18
TALES FROMTHE FUTURE
The reports noting larger profits than before were devoid of emotion.
There was no one left to praise him. His father had died, and the praise of
one’s subordinates brings no joy.
And so John Heitzman traveled back in his recollections to his childhood.
His memory listlessly illuminated the rare moments of contact with his
father. More often than not, John’s strict father would reprimand him in the
presence of the nannies and tutors assigned to him.
Then suddenly something like a wave of warmth flowed through the body
of the billionaire who was lying there motionless. His body twitched with a
pleasant sensation. A very sharp and clear picture arose in Heitzman’s recol-
lections. A far corner of the garden, surrounded by acacia trees, stood a little
house, about two meters high, with one tiny window.
A yearning that one can’t entirely understand, the yearning nearly every
child possesses: to create his own little home, his own space. This yearning
has nothing to do with whether the child has his own separate room in his
parents’ house or shares a room with his parents. Nearly every child goes
through a period when he begins to build his own little corner of the world
with his own two hands. Clearly, a person has a gene that stores some kind
of very ancient information, and it says to him, “You need to create your
own space, on your own.” And the person, a child, heeding this call that has
come to him from the depths of eternity, begins to construct it. And even if
it can’t ever compare to today’s mansions, all the same, the person will feel
more serene in this spot that he’s made for himself than he will in any man-
sion.
And so, nine-year old John Heitzman, who had two spacious rooms in his
family’s country house at his disposal, nonetheless decided to build himself
a little house with his own two hands.
He built it out of plastic seedling pots. These pots ended up being very
suitable for building. They came in a variety of colors. John used blue pots
for the walls and then made a striped border that ran all the way around the
perimeter out of some yellow ones. He set out the pots one inside the other,
and they slipped into the little grooves, fastening themselves together. John
laid one of the walls by laying the pots on top of each other on their sides,
