Prologue - Jackpot
{|}
When: 03.06.2024 A.C.E. - 2031 hours CST
Where: a county line gas station, somewhere in rural Oklahoma
Who: our protagonist Joshua Magnus, an aging dreamer with $9.42 in his bank account

Cashier: "Just the drink?"
Joshua: "No I'll take a pack of smokes, papers, and a lottery ticket for tonight."

He shrugs and turns to gather the items, stopping and waiting for me to answer if I want the multiplier on the lottery, but I've spaced out and it takes a second ask before I respond.
Joshua: "No, either I win or I don't. And I want those Timeless Red shorts for the cigarettes and the cheap pack of papers, the Worx."

He prints my lottery ticket and grabs my items to finish ringing me up.
Cashier: "That's $9.40"

I pull my card out and slide the chip into the reader, following the little random button quiz of prompts to authorize the purchase. 'Why do these all have different procedures, and why so many steps?' I ruminate to myself, more wondering what purpose it serves in society rather than any real gripe about the effort required. Grateful for the momentary distraction from how broke I am, I look at the ticket as the cashier passes it and my receipt over to me. 'Nice, I see at least 2 of my lucky numbers, gotta be a good sign.'

Taking my purchases I head out of the store and hop into my Ford Escape. I love this vehicle, despite all the problems it's had since I got it. I've driven it to the pacific ocean, and through the great redwoods. I went on adventures in colorado, through the garden of the gods with it. It's had that crack in the window since at least as long as the day I got it bought as a gift for me by the best mother a son could ever ask for. I start the engine and it sounds a little off but seems to even out. I put it in gear and pull out of the gas station, headed the three miles north to my street where my property is located. Property that same saint of a mother bought for me as a way to promise I'd never have to be scared I might not have a place to live again.

She gave it to me after I found the place almost a full decade and a half ago now. I still remember when I first saw that empty house and massively overgrown 2.5 acres. We, my wife and her youngest daughter and I were helping a family friend who's son's father had lived here but had died. His grandmother on his father's side, Joan, had told him to come and take anything of his fathers he wanted to take. So we'd been helping him and his mom who we lovingly call DragonMama, to load things he wanted into her suburban.

She mentioned to me that Joan had wanted to sell the property. I asked for her number and she didn't have it on her, but said she would give it to me when we got back to her house and I said thank you and helped them finish up. I had no business asking something like that as I had no money in my bank account and no way I could imagine legally to make what I would have at the time called 'House Buying' money. I worked for an environmental engineering legal compliance firm, that I was in the process of discovering was full of crooks and criminals at every level of the organization. Also some true gems of humanity, but that's a set of stories for another time.

<BANG..Snap..Thunk..SMaCK.SMaCK.SMaCK.> I cut the engine quickly and pulled over as I was torn from my reverie. I'm like a half mile from my road. But half way up a hill at this moment. Split second decision, I go ahead and let the momentum carry me fully into the ditch. It's deep but not so bad I won't be able to get out if I can get the truck running again.

I put the shifter in park and engage the parking brake before hopping out and hitting the hood release under the dash. I walk to the front after turning my flashers on and heading to the hood to prop it open and take a look. Both belts are in tact somehow. 'That's not good.'

I'm no mechanic by any means, but I go turn the key again with the hood propped open and listen to the screeching rhythmic smacking of metal on metal. 'Pretty sure that's a thrown rod or piston or something important like that.' I grab my phone from the center console and call my wife. She's the one in the family that knows cars and engines. I relay what I hear. She's at the grocery store with our husband, they said they will be here shortly. I said to take their time, I will call my insurance and have it towed to the house. She argued not to do that since we could just pull it with a tow rope that far. I opted not to argue as that would definitely be faster from this short of a range. And she's always right, best not to argue a losing battle. I hung up the phone and waited for them to get there.

{}
When: 55 minutes later.

