She finally arrived at the office and the secretary motioned for her to go inside.
“He is expecting you.”
Seo-yun opened the door and stepped inside the office. It looked more like a command room than an office, both the right and the left wall were screens six meters wide and three tall, the one on her left showed hundreds of graphs, statistics and projections, while the one on the right showed multitude of data that was constantly changing, faster than she could follow. In the center of the room was a pair of comfortable couches with a low table between them, at the end of the room was a so called “control desk” a variety of windows were open on its glass surface or were floating just above it, holograms similar to the one found on the alien ship, though much less advanced. Tomas Klein sat at the table his hand furiously working above the table, bringing up new windows or dismissing them with a gesture, two comfortable chairs were placed in front of the desk. When Seo-yun approached the middle of the room he cleared the desk of all the windows and then with a tap turned the wall screens off, they now showed a beautiful recording of a sunny day on a grass plane. He met her eyes and held her glare.
“So you’ve finally found time to look through the files.” He said with a slight smile.
“Yes, and there is much I wish to discuss with you.” Seo-yun replied evenly. He stood up and walked up to the couch on Seo-yun’s right, he sat down and indicated that she sit on the other. She hesitated for a second before relenting and taking the seat across him. He watched her calmly, relaxed as if he didn’t have a care in the world. She studied him for a moment before finally speaking.
“How is it that no one knows how big Olympus really is?” She asked.
“Oh, there are people who know, but they, like everybody else simply don’t care.” He responded cheerfully.
“How can they not care? Olympus is a private company, a word from you can cripple the entire world economy.”
“It is human nature, as long as everything works, they don’t care, I have always dealt fairly with everyone, those in the government that know keep it hidden because it suits them, Olympus keeps the economy running, making their jobs easier, as for the rest, they ignore our expansion because dealing with us brings them money, and our removal would mean losing their wealth. As for those ignorant, they listen what the media tells them, and believe them, they have no desire to learn of things that don’t concern them, as long as they have a comfortable life, which Concordis provides.”
“That’s insane.” She said.
“Yes it is. And that is the way most everyone in the world operates, they follow the design set before them, they finish school, they get a job, they marry, they have children and they die. They don’t care about anything outside their own little world. I have created Olympus for people who wish to live different kind of life. A life that is a journey, a path, were they never stop, but always keep reaching for that goal at the end.”
“So you believe that having a family is wrong?” She asked, that part irked her a bit, she always wanted a family of her own.
“No, you misunderstood me. I have nothing against family, what I despise is monotony, it’s suffocating, it destroys good people, and it prevents progress. How many married people you know that have been together for years, who say they love each other, and yet they are miserable.”
She knew a lot, many of her colleagues were married, and she could see that they have lost something, not because they were married but because of the thing Tomas mentioned, monotony, routine, that is the probably the biggest reason why people cheat, why they do things they wouldn’t otherwise. Not that everyone was like that, just most of them.
“There are many people within Olympus that are married” Tomas continued “But every single person in Olympus is there because they are like me. They crave something more than the ordinary everyone else holds as the utmost achievement in life. They want to do things that no one else has done, to be part of something else, even if they themselves don’t know what it is, they hear that call within themselves, and they had the courage to reach beyond the path that they have been put on. Do you understand?”
“Yes.” She said, and she really did understand. It took this conversation to make her see that the past months while she was working at Olympus were the happiest days of her life, she had always felt the thing that Tomas described, but until now she just didn’t realize it. She had been searching for something, she had jumped from school to school, getting degrees in many areas, always searching for something she herself didn’t realize she needed. And now it seemed like she finally found it with Olympus. “I understand.”
Tomas smiled. “I know that you do. That’s why I hired you in the first place.”
“We’ve gone off topic. Why did you really start Olympus? You have accumulated power and yet you don’t do anything with it. All you do is work and expand, and I have access now, I know how much you work every day, you don’t indulge yourself in the slightest, anyone else with your kind of wealth would be spending it as fast as he could earn it. So tell me the real reason for creating Olympus, you have invested in every kind of research man could think of.”
Tomas looked at the wall to the green field and blue sky projected there, he seemed to be studying it closely. She waited patiently until he suddenly turned his eyes and locked them with hers.
“My first memory is of the clear night sky, I was in the wilderness with my parents, this was just before they died, I don’t remember why or where, but I do remember the stars, they are my first and clearest childhood memory. Ever since that moment I have been enamored with them, I have always wanted to reach them, to grasp them in my hand. You asked me why I built Olympus. I built it to fulfill my childhood dream, to go among the stars. Over time, as I grew that dream evolved from my reaching the stars to me taking the humanity with me. Everything I have ever done, was for that purpose, the ship we found has just accelerated my plans, but Olympus is my gateway to the stars.”
Seo-yun was struck by the intensity of his words, coming from anyone else it would seem as a childish dream, a thing you might say if someone asked what your dream was. But coming from Tomas it had an entirely different feel. This was the man who built a worldwide empire, who could have ruled the world if he so wished, a man who had devoted his whole being to the purpose of fulfilling his dream.
“And what happens when you fulfill your dream, when you reach the stars?” She asked
Tomas smiled yet again, but this time his smile seemed lighter, warm. “You, Seo-yun, better than anyone should know the size of the universe, the number of stars in the sky. My dream is one that can never be fulfilled, a goal that can never be reached, and that is precisely why it is a dream worth reaching for.”
Hearing his words, for the first time in a long time Seo-yun felt like her life was on a path that was right for her. She looked at Tomas, in his green eyes she saw a glint of something, a drive unlike anything she had ever seen. She looked at his face, his words were that of a madman, and perhaps he was a bit mad. He had to be, to do what he had done all for a childhood dream. There were easier ways to reach the stars, he could have become an astronaut, but instead, he conquered the world, and chose to bring all of humanity with him on the journey towards his dream.
Chapter Six