I’m back in my Mission District house, in my personal gym.

I’ve stripped off my shirt, and I’m wearing short gym shorts that go about halfway down my thighs, to give me more movement when working out.

My home gym has a treadmill which I hardly use, but it’s also got a complete set of free weights. When I started getting into weight lifting, I used the machines, because that’s what I saw everyone else at the gym doing. But I soon found the freedom and toughness I was looking for, that real grit, in free weights.

I’ve got a top of the line squat rack and a separate bench press bench. Lately, I’ve been getting into Olympic lifts, though, and I have a complete set of everything. I’m not messing around with this, the way other rich guys do. They spend a half hour on the treadmill and call it a day—they did their duty for the doctor. Me, this is the one place where my life isn’t easy anymore. And I long for that struggle. That’s what I love about weight lifting—it’s just me against the metal, against the weight that never changes no matter how much I’ve got in the bank. I can either lift it or I can’t.

I squat down, gripping the cold steel bar beneath me. I rotate my hands to a classic grip, letting the texture of the metal bite into my flesh a little. It’s good to have callouses. It’s good to feel a little discomfort, even pain. It keeps things real.

With perfect form, watching my body in the mirror, I quickly pull the weight up to my stomach and then over my head, holding it up, executing the clean and jerk perfectly. I step back and throw the 200 pounds down on the ground. This is just a warm up, but I’ll work up to my max.

An hour goes by, my mind completely clear, completely lost in the weights. The house is silent.

When I’m done, I head into the kitchen in my gym shorts and pour myself a glass of organic milk from the refrigerator.

I pull down my gym shorts, just because I can, and walk to the shower buck naked, my cock hanging before me like a pendulum.

With the hot water showering down on me, my cock starts to grow, as if on its own accord. I let my hand brush against it, and can’t help but gripping it in my fist.

But why not settle for the real thing?

I make a snap decision. The same one I’ve made a thousand times before. It’s not like I have a job to go to.

I’m going to hit the bars, pick up a hot piece of ass, and lay her down naked on my bed. Or, if I’m in the mood for something quicker, maybe we’ll fuck in the bathroom. I’ve been known to do worse.

In another twenty minutes, it’s dark outside, and I’m dressed, seated in my Porsche bucket seat, and roaring out onto the road.

The bar is called Bow Tie, a semi upscale place where people hang out, sipping martinis and trying to act richer than they actually are. It’s a hell of a lot different than the dive bars I used to hang out in when I was just getting my start, working on my algorithm.

There’s not much action yet in the bar. A couple women give me glances, and while they’re quite attractive, wearing low cut dresses that hug their bodies, there’s just not that special spark there. I need that. I long for that, and crave it. That moment of connection, however brief. That’s what does it for me. Well, that and a banging body.

I sip a glass of whiskey and chat with the bartender while I wait for the place to fill up.

“It’s been a while since you’ve been around here,” he says while wiping down the bar, as bartenders always seem to do. (I think it appears more professional if they’re always doing something, rather than just standing there.)

“You know how it is,” I say vaguely.

“A lot of work, huh?”

“Not exactly,” I say. “I spent some time down in the Bahamas, but it got boring.”

“Sounds like a problem I’d like to have,” he says, giving me a grin.

“Not a lot of action here, tonight?” I say.

He shrugs. “Maybe not tonight. It’s a Tuesday, after all.”

“Tuesday? Really?”

He gives me a wink and goes to attend to another customer.

I guess I really am a playboy billionaire, or whatever it is people like to call me. Apparently I don’t even realize what day of the week it is. Not because I’m out of it, or not organized, but simply because the days of the week don’t mean much to me. It’s not like I have to do something different on Tuesdays.

The bar is a fancy enough place, with an expensive looking bar. Everything has that elegant look to it. I think they renovate it every year, so that it keeps that “fresh” look and never appears dated. That’s what keeps the customers coming back and blowing a sizable portion of their paychecks on a night out.

As always in San Francisco, there’s a guy next to me on his laptop. I spot some code on his screen, probably Python, judging by the structure of the syntax, even though I can’t see the code because of a little bit of glare on his screen.

He catches me looking over in his direction.

“Working on an app,” he says.

I size him up. He’s one of these typical coder guys you see here. They’re practically swarming the city like insects. When I first came here to run my startup, it wasn’t quite like this. The city was still weirder, stranger, and more interesting. But there’ve been a lot of good changes too. Places like this bar wouldn’t exist, for instance.

“Startup?” I say.

He nods his bearded head excitedly and launches into an incredibly boring explanation of exactly what he’s trying to do. He’s a little pudgy, overweight, and already balding, even though he’s in his early twenties.

