Tomorrow Again

The twilight warmed him. Hatter Colm set his briefcase down and his tablet and wireless headphones on his desk. By stretching out on his couch, it appeared as if the office grew bigger. With another account won, he earned some extra shut-eye. Dreams came and he woke up to the sound of his own breathing. Twilight still colored the evening. When he rose to his feet, he looked at the door and found it slightly ajar.

Upon opening it, he saw billionaires. Everyone working in the skyscraper in Downtown Wilmington, Delaware had earned the title of being in the three comma club. Bustle. The sweetest thing remained the transactions that produced even more billions. Colm looked at the faces. Some looked like monoliths, others simply amused.

“Hatter! Great for you, bossman!” Lynetha Smithly remarked.

“For what?”

“You’re the world’s first trillionaire!”

Colm’s black skin glistened with sweat. He looked at his watch. The news projected from his time piece. It broadcast how he had been five trillion dollars richer. It happened over night. He had experienced tomorrow again.

“What is there to do?” he asked himself. More bustle. The floor bristleded with financial activity. Colm continued to make sure he had awakened from his slumber in the early evening. He had.

This news he had prepared for, he thought. As a hedge fund manager, he had bought into the reality of one day being the first in the four comma club.

He looked around and he saw the television screens. Amidst the applause, funny hats and noisemakers, he saw sour visages. Buried under the excitement remained resentment. People showed their displeasure with a trillionaire finally rising above the rafters.

A cake rolled out with his name on it. The rest read: “Congratulations, Mr. Colm.”

The floor kept buzzing with more work. It was like people were vying to become trillionaires themselves. He glanced at his watch. More angry faces appeared. Now, he returned to his office to listen to the people on his tablet.

“It’s just not right. It’s bad enough we got these millionaires and billionaires. Do we really need a trillionaire when babies are starving at night?”

Someone else said: “Don’t eat the rich, kill them all.”

Colm couldn’t understand why such animosity had been directed towards the most productive members of society. Or if these people had actually achieved what he had, they wouldn’t be so hostile. Maybe not.

He journeyed back to the floor to address the whole matter.

“Folks, folks. Thank you all for this lovely cake and for continuing to work. We still have work to do. Nothing has changed but a few decimal points.”

Laughter. “Seriously, though, we have to consider the––” Just then, a gun cocked. It was a shotgun capable of blowing people away with a single blast. Colm kept two loaded .38 Special pistols in his briefcase just in case someone tried to get cute like this. He didn’t call for security but he let this miscreant speak.

“Alright, we know you don’t have cash. We don’t want it.” A slightly portly black masked man announced to the floor. Some had been visibly shaken by the intrusion. Colm backed away to his desk, not out of fear but to reach his firearms.

“We want the trillionaire,” the voice stood alone but alluded to more people either outside or on different floors. Security remained lax, just some ball caps and walkie-talkies. But Colm came prepared. He grabbed his guns and pointed them straight at the would-be assailant’s chest and head. He fired with authority, two at the heart one at the mind. He knew how to capture those from his days in the United States Marine Corps. As a retired colonel, he had fashioned a world of protecting his values with force just as he had demonstrated.

More celebration arose when the target toppled. Colm put a finger up to his lips, telling everyone to stay quiet. With possible other offenders in the building hearing gunfire, there could possibly be an ambush. He checked the man and tore the mask from his face. Blood and fragments smeared and Colm wiped them on the man. He held the guns in his hands and waited for the next wave of people yearning to taste carbon. None came. He may have just been bluffing.

He turned to the news and it had already been broadcast from some office assistant’s smartphone. “Jesus! Put away your phones. Everyone! Now!” He looked about and everyone had placed their phones on Airplane Mode just in case he approached them and ensured that they didn’t deliver information to the journalists. As the boss, he had sway over his staff and they heeded his words with speed. He looked at his tablet. A report came into the newsroom.

“We’re getting word that the Phillipe Building in Wilmington is under siege. We’re getting reports from the penultimate floor….”

“I knew it. Look, everyone stays low and away from all windows. I’m going to go to the floor below and see if there’s a disturbance down there. Tyson,”Colm announced.

“Yes, Hatter,” the tall brown-skinned man replied.

“Make sure these folks are safe. I’m giving you one of my pistols. It’s simple to use. You just point and shoot. If anyone else comes up here with any mess, keep low and your finger on the trigger,” Colm commanded. They all heard a shot. With sharp glances, Colm continued his mission.

As he descended the stairs, Colm saw mostly women with their hands stretched to the ceiling. They had run outside of the office space. He reached the doors to Swerson and Nutley Financial. The one shot had been fired by his wife, Heather. She had carried her own .380 pistols. She also retired as a colonel in the USMC. Her assailant had ruined her royal blue blouse.

“How am I supposed to get this out?” She asked with a coy, wry smile on her face.

