Autobituary of a dying man [Part 1 - Take 1]

Jack King, aged a few decades and some years, dies tomorrow of no reason at all. A prominent figure of the unknown world and a hall-of-famer beyond the history books, tomorrow we shall be missing a man whose work has reached so many but was known to very few.

In 1982, Jack was born in the other city known as Paris in a middle class Christian family to Zwei King, a professor of German language and Sam Bouf who was still studying for her business degree by the time she gave birth to him.

Early on, Jack was the victim of the January effect. He was sent to school in September 1984, aged 2 years and 7 months. At the Catholic school of Sagesse, he was a slave to the stimuli of his parents and teachers, dedicating his entire asocial existence to satisfying older people’s desires and requests. To externalize his childish energies, his parents let him join a scouting association where he excelled as an active member and shone to leadership from the beginning.

At age 11, he decided that he didn't want to part his hair on the right anymore. His parents were receptive after a period of resistance. They allowed him to comb his hair backwards hoping this new "western" hairstyle would not affect his grades. As expected, it did not. At age 14, he had already published his first short novel.

Having finished school obsessed with success and drunk with competition, he had little orientation and so much potential that he ended up following the herd of bright top-of-their-class students and went to a top engineering school to learn how to build things for a wage. He also decided that he was never going to be a professional violinist; so he gave up his lessons after 11 years of courses and decided to learn to sing opera.

Six years in engineering school to obtain a five year degree taught him to deal with failures and humiliation. It also taught him that things should be done in a way that satisfies the end result and not for the theoretical utopian raison-d’être they teach you about. While he was in school, he also became a man and learnt everything there is to know about unfaithfulness and what it means to the significant other.

His career promptly took off as a software engineer, working for a couple of start-ups for short periods of time. His failure to abide to a hierarchy he did not believe in made him a bad fit for mushy cultures. He spent some time off trying to become a quick millionaire selling magic products to a dupable crowd. Then he tried to start a software company, with no avail. At that stage, he learnt that things are not as easy as they may seem to the hopeful ambitious. Jack also learned that shortcuts are a thing of the software engineering world, but less so of the real one.

He left the Paris of the East and settled in the Paris of the West after that. Over there, he pretended to work. As a tech consultant, he was paid good money but knew that he was just a passenger at a station waiting for the next train. While he waited in this marvelous city of light and darkness, he learned to charm, lie, cheat, betray, love, be betrayed and overcome hatred. He also learned how to defend himself in court, while enjoying Europe by car, train or plane.

In 2008, he joined a top business school in the US, and decided to part his hair on the left side like it was when he was 11. Behind him, he left a time of false hopes and scattered dreams and a place of beautiful memories and dear images. As he started his MBA, he had high expectations stemming from the culture he was exposed to at one of the finest programs in the galaxy. But as soon as the world economy fell down on its knees due to uncontrolled greed by amoral bankers, his opportunity frontier started to shrink at breakneck speeds. And as summer of 2009 closed in, he started realizing that he was heading down a dark tunnel. Being a fan of surprises, this kind of masochistic uncertainty entertained his overly agitated mind.