Volume 5: Growing Up Chapter 310 Routine Operations
Many years later.
A Victorian-style villa in the small town of Montauk, Long Island, New York.
An old, skinny white man was lying on a lounge chair in the garden, basking in the afternoon sun. The servants and the family doctor were watching him and helping him adjust the angle of the parasol to avoid the light being too strong or too weak.
In front of the floor-to-ceiling window in the living room, the old man's family looked at him with sad eyes. The old man had his back to them and was trying hard to talk and laugh with the guests who came to visit him specially.
"Ben, as I recall, you are only five years older than my father Colin. I mean, you should consider my advice and go to the Stanford Medical Research Center in California to rent a room and live there permanently. The Stanford Medical Research Center branch in Newport, Rhode Island is also good. Their research has made progress. At least my father is doing very well under their care. We helped him replace his liver two years ago. Because of the donation, he can enjoy privileges such as exemption from exclusion and selection of better organ sources." Tommy, who was wearing a fashionable beige suit and whose hair had been turned platinum by time, and was now a sixty-year-old man, reached out and gently patted Benjamin Benson's hand on the back of the chair, and asked gently, "What's the matter with you?"
"Now he continues to drink every day, and then confidently calls me a scumbag. The doctor said that if he replaces a few more times, he will live to be a hundred years old. I think your lungs are also OK. Africa is so big, there must be a lot of black people who donated their lungs to you voluntarily or involuntarily. Anyway, it hasn't spread to the brain, so you can replace the problem wherever it is."
The aging Benjamin Benson smiled and shook his head gently: "I know what my situation is, Tommy. Compared to living in those places, I would rather stay at home in the last period of my life. I have been busy outside all my life, business finance, charity, computers, the Internet, artificial intelligence, even weapons, banks, the Federal Reserve... Now I can finally stop. I have a lot of time to spend with my family every day. It feels very good. I can see the changes in the grass on the lawn every day. The flowers are slowly blooming. Time has finally slowed down, as slow as an old man like me, hehe... By the way, I also watch the ninth season of the fantasy historical series "CSA" produced by your company on time every week. Can you tell me whether the American Confederate Anthropology Bureau has been successfully infiltrated and seized power by white people who sympathize with black slaves in the latest episode... And the black slave terrorists who are preparing to sabotage the Black Slave Olympic Games... American Anthropology Bureau, American Black Slave Olympic Games, you are really amazing. How did you come up with these racially discriminatory national institutions?"
"Ben, I didn't insist on taking you away. I just came to visit you. To be honest, I still remember that I always called you old man, but I hope you understand that I always regard you as my mentor. Without you, I might not be able to do anything." After hearing Benjamin refuse the proposal to recuperate at the medical center and try to end the question by changing the subject, Tommy did not insist any more, but accompanied the old man to talk about the past:
"Even though you have retired for a long time and haven't chatted with me for a long time, I always feel that as long as you haven't really seen God, I have a trump card. I can face desperate situations calmly because I know there is an old guy. As long as I go to him, he will definitely give me the most correct guidance. You feel that time has finally slowed down, but I feel that time is the fastest gun in the fucking world. Every time you hear a gunshot, it means that an era around you has ended. Of course, it doesn't matter to the person who was shot, because he is no longer afraid of time bullets, but for the friends of the person who was shot, it feels very uncomfortable."
"Who wouldn't be hit by the bullet of time, Tommy?" Benjamin turned his head and smiled at Tommy. He raised his palm and pressed Tommy's hand down and patted it gently: "Nothing is important. Life is like a record. When the last ending tune sounds, you should know that it is about to end. So you might as well enjoy the last song while the needle is still working."
Tommy looked back at the old man and smiled: "Why don't you use this time to contribute to Ted's newspapers? I think a lot of young people will buy into your sentimental words just now."
"Thank you for coming to see me before my stylus stopped working. This should be the last time we meet. I mean, no friends other than family will be notified of the funeral. Just put a simple obituary in the newspaper. Don't let us see these little guys we have dealt with for so many years. I'm not kidding." Benjamin was a little tired. He shook Tommy's hand hard, said with all his might, then slowly closed his eyes and began to rest.
The health doctor next to him immediately came forward to check his physical condition. Tommy stood up, took out the sunglasses from his suit pocket and put them on his face, turned around and looked at Benjamin's family behind the floor-to-ceiling window, bowed slightly, and then walked directly through the garden to the outside.
A low-key black Chevrolet business car stopped outside Benjamin's house. Seeing Tommy coming out, the driver opened the door and Tommy sat in the back seat. He turned his head to take a last look at the mansion, then leaned his head back on the chair, closed his eyes, and tapped his chest with his left fist, muttering softly what Benjamin said when he first met him:
"Tommy, no matter what business it is, when you feel that you are tempted, recall the original purpose you wanted to achieve, because it must be more important to you than the temptation. Recall it and let it guide your heart back to the starting point."
