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There are some truths to this world, although not many. For one, his name is Graham Greene, that is indisputable (in all of its Kristeraian glory). No one can change that, save himself. But he would never do that, not in a million millennia. For being who he is, the truth be told, is his sole asset.
Graham Greene was finishing his shave. That is a fact, no one would ever disagree with it, although it would be true to say he was doing other things as well. He was humming a 20th century pop-song that was recently re-recorded by a currently fashionable female dance group. They did not play instruments, they had never written a word of the lyrics they sang, they were young, could follow the choreographed maneuvers with the agility of a child’s toy and were willing to don whatever atrocious, caparison costumes they were asked to wear. They were the most popular music group in the nation. They would win all the awards at that year’s ceremonies. Graham loved them, he simply adored their sound, he enjoyed with an endless fascination watching them move on stage, the glimpses of their heaving chests, the line that was always visible of a long slender thigh, their perfect, surgical faces, their mouths that formed the words, their faces that seemed so passionate about another person’s words.
Beside the tune he absently mimicked and the fleeting images of the young women, Graham was considering other things. Very important things, things that he would forget within the week but that were, for now, his entire existence. In Graham, it must be said, was an almost mithridatized and bovaristic psychology, he was incredibly adept at the object of his focus, but a miserable failure at balancing anything else. He was not complex, to explain it curtly, in a clinic sense. But he was uncannily talented in the one subject he was currently interested in; he was the best at the one thing he was doing at a given moment. Should you watch him playing a game, he would appear to be a master. Should you catch him in negotiations with a potential client, you would believe him to be an expert. Graham Greene was the perfect control element in any experiment; he was like a fixture of a landscape that gave the area its character, a feature that would never, ever change. He was the perfect product of his environment, a Protagorasian archetype as yet unidentified by the golden bough of society’s ever-reaching family tree.
Graham Greene was an A-lister, he was thirty-eight and Senior Vice President of the sixth largest advertising agency in the world, Hidiger, Popov, & Schlesinger. He was tall, muscular, handsome, and confident. Graham was just the right man, he was six-foot-six, one hundred and eighty pounds, with a thirty-four inch waist and size ten shoes. His hair was dark brown, his complexion was olive, without being oily, his eyes were brown, his teeth were white, his nose was the perfect complement to his stern profile, he had a strong jaw, a rigid, but pleasant mouth, thin, pink lips, and well-groomed eyebrows. He was not too tall, but maintained a commanding presence; he was not too good looking, but attractive enough for people to turn to look at him. He always scored above average on every test he ever took, from his bi-monthly mental health exams, to his intelligence tests. His physical examinations were always perfect, he’d never been sick, he’d never injured any part of his body, he’d never grown tired, sad, or angry. Graham was an A-lister man if ever there was one.
He owned four houses on three continents, an armada of sports cars, a helicopter, a private jet, one championship style sailing vessel, a speedboat, a houseboat, a fishing trawler, and two yachts. He had fashionable apartments in Paris, New York, Beijing, Johannesburg, Sydney, and Rio. He skied in the winter, sailed in the summer, hunted in the fall, and vacationed in the spring. He was always well over his purchasing goals, had a line of credit that extended into the millions, never went in debt too far, and kept his own personal accountant, lawyer, doctor, and pharmacist. Graham was always invited to the right parties, always present at major events, knew the most important people, lunched with senators, royalty, and barons of industry.
He came from a long line of great men. Graham’s great-grandfather had invented the interpolar breeding apparatus and had single-handedly saved the whales from extinction. His grandfather had curtailed the family fortune made from the interpolar breeding apparatus and began a not-so-for-profit world wildlife heritage organization that had ensured the continued existence of terrestrial animals from the lion to the dung beetle. The Greene name was known, well known. Graham’s father had taken over for his father when the elder Greene was in his sixties and increased the protection of GreeneNet, as the organization was called, to include amphibians, reptiles and crustacean. Before Graham was a teenager, the word extinction had disappeared from dictionaries and encyclopedias. The world was populated with every kind of animal that naturally occurred in its environment.
The Greene’s were elected to public office, put in charge of large operations, offered posts in government departments and given first class citizenship. They were known for their consumerism, their piety, and their unending drive for success. Only the Greene’s could save the North American Rock Turtle and they had. Only the Greene’s could save the South African Jackass Penguin and they had. Only the Greene’s could develop over-breeding policies that were humane, as well as comprehensive. Greene’s ran all the major parks in all the world’s regions. Graham’s uncle ran Etosha, Kruger, Chobe, and Lesotho. Graham’s cousin ran Corbett, Sawai Modhpur, and Kindhar. His brother-in-law ran Everglade, Olympia, Appalachia, and Colorado. Another one of his cousins ran Nullarbor, Tanami, Barrier Reef, and MacDonnell. Graham, himself, had interned at his great-uncle, Tobias’ Maud Land Reserve for two summers, overseeing the migration of the Antarctic Spiked Dolphin.
Graham had come into this world destined for leadership, destined to be important. He had scored first in all his courses throughout first and secondary school and was elected to the Nantucket School for Gifted Youngsters four years before normal acceptance. He was twelve when he won his first Yager Award, thirteen when he was first recognized by the government for his consumer protocol influence achievements in his community, and seventeen when he left home to begin college in Baghdad. Graham impressed everyone he met (in an almost bodhisattvian manner), he could recite Shakespeare from memory, he could define the half-life of any element on the periodic table, he could explain to a two-year-old why the sun did not stop burning. When he was twenty-one, his first novel, The Superb and Laughing Adventures of Baron van Klepto, received the Indigo World First Book Award from the Foundation for Cultural Unification and sold over twenty-million copies within the first year of its publication. Graham was also an expert athlete, holding world records in the fifty-meter dash, the aquatic marathon, and distance jumping, two of which still stand today. He played for the Brasilia Wild Cats Professional Netball team for eight seasons and saw them to three world championships. This followed with his starring roles in over twelve major motion pictures, most notably and the one he won the Tommy for, Fatso Got a Melon, grossed over six hundred million numbers. With just the right timing, Graham’s first album coincided with his last picture, Darwin’s Sense of Humor, a not publicly well-received movie, but critically the most important of his career, and he gracefully transitioned from actor to musician, producing four top-10 albums in just two years.