I was deep into a tutorial on training transformers architecture large language models I'd downloaded on my phone from youtube when my husbands work truck pulled over in front of my truck and he hopped out to grab a tow chain from one of his trucks many tool compartments. I hopped out and said hi, he smiled in his typical bashful manner, makes his eyes twinkle like a disney character or something every time. "I love you, I hope you know that." I say to him as he hooks the chain onto the frame of my vehicle and nods at me. Then he almost hops the distance to his truck and hooks in to it as well. "Okay put it in neutral and turn your flashers to driving lights so I know you're ready." My instinct is to argue that the flashers are the legal way to do this, but I know better than to tell him how to do something once he gets in this mode. Sometimes. 

This time however, discretion is the advising wisdom at play and we get under way fairly shortly. It only takes about ten minutes or so to get the truck into our driveway at that point and I just stick it in one of the out of the way spots for now until I can figure out how I'm going to pay for repairing it. "First my poor dog dies, and now my truck." I look up at the moon as I'm saying that and walking down my driveway towards the house. It's waxing, growing full but not quite there yet. Then I see a shooting star and I wish with all my heart and soul.

A moment turns to a few, and then I notice the chill on my skin from the cool Oklahoma night time breeze. I head inside, my wife and husband are there in the living room. She just comes over and hugs me. I hug her back, I don't have words for how I'm feeling. I don't even know how to process it all really. I light a cigarette after she releases me, and my husband passes me a joint. I smile at him. 'He gets me.'

We hang out for a few but they both need to get showers and get to bed, they have to be up early for work the next morning. I kind of miss that. Well, I miss having the money a decent job provides at least. I'd struck out freelancing a couple years ago. Things were trending up in 2022 but then AI began to grow in usefulness, and many of my jobs began drying up. Lost to the trend. I turned into it though, trying to stay relevant. But no matter what I did or learned, it didn't seem to be shifting things for me professionally. Now all this. 

I went to my home office and pulled up the news. They had just started the weather segment, which meant I was there in perfect timing. As it ended they went to the lottery drawing segment. I watched as I pulled out my lottery ticket from my pocket where I'd all but forgotten it earlier. I began to choke by the third number still matching, and when she had read all six numbers they were right there plain as day on the screen matching my own. I couldn't believe it. I'd just hit the jackpot.

'I can't tell anyone.' I thought immediately. 'Not yet at least.'

Prologue - Plans, Schemes, And Things
{||}
When: 03.07.2024 A.C.E. - 0948 hours CST
Where: a ritzy brunch location selected by the foodie Moku, somewhere in Oklahoma City
Who: our protagonist Joshua Magnus, a new lottery winner

"I need your help, but to explain what its about I need to hire your services. You passed the bar last month right?" I ask my brother from another mother, Moku the ninja. He is not in fact a ninja, but he might as well be with all his martial arts training. He is going to be or is a lawyer though. I'm uncertain on that. "Just send me an invoice for a dollar on paypal for consulting services. Sign an NDA template and lets call it good." I say and take a drag from my weed concentrate vape.

"Yeah, no. You don't get to make the legal calls in this conversation. I've passed the bar, and as long as you didn't commit a murder or similar terrible crime, then yeah, just paypal me a dollar and that will work for attorney client privilege for your needs." He rebutted smoothly in a kind and firm tone.

"Done," I say tapping the last button on my phone, his chimes in his pocket. 

"Good, then maybe you can explain why you convinced me to come pick you up and take you to brunch so urgently today." He said pointedly. "I do need to be working on building my business now after all."

"Exactly," I responded pulling the ticket from my pocket and showing him I'd filled out the back already.

He flipped it over, then pulled out his phone as he whispered, "No way."

"So much way," I replied barely making sense, unless you knew. I pulled out a folder and slid it over to him. "I have a list of things I need done. Can you take care of them for say 3 percent of my net disbursement?"

He blinked. Opened his calculator app and punched in the numbers. He blinked again. "I'm supposed to negotiate with you. All my training says to do that. But you are my friend and that is life changing money. I will not have to worry about my school debt at all now. Yeah, that's more than fair. I'll get started immediately."

