It seemed none of the headlines were alarming enough to get anyone to change their behavior. Headlines like, “How to Minimize the Amount of Polluted Air You Inhale While Exercising.” Headlines that effectively urged everyone accept their fate—the planet’s fate—at the hands of capitalism. Hands that were, incidentally, smooth, well-oiled and looked as if they had never worked a day in their life. Mainly because those hands—the hands that puppeteered the strings of capitalism—belonged to the millionaires and billionaires of the world. And it was no secret that the “work” they did to secure those “stacks on stacks” was typically delegated to others. People they could build their wealth on the backs of and then spin some yarn about how they were “self-made.” That was the yarn Felix von Beekman, the twenty-six-year-old son of billionaire Bradley von Beekman, had been spun his entire life. And the yarn that, only up until recently, Felix had genuinely believed.

How could he not? When you’re indoctrinated your entire life to think a certain way—to believe in something—it’s hard, if not almost impossible, to undo the conditioning. But Felix had been fortunate enough (just as he had in terms of his circumstances of birth) to encounter a woman who was willing to show him the error of his ways, of his beliefs. A woman he met at what Bradley would perennially call “that ‘pinko college’ I wasted my hard-earned money on.” A college that, naturally, was located in a particularly idyllic part of Northern California. A college where protests and general displays of political conscientiousness were de rigueur. And though Felix tried to resist participating in any such displays at first, he soon realized that attending such “events” (a.k.a. protests) were what would lead him to meeting a romantic prospect. Since it was clear to him from the very beginning that the “chicks” at this college were nothing if not far more politically active than they were sexually active.

And yes, at times, like his father, Felix would ask himself why he had chosen, of all the universities he could have attended, this particular one, so blatantly antithetical to his own politics and background. Except that, as far as Felix was concerned, he didn’t really even have any politics. Simply “lived his life” without thinking about much of anything “too serious.” Which was, of course, a distinct privilege of the rich. Though this “revelation” was something that Felix needed to be “informed of” by Luna, the “financial aid girl” that stole his heart. Yes, “financial aid girl” was how he referred to her at the start of his pursuit, addressing her behind closed doors the way his crew of fellow “frat goons” did when he made the mistake of mentioning aloud that he was interested in her. The moment he said it to them, he knew he should have kept it to himself. These were the types of boys (“men” was too grand a word) who looked for the videos that had been circulating online about how to drug your wife without her knowing so that she could be gang-raped while you watched. The types of boys who had never been told “no” about anything in their life. The types of boys who were most definitely looking for a “tradwife” they would inevitably cheat on when they weren’t drugging her so she could be gang-raped.

Technically, Felix was one of these types of boys. Or at least he was supposed to be. But even long before he had arrived to the college where he was supposed to embody these “ideals”—the ones of his fellow “frat goons”—Felix knew he didn’t truly believe in them. That something about adhering to such “ideals” was inherently laden with a kind of “ick factor” that he couldn’t quite put into words until Luna came along to do it for him.

Of course, getting Luna to even talk to him long enough to put Felix in his place took quite a bit of legwork. He had to endure many ignorings, many eye-rolls, many outright scoffs before she would even bother to look at him and listen to anything he might have to say. At first, he tried what he thought all “bitches” wanted: a grand gesture. For Felix, that meant the ultimate cliché of having a hundred dozen pink roses (he thought it was breaking enough of the cliché not to do red) to her dorm room. A gesture that Luna’s roommate, Stasia, was even more irritated by than Luna, for she was the homebody between the two of them, and hated that her “sacred space” had been infiltrated in this way. Indeed, the room was packed to the gills with these flowers, hardly spacious enough to accommodate so many. But, naturally, a boy like Felix wouldn’t think about something like that, himself living in a luxury apartment off-campus.

It was that luxury apartment that eventually got Luna to acknowledge him in a real way. For she needed a place to throw a surprise birthday party for Stasia, and the venue she had originally planned it at fell through at the eleventh hour, leaving Luna scrambling to find another option that was big enough to accommodate all the guests she had invited. That’s when she remembered: Felix was kind of obsessed with her and he had a huge-ass luxury apartment all to himself. When she faux-coyly asked him if he would oblige this request, he, in turn, feigned playing hard to get about it for the first minute or so before instantly agreeing. If he had known his apartment would be his “in” with Luna, he would have found a way to wield it a long time ago.