He’s got no idea who he’s talking to, obviously, because he’s talking to me like I’m not a coder myself, although frankly he’s doing a horrible job explaining what he’s trying to do. I don’t have the heart to tell him that the central piece of his project has already been done, likely a thousand times better and more efficiently, almost a decade ago. And the surface functions of his app are completely worthless. No one’s going to buy it: a dog walker app. Tells you where you pick up their crap, or something like that, or where the nearest available dumpster is.

“Sounds interesting,” I say, thinking that I need to get out of here as fast as possible.

I glance around the bar again. There’s no one who hits me with what I’m looking for.

Shit, I was looking for something new tonight.

I grab my phone and start scrolling through my contacts list. There are women listed under names such as “Hot red head from tennis” or “That ass from the gym.”

Horribly degrading, I know. But how else am I going to have any idea who they are? Like I care if it’s degrading anyway. It’s not like they’re going to see their name. And if they do, that’s their problem, right? They can make of it what they want.

My thumb flies past at least fifty women who would drop whatever they’re doing, their boyfriends included, for the chance to fuck my brains out tonight. And they wouldn’t expect anything of it. I chuckle when I think of the “douchebag billionaire” term thrown at me. Do people think that bothers me? Now that I’ve got my head on straight, it doesn’t matter one bit to me.

Why wait around this bar for someone to show up who’s never going to? Some mythical woman who’s going to blow my mind (and my cock)? Maybe it’s just that the same old thing isn’t doing it for me. I’ve got women literally at my finger tips. I need a bit of a… I don’t know… a challenge? Something like weight lifting, something real and visceral.

“So I’m writing this in Python,” says the guy next to me, the nerdy tech guy who doesn’t have any idea what he’s doing. He’s been talking to me all this time? I hadn’t even noticed.

“Wrong move,” I say.

“What?”

“You heard me. Don’t write it in Python. But better yet, don’t write it at all. It’s a useless app. Everyone’s talking about apps now, but industry is where you want to hit. The internet isn’t finished. It needs heavy duty algorithms, heavy duty task managers. Apps aren’t going to change the world. It’s just a cell phone game, essentially…”

The guy’s speechless for a moment. “But there’s a lot of money in apps.”

I shrug. “Do what you want,” I say. “Waste your own time if you want.”

I throw down some money on the bar and stand up. I’m tired of this place and need to get out. Looks like some lucky woman from my contact list is going to be getting a call from me tonight.

“Oh!” says the bearded nerd, literally slapping his forehead with his hand. “You’re… Ryan Hudson, designer of the Sisyphus Algorithm!”

I nod my head, not really paying attention.

“So nice to meet you,” he says, probably holding out his hand to shake mine, but I’m not looking in his direction. I’m just getting my sport coat situated on my shoulders before leaving.

“Nice to meet you too, kid,” I say, throwing him a bone.

“But aren’t you worried?”

That catches a bit of my attention, just enough to respond to him.

“Worried? About what?”

“Your business? What about the Zen Algorithm? It’s apparently clocking better performance than yours by miles.”

He’s got my attention now. My algorithm has always been untouchable. Nothing can beat it, and people have always said nothing ever will.

“Zen Algorithm?”

I don’t sit back down, but I turn back to him. This time, I notice all the acne on his face, and the ingrown hairs.

“Yeah,” he says, showing me his phone, which has an article about the Zen Algorithm open.

I take the phone from him and my eyes scan down the page quickly, my thumb scrolling along as the words flood my head.

“Ryan Hudson may have some new competition… etc., etc.,” goes the article, along with the usual bullshit. But at the bottom are some numbers. Some benchmark scores. Incredible ones. Scores that blow my algorithm out of the water.

Shit. This could be bad.

Why the hell wasn’t I aware of this?

“So, uh…” The nerd is talking to me, but I’m not listening.

And I’m not thinking about the algorithm either.

That’s all left my head.

The sudden worry, the disaster sounds of financial ruin… everything that was completely occupying my thoughts just a second ago—it all slides away.

The most gorgeous creature I’ve ever seen has just walked through the door.

It takes me a moment to realize what even happened. My attention simply zoomed in on her. She’s like a bulls eye. I’m not aware of anything. The moment seems frozen in time.

She’s just simply fucking gorgeous.

She’s young, but she’s grown up. She’s got curves in all the right places. She’s wearing an elegant short dress that hugs her hips and cuts off halfway down her thighs, exposing her shining legs.

Her breasts are probably a B cup—I have an eye for these things, but they’re pushing the boundaries of those size constraints. Pushing up and out, about to burst into a new size.

Her hair hangs around her face, framing it perfectly.

“So the algorithm is…” The nerd next to me is still talking to me, but I don’t pay him any mind and I step away from him.

I walk towards her confidently. She’s going to be mine. She’s the object of my desire tonight. The women in my contact list can wait until hell freezes over for all I care.