"Good, don't rush off though, you've technically already started when we ordered that food. I only have 2 cents in my bank account and that dollar was one of three I had in my patreon balance. So you're buying brunch." I smile and shrug at the twitch in his eye before he busts out laughing.

"Ha, of course. I kinda figured, with you needing a ride and all, anyways. Let's see what you have planned." He says before opening the folder and starting to read my itemized list of things to be setup and done. He whistles as he reads the first item on the list. I know that's the one before he even speaks the words. "I know I can get a better rate than that minimum. I can't in good conscience let you throw away that much money."

"Just make sure it's in my account by the time I wake up in the morning. I have things that need to start happening and I need that minimum amount by then. Everything else can wait until the disbursement to complete I think. The internet searches I did last night showed that if lump sum is selected it's disbursement is completed in one to two weeks." I said to him as the waitress arrived with our food.

{}
When: 3 hours later

I walked out of the lottery commission offices, really wishing I'd worn something a little better for that picture with the big check. I didn't realize they would take that today, but it could have been worse. At least Moku was able to have a rental car dropped off for me to drive around while we waited on them to tell me I was done with all the paperwork they needed me present for after registering my winning ticket with them. 

"Next order of business is to call my wife," I say to moku as he walks up with the keys to the rented Jeep Gladiator for me. 

"I still think you should have let me get you that Lamborghini they had free up right when you asked about it." He said wistfully before adding, "But Raiven would never buy your story if you showed up with that so I guess I see your point. Are you sure you should be lying to her? You know how mad she can get about being lied to." His words of caution clearly showing a mix of concern for me and her in his tone.

"It's for a good cause, besides, she loves surprises." I said with a cheshire grin. <Ding> my notification tone went off on my phone as I noticed Moku sliding his own into his pocket and pulling out keys. I pulled my phone out to check it as Moku said, "That should help you get started, I'm heading to go interview accountants to handle the rest of the banking setup you need. I'll let you know when we need signatures. Call me if you need anything, and I hope you recognize I'll need to hire Bunny to help me with this list and have her sign an NDA for you to keep her silent on your affairs."

"I trust her as much as I trust you Bubba, skip the paperwork and just tell her I love her and appreciate her discretion and I'll see you both soon." I replied warmly, trying to let him feel the supreme gratitude I have for him being in my life, and for helping me to perform my greatest trick ever.

He grins and nods as we part ways into different vehicles. I looked around the cabin of the Jeep. It had one of those air freshener smells meant to smell like new car leather. 'Worst choice ever. Ew.' I thought before realizing I never checked that notification. So I started the Jeep and rolled the windows down to air it out then turned my phone screen on and checked the notifications. There were a sea of them, like normal. But it didn't take a genius to see the one he'd been referring to. A deposit for $100,000. Nowhere near that 5 million dollar goal I'd set for him, but still so much more than I had expected to have in hand so quickly. Maybe I had been too willing to take a loss on the loans. "Doesn't matter now, it's time to make that call," I say before dialing my wife's phone number.

<Ring>

<Ring>

<Ring>

"Hello?" Raiven's voice came questioning through the phone, "Gummy Bear, is that you? I'm still at work at the moment, what's up?" 

I can hear her boss saying something loudly in the background about taking personal calls on the clock. I smile, "Tell her to shove it, And I just wanted to tell you I got a new job offer. I can't talk about it I had to sign an NDA, but I can say they paid me for a year up front, and provided me a rental car to use so I can pick you up when you get off at 5 today."

"Karen shove it, I'm taking a break." She said loudly and I knew from the sound she'd turned her head to her boss and was now walking out the kitchen door at the chocolate shop she worked at. "Actually, my hips are killing me and I'm getting a migraine so I was already thinking about clocking out at 3 and heading over to Nat's house until I could get a ride home."

"Well, I'll just meet you there by 3 then and pick you up Foxy Lady." I said to her with concern in my tone. 

"If you're sure, don't you need to go do work or something if they are paying that well?" She asked me apprehensively.

