On the evening of his thirteenth birthday Hiram Nigglefish was sad, but then he watched the Academy Awards on television and something clicked.

Hiram was of Asian descent, but had been adopted at birth by a quiet couple of Jewish ancestry. Up to his thirteenth birthday Hiram enjoyed taking care of his pet goldfish and reading books checked out of his public school's library. The day after his birthday Hiram flushed the fish down the toilet and returned the Beverly Cleary and Lloyd Alexander stories to the library, some of them half-read.

He immersed himself in all things having to do with film and cinema. He went to the adult library and checked out books on script-writing and directing. He begged his parents to enroll him in acting classes. He joined up with the community theater's children's troupe.

Hiram looked to the future and saw that it involved electronics. He saved his allowance and paper route money and eventually bought a cheap computer, which he dismantled with the help of a text and then reassembled.

By the time he was sixteen Hiram knew the latest computer programming languages, had seen every art film his home town's small alternative theater had to offer, as well as every major blockbuster of the previous three years.

To support his interests Hiram worked two part time jobs, as well attending high school. He made A's in every course, doing extra curricular work in physics and astronomy, and studying macro and micro economics and international politics on his own.

While in high school his drama department put on a total of eight plays. Hiram acted in five of those plays, directed two, and wrote another. He did elaborate set designs for the other play.

Hiram received a scholarship to study computers and electronics at a prestigious university. He also immersed himself in film courses, acting, set design, cinematography, and took a minor's worth of courses in political science.

One day while taking a small break in the library he came across a book of absurdist essays. Over the next few weeks Hiram memorized every single one of those essays, and he devoured every other book he could find with similar contents.

In four years Hiram Nigglefish had a degree in computer science, electronic engineering, and theater. He continued his studies in computers and electronics, as well as dabbling in more political science courses. While finishing his Ph.d's Hiram sold a few screen plays to Hollywood to pay for his student loans.

His parents were very proud. Hiram maintained a strict conservatism throughout his life. He partook of drugs and drink in those social situation where such substances greased the wheels of interaction between himself and people of potential influence. He engaged in sexual activity to assuage his temporary cravings and to assure those same potential influentials that he was completely normal and harmless by their standards.

After receiving his Ph.d's Hiram took on a job at At&T's Bell laboratories and helped to design several communication innovations, as well as internet tools and electronic efficiency systems. His work was nominated for a Nobel prize in physics, which he thankfully didn't win.

Hiram continued to work on screenplays while working for At&T and also wrote a few books of absurdism and farce, under an assumed name.

Eventually Hiram was able to afford the down payment on a loan, which he used to produce a movie. The move did nominally well and he was able to profit on his investment. He made a few more movies this way, and then directed a string of low budget art films which won him critical acclaim and a few invitations to the Cannes film festival.

Hiram continued to do communications and electronics research in his own lab while directing big budget Hollywood pictures. More than one actor and actress from his films were nominated and won academy awards.

Every so often, maybe once or twice a month, Hiram was seen to be smiling for a few seconds.

Hiram kept his hand in the international politics scene, writing an occasional article for Newsweek and Time under an assumed name.

Eventually Hiram's work as director was nominated for an academy award. Thanks to several clandestine and anonymous bribes, he was able to ensure that he did not win the award.

With every successful film Hiram's fortune grew. Eventually he was made a member of the Academy itself. Hiram rose to become president of the academy for a few years, and even produced a few of the award shows.

Working with executives from various ad agencies, Hiram was able to familiarize himself with contract negotiation techniques. At the same time his innovations in physics, electronics, and communication saw a gigantic leap in the efficiency of television broadcasting, the monitoring of those broadcasts, and the study of participation in broadcasting. Hiram helped to develop a pseudo-virtual-reality environment, where television gave participants unprecedented access to their favorite shows and stars. Ad executives were able to see instantly the impact their work had on viewers.

Further developments made for advertisement archiving advances. Thanks to Hiram's work from Hollywood on his movies and television shows, as well as his research, advertising agencies could construct commercials virtually on the spot, and feed them to viewers instantaneously during TV breaks.

Hiram used his connection to become an executive producer for a variety of sporting events, such as the Super Bowl and and World Series. He negotiated "impulse advertising contracts," where ad execs would call in and bid for a ten second or thirty second spot while the game was being played. The switchboard was bombarded after a spectacular 83 yard kick return for a touchdown, and within seconds Hiram negotiated seven and half million dollars for the thirty second commercial that followed. Similar lucrative on-the-spot negotiations netted the networks that carried these innovations stupendous windfalls.

Before long the various entertainment industries had budgets and assets rivaling that of the governments of international superpowers.

