Variations in Dreampaint

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I wiped the perspiration from my forehead again, scratched my beard, and stood patiently at my little flower stand. I watched the crowd, seeing if anyone recognized me… seeing if I could find him. I was not worried that I wouldn’t recognize him; I knew him too well to miss him, though we had never met. I had never even seen his photo.

I was more worried that someone in the crowd would recognize me. It had happened once, ten years before, despite my garish clothing, and the DreamPaint 1010HR sunglasses I wore. Occasional recognition was inevitable, if your face had appeared on every magazine cover from Time to Byte to Forbes; if you were the only man to be compared to both Bill Gates and Michael Milken in the same breath. Fortunately, being the wealthiest man alive not only made me recognizable, but it also made correcting the problem straightforward: the lucky lady who’d spotted me ten years earlier now inhabited the only Swiss chalet on the Great Barrier Reef, and she did not want to lose it.

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