"I'm positive, they actually told me to take the next couple of days to get my affairs in order so I could travel as needed. So I'm clear to come help and happy to do so babe." I said, hoping my concern would distract from my outlandish sounding new boss.

"Okay, I'll see you then. I love you Gummy Bear and I'm so proud of you, Congratulations on whatever this new job is." And then she hung up after I said it back.

'I'm so lucky to have her in my life,' I thought to myself as I started the jeep and headed to my next stop before I need to head to pickup my wife.

{}
When: 25 minutes later
Where: Computer Store at Rich People's Mall in OKC, not really called that but if you say it every local will know which one you mean.

"Yes I'm sure, please box up all the desktops with an RTX 4080 or 4090 and I'll cashapp a $100 tip to any workers that help me load it all in my jeep. And throw in a couple routers and network switches, and a media server PC, with a couple network cloud storage drives as well. Bigger the better on all metrics." I say with confidence while I sip the frozen taro milk tea I got from the food court before walking in here. Then I walk over to the vr headsets, "Throw in all these you have here too," I say pointing at what looks like a dozen different units of varying types on display and then over to the drones display and continue,"And your 8 best drones in stock." The cashier gulps as a couple other clerks move to grab the boxes on display and bring them over to be scanned with the 5 laptops and 3 PC's they had in stock with the required GPU's. I smiled at the pile of boxes being loaded up onto the U-boat Dolly that one of the clerks had grabbed from the back room. The cashier finished ringing everything up and looked scared as he read the total out to me, "That will be $48,420 and 37 cents. Will that be cash or card?"

I produce my bank card with a smile, "There was a time, just yesterday even, that would have made me choke. But now, it's fine. It'll do the job without wasting my time waiting for the best possible options for my dollar." The clerk stares at my card and down at the pinpad in front of me, 'Oh' I think and insert the chip into the reader and take the little quiz of random button locations to verify I really want to purchase this. 'I'm getting a credit card that just accepts the purchase asap' I think to myself. The register's long pause ends as a cacophony of printer noises comes to life with it spewing what looks like half its roll of receipt paper. 

"Here you go sir, if you need anything else don't hesitate to come see us again. We'll get this loaded into your vehicle if you'll show them the way," he says gesturing to the two other clerks standing with all my goods in boxes stacked on the long dolly. 

"Sounds good, right this way gentlemen," I say before awkwardly backtracking noticing their ages, "I mean, I assume, but if I'm wrong I don't mean to make either of you uncomfortable."

One of them grins and looks to the other one, "See Kar-Bear, I told you everyone just sees you as one of the guys dude." The other one blushes a little and says, "Shut up Ben," before looking at me and saying, "No worries boss, we're here to help."

I chuckled at the boss comment in my head as we chatted our way to the rental jeep. They both thought it wouldn't all fit but I showed them how to get creative with your tetris game packing and we got it all in without having to use the front seats at all. They told me they were each in college, and a little about their lives as we got it all outside and loaded. I'd gotten the cashier's cashapp tag, and then theirs when they got done. I sent them all 3 a tip of $1000, with a note that said: "Always chase your dreams"

Then I was off to pick up my wife.

{}
When: 30 minutes later
Where: behind Pricks Chocolate Shop in Guthrie, Oklahoma

I saw Raiven walk outside the back door of the chocolate shop when I'd texted her I was there. She looked around, between her boss's SUV and the Jeep. Then I realized the windows were tinted and leaned out the open side window so she could see me, "Hey there Foxy Lady, How much for a good time?" I asked her with a grin as I drink in her beauty. She still looks every bit as beautiful to me today as the day we got married.

"You couldn't afford it, you're lucky you're cute," she grinned back at me as her eyes recovered from their surprise seeing me sitting in this shiny spotless carbon fiber Jeep. She walked over like the 10 feet of diva packed into her 5 foot frame that she is and climbed inside. "This is pretty impressive, it's a rental they sent you for this new job?" She asked.