And then Hiram threw himself into another film. He invested heavily in it, wrote the script, did the casting, directed it, oversaw all special effects work, and editing. Hiram choreographed the advertising for the film, took care of distribution, and made certain everyone in the world knew who was responsible for it.

The movie opened simultaneously in fifteen countries in English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Portuguese, both major spoken forms of Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, and Russian. A week later it was subtitled in over forty other languages and dialects.

Speculators built extra movie theaters in anticipation of the films draw, and were not disappointed. It was easily the most watched movie of all time, grossed a record breaking gate on it's first day which dwarfed the combined gates of every previous record holder.

Merchandising on the film caused world-wide solidarity in social and economic trends.

At the academy awards, Hiram negotiated a spot on production, and through various sobriquets and pseudonyms was able to become the sole benefactor of the show. Every dollar of profit the show made would go into Hiram's pocket. He also made certain the show would be simulcast live in every major country in the world. No tape delays. Citizens in various parts of the world stayed up until three in the morning, local time, to watch the show.

Hiram's movie won every major award, and most of the minor ones. Many of the awards were accepted by stand-ins for Hiram himself. When the award for best picture was announced, Hiram made his first and last appearance on the academy awards show stage. He received a fifteen minute standing ovation.

Finally the crowd grew silent. Hiram approached the microphone. Already a blitz had begun by the various advertising conglomerates world-wide for the commercial following his speech. Hiram used a special pocket-held communication device and a simplistic Braille reader to negotiate the single largest transaction of money in the history of the world.

Translators and closed-captioning were poised and ready.

Hiram looked out at the live audience, into the cameras at the population of the planet. he said:

"Ever since my thirteenth birthday, when I found out I was adopted, when I was told that I would never know my true parents, when I realized that I would never know who my ancestors were, I have sought an even greater sense of loss and loneliness than I felt on that day."

And then what followed was a ten minute diatribe consisting of the most absurd, goofy, silly, weird, and totally inane string of sentences that had ever been put together. No one who had ever met Hiram Nigglefish or read about him or who had seen his work would ever have guessed in a million years that he was capable of expressing such looniness. In was random, pointless, and non-stop. The very few television sets and monitors in the world which had not been tuned to the show soon became tuned to the show, their owners receiving alarmed tips from neighbors and friends. Hiram amazed the craziest people in the world, the flakiest, the most self-indulgent and the one's with the lowest self esteem.

Afterwards, absolutely no one agreed on what he had said, or why.

II.

Hiram Nigglefish was the richest person in the world. He had more cash than most countries, more controlling influences, more stocks, more bonds, more ownership titles. If anyone came close to owning the globe, it was Hiram.

After the award show, Hiram became a recluse. He would see no one, and what communications he made were under assumed identities, acting in his own name. Hiram made deals and acquired. He saw to the super structuring of more internet and communications systems, and used his superior understanding of their inner workings to gain complete control of their networks.

He continued research in various areas, publishing papers under pseudonyms to stimulate the research of more innovations by other institutions.

Eventually, Hiram bought a fully operational Space Shuttle, and directed a team of technicians in a reworking of some of it's systems.

When the work was finished, Hiram climbed into the cockpit, and owing to it's remote location, launched himself into orbit without any eyewitnesses. Successful manipulations in his communications networks made certain no one detected his launch at any of the space-monitering installations or radar arrays on the planet.

On the night of his 113th birthday, Hiram Nigglefish was sad. He opened a panel, flipped a switch, and pressed a button. Then he went to sleep.

As he slept, every intercontinental ballistic missile with a nuclear war-head launched itself into space, and headed for the moon. Thanks to various key pre-explosions, ninety percent of the missiles, despite running out of fuel, were able to make it to the moon's surface on shockwaves.

Simultaneous with their detonation, nuclear power plants around the globe suffered meltdowns, igniting explosions and knocking the earth's magnetic poles out of whack.

Around the planet, every electronic device shut down.

The moon was blasted off it's orbit, and crashed into the earth.

The earth was rocked from it's own orbital path, and spiraled into the sun.

Hiram woke, his ship having sling-shotted itself outward and away from the earth's gravitational pull. He checked his instruments. The earth was gone. Every single human except himself was dead. He was utterly alone. He had enough power and food for one month of survival.

Hiram Nigglefish nodded his head.

III.

30 days later, Hiram looked up from the last of his food supplies and the gauge on the oxygen tanks, which read zero. Out the window of his cabin he saw the body of an alien attach itself to his ship. The alien peered in at him.

As Hiram watched, as he breathed the last of his oxygen, the alien slowly, slowly, shook it's head.