“Watch out for the sludge,” Cheryl warns me as we walk past the pedestrian portion of Broadway toward our Times Square setup.

I look down. There’s a green and vile looking stream of ooze running from the sewer grate down the street. Jesus fucking Christ. You’d think the Mayor would actually clean up the city a bit and prevent the sewers from overflowing. But he’s off who the fuck knows where trying to move jobs to China or something. At least that's what the papers are saying.

“Ethan!” Cheryl calls and I snap out of whatever daydream I was in the middle of. I look up at her. She’s at the podium a few paces down.

We’re standing at the corner of 44^th and Broadway, and a crowd has already formed.

I look around me. New Yorkers call Times Square the Crossroads of the World. I call it The Last Place I Want To Visit.

I mean, sure you got the fucking theaters. Whatever. Off-Broadway is becoming the avant-garde nowadays. What else do you want? I’ll give you a million fucking other places in New York City you can get it.

You want the flashing lights? Go to fucking Herald Square.

You want shopping? Again, go try SoHo, TriBeCa, or Midtown near Macy’s. Hell, go to fucking Columbus Circle.

But there is one thing that Times Square is known for.

Sex.

Plenty of fucking sex all around here if you just know where to fucking look.

Say, you want to go to a peep show? Well, actually, not much use for ladies at peep shows, but if you know that special man in your life who's not able to get any fucking women, then all he has to do is go over to 8^th Avenue and look left, and right next to the fucking Port Authority Bus Terminal he'll have what he needs. Plenty of fucking peep shows there where he can jerk off to a girl in a room smoking a cigarette and fingering herself while little peepholes allow people look in.

Want to buy some porn? You’ll find that all over 46^th street. Any kind of fucking porn you want. Tourists walk right by it; they’re so entranced by the fucking M&M’s store and the Coca-Cola sign. They can’t get enough of the NASDAQ building that they totally don’t realize they’re walking by three strip clubs and fifteen massage parlors that specialize in the ancient art of Rub N’ Tug.

Maybe your male friend wants to just skip all that and go straight for the hookers. Look no further than 7^th Avenue from 44^th Street to 49^th Street. These women will stand there day and night walking the streets – you just gotta know where to look and you’ll see. More than likely, they see you. And if they see that you’re a tourist, they’ll blend in so fucking well.

I mean, take it all in. Naked Cowboys—yep we've got that. Girls with nothing on except body paint? We've got that too. You can take a picture of them as they rub themselves up against your cock for $20. I’m fucking serious.

It's a fucking pit of licentiousness and debauchery.

Which makes it absolutely goddamn perfect for what I’m about to do.

I walk up the stairs toward the podium.

We already have some of our regular porn starlets there, entertaining the audience and posing for pictures from reporters and photographers.

I’d say we have a good crowd. There are at least 10,000 people. All the major newspapers and news organizations are camped out.

What? I know you may be finding this hard to believe, considering KaneCo centers around pornography—right up there with Hawkelane Media—but porn has become completely mainstream in America today. We fucking celebrate it. And that’s good. Because if there’s one forte that I have, it’s pleasing the fucking ladies.

Don’t get me wrong though. I’m not just some fucking schmo with a good fucking body and a giant fucking cock. I built this fucking company from the ground up. My parents live in California—in Los Angeles. My dad owned a shoe store and my mom was a housewife. I was your regular kid. Went to UCLA for undergrad and then graduate school. Started working in marketing. And then I realized I didn’t like working for the fucking man. So I quit. Took what meager savings I had and started my own marketing and media company.

I didn’t know I was going to be getting into porn. But what I did know was that I wasn’t going to stay broke, or middle class. I was going to be fucking big.

That seems like so long ago from now, doesn’t it? I mean, I know you know I’m famous; you see my face on all the newspapers and shit. But you never heard that little bit, did you?

I’d tell you more, but it’s time to start.

The starlets are all done with their fucking happy and giggly jiggling. Don’t look at me like that. I’ve fucked them all. They all moan like a whore when they've got my fucking cock between their legs.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the first ever product launch by Illicit Entertainment,” I say into the microphone and watch as the photographers flash their cameras and people start to cheer.

Seriously, they’re cheering for me. A fucking pornographer. Sometimes it boggles the fucking mind. But we all gotta get laid, right? So maybe they know something I don’t. Maybe I’m fucking old fashioned.

