My great grand father founded the biggest, most successful technological company on the planet. He, along with his brothers and sisters, had been hailed as great scientists of the 21st century. Launching out new technological advances one after another, they gave mankind the jump-start to eventually achieving interstellar travel.
This period had been nicknamed, "The golden age of discovery". Thanks to these individuals, many other people had discovered ways to decrease global warming, destroy famine, as well as predicting natural disasters with terrifying accuracy... and some shady plans about controlling the weather.
But the smartest one of them all in terms of general intellect had been my great grand father. So naturally, he was voted to be the president of said company.
However, other companies had tried thousands of ways to steal his inventions. They failed mostly, seeing how they tried to steal from a man who was basically the smartest man who ever lived. They succeeded in stealing a few, which in turn made him steal back.
These simple hacking between computers would soon increase to bribery, sabotages and in extreme scenarios: assassinations. My great grand father, once a cheery, happy person, would become more distant and cold.
And soon, more and more companies would join the conflict, paving for the eventual insanity of my great grand father. A scientist gone mad, old and withered, he took all of his blueprints and destroyed it all-- as well as himself-- in a massive atomic explosion, taking some rivals along.
This would be the end of him, but not his family. When the radiation was cleared out with the accelerated technology, my grand father found his simple, short last dying words in a form of a reinforced hologram simulator: "Take my position and continue on my legacy."
And so he did.
With all the rivals gone, my grandfather had continued the company uncontested and in peace.
Skip one generation later, this is where my story ends and begins a new.
I could still remember it oh so clearly: I had been casually watching my father on television. With all the advances in technology, the screen had basically better quality than real life. And remembering my history classes looking at old pictures, today's technology almost seemed completely alien compared to the past.
Anyway, he had been discussing some plans to send the first permanent satellite on the gas giant known as jupiter, when he had suddenly started coughing violently. Getting rushed to the hospital immediately, he had been diagnosed by an unknown type of poisoning. Probably because of all the times he had personally conducted dangerous experiments.
He was sad, but was accepting of it. Despite some advances in technology increasing the human life span, he had always disliked artificially increasing his life, being always heard quoting, "If you are aging anything past what your body can naturally handle, I won't see you as another human being-- but a robot."
I had always thought it was because he feared of falling into insanity like my great grand father and grandfather who both artificially increased their life span by a few decades.
Many of his organs were decaying to the point where a complete mechanizations of his cells were needed as medicine was no longer effective. But he declined. Despite many of the doctors pleading, he had accepted his faith.
His dying last words were, "Many of my sons and daughters are more than capable of taking my position. Now, to give my father a good beating for being a dick bag to me when I was a kid. Which is funny because he told me that he once tried to attach another penis to his crotch." He always did have a great sense of humor in the wrong situations.
Unfortunately, only my oldest brother and I, the youngest son, had actually wanted the position of the massive company. My father had wished for his children to be the one to gain the position as to continue the 'tradition', so his brothers and sisters could not become the next president.
This generation of my family was very loving to each other. So there were no coup d'état and the such. Humanity in general had actually become quite nice thanks to all the advances.
But out of all the family members, my oldest brother was the only one I absolutely hated and vice versa. He was 10 years older than myself. I had just finished college. Despite the longer lifespan of a few decades, the age 'levels' of schools had stayed relatively the same.
He was extremely jealous of myself, always getting irritated whenever I would get that one simple praise by my father. I had tried to be friendly to him, but my attempts was seen as a way of pitying him; and he HATED being pitied, especially by someone who was much younger than him.
My uncle, who was the vice president of my father's company, had decided to give the position to the one who could present to him the most impressive invention.
And thus, many months of hard hours spent down in the basement with a team I personally organized, and we managed to complete a substance called "cryogenics".
People had tried to invent a proper substance to safely freeze a human being, but experiments were costly, and with the inventions of artificial limbs and organs, people did no longer see a big enough reason to spend large amount of money on the project.
This is the place I died. Right in my own workshop.
My guards were slaughtered. My lab members killed. My blueprints and notes burned. And probably bombs planted to get rid of my workshop entirely. I had been on a catwalk grabbing a sample from atop the massive container full of cryogenics when all of these happened. I was completely oblivious due to the fact the massive room I was in was sound-proofed and resistant to vibrations. This gave a wide opening to my soon-be assassin.
Who, unsurprisingly, turned out to be my brother. I already knew it from the start. My back was turned against him. I then felt several sharp pain behind my back.
The bullets definitely cleanly went through my organs, emphasized by the growing blood puddle below me. With a massive will of force, I managed to at least turn to face him. Adrenaline working its best to give me a few more seconds of consciousness, I was given a brief time to observe my surroundings.
In the corner of my eyes, I saw that all the cameras had been busted. I could also see a few glowing lights from within the walls meaning even my hidden detectors were destroyed. If those were destroyed, then it was safe to say that they managed to destroy any video, or image evidence of themselves.
What about DNA?
Current technology is impressive. The common criminal is almost non-existent thanks to the new amazing DNA scanners. But it's really hard to detect someone who has high level access to the world's most advance technology... like myself and my brother.
He was currently covered in a dark metallic suit that was blurring his entire body, including his face that I had a hard time trying to focus on. And so, it was also safe to say he was gonna get out of this completely free. Knowing my brother, I don't think he would be afraid to rat out any of his accomplices in order to secure his freedom as well.
All in all, I got fucked nice and clean, I was foolish to not increase my security more.
No... I was foolish to not had of seen such a mad act planned by my brother.
My brother's gonna claim credit for my work and he's gonna gain the position. He'll undoubtedly be able to make up a story for my death considering how I was always known to be fond with working around the more dangerous materials.
Anyway, I managed to at least gave him the middle finger before more bullets filled my already bloody torso and I fell down the massive container of experimental cryogenics. With the substance quickly doing its work on numbing my senses, I could feel my body's temperature dropping by hundreds of degrees.
I was not able to blurt out my last words as my throat was filled as well.