Chapter 38: Love and Marriage

YOU KNOW, I always loved the San Francisco area—from the potheads to the digital engineers. Sometimes both in the same person. I invested heavily in computers when they first came out and have millions in high tech stock.

But what a learning curve! It seemed like time changed faster and faster once I got to the northern continent of the Americas. It was just the turn of the eighteenth century when I settled on Goat Island. No one asked me for a passport or a visa. I talked to the natives and they didn’t object to me settling and trading. That was good enough. If I had wanted, I was rich enough that I could build a temple or buy a boat.

The Spanish came and began issuing land grants. I was unable to convince the governor that I was supposed to have the grant of Goat Island. It went to another noble and I had to talk him out of it. All for a slip of paper that said I was the rightful owner.

The last time I could hide my wealth or the source of it was before California became a state and I dropped into the assayer’s office with six bags of gold dust I’d acquired many years before. From then on, I had to track my wealth and make sure it was legally transferred from one entity to another as I changed bodies and identities. I couldn’t just walk into the next town as someone else and start over. They wanted a birth certificate, a driver’s license, a record of deed, or some other piece of paper that proved I was who I said I was. What a headache.

But, let me see, I was talking about computers. I liked them. I’d already moved to the Midwest before I could acquire one, but I bought one as soon as I could. Then I spent hours playing silly games on it because I didn’t know what else to do with it. Of course, Brenda (my secretary in the housing development) insisted she needed a computer to keep track of our burgeoning finances, CPM project plans, customer data, and who knew what else. Until I started writing my memoirs, I still mostly used my computer for playing games and watching porn.

I have noticed that the first use of any new communications technology in history has been pornography. I’m certain the first item written on a piece of paper or animal skin with a brush and ink instead of being carved in a clay tablet with a stylus was an erotic poem from a shepherd who scrawled it with a bit of charcoal on a stretched hide. Or perhaps it was Pinaruti’s detailed drawings of a phallus that ended up between my legs. Did you know some of the ancient pictographs found on cave walls show a man and woman copulating?

What was Gutenberg printing before he set out to reproduce the Bible? Pornography! And then he produced indulgences for the church to forgive people for reading pornography.

And when the first camera obscura was used to project an image from one room through a lens onto the wall of another room, what was projected? Nude women, of course! And live copulation. When they figured out how to capture that image on film, I’m sure the first image printed was a naked woman.

Movies? Porn. Video? Porn. Computers? Porn. And when the great World Wide Web was created, the most popular websites available were porn.

I loved my computer.

Of course, with the advent of the internet and the web, we were suddenly connected to people around the world. Before we got social media, we got email. What a delight those early messages from people reaching out to me were. I subscribed to everything. I got news, weather, entertainment, sale bulletins. Hundreds of emails a day.

And in the mass of mail, I received a message that made me sit up and take notice.

Dear one,

My name is Mrs. Peninnah Ariel Dugganaiah. I am a citizen of United Arab Emirates living in Dubai. I was the faithful wife of Mr. Benaiah Dugganaiah, who died of leprosy and venereal disease in the year February 2010. During his lifetime, he deposited the sum of €8.5 Million (Eight million five hundred thousand Euros) in a bank in Brussels, the capital city of Europe. He left me a wealthy and well-cared-for widow.

It has since taken me five years to sort through his papers and close the holdings of his company, of which I was left executrix. In sorting through generations of historical records, I came across a folder marked only, “The Owners.” I had to enlist the assistance of Dr. Bernard Lowes, a prominent translator of ancient languages, who wants very much to have the documents I showed him so he can take them to a museum. However, he confessed that the papers were actually a recording of shares in my husband’s oil exploration which was begun many years ago by his father’s father. Each listing of a share had a notation indicating “no further heirs” after assignments that were recorded through the centuries.

This is true of every share in the exploration company except one made out to Bob. To this share was appended a note that said, “Bob is still alive.” Dr. Lowes, of course, laughed at that note, pointing out that the owner would be 2,000 years old, but my husband was a man of honor and I would dishonor him if I did not attempt to locate Bob and present him with what is his.

The documents of the company indicate that the current untapped oil reserves of the company would place the value at over $500 billion US dollars.

I would ask that you come to Dubai at your earliest convenience to claim your share of this company. My husband left me a certain means of identifying the true Bob when he arrives. I have carefully researched your background and believe you have the identifying marks that will allow me to transfer this wealth to your name.