“I hope you enjoyed the Illicit Entertainers,” I say gesturing to the girls. People cheer again. They’re clapping and hooting and hollering. Not just pervy fucking dudes either. We’re talking tourists snapping pictures with their iPhones—wife and kids in tow. Teenagers. Hell, is that a fucking priest in the crowd?

“Pornography has come a long way since the days of old, America,” I say, looking directly into the cameras now. I may be in Times Square, but my face is being beamed all over the world. “And today, Illicit Entertainment is going to take it into the next millennium.”

A collective hush goes over the crowd and I nod to the technical guys.

The stage darkens. A screen lights up behind me and our company logo appears. This is my cue.

“We used to have scrawling of people having sex on cave walls,” I begin, pacing my words like Cheryl taught me to. “But from cave art, we went to pictures. And pictures became magazines. Magazines became books, that went to movies.”

People are looking at me with rapt attention and they look at the screen, which shows a montage with wonder. Seriously, I’ve probably destroyed the values of the next generation, but whatever; it pays the bills.

“Movies changed when we got the VCR,” I say, and the screen behind me switches to showing VHS tapes.

“Then came the Internet, and it revolutionized everything,” I say, and the screen flips to show pictures of webcam girls and streaming media. “Until today. Today, Illicit Entertainment is proud to announce the next generation of pornographic entertainment.”

I pause as the music starts.

A drumroll and then the video shows a simple pair of eyeglasses—sleek and minimalist.

“Behold, the Illicit Escape,” I say to the audience, as if showing them the fucking meaning of life.

People pause for a moment as the video starts to pan around the glasses and goes from looking at them from the front, to showing what they look like from the point of view of a wearer. It shows the glasses being worn, and tiny cameras and sensors on the rims.

“Based on revolutionary new software, the Illicit Escape uses a built-in operating system that looks at where your eye is focused to highlight what you see. And what you see, is a whole new world of sex,” I say, reading from the script.

I turn around to look at the video because this is fucking cool. A holographic image of a woman materializes on the inside of the eyeglass like an object. She’s in perfect detail. She’s only visible to the wearer and she starts doing a bit of a dance.

That’s when a holographic image of a shirtless man shows up. I had wanted to be in this shot, but Cheryl told me that doing so was crossing a fucking line. I would have still done it, but she went ahead and scheduled the shoot for when I was in another meeting, and I didn’t find out till too late.

It’s a fucking shame too, because while this guy on the screen is hot, I’m in way better shape.

And when the girl gets down on her knees and starts to take off the guy's boxer briefs, the crowd begins to ooh. When she puts his cock in her mouth they go aaah.

The video then rotates the POV and shows that to the outside world, it looks like the wearer is just wearing regular clear eyeglasses.

“Watch virtual reality porn, wherever you go, safely, discreetly,” I say into the microphone and the crowd begins to cheer. “But, now, Illicit Escape takes it one step farther.”

The video zooms out to show a diagram of the glasses on a human face.

“Using groundbreaking new technology, the Illicit Escape uses subconscious visual cues to make your brain believe that what you're seeing is something you’re actually experiencing,” I say to to the audience. I can tell they’re looking at me, not believing.

“That means that when she does this,” I say and point to the video as it changes to a user POV and shows what it looks like when one wears the glasses. A hologram of a woman is sucking a dick. “You feel the sensations of the mouth on your cock. Your brain feels every aspect of hands on your body.”

There’s a silence as the idea sinks into people. To put on some glasses and trick your brain into thinking you're really having sex?

Apparently everyone comes to the same conclusion that we did; this is a fucking great idea. Because the next moment, they’re cheering louder than ever before. It seriously takes me a few minutes to get the last line of my speech in.

“Ladies and gentlemen, the Illicit Escape. Available for sale this year,” I say and pause as the cameras get one last shot of me. I wave and then Cheryl comes up to me. She’s smiling and she guides me off stage.

Lots of adrenaline, I’ll be the first to fucking admit.

But that’s not all that catches my eye.

At the curb, there’s a limo. And as I look over to see it, I notice the window gets rolled up. When I try to walk toward the limo—I don’t know why, okay?—it pulls away from the curb and drives away.

I don’t know why it fucking bothers me so much. Corporate espionage? Maybe.

“Cheryl,” I tell her as she handles some press inquiries at the base of the podium. She looks at me, waiting for me to speak. “Pull the surveillance cameras and get me the license plates and registration for that limo that just went by when you get a chance, will you?” I ask her.

She nods.

Maybe I’m being a bit too paranoid, you know?

But with this high of stakes—with something that’s going to take me from a regular billionaire to the richest man on the planet—you can never be too careful.