Prologue

I looked through the plane window, leaning over my girlfriends Angie and Lucy, saying goodbye to everything I knew, embarking on a wild adventure. Looking around, I saw my five other girlfriends deep in thought, undoubtedly preoccupied with the same types of feelings. A group of journalists and cameramen sat relaxed settled nicely in my hundred-seater executive jet plane. They just learned that I owned it, adding to my mystique and the clandestine way we were taking off in a direction unknown.

“I own a plane”, I thought to myself, chuckling, “who would have guessed”. If someone told me that I would set up a successful business and sell it for ninety-three billion a year later while still a teenager, I would tell them to get off drugs. My majordomo Charles told me that I had the same business sense as my grandfather, a man I never met. I lived all my life as a simple boy, single child of a county sheriff. I don’t know how I could possibly develop those skills. I was, of course, smart enough to know that it wasn’t all me, but the tireless work and dedication of hundreds of women who decided to join me. All of them contributed something to make it work.

“Attention, please”, Lola interrupted everyone, referring to journalists on board the plane. “Dear friends, we have chosen you for your excellent reputation and quality work to spend a week with us on Jack’s Island”.

“What’s Jack’s island?” one eager journalist asked immediately. Lola smiled at her, not minding the interruption. “It used to be an island in the Caribbean owned by Jack, which we bought out completely from Venezuela and registered it as an independent country, ruled by one king, Jack the first”. Everyone gasped, shifting their looks from Lola to me and back. It took them a while to process what she just said. Immediately Lola was bombarded by questions, some of them redundant. Patiently with an amused smile, she answered. Thirty minutes later, they exhausted themselves, and Lola continued with her planned presentation, telling them about the island’s history and her involvement with it.

“So, help me understand. Jack gave you millions to play with, and you made a country”, asked one bewildered journalist. Lola said, “not just a country, a whole nation. All the people that you see here are its citizens”, and giggled. “Who are you” another journalist responded in shock. “My name is Lola. I work for Jack”.

The journalists didn’t know what to make of it all. “So Jack gave you the money, and you just built a whole new country? How on earth do you even get such an idea? Is it even possible?”

“Oh, it is very much possible. If you check with the United Nations, you will find Jack’s island there. Many of us came from poor backgrounds, some of us had terrible prospects in life. Jack asked me to use my imagination when he gave me an island and money to build a place where all of us were happy and welcome. Our own paradise. Unfortunately, we couldn’t just buy a large farm and do it there because it would still be subject to the laws of the country, so I decided to cut out the middleman, and we made a country of our own with Jack as the king.”

“But he is just a kid. How’s that even possible? How old is Jack?” Lola told them I was almost twenty now. Everyone just shook their heads, trying to process all she told them. I saw them look my way, sizing me up. I was five-eleven, good looking and muscular with chestnut hair and blue eyes, fit and sporty from all the martial arts and well dressed, attractive but nothing incredibly different from most other guys my age.

“The island is currently home to over three thousand people. Many new immigrants are coming each day from all over the world, looking for a better life and better future.”

“So you are actively trying to build it into a real country, and people around the world want to join?”

“Yes, that is correct. We have a backlog of over ten thousand applicants. The only reason we don’t bring them in yet is logistical.”

“And all those people decide to join you because they share your beliefs?”

“Absolutely! They all believe the same, want a better life and be a part of our family.”

“So, in essence, you are something like a religious cult on steroids?”

“Not really a perfect analogy. We have our own robust belief system, but most of us aren’t particularly religious. If anything, we believe in science and demonstrable facts, but we do have people who pray to God as well”, Lola said with a giggle. “On Jack’s island, everything is permitted that doesn’t hurt others or the island.”

“Everything? Even drugs?”

“Drugs are illegal because they harm you, so there aren’t any.”

The journalists frantically wrote down all that. Some have pulled out their laptops, typing it all in. It was a lot to digest. Lola went through the island’s early history, how it was just a large tropical island that, with a lot of help from a few dozen girls, she managed to urbanize, build a whole town, bungalows and four massive hotels. The entire island was made eco-friendly, water reclaimed from the sea, energy from wind farms and renewable sources with a heavy focus on sustainability. She told them how we spent millions pulling irrigation through the jungle, made little wooden paths around the islands, stone footpaths for electric scooters and people walking around. There were no pollutants, and all waste was either composted or recycled. She went on into the smallest details of how we created our own gold-backed cryptocurrency, made deals with offshore banks for clearing and trading with gold, a military alliance with Venezuela. There was a huge amount of information to process in a short span of time.

The journalists kept bombarding Lola with questions, and she kept answering them, painstakingly avoiding our biggest secret that everyone on the island was related. Those three thousand some inhabitants were all women, my girlfriends, my lovers, my friends, my bitches and my breeders. All the women on the island had one thing in common, my genes. They all were pregnant, carrying my children, which made them connected to me closer than anyone imagined.

It was the truth. I was building a nation, a genetically pure nation where every single person carried my genes. Moving to the island was easy. All you had to do was pass the screening and commit to having children with me, becoming a part of my family. The world outside was falling apart from all the political misadventures, wars, poverty and armed conflict. There was no way to fix this. As they say, the only way to win that game was not to play, and Jack’s island was the answer. We decided to build our own society where all the people are connected genetically, one huge family. None of us had the will or energy to try fixing the broken world. Instead, we decided to start anew, build our own world on Jack’s island, separate, isolated from most of the others.

Sitting on our sofas, we’ll watch the world burn, playing by our own rules, letting the others either tire out or destroy themselves while we mind our own business. We brought the journalists with us to show them our island to spread our message worldwide and tell millions of young women that there was another way. We didn’t want to hide, living in a jungle. We wanted the people to look up to us and see hope. It was a conscious effort to build a society based on a completely different set of beliefs we piloted inside my company.

I had no illusions and knew that for now, everyone would just laugh at the bunch of teenagers running around naked on a tropical island. Soon enough, though, as we develop, the conflict would find us, leaving us with the question, “what happens then?” The only way to create a stable society was to engineer it, and that’s what I set out to do by breeding thousands of my children. All previous efforts to achieve something similar have failed because they didn’t incorporate the most critical component; nurture.

I’ll watch my kids grow inside the framework I created, believing things I taught them. They will give birth to a new civilization, unlike the one drowning today. This was the whole nature versus nurture debate. You can’t just make kids and hope for a good outcome. You have to nurture the final result, lead the flock to the water and show them the way. My girls knew this from day one. They saw the light even before it became my plan. They sacrificed everything to help me reach this goal, and now with every breeder, we were a step closer.

Thousands of women worldwide wanted to join as breeders. It wasn’t the money or charmed life. They saw what we were doing and believed it with all their hearts. None more than those who called themselves bitches. My dedicated, fanatic loyal servants and believers were willing to sacrifice their lives for a better future, not for themselves but for everyone.

Lola kept answering questions one after another. The tireless journalists wanted to know everything. She told them about flocks of macaws flying around and friendly peacocks walking about. I got a little bored, so I snuggled against Lucy, closed my eyes and fell asleep. After we land, there will be little rest. I had a country to build and a nation to breed.