I need your urgent answer to know if you will be able to execute this project, and I will give you more information on how the fund will be transferred to your bank account or online banking. With the love and honor of the ages,

Mrs. Peninnah Ariel Dugganaiah

Well, that set me back a bit. I cast back in my memory a couple thousand years and found a pyramid scheme that would make me rich, according to the trader I’d encountered in the desert. In fact, the sale of shares had made me quite a lot of money in the century that followed, but I never really took the idea of there actually being oil involved seriously.

I set about making travel arrangements.

“Bob, those emails are scams,” Brenda said. “You are so naïve. They are all designed to milk you for identity information or to get you to pay them huge amounts as an agent to transfer wealth that doesn’t exist to you. You can’t mean you think this is real!”

“Well, Brenda, think of it as little old me off to do battle against the great scammers of the world, one at a time,” I laughed. It was certainly possible that there was some back alley fellow with an internet account posing as a widow and that the only oil involved would be what was in his hair. But I couldn’t help the feeling I had that this could be for real. I would at least go visit the old lady and see if good old Dug had, indeed made me a fortune.

“Bob, you are impossible. Just be sure to pack me in the satchel before you leave. I don’t want to be left here without you,” she laughed. I promised her I would.

I fucking love to fly! I even got a pilot’s license in the 90s. Just for small planes, but they were so much fun! At last, I could correct Pinaruti’s oversight and have wings.

I’d discovered something important about traveling after 2001: The look-away spell on the satchel only worked for human eyes. The security scanners picked it up just fine. I was pretty nervous the first time I had to pass it through an x-ray machine, but all that showed was the few miscellaneous items put in it without opening a gateway to the infinity room. It still made me nervous to remove it and let it pass through the machines at the airport.

It was a mere fourteen hours to Dubai. Traveling first class included anything I could possibly want, including the flight attendant. When my pod had been made into a bed and I crawled in, she crawled in with me. When she walked through customs, she walked into the infinity room and never looked back. Coffee, tea, or me? I had all the ‘me’ I wanted.

I booked myself into a fancy hotel and called Mrs. Dugganaiah. She invited me to her office immediately.

The buildings were amazing to me, even having been around for so long. They soared into the sky and out of sight. People were everywhere in the busy financial district. In a way, I missed the old markets, but I was told Dubai had a bazaar that hadn’t changed in hundreds of years. I made a note to visit it.

“Mrs. Dugganaiah, it is a pleasure to meet you. My sincere condolences on the loss of your husband,” I said as I bowed over her offered hand. Her beauty made it a pleasure indeed.

“Bob, the pleasure is mine. Ariah, we’ll have tea in my office,” she said to her secretary.

I was momentarily distracted as I looked at the secretary. Did she look like my Aria, who died so many centuries ago? The mention of her name brought back the pain of losing her, but I couldn’t recall her face. That’s sad, but it had been 4,000 years and so many women ago. I told you, I’m not omnimnemonic. Strange what things still are fresh, though.

Mrs. Dugganaiah led me into a very modern office that had a lovely table and sofa where we sat. Her secretary was all smiles as she brought the tea. I assessed my hostess as we waited for the tea to be poured.

I somehow expected her to be an elderly widow. Apparently, Dug had a trophy wife. She was out of her teens, but not midway through her twenties. A burka hung neatly on the back of the door, but she was dressed in a miniskirt suit and a blouse that left her toned midriff bare—a diamond sparkling in her navel. Her heels easily added five inches to her height. She noticed my observation.

“Though a citizen of the UAE, I am a western woman. Doug and I married in Italy. I am not required to wear traditional Muslim clothing. In fact, there are various levels of appropriateness for women’s wear here. Many do not wear the face covering, but most adult women cover their hair and ears. You will find western women on vacation in nearly any mode of dress found in the western world, including bikinis on the beach. Since I am now alone, I cover fully when I am not in my office or in my home. When people visit me here, they are the guests and are not privileged to criticize my apparel.”

“My only comment would be to say your apparel is quite lovely,” I said.

“It looks even better when folded on a bedside chair.”

I was a little shocked at her forwardness in that suggestion. But she was a young and beautiful woman, and I could well imagine her folding her clothes neatly beside the bed before she crawled in. With me.