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The old man sat in his wheelchair and pondered the end of his life.
This was an annual event he did every New Year's Eve.  He knew he
had less than an hour left to live, yet he could, or rather would,
live another year.

It was a cold night in New York, but that was typical.  There were 
at least 3 million people in the Times Square Area.  And they all 
were waiting for him, needing him.  It was more than twice as many 
people as he needed.  

This particular time of year that made him pause and reflect
back upon his life.  To try to sort things out.  To figure out where
he went wrong and what he got right.  To try to figure out what is
the most corrupting force: money, sex, power, life, or possibly some
combination thereof.

He mused about how he could walk away from it all.  Walk away from the
crowds.  Walk away from the fame.  Walk away from the fortune.  Walk
away from life.  He thought about the difference between addiction and 
corruption, but couldn't decide which was the lesser of the two evils.
Either way, he knew old habits are hard to break.  Incredibly hard 
to break.

Like how Guy Lombardo used to do his New Year's Eve gig at the 
Waldorf Astoria.  He was a tradition.  The old man had known Guy,
long ago.  At the time, he thought Guy was stuck in the past, 
doing his big band shtick over a quarter of a century after that era
had passed.  The old man was connected to modern music.  "That's 
the difference between us, Guy," he recalled saying once.  "No 
offense, but you're the past.  I'm the present.  And if I have to 
change to adapt to the future, so be it.  The kids know what's right."

And he had been true to his word.  Those were the empire building
days, and he had forged quite an impressive one, both behind the
scenes and as a front man.  He learned that a good reputation 
increases in value more than gold, diamonds, land, or any investment.
And he had grown his investment wisely.

Casey had a chance, but never cashed in.  "You've got a golden
opportunity, man!  Play your cards right and you could be dining on
caviar, not Scooby Snacks."  But Casey was not a business man and
never tried to play off of his reputation.  In a way it was a pity,
but the old man realized that it was probably a safer move on Casey's
part.  Had he posed a threat, the old man would've been forced to
crush him mercilessly.  Perhaps better they only crossed paths, rather
than swords.  

But the empire building days were over.  There was no more land-grab
and the existing empires would need to battle each other until there
was only one standing, and eventually it falls, and then the cycle
starts again.  

He felt a cramp in his legs, or possibly just New Year's nervousness;
anticipation, like a junkie waiting for the ultimate hit.  After 
ignoring the cramp for a minute or two, he finally threw off the 
blanket, stood up and paced around the room a bit, stopping in front 
of the large window to stare out at the crowd below.

-----

He had barely been up for half a minute before one of his assistants
happened to come in.  Jeanna was a short, pretty girl in somewhere in
her mid-20s, and had been his loyal assistant for over 5 years now.
She was also an excellent make-up artist, which is why she was hired
in the first place.  It was essential that he had the proper look for 
his adoring fans.  Jeanna admonished him for getting up before she
was finished, and said he risked wasting the two hours she had spent 
practicing her art with him.  And besides, his hair was still not
quite the proper shade of gray.

He sat back down and looked up at her.  Jeanna was a true-believer.  
Of all of the people doing various tasks for him, she was one of the 
closest in the inner circle.  Others he controled and owned through 
the more mundane means of money, drugs, sex, the illusion of power.  
Jeanna's loyalty to him was unquestionable.  And it probably would 
remain so for another few years.  She was still at the age where she 
could ignore most everything and focus on her naive beliefs that he
really cared about her at all and would help her.  At some point, 
probably in another 5 years or so, she would wake up and realized 
the lies he told her.  But there would also be the truth, what she 
could see with her own eyes.  It would cause conflict and doubt in 
her pretty little face, and he would be able detect it.  And then 
she would change from an asset into a liability.  And then...

He smiled up at her and told her how talented she was, especially for
a 22 year old.  She corrected him, and his smile widened.  She leaned
over and kissed him on an unwrinkled part of his cheek, careful to 
avoid smudging her work, put the final touches on his hair, and wrapped 
the blanket back around his legs.  Without saying another word, she left 
the room, stopping only for a moment at the door to look back and smile.  
She was one of the easy ones, for now.

His business assistants tended to be the easiest to control.  Hire a
greedy bastard and you know what his focus will be.  As long as he
makes money, he's loyal, or loyal enough.  The ones who watched the
device were also easy.  They had no idea what it really did, and in 
the end, it took care of any problems itself.

For the few other duties that required a personal assistant, when greed
or adoration was not there, he would fall back on the tried but true
methods: sex and drugs.  The music industry made it simple to obtain 
either, or rather to use either as a method of payment.  By finding the 
right people with the right flaws or addictive personalities, control of 
them was assured.  

The drugs were there, as always.  He would try to make sure that they were
obtained indirectly, so they could not be traced back to him, but he knew
the risks.  Typically, any indiscretions there could be fixed with money.

And the sex...it was laughably easy.  The industry was bursting with
up and coming starlets who would "do anything" just to appear on one
of his shows, or get recommended on one of his "hot lists."  And again,
it was a matter of saying, "Now look, I'm not asking you to do anything.
It just Joey (or whoever it was that week) is feeling a bit blue.  He's a
great guy and I don't know how I'd manage without him.  I just thought
you two might hit it off, you both seem like good kids.  It's on me."
It was that simple.  The old man was clean and Joey (or whoever it was
that week) got help with his "blues."  And if Joey was happy, the starlet
got a break-through hit into the top 20, which led to a contract, an
appearance on the old man's show, which boosted his ratings and power,
and so on.  It all fed off itself, and everyone came out a winner.
As long as you didn't think about it too much.