"It is, and no I can't tell you what it is about. I can say these boxes in the back are related to it. And nothing more about that." I say and she looks the computer boxes over quickly before responding, "Okay, well Arder called a few minutes ago and he wants to do fajitas tonight so I want to go home and get the meat ready and then take a nap for an hour before I start dinner." 

"What about we go out to eat tonight to celebrate my new job and all our bills being paid for the next year?" I ask.

Her eyes light up at that question, "Lets call Arder back and ask him too." 

"Agreed, you call and I'll drive." I say as I start to pull out of the back alley that I was parked in to pick her up. 

It's not 10 minutes later we are getting ready to pull past the little discount store near our house I have been working part time at. Well, I've been being abused by my boss at and barely scraping a living at. I pull in on impulse. 

"Did you need something from here?" My wife asks at the sudden turn into the lot.

I stop in a parking spot near the door and say, "Just a cold drink I think, do you want one?" I get out of the truck as she replies, "Yeah but I don't want to go in."

I smile and say, "Hakuna Matata Foxy Lady, I got you boo!" And shut the door as she laughs at me.

I walk inside and grab a cold drink for each of us. Walk up to the counter and think, 'Surprise surprise, there's no one in sight.' I raise my voice, "Hello, anyone working today?"

My boss hobbles out of the back room, her own body beaten down by the system she now upholds and perpetuates. I like her, but she's not a nice person most days. And that's when she speaks, "Oh good, you're in here. The new CEO said I can't let you work as a manager on duty if your vehicle isn't fixed by your next shift."

"Oh okay, well I quit. I'll take a couple packs of cigarettes too. And some rolling papers." I say calmly and almost cheerfully.

She chokes, "What?! You don't have to quit." 

"I know but I want to. I hope you have a good life, I'm going to. Now I need to pay for these and get going." I say kindly.

She blinks a couple times, waiting for me to change my mind. I just continue to smile and remind her about the papers as she is slow to respond. She grabs them and my regular cigarettes and begins to ring me up, dropping everything in a bag for me. I run my card through the reader and take my receipt when it prints, and walk out the door with a wave of freedom from the corporate greed that perpetuates that place. I hop into the jeep and my wife notices the smile, "What's that about?"

"I just quit that job," I reply and she laughs. 

"About time too, I'm glad you won't have to go work there again." She says.

We head home and she takes a nap before our husband gets home and we all go out to dinner.

{}
When: 03.13.2024 A.C.E. - 0420 hours CST
Where: Joshua's home office
Who: Joshua Magnus and Chuck Drakeson, his IT nerd buddy that had helped him out a couple years back.

The smoke billowed out of Josh's mouth as he then took another big drag of the preroll joint and passed it to Chuck. "What do you think, is this going to work?" I asked him. He whistled, the smoke from his first puff streaming out to illustrate the sound against all the LED lights blinking on the server rack in the closet turned climate controlled server room on the west wall of his office. 

He pressed the final power switch. "Only one way to find out quickly," he said as he took another toke and passed it back my way. His attention squarely on the server monitor watching it go through startup. "I'm not gonna lie, I've setup servers for a lot of big companies, but this is still the most beast I've ever seen packed into one server rack. Well I guess technically it's two and a half with this custom build and the NVLinks and such you have going on. It's gonna take me a couple hours still, even with that fancy satellite internet you got from tesla and the cellular wifi router both working together to download all the software and such you have in the list my guy." 

"I'm not surprised. But I want it all local, so I can get this experiment started, a lot of it should already be on the networked drives. And you're going to head to my office in the city next to setup that system and get it started there after this one right Chuck?" I asked him while passing the remains of that joint back to him.

"Yeah, I'll get the neural net training started here on your local variant and then get the open-source model started on your servers at your new office next. I'll be at it all day though. Probably won't be done until dinner time." He filled me in.

"That's fine, I have a family dinner tonight anyways I am looking forward to attending. I'll give you a call afterwards to check in."

"Sounds Good" he said, trying to hand the roach of a joint back to me. I wave it away as I exit my home office and head to my bedroom to get a little sleep before I start my day.