That night, as the liquor (and other assorted recreational drugs) flowed freely, Felix continued to use his apartment to his advantage by ushering Luna up to his bedroom (because of course the apartment had a spiral staircase that led to an entire upper floor). He said he wanted to “talk” to her privately and, because she had just downed her umpteenth tequila shot, she was amenable. When they both sat at the foot of his bed to “talk,” however, it was Luna who put a kibosh on any of Felix’s attempts to “confess his feelings” by grabbing him and kissing him like he might provide her with some kind of life force. And from that moment onward, it was actually Luna who provided a life force to Felix. In truth, he started to wonder how he had ever existed in the world without her, so blind was he to everything she opened his eyes to.

It was a blindness that Bradley had “worked hard” to (or rather, paid other people to) cultivate in his son, and he didn’t take kindly at all to what he was hearing from Felix about “this Luna person.” In truth, for Bradley to suddenly pay attention at all to what was going on in his son’s life was already a strong indication of just how much of a threat Luna seemed to pose to him. Or rather, to the trajectory he had long ago laid out for Felix. Whether or not Felix was genuinely interested in that trajectory was never something Bradley bothered to consider—because his future was patently “in the bag” from day one. He would take over the company and its many subsidiaries, marry three or six times (each time with a more ironclad prenup than the last) and aim to “sire” the ideal children to carry on the von Beekman “legacy.” A legacy which, as Luna reminded Felix every day, was rooted in exploitation. And that all the von Beekmans had blood on their hands that could never be washed clean. Unless, perhaps, Felix decided to not only renounce his inheritance once he got it, but give it away to people and organizations that could actually use it for good. To help undo the kind of now-normalized headlines that said things like, “How to Minimize the Amount of Polluted Air You Inhale While Exercising.”

Felix grew increasingly responsive to this suggestion. Or what Bradley would call “radicalized” by it. For he was privy to all of Luna’s “brainwashings” ever since he bugged every room they might possibly be in together and had both of them constantly tailed by his “on retainer” private investigator. There was nothing that Bradley didn’t know about Luna, the relationship or how Felix had been changed by it. And all of that information was instrumental to Bradley realizing that he would have to do something he might have once thought to be unthinkable: disinherit his only legitimate heir to “the throne.”

Bradley, in typical Machiavellian fashion, kept what he knew to himself, as well as his plans to change the will to leave everything to his most trusted business associate, Leonard Redmond, who also happened to be a primary shareholder in Von Beekman Industries, Inc. Leonard, he knew, would not let him down. Would do with the money what he had always believed Felix would: ensure the continued wealth and influence of the von Beekman name. But Felix had evolved past such notions with Luna whispering in his ear like some kind of commie Iago.

Five years into their relationship, with Bradley having consistently refused to ever meet Luna (he felt as if he knew her already anyway thanks to all his spying), Felix decided it was time to “pop the question.” Except, knowing full well that his father would probably disown him (not aware that he already had), he did so with the cowardly stipulation that they had to elope. That no one could know they were married, lest Bradley find out and take away the inheritance because of his prejudice against “poors” like Luna.

Luna, very aware of what a madman Felix’s father was, knew that Felix had a point. That if they wanted to “show love” for one another in this way, it had to be in secret. And while they could have just not bothered to do it at all, Felix wanted to ensure that Luna would automatically get Felix’s inheritance if anything happened to him. For Felix had drawn up a will of his own that stated should he die after getting his inheritance (and before they could give away all of it), it was to go to Luna.

So they eloped. Felix shelled out for a lavish trip to Hawaii, where they would have an intimate ceremony on a private beach. Because, yes, for all of Luna’s contempt for excess, she couldn’t quite resist it when it was presented to her like this. And she absolutely basked in the luxury of it all—which is something that Bradley’s private investigator documented with many, many photos and videos.

Bradley, knowing of the nuptials while Felix thought he had kept the event “cleverly concealed,” was tempted to die earlier than planned just to see the look on Felix’s face when he realized he wasn’t getting a dime. And that’s when it occurred to him that his company had already long been working on the technology that could separate mind from body so that the former could live on forever, vampiric, uploaded to a drive. Able to know and see everything the future might hold. That’s when he decided to do it. To be the first “test subject.” It would be risky, revolutionary and, above all, extremely expensive to execute.

Upon completion, to the outside world, it would appear as if Bradley had died because his corporeal shell had been rendered “inactive.” But Leonard would know the truth: that Bradley’s mind was alive, well and everywhere. And he would make sure Bradley could see that priceless look on his son’s face after being read the updated version of the will. All so that Bradley could shout out of nowhere, out of the ostensible depths of hell, “Was your low-grade whore worth it?! Worth losing billions of dollars? Ahahahahahaha!” Perhaps the biggest sign yet that Bradley had way too much money on his hands that he didn’t really know what to do with. Or, if you asked any other rich person, proof that the best revenge costs a lot of money.