way in the next couple of chapters, so we can get on with his social life.

Work was ahead of schedule on construction of the new server building, and installation of the robotic arms on the prototype server was complete. The self-contained cooling system was nearing completion, and once installed, final testing would begin. We’d not only caught up but were ahead of schedule. In the meantime, I’d finished all of the coursework for my bachelor’s degree in computer science as well as that required for my master’s and my Ph.D. I’d even submitted my Ph.D. thesis proposal, w

Authors are evil. 🤪 Without giving too much away, an important chapter in J.J.’s life is coming to a close, but a much more exciting one is about to begin. Very soon, the significance of the story title will be revealed.

Again, I awoke to visions of being chased by my dad, but then I saw Shaun in my dream, and everything was okay. I quickly fell back to sleep and didn’t wake up again until the alarm on my phone went off. I groaned as the sound woke me and my boyfriend up after a night of making love. It was so tempting to just turn the alarm off and go back to sleep. It wasn’t like we had to go to Chinatown this morning. The reviews for the DimSum Palace were even better than those for Jing Fong Restaurant, and

Even though it was after 10:00, there were people waiting to be seated, so we waited more than twenty minutes, during which the wonderful smells of the food were making me insanely hungry. While we waited, we were able to look at the menu, which was quite extensive and included everything from simple deli sandwiches to hamburgers to full meals. One thing it was not was cheap, but then Junior’s was world famous, this was New York where everything was expensive, and this was a tourist area on top

Things at work were moving slowly, and we were running into problems on all fronts that threatened to result in unacceptable delays. If the servers couldn’t be ready to be mass-produced and delivered starting in December, there would be no choice but to switch back to using the conventional servers for which the facility was originally designed. Thermal sensitivity of the circuitry was turning out to be a major headache, with component failure happening frequently during freeze-thaw cycles. We c

Following the directions on the GPS to the coordinates my boyfriend gave me, I drove my new car west at first, then south until we turned off on a tiny farm road. We reached a line of trees, at which point the pavement disappeared and along with it, directions from the GPS. Shaun told me to proceed into the trees on a one-lane dirt road and then to turn off onto what looked like nothing more than a footpath with just enough room between trees for the car to pass. Ultimately, we came to a seclude

On the last day of Driver’s Ed, we each took a victory lap around downtown Omaha on Interstates 80 and 480, in traffic, crossing over the Missouri River twice. We headed back to the school and hugged each other as Ms. Livingston signed the spot on our learner’s permits that indicated successful completion of a course at a qualified driving school. I couldn’t believe how fast the summer had gone by. Only half my weekends were free, and so I’d spent two more full weekends with my boyfriend si

Office relationships can succeed spectacularly, or they can explode and leave much collateral damage. I'm not going to comment on what's ahead, but there's a major clue in my words. Regarding my culinary skills, I've actually never made that sandwich, although I've had ones that are quite similar. I haven't eaten any red meat in some 20 years. My dad died of a heart attack when he was 58, but his first heart attack was in his early forties. None of the men in his family lived past their fifties. I can't do much about genetics, but I can control what I eat. Ah, the memories of beef.