by Zach BROWN

Born in Lafayette, In­di­ana in the mid 1980’s, I was fast to ma­ture and take on great tasks. By the age of 3, I was al­ready 6′2″ and rul­ing Nepal, a small coun­try in south­ern Asia, with an iron fist. I man­aged to save the na­tion from im­mi­nent eco­nom­ic fail­ure as I es­tab­lished a good trad­ing re­la­tion­ship with much of Eu­rope, and pro­ceed­ed to es­tab­lish a mul­ti­par­ty democ­ra­cy with­in the frame­work of a con­sti­tu­tion­al monar­chy. Called back to the soft hills of In­di­ana, I ar­rived in ’91 to my na­tive land, where I ad­vised Pres­i­dent Bush on for­eign af­fairs while he stayed at my home dur­ing trips to cities around the area. This was not a high point in my life, as one could tell.

Af­ter my long stint in pol­i­tics, I de­cid­ed to go in­to a field that may help the world. This field was tech­nol­o­gy. I teamed with a very am­bi­tious Bill Gates of Mi­crosoft Corp. to plan and de­vel­op what would lat­er be tagged Win­dows 95. This was the first prac­ti­cal op­er­at­ing sys­tem for the per­son­al com­put­er, and though I played an in­stru­men­tal part in the de­vel­op­ment and mar­ket­ing of the prod­uct, I de­clined meet­ings with the press and even to have my pic­ture tak­en. This was a dark time in my life and though my achieve­ments were many, the pres­sure of be­ing an eight year old ex-po­lit­i­cal icon/software de­vel­op­er and one of the great­est minds of our time re­al­ly be­gan to weigh up­on my spir­it. I sought the on­ly true place that was home to me: Lafayette, In­di­ana. Up­on re­turn­ing, I en­rolled in Lin­coln El­e­men­tary, where I stud­ied for the next 2 years. I worked in my spare time as a tu­tor and a life­guard at the lo­cal swim­ming pool, where I saved lives dai­ly and was a con­stant in the lo­cal news re­ports. Many revered me as the hero of mankind, and though this was im­mense­ly flat­ter­ing, it was al­so a bit creepy and I of­ten found my­self chang­ing phone num­bers every 4.6 days. This was not the way I want­ed to live.

Seek­ing shel­ter af­ter a teary good­bye to my fam­i­ly and friends af­ter mak­ing what may have been the tough­est de­ci­sion in my life; I moved to North­west Africa and changed my iden­ti­ty. I was now a new man. A one Bret K. Shep­ard. Up­on ar­rival, I be­gan work at a small vil­lage hos­pi­tal in Mau­ri­ta­nia where the Fu­la Maci­na tribe set­tled and con­tin­ued on my jour­ney to save and en­rich the lives of those around me. I earned no pay, but was giv­en prop­er shel­ter and food to sur­vive. I found the peo­ple of Fu­la Maci­na to be very grate­ful and a wel­com­ing and in­tel­li­gent group of peo­ple, though they were far be­hind the times in things such as agri­cul­ture. I in­tro­duced them to many tech­nolo­gies and taught them how to prop­er­ly plow fields to gain the most efficiency.

Feel­ing home­sick, I re­turned home, though un­der my new iden­ti­ty, and was home schooled by my un­cle, a for­mer Ox­ford pro­fes­sor and cor­re­spon­dent for Ra­dio Free Eu­rope. I be­gan to im­merse my­self in new op­por­tu­ni­ties and hob­bies, grow­ing tired of the things I had been in­ter­est in when a young boy. I was grow­ing up now, al­most 7′3″ and 12 years old. I found an im­me­di­ate in­ter­est in arche­ol­o­gy and be­gan to or­ga­nize my very own ex­pe­di­tions to Be­lize, Jor­dan, and the most suc­cess­ful, Jerusalem, where I found many old ar­ti­facts which now lie in the Lon­don Mu­se­um of Archeology.

Rem­i­nisc­ing one night in front of a fire with my grand­fa­ther, a No­bel Prize win­ner in the field of Phys­i­ol­o­gy and Med­i­cine, my thoughts wan­dered to my days in Nepal and Mau­ri­ta­nia and yearned for them. That night, I be­gan work on what would be­come my first and great­est pub­li­ca­tion. It was to be a non-fic­tion work of my days in the beau­ti­ful desert of Mau­ri­ta­nia and my won­der­ful yet hec­tic time in Nepal. Af­ter re­leas­ing the book, I be­gan a world­wide tour that took me every­where from Syd­ney, Aus­tralia to Am­s­ter­dam, Nether­lands to Los An­ge­les, Cal­i­for­nia. I did not tour Asia or Africa with the book, but I did arrange to vis­it Mau­ri­ta­nia in May of ’01 and stayed there for 8 months, tak­ing in the coun­try’s rich sights and smells. In Ju­ly ’01, 2 months in­to my stay, I in­vit­ed Vice Pres­i­dent Ch­eney to stay with me for a few weeks and he gra­cious­ly ac­cept­ed, though on­ly stayed for 2 weeks, stat­ing he had much too much work to do to va­ca­tion any longer. In Jan­u­ary of 2002, I made my way to Mons, Bel­gium, a fa­mous site of World War I, and am cur­rent­ly still en­joy­ing a pros­per­ous and re­lax­ing stay here, oc­ca­sion­al­ly fill­ing in for Ed O’Brien, gui­tar play­er of the in­ter­na­tion­al­ly known band, Ra­dio­head, when they are on tour and he can not make it. I am con­sid­er­ing a star­ring role in the up­com­ing re­make of Rocky I‑IV, (no, no Rocky V) but I think time con­straints and a lack of mo­ti­va­tion to make a come­back to the main­stream will stop me in the end.

Filed under Fiction on January 27th, 2004

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