That's not to say that the old  man never sampled the wares.  While never
addicted, at least to drugs, he had sampled most of what passed through.
But as time went on, he discovered that the same thing that protected
him against addiction tended to make the high little more than a mild
buzz.  It was hardly worth it.  He had, on a couple of occasions, pushed
the envelope as far as it could go, just to see what would happen.
After 10 times a normal dose, he developed a bit of a headache and later 
had to take a nap to sleep it off.  He had been playing "Japanese 
Gauntlet" with his assistant, and when it came time to match the old
man's dose, he did.  His heart managed to run for 3 minutes of 
excruciating agony before it burst, and the massive hemorrhaging made 
for a ghastly mess.  But his assistant had been getting harder to control 
as his addiction grew and he had been with the old man for almost 3 years.

Few of his assistants left unscathed.  But that says nothing about the
millions the machine affected.  The old man could say that the effect on
an individual was miniscule.  He was not even sure it wasn't like a
transfusion, where the body replenishes what was taken after a day
or so, though he really didn't believe that.  He figured it was
permanent, and moreso, that if he did something extraordinarily foolish,
and needed to lay claim to those stolen moments, that he would survive
but the ones that those healing moments came from would need to handle
his foolishness.  All part of the great cycle of feeding.

But none of that really mattered to him.  Like how he didn't really 
care how the machine worked.  He had looked at it and tried to make 
sense of it, of course.  But he had no idea if the ancient carvings, 
hidden behind all those light bulbs were Egyptian, Celtic, or some 
strange moon-man language.  And again, it didn't really matter.  The 
machine worked.  He knew how to make it go.  He knew what it gave him.  
He knew what it cost him.  It was that simple.

And he thought about giving it up, every year, in fact.  Walking away 
from it.  From the job.  From the whole industry.  Just like Guy had.  
Guy had lasted almost a year on his own. But he had been 75 and in 
good health.

The old man remembered talking to Guy, telling him he was crazy for 
giving it all up, throwing it all away.  Guy had said that he was 
just sick of it all, the routine, the Waldorf Astoria, the works.
The old man had tried to tell him that that was because he was out
of touch.  Unplug yourself from the kids of today and you wind up
living in a museum.  Hell, you become a museum piece.  It wasn't
the way to go.  Guy didn't believe him.  In a way they both were right.
Both museum pieces, just different museums.

He enjoyed living, even if it was at the expense of the life he stole 
from others.  He could walk around, without his makeup and not be 
recognized.  Just another young face in a crowd.  There were no morals.
He fed off people who fed off people who fed off him.  One gigantic
cycle of snakes eating each other.  That's how the world worked.

As far as he knew, there was only one device, and he was the only one
that used it.  At one point, 20 years ago or so, he had been concerned 
that others used "his" gimmick.  It took a lot of persuasion before he
could get any information.  And in the end, it was the offer of a spot
as guest host on his countdown show that finally loosened Mick's tongue
(so to speak).  The old man was quite relieved to find that it was just
a standard deal wtih the devil.  Mick had been getting pretty bored with
things too, and admitted that the only thing that kept him from using the
escape clause was the knowledge that Keith had used it decades earlier --
and was still going, more or less, in his own way.

The coveted guest host, even the featured guest spot, were the old 
man's crown jewels.  An appearance could start a career or revive a 
former one.  Nearly 20 years after Britney's ass quadrupled in size and 
her two main assets were setting on her career, an appearance on his show
had shot her "come back" album back up to the top of the charts and paid
for some much needed plastic surgery and implant maintenance.  The public
bought what he told them to buy.  Period.

The old man had kept in touch.  He knew the popular acts of the day
from fluff to real talent.  Buddy Holly.  Elvis.  The Beatles.  Micheal 
Jackson.  The Clash.  Mariah Carey.  Debbie Gibson.  Tiffany.  The Cure.  
The Police.  Madonna.  Britney Spears.  The Beastie Boys.  Kahanna Tranh.  
T'Wanga M'Kitna.  The Step.  Terri Holdington, Jr.  Hell, he knew about 
Sushila Choi ten years ago when her "new" brand of music was nothing more 
than a rip off of the previous cycle of techno-latin ska with a 
Wubbie/Hawaiian beat added.  And in truth, he preferred a classic, rocking 
Elvis song to anything, hands down.

Keeping in touch had been one of the keystones in establishing 
his empire.  But...had he seen it all?  Or rather, did being in 
touch help him all that much.  If it did, would he sit here every 
year and ponder his "option"?  Did he want to keep it up or was it 
the fear of it all collapsing that drove him?  Was it an addiction?

It had become an annual tradition: thinking about giving it all up,
but never doing so.  Was it the thrill of the massive Infusion at
midnight?  While it was 'the strike,' as the kids would say, it 
wasn't everything.  If it were just that, he decided, he could walk 
away from it.  But the empire.  The people that needed him.  The people 
that used him.  He was a spider -- trapped in the center of his own web.
And unlike Guy, a veritable youngster at 75, he was old enough that 
without the Infusion his life would be measured in minutes, not months, 
beyond midnight.  He had to admit, he'd prefer not to wither and shrivel 
into a rotting corpse in front of the camera in front of hundreds of 
millions of people around the world.  Was that an addiction?

----

Decision time was near.  He would need to appear on the balcony soon.  The 
answer would be the same: life.  There was still more work to be done.

Besides, there was always next year.

-----------------

addiciton
corruption
empire
animals
cycle

Recurring themes and motifs, symbols and images that intrugue me:
That of of addiction and corruption; the cycle of people using and 
feeding off each other; to a lesser extent empires; and animal images.