After saying that, Tommy exhaled lightly, calmed down, and said to the driver: "Let's go."
After the driver started the car, he said to Tommy in the back seat, "Sir, when you were visiting your friend, a phone call came in. It was your son Hilbert, who wanted to remind you not to forget to attend his 18th birthday party tonight. If I remember correctly, Hilbert told me on the phone that his party would be held at 6 o'clock tonight in Los Angeles, California, in the southwest of the United States. It is now 4:17 pm, and we are still in New York, in the northeast of the United States."
Tommy put away his sad mood, thought for a moment, and then said to the driver in a daze, "Shit~ Why does this silly son always remind his relatives on the same day? He can't remind them a day in advance? I knew that one day I would regret having children, because it is inevitable that one of my children will inherit Otilia's innocence and kindness. Obviously Hilbert is the unlucky one. He is as naive as his mother was back then, and always thinks that people should be as leisurely as him."
"He called me three months ago, one month ago, and a week ago, and you perfunctorily promised him that you would show up on time. If the trial goes on, I am willing to testify for Hilbert." The driver said to Tommy with a smile through the rearview mirror.
Tommy waved his hands impatiently. "I can't listen to my son talk about physics for half an hour, which makes me sleepy but he is very interested in it, and then remember whether he reminds me to attend his party in the middle! I'm not Einstein! I hate physics! Especially after Hilbert refused to enter Stanford and chose MIT! He should know how much his father hates the four-eyed professors from MIT! Those guys are greedy vampires! The money they spend working for me is enough to build another university!"
"Sir, I think Hilbert is really excellent, well-educated, gentlemanly, kind..." The driver said what he thought of Hilbert.
Tommy unhappily reminded the driver: "John Page, do you know what the biggest difference between you and your grandfather is?"
"I guess you're going to say, little Paige, that your grandfather never talked much when he was my bodyguard, Mr. Tommy." The driver obviously didn't care about the dissatisfaction in Tommy's tone, and his laughter became louder. "By the way, I've asked your private plane to come to the nearest Long Island airport to pick you up as soon as possible, so that we can save time and board directly from the local airport. The flight takes five hours, but fortunately there is a three-hour time difference between California and New York. We take off at 4:30 Eastern Time and will land at 6:30 Pacific Time after flying for five hours. After deducting the time to rush to the Eagle's Nest, you will be at most 40 to 70 minutes late and can participate in most of the party process, but you will not be able to meet with your ex-wife, Justice Otilia Farrell, who has finally forgiven you and is considering remarrying you, because she can only attend the first 30 minutes of the party and then rush back to Washington."
"Hey, honey." Tommy called his ex-wife's number. "John just told me that you can only stay at the most important 18th birthday party in your son's life tonight for 30 minutes? That's less time than you have to give the defendants in court."
Otilia on the other end of the phone said, "Tommy, I just walked out of the Los Angeles airport. John is right. I can only stay at the party for thirty minutes. But if you think it's more important to accompany my son, I will be happy to stay and miss another late-night meeting tonight about some informal internal discussions of the U.S. Supreme Court regarding certain military-industrial complexes."
"You know, there is no need for a child to grow up in a ostentatious way and at great expense. Just focus on your work, dear, and let everyone know the importance of military industry to America. We have been so low-key, developing all kinds of high-tech to defend this great country. Why do they always think that the Pentagon and contractors like us are wasting money? Without the various equipment we make, do we have to let the soldiers fight the enemy with their teeth?" After hearing the reason why Otilia was absent from the party, Tommy immediately chose to support his ex-wife's work with great righteousness. His son's party was not worth mentioning at all.
"How long will it take you to arrive? There are some more important issues that I think we can discuss in person."
"What's a more important question, a more important question than what you just said?"
"Our wedding, Tommy. One of the conditions for me to remarry you is that you owe me a wedding."
Tommy agreed immediately: "Of course, the details of the wedding need to be discussed slowly by the two of us alone. It is a romance between the two of us, and our three children have no right to participate."
Otilia hung up the phone, and Tommy leaned back in his chair. "Can you believe it? She even considered missing such an important internal discussion because of a child's 18th birthday party. Come on, she is paid a high salary by taxpayers! She also acts like her family is more important. Without money from me, a taxpayer, and if she doesn't help me solve the problem, how will her children have the party? The biggest mistake I made was marrying her."
"Once when you asked me to help Chief Justice Farrell with some trivial matters, I happened to hear her complaining about similar things to General Leon's wife, Ms. Ashley." John said as he drove fast on the road.
"What did she say?" Tommy asked, looking out the window at the Long Island scenery that was moving away.
John said, "She said her biggest mistake was believing your blessing to her to start a new life after divorcing you."
“Routine operation.”