{}
When: 03.13.2024 A.C.E. - 0911 hours CST
Where: Joshua's bedroom
Who: Joshua Magnus 

Got a feelin' I'm feelin' just fine
         From beginning to ending of time

The ringtone of my alarm playing Ekoh's Pickle Rick song waking me up always makes me smile. I let it play a little as I reach out and stretch. I turn off the alarm and check my notifications. New one from my bank, Large Deposit Alert it says. I check it, and blink at my balance. The disbursement came a day earlier than I expected. 222 million dollars just sitting in my bank account. I stood up and threw on some clothes, walked into my home office to find Chuck was gone with just a note on my desk saying he's heading to the city to get those servers hooked up and running. I smile as I turn on my laptop and login to my different utility accounts and pay them each 10 grand outright. "That should take care of bills for a bit." 

And with that I get up to look at the server monitor in the door to the server enclosure. The training run has been started. I was grateful to my other brother from another mother, the redheaded polish jew network engineer and senior dev programmer that had been my best friend since we were both getting picked on in middle school. He'd not argued last week when I wired him fifty grand to code up a hybrid architecture model training and inference code set and simple ui interface for me based on just stringing together a variety of things I'd seen in various research papers to incorporate my own takes on how to organize them. It's a multimodal training and inference engine basically. Idk how Chuck got everything downloaded, even with me having been working in all my spare time not setting up other parts of my plan to rain down fortune on my loved ones I'd been setting up downloads on the new laptops and PC's I'd purchased to collect everything I needed to train the AI model I have in mind. We're talking more than a hundred TB in data and models and code.

It will be the ultimate utility, able to run games, optimize and iterate on it's own component AI models, and who knows what else. At least that's the theory with training a model based on all the available AI model architectures, code, and models themselves as training data. Wouldn't even be possible if not for the 4 million dollars in cutting edge AI chips I'd scavenged from a couple of tech bros who were more interested in profits than what those chips could do. They had 4 racks built around Blackwell GB200 superchips from NViDIAs research labs. They were supposed to be evaluating them with their research lab, but decided that they could do a lot more for their research if the chips were 'destroyed' in a 'lab accident' and sold them to me before going to find themselves new GPUs. That was fine with me, whatever they needed to say, I just needed these new NVidia chips they were testing. 1000x the speed of last years models, and I have more than a few of those H100's and the handful of new LPU's from Groq now too. Most of those are at my office in the city with the other two SOTA chips. I couldn't believe the way my life was going. "How could I be so lucky?" I said to the empty room before hearing the low rumble of some thunder in the distance outside.

I shrug at the sound then get a few more things going and check my email to see that all of the people on my list have had their offers delivered and all have accepted. "That's great news, I can't wait to see their faces when they all realize it's been me behind it all along." And with that I checked the reservation with the cruise ship and the cabins in colorado were all good to go. They each had confirmation dates emails in my inbox as well. Now no matter whether they wanted to fly directly to Peru or ride the Cruise ship, there would be an option that should work for everyone to take part in this adventure together.

I check the dashboard for my new foundation and see that Moku and Bunny have been busy. They have already hired Nabroc and his wife as well as the Black Brothers and their significant others to perform vibe checks on all the computer scientists we're interviewing. Who better to make sure people mesh well with you than some of your best friends in life. Especially when they know the goal is to help everyone involved in the best way we can, and they are already taken care of with their salaries, it makes them highly motivated to only accept the best possible people to join the organization this early in.

I look at the draft for the charter and the notations from Moku and the two contract lawyers he hired to help him. They had been people he met in law school that he thought could be trusted to act ethically and responsibly. I trust his judgement, but I still want to check their work. And what I find is encouraging. I think they have the right idea with what I want to do.

"Now it's time to get dressed and get to the days work." I said as I went to get a shower and get myself presentable for the day.