“You don’t. We’re trillionaires and we can buy the company who makes that shirt many times over and that’s why they hate us. Now, I don’t think there are any more of these goons. Let’s go out together and secure these areas.” At that time, the SWAT team had already arrived along with police and Delaware Bureau of Investigation (DBI). Everyone evacuated the building. A bomb, like a child’s plush teddy bear, had been discovered and detonated by the bomb squad.

“How do we account for all of this?” Colm asked the police chief, William Turning, after coming down from a press conference. He had actually outranked Colm, before retiring as a colonel and becoming a cop.

“We secure your homes and assets, Hatt’. That’s all we can do. I’m just amazed the only casualties or fatalities are the assailants themselves. Looks like you still know how to work a pistol.”

“Yes, well when you can purchase gun ranges and own some on your property like I can, you might be able to keep up with your shot. I’m kidding, Bill.”

“I know you are. And I’ve got a full bird on you, don’t you forget it.”

Heather looked ready. A wad of nicotine lay in her bottom lip against her gum and made her candy apple gloss pop even more. Colm walked over to her, the sun finally making its stretch towards the dying of the evening.

“What can we do but show the world that working hard is not that way? How can we show people that earning a living really means making a killing is the only other option?”

Heather looked at her husband. Something about their dark features intertwined and made a black mélange blackness. To survive utter chaos had been nothing to them. With a combination of seven tours in war zones between them, they had prepared for a day when hell would descend upon their civilian lives. What they counted on most remained the other’s fortitude, strength, and resolve. They peered into each other’s brown eyes.

Police tape sectioned off the building as uniformed officers scampered about the place looking for ways to secure the area. Everything they had trained for in the Corps led them to this moment. As the crowd began to disperse, Colm wiped a thin piece of paper from his wife’s eyelash. He blew it into the atmosphere.

A trillionaire he didn’t feel like. He never felt like a billionaire or a millionaire either. He enjoyed the fact that he could invest in close to anything he ever wanted. Any expense he could match it and know that he earned every cent. What he didn’t want was to see the fear in Sally Reynolds' eyes when that man crossed the threshold to his office. Adrenaline kicked in and his memory permitted him to act with agility and precision.

Every ounce of his frame had been put into action so that he could preserve the lives of those closest to him. Even with the notion that he didn’t “feel” his wealth, it was still all about the money. He had just withstood attackers and stared down death once more and tally marked another win against certain mortality. Heather looked down at her phone at a picture of herself. Underneath her face read the words “Hero saves the day at Wilmington bank.”

“You’re not going to get jealous, are you?” she asked with that wicked smile.

“I’m not at all. I don’t need recogn–” a picture of him then popped up on his tablet. The sub-headding read: “Newly minted trillionaire remembers he’s a retired Marine officer during a misguided takeover of a hedge fund.”

“There it is,” Heather grunted. “They just had to put ‘newly minted’....” She shook her head. The effects of the nicotine numbed her senses and relaxed her to a considerable degree. Her eyes looked like oval lumps of coal. They held within them a sense of a challenge, of something that can conquer and win. She walked over to the police chief.

“Great seeing you, Bill. Just not like this, of course,” she noted.

“Yes, Heather. We’ve been preparing for something like this. Your husband knew he’d be a trillionaire one of these days. I don’t know, maybe when he passed the nine hundred and fifty billion dollar mark….”

“I knew, too. But I had no idea the hatred and animosity towards the working man could ever reach this height.”

“Why do you say working man? Those two numbskulls you both took out were looking out for the ‘working man’ weren’t they?”

“Not at all.” She smelled the August air. It was thick and salty. “The work that had to go into making one dollar is the same for everyone, just on different levels. If you’re a hedge fund manager, you know that your stake is higher so you perform more. The more you perform the more you make. It’s not about working hard. It’s about working smart.” The police chief drank in her words and a vague understanding washed over him.

“I know you’re right, but I make just about as much as I did as a general. I’m not mad, though. I know you both have earned your keep. But some people will say that even if you did it earn it, you shouldn’t have it. Somebody else needs it.”

“Did somebody else stay up long hours studying? Did somebody else constantly run into a wall with an idea only to come up with a solution that nobody saw coming?” Heather asked.

“Okay. I got the picture. I’m still happy for you. It’s not a money thing. It’s whether or not you both deserve it. And you obviously do.”

Colm walked around and kept his wits about him. He felt the tiny twinge that he put his fellow workers in danger. He held his head high. But the feeling persisted. It looked like he cursed himself. Helen in Accounting came over to him.

“I know the press always calls you the “Mad Hatter” but what you and Heather did in there is nothing short of a miracle. What you do with money is a true blessing.”

“You know I don’t go for that God stuff, but I respect your right to say that,” Colm explained. Helen smiled and walked back. The twinge now transformed into a boost. It wasn’t anything mystical, just a kind word from a sincere voice.