You probably think being me is a walk in the park, don’t you? From the outside, it seems like life is just dandy: jetting around to various properties, buying things that aren’t for sale and hours rife with substance abuse spent at the spa. Well, it’s not. I have enemies.
It all started at the auction in Monaco last year. I was slightly tipsy from too much champagne on my yacht and stepped outside for a breath of air. I strolled aimlessly down the street and wandered into an ongoing auction at one of the many auction houses that line the road.
I waved off the man who tried to stop me to ask for some ID or invitation or whatever and proceeded inside, curious as to what wares were being shown. Immediately, a magnificent sapphire necklace with jewels the size of birds’ eggs caught my eye.
I had to have it. I doubled the reserve and then went in search of a bathroom because I’d had so much champagne. I confidently returned to the desk later on the in day, wiping my nostrils clean to claim my purchase.
But it wasn’t so. The necklace was gone, my bid topped by another woman while I was in the loo. At first, I thought it was part of some kind of hoax the auction was playing on me. I made threats involving gunpowder. And then I saw that they weren’t joking.
My bodyguard yanked the mousy attendant into the alley behind the auction house and dangled him by his ankles against his squeaky protests.
“Where is she?” I snarled, in a way that was reminiscent of my favorite film.
“I don’t know!” squealed the attendant.
I made a motion to my bodyguard, who gave the attendant an extra-hard shake. Some loose change, a ChapStick and a Slim Jim wrapper cascaded onto the pavement.
I snatched up the wrapper and waved it in his upside-down face, which was slowly turning red. “Dude, seriously? Do you know how bad this is for you?” I made another motion to my bodyguard and he dropped the attendant onto his face with a loud smack.
It was too late. She had gone and nobody knew who she was. I only got a name: Blanche. But she sometimes went by Muffy.
And so for one exhaustive year, I paid private investigators and bribed government employees for the whereabouts of Blanche. Dozens of false leads later, I finally found the bitch. She lives on a yacht that only makes port four times a year. Which, admittedly, is way more off the grid than anything I have set up. But I still found her.
She’s good, but she’s not that good.
Now, you’re probably thinking that I would have just gone and asked to buy the necklace off of her, right? Not so. That would imply that she’d won. Nobody bests me. If I couldn’t have the necklace, then nobody could. So I called Rolls-Royce. The defense contractor and jet engine manufacturer, not the carmaker.
“Make me a highly advanced naval vessel,” I said. “Put some really big guns on it. I’m in the mood to sink something.”
Rolls-Royce hasn’t finished the vessel yet, but the preliminary plans look promising: 100-day operating stints, a 3,500-mile nautical mile range and speeds of at least 25 knots. And it’ll have autonomous capabilities, according to the update that Rolls made very public for some reason:
The absence of crew increases the need for very reliable power and propulsion systems. Rolls-Royce’s approach is to blend advanced Intelligent Asset Management and system redundancy in a cost-effective manner that avoids sacrificing the cost and volume savings achieved by removing the crew. A suite of autonomous support tools, developed by Rolls-Royce, such as Energy Management, Equipment Health Monitoring and predictive and remote maintenance, will ensure the availability of unmanned vessels.
It’s hard to say where Blanche is at this exact moment, but I have my suspicions. Once the Rolls is finished, I plan on surprising her with a little rendezvous
Fuck you, Blanche. I’m coming for you. I’m going to bury you and that necklace at sea, where you belong.