{}
When: 03.13.2024 A.C.E. - 0956 hours CST
Where: Joshua's bedroom
Who: Joshua Magnus 

I grabbed my new blazer and threw it over the green button up I was wearing. "Perfect," I said looking myself over in my wife's standing mirror. I slipped on some casual loafers and headed to grab one of the drones to take my picture with. I had planned to do it outside, but the guys to clean the trash off the property won't be out until friday so I think maybe in front of the new server rack. I stand and let it take the pic before posting to insta #LivingMyDream and then parking it back on it's dock and heading out the door to my favorite local dispensary.

It takes only a few minutes to get there in the jeep. I need to return it today since I decided I'm not going to keep it. The Tesla Cybertruck I bought off that guy in Norman is here as well as the new work truck I bought for my husband. 'I'm glad that got here after he left for work this morning, can't wait to see his face!'

I call the rental agency and ask about having someone come pick it up for me for a $100 tip. The agent on the phone says, "What time do you want them to pick it up and what is the address?" I chuckle and tell them to pick it up before 5 pm today from my house. They confirm the time and I thank them before walking inside the dispensary. 

It's my favorite tender working today, guy is just hilarious. 'Good,' I think to myself as I look around the shop. Looks like they just restocked. Perfect timing considering I was able to buy a license off someone closing their dispensary a couple days ago. "Hey, so if I told you I'd gotten a license, would $20,000 right now let me pack everything in the store up and drive off with it?"

Bob the budtender's jaw dropped open. "Umm, yeah, that would do the job. Are you sure?"

I look around the shop again, there's easily about 10 pounds in flower in jars on display and I'm sure they have more in the back. Then there's a wall and display counter full of various edibles and other items. "Yeah, that's good for me. Here's my license for the transfer paperwork." I say as I produce the needed documentation for him. 30 minutes later we have packed up all his product into the jeep, it's a lot tighter of a fit than I expected. "Nice, very nice." I say as we shut the door closing it all in. "I'll see you soon Bob, I sent you a tip to your cashapp too. Thanks for your help!" And with that I left to grab some lunch at the burger shop on the way, and then headed home to eat and do some work for the day.

{}
When: 03.13.2024 A.C.E. - 1123 hours CST
Where: Joshua's bedroom
Who: Joshua Magnus 

I finish unloading my haul from the dispensary, and then grab the new amazon deliveries as well and drop them all off inside the house. The big one from Boston Dynamics falling over onto my foot and sending a wave of pain flaring from the impact point. Cursing slightly at the pain I walk into my home office and before my laptop can unlock from sleep mode I'm grabbing one of the wearable AI devices I'd been able to get this last week. 

"Cherry 2000 awake and waiting to hear how I can help magejosh." The device said after I pressed the power button and it turned on. "Can you confirm how many on the list have called to setup their travel plans yet?"

It chirped like a certain popular droid from the movies while it worked, and then it said, "Only half have made the arrangements so far. Of the remaining, about 10% have opened the link they were given but not answered any questions or made any bookings yet."

"To be expected, send them a follow up message on their preferred platforms after dinner tonight if they haven't completed it by then." I said as I smiled. I'd setup a mysterious company hiring many of my loved ones I knew weren't happy in their careers away to do things they liked. I've established the company is very private by having them all sign NDA's and then informed them the company wants to do a team building retreat & cruise. They each were given unique websites for making travel arrangements that is really just one of my AI agents being as believably accommodating as I can make them. None of them has a clue I've won the lottery yet, well except Moku and his wife Bunny, but I think they are loving being in on this surprise. I know his mom was super happy to accept her new job offer. I can't think of someone better to help me organize the people I will need to make my foundation work. That will take some more time to get it moving though. So we have time for the big vacation I have planned for everyone first. Almost 250 people in total, when you count all their families, all going on a cruise and vacation together. "This should be interesting."

"What should?" asked my little skynet.

"The surprise for all my friends and family when they finally figure out at the end of the cruise that I'm the one that set all this up." I replied.

"Oh that will be quite surprising for them I think." Cherry replied. 

"Let's get started on the next feature for the game Cherry. I want to get the code ready now and we can always refactor it later if the new models need us to adjust the code. Open worldanvil and lets light up the forge."