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Fuck that sweater, I didn’t need it. Fuck my mom, I didn’t need her either. Fuck Colum Bishop; he would eventually die at my callused fucking hands. I just needed time. I needed patience. I needed to use what I had; my brains.
My creative side wanted to draw, but the logical side knew drawing would get me nowhere. So I channeled my creativity elsewhere. I drew pictures at first, because a smart man uses the tools he already has. I drew, I posted a For Sale sign at the end of the alleyway, I hawked those images to sympathetic passersby, and with the money I made, I rebuilt broken down computers, because that was another skill I possessed.
I sold my drawings for between two and ten dollars apiece. I sold refurbished computers for a hundred.
It took my eleven-year-old brain only minutes to figure out where to focus my attention.
I made my way to the old computer store, three blocks up, as often as I could, stole what they considered trash from their dumpsters, purchased the parts I needed, or made them myself, if they were too expensive or simply didn’t exist yet. I rebuilt, rebranded, and sold those old machines to people who wanted a good computer for a tenth of the price.
And that’s howGriffin Industrieswas born.
I didn’t call it that back then. I didn’t call myself anything. I just sat in my silence and let my brain keep my body afloat. I needed food, so I earned and purchased it — or more often, I stole it. I needed a blanket and a mattress, so I earned enough to purchase. In reality, I stole that stuff too.
I enjoy stealing.
To buy something I earned feels sweet. But to take it feels a thousand times better.
To take it from a big corporation making billions, who could afford to float a kid’s basic needs, was the sweetest flavor of them all.
Now I’m forced to talk to people on a daily basis, though I keep it to the barest minimum. I eat and sleep in comfort, though I still steal as often as the opportunity presents itself. Why? Because it feels good.
Griffin Industries is a technological empire on the cutting edge of innovation. It started as a hungry boy in an alleyway, and now boasts innovative divisions that beat out almost every other bidder in the mechanical division. We bid lower than everyone else. We under promise and over deliver. We take perverse pleasure in undercutting the competition, sending their businesses into the ground, then reaping the rewards of a market that is almost exclusively ours.
We continue to quote low, despite the lack of competition and the option to gouge money from clients. Wecouldfix prices and completely fuck the industry, but that would screw all the little guys.
I only take pleasure in ruining those bigger than me. There’s no point picking on those smaller. That’s not a victory at all.
Those that are smaller come to me when they can’t keep up, they beg to be swallowed up by Griffin, I pay them well and above their asking price, and bring their owners and executives in as part of my executive team. If they were smart enough to establish themselves in the first place, then they’re smart enough to be part of my team. I pay my executives high six-figure salaries to ease the pain of losing control, plus bonuses every time we win a contract and sweep it out from the bigger tech companies.
It’s stealing, and I fucking bask in it.
Griffin Industries has more than a hundred thousand ground-level employees who all earn an above average wage. We have an incentive program where we pay for education if it’ll benefit my company. A kid wants to become an electrical or mechanical engineer?Go for it. When he or she graduates, they have a guaranteed job, a monetary bonus as reward for graduating, and if they graduated with honors and their final thesis intrigues me, they’re sent to my office for an interview to enter my executive team.
If you’re smart enough to graduate a program like that with honors, then I’m smart enough to know I’d like to sit down over a meal and chat about where Griffin Industries can go next.
My company believes in the voiceless little guy. It might not seem that way, with how I buy up the little guys, but this is how we build a bigger army. Splitting our efforts and having a hundred tiny tech companies spread out through the country is dumb. It’s weak. So I bring them all under one roof. We combine our forces, we combine those brains and their collective knowledge, then we take down the bullies that sit above us.
What will I do once I reach the top?
I’m truly not sure. But once I’m there, I hope to still be that same boy in my heart. I steal, but only from those who can afford it. I lie, but only to those who don’t deserve truth. I want to be able to stand at the top of my mountain and look down at the path I walked. I don’t want to see burning valleys and broken people. I’d rather see kids like me being helped up. I’d rather see hope, and education, perhaps a little law-breaking, but only when the law is wrong.
I hire thieves. Because I know how their minds work.
I hire liars. Because I know why they’re lying, and I know they’re not lying to me.
I hire the smartest brains, and put them to work continuing what I started.
I guess in a way, we’re the Robin Hood of the tech world. The sheriff of Nottingham considered Robin a criminal. And yet, the story is of Robin’s happiness and good deeds, no?
Fuck the haters and fuck the jealous. I found a hole in the market, I filled it, I continue to fill it. And in between conference calls, I dig into the data of those who’ve stepped on me.
Colum Bishop.
Officer Raymond Tate
Abel Hayes
The unnamed suit from that day… it took until I was twenty-one and had access to data I hadn’t earlier, to find out his name was Sean Frankston. Another drug dealer. Another woman-beater. Colleague to Colum or competition, I could never tell. He went to prison a few years back for crimes similar to those Bishop and Hayes committed, but it wasn’t connected. Not officially, anyway. Never in the government files. Frankston’s arrest remains to this day unconnected to Bishop’s empire, but when he was sent away, he became a non-issue for me.
