The Tomb of Bill Gates

A smelly breeze from nearby fish-packing plants on the Seattle waterfront wafted across the two men standing before a one-story brick building. Given their intense mutual interest in the building, both chose to ignore the odor.

"This is it, sir: the operating center of Microsoft Shareware. On the outside, an unassuming old warehouse. Inside, a labyrinth of complexity and intellectual creativity. We've mapped it digitally in three dimensions, as you requested---including the burial chamber."

"I'm sure it'll make a fine museum," assessed the software mogul, optimistically. "Especially if we find Gates interred there.

The archaeologist keyed the door code and they entered. The mogul from Mars gasped at the indirectly-lighted, open interior with its wilderness of tall, cryptically-marked partitions. Each partitioned work area had its own lamps; but these were turned off, and the computer programmers who formerly used them were long gone. The building had been kept in good condition by the court-appointed Receiver for many years until the legal maneuvering had ended.

"Impressive. This place really is a labyrinth."

"Yes, sir. The place was metaphorically modeled after the classic Microsoft PC operating system, Windows. It was the old company's premier product, and was itself quite labyrinthine. People using it often became confused and suddenly found themselves outside it. In imitation of that program, several of these corridors lead to outside doors or to dead-end walls with Windows error messages inscribed on them. It was a sort of self-mocking corporate jest."

"Amusing. The museum's visitors will, no doubt, appreciate it."

"No doubt... As I wrote you: after Microsoft was broken up into seventeen independently-operating divisions by the government, Gates and his closest associates sold off their old Microsoft stock and started up a new shareware firm which wrote inexpensive computer programs that competed with the commercial software of their former competitors. It was revenge against the conspiracy which promoted the Breakup.... By the way, of the seventeen miniBills, only the Microsoft Realty Corporation was successful. It owned and managed the 23-acre Redmond campus of office buildings."

"Predictable," replied the software mogul. He clearly understood cutthroat competition in software. His was the preeminent firm on both Mars and Earth for the new artificial intelligence used in many devices. He was a great admirer of the historical Microsoft, and he was more ruthless than Bill Gates had ever been. "But Gates wasn't allowed to continue his clever revenge enterprise, was he?"

"No. After several cease-and-desist warnings, the Antitrust Police raided this place and put it out of business. The top officers escaped to Indonesia, where they reorganized---all except Gates. He disappeared. We now know that he died before the raid, and was entombed within this building. That's why I requested your presence. We're ready to open his newly-discovered sarcophagus."

The mogul's expression brightened. "Will there be treasure in it?"

"I'm not certain about that. I wouldn't count on finding anything. Gates was not a man to spend a lot of time collecting." The scientist suddenly remembered he was talking to an enthusiastic and reknowned collector of valuable objects. "Uh, he did some collecting, but he was primarily a workaholic."

The two men wound their way through the building's mapped labyrinth until they reached the company Conference Room. On the long table there, the archaeologist removed from his attache case a glass preservation-slide. In it, was a yellowed scrap of paper.

"This is the Ballmer Fragment. It's an excerpt from a diary kept by Gates' chief associate." He handed the slide to his sponsor, who read it aloud:

"`Behind an electrical panel'?"

"Yes, sir. The Softies were very clever.... Follow me."

In a nearby corridor was an electrical closet. Inside it was a wall-sized panel with meters, circuit breakers, and switchboxes. It also contained the controls for the antiintrusion sensors.

Without warning, the archaeologist yanked down the handle at the side of a switchbox labeled in red, "MAIN LIGHTING." They were instantly plunged into inky blackness. The back wall of the closet unlatched electromagnetically at one side, and was pulled open as easily as the front door of a residence.

"What the...?" The mogul experienced a sharp, unreasoning fear. "I can't see a thing."

The archaeologist snapped on a flashlight. Behind the now-open panel was a downward-sloping concrete corridor.

"The tomb is down there. Its designers figured that nobody would turn off the lighting in this windowless building. Good psychology. That made it likely the tomb would remain concealed."

The two men moved slowly down the corridor. The concrete floor leveled out, and ahead they could see a steel door. When they reached it, the archaeologist keyed it open, and they stepped inside.

"The tomb of William H. Gates III," declared the proud scientist.

He handed his flashlight to his companion. The mogul swept its beam over the burial chamber. He stopped it at a marble sarcogaphus in the center, then illuminated the rest of the chamber until he was satisfied that it held no golden treasure. In fact, aside from the sarcophagus, the only other furnishing was a full-length mirror mounted on a wall.

"A mirror?... Did the Gates plan to leave his coffin and check on his appearance?" the mogul jested. He knew that computer people often had strange eccentricities.

"It's for visitors, sir... it seems."

The mogul pondered his reflection in the mirror. It showed a man who was easily seen as being of the Gates-class commercial nobility, but more-elegantly groomed than most younger software tycoons.

"What're those words at the top? I don't know the language."

"It's in ancient Latin, the language of mottos." The archaeologist seemed hesitant to volunteer a translation of the Roman letters etched on the glass.

"Well?... What's it say?"

"Uh, it translates more or less as `FOOLISH IS HE WHO COVETS THE WEALTH AND POWER OF ANOTHER.'"

In the dim illumination of the mogul's face by the flashlight, the anxious archaeologist was relieved to see that his sponsor was smiling.

"How true. How very true." The mogul turned to the sarcophagus. "Have you opened this, yet?"

"No, sir," fibbed the scientist. "I wanted you to be the first to view the remains of the fabulous software king. If you'll give me a hand, we'll push back the lid. It's rather heavy."

The two men, straining, thrust aside the thick lid just enough for a peep inside.

It was empty.

"How disappointing," shrugged the man whose money had purchased the building and its archaeo-examination. "Grave robbers, I presume?"

"Yes, sir." The archaeologist reflected for a moment on the sorry probabilities. "The Java Gang, most likely." Noticing the quizzical expression on the face of his sponsor, he added, "That's what Gates called his conspiratorial competitors."

The mogul carefully used his flashlight to further inspect the empty sarcophagus, in case it might contain tiny-but-valuable grave goods.

"There's something engraved in the bottom of this. Have a look and tell me what it says."

In the wavering beam of the flashlight, the archaeologist mumbled the words, as if they were new to him. "More Latin. It says: `THE ULTIMATE PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE IS SILENCE.' Gates was something of a philosopher," Then he sympathized, "I'm terribly sorry his remains are missing."

The Martian tycoon allowed himself only a soft sigh to reveal his disappointment at the loss of the corporeal remains he so coveted and had felt were within his grasp. But he was not a man to cry over spilled milk.

"Professor, when my Museum of Antique Software opens here, this sarcophagus will contain a mummy that looks exactly as history remembers Bill Gates: spectacles, unkempt hair, smirk---correct in every detail. This tomb will be the exciting climax of the visitor's tour. I'll get everything I need from..."

"Please don't tell me any more, sir. I'm only a subcontractor."

The men left the chamber.... Behind the thick concrete wall on which the cautionary mirror was mounted, in a meta-tomb beyond a tomb, the cleverly-stashed mortal remains of Bill Gates slumbered undisturbed toward eternity.

Frederick Rustam is a retired civil servant who writes science fiction for the Web as a hobby. He formerly indexed technical documents for the Department of Defense. He finds constructing imaginary worlds of the future to be more rewarding than indexing the technology of our times.

As to other of his works, he says: "I have no webpage. My Web existence is entirely in ezines, mostly of the SFF&H variety. As a substitute for a webpage, I've been indexed by the Web search engines, and my readers can read some of my other stories by this means. As a former indexer, I find this gratifying."

E-mail:frustam@CapAccess.org

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