I sat reeling as it was explained to me that, though I had won the sweepstakes money, and it was truly mine, I couldn’t spend any of it without getting someone’s permission. I had been placed in a conservatorship.

“How is this possible?” I shouted. “How could a judge listen to my lunatic, controlling parents without even speaking with me?”

“I’m sure the judge would have liked to speak with you, Terrence, if only you could have been found,” the esquire observed.

“But there is no reason whatsoever for any of this,” I raised my voice. “This is absolutely ridiculous. I refuse…”

“Interestingly, you mentioned ‘sleeping’ as your way of life earlier,” the esquire spoke, interrupting my diatribe. “Your sleeping disorder was considered by the judge in granting the conservatorship.”

“Sleeping disorder?” I protested. “I don’t have a sleeping disorder.

“Tell me, Terrence. Did you once spend an entire week trying to set the world record for consecutive naps?”

He knew about that?

“Yes, but the records committee refused to accept my…”

“Based on the evidence presented at the hearing, Dr. Tariq Murabahi, an expert witness, was able to diagnose you with Acute Supine Attachment Syndrome.”

“That’s not a thing,” I scoffed.

“If a judge thinks it’s a thing, it’s a thing, I’m afraid. And then there’s the question of your competence to handle your finances.”

“What?” I growled indignantly. “Who says that I can’t…”

“Did you once ask your father for two hundred thousand dollars to start a political organization?” the esquire inquired.

Warily, I confessed that I had.

The esquire nodded to Fred, and Fred pulled out a sheet of paper from the folder on his desk. He held it up for all to see.

“Was that the charter of your organization?” the esquire prodded.

I examined the paper in Fred’s hands.

I could see that it was indeed the charter. It had our letterhead right at the top. It read, “The Society for the Preservation of Dial-Up Internet.”

“Did you spend two hundred thousand dollars lobbying Congress to preserve dial-up Internet access? In the year 2019?”

I nodded.

“Our efforts were somewhat unsuccessful,” I admitted.

“And on another occasion, did you invest one hundred fifty thousand dollars into a company building a resort tailored to introverts?”

“I did,” I replied sheepishly.

“And how did that investment pan out? Was the resort a financial success?”

“No, nobody came to stay,” I sighed.

“Why do you think that was?” the esquire prodded.

I looked down at my feet, embarrassed.

“It turns out, introverts prefer to be alone.”

“Ahhh, yes. Introverts prefer to be alone,” the esquire observed, smugly. “Do you think that fact should have been recognized before investing so much into a place for them to gather? Wouldn’t that be the action of a person who is responsible with his money?”

I gave him a withering look. I had shown up to get cash, not to be insulted.

“O.k. That does it,” I announced. “I’m done with this. You can keep your money. I don’t want it.”

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And with that, I stood up and began to walk out of the office.

“Are you seriously walking away from fifty million dollars, Terrence?” Fred called out.

“I’ve walked away from more money before, Freddy,” I replied. And it was true.

At that moment, all I wanted to do was go back to my quiet life in the Utah desert. But it was not to be. Fate had it out for me that day.

I soon found myself sitting on a park bench next to a beachfront sidewalk with my back to the ocean. Nearby was the empty parking spot where I had parked my vehicle before the meeting. It was gone. The entire camper was gone.

I was finally seeing the world as it truly was, stripped of artifice. It was grim.

I peered at a sinister-looking child carried by a grumpy woman crossing the street nearby. Did those two steal my camper? What darkness lay within that infant’s mind?

A police car rolled past and I watched moodily as it turned a corner, leaving my sight. Did the police have my camper towed away? Should I report it stolen? Would they even care?

I saw a tall thin woman in a conservative-cut black business suit approaching. The cold predations of corporate America were personified in her blank features.

I squinted, looking more closely.

It was her, the woman from the meeting in Fred’s office. How had she found me?

“Terrence,” she addressed me, after drawing close.

I looked up and nodded a silent greeting.

“Terrence, I must advise you that your best option is to return and collect your sweepstakes money.”

“You came all the way down here to give me that lousy advice? No thanks. I’m in a pretty foul mood right now. First I think I’m rich, but it turns out I’m not. Then I get profoundly insulted. And now someone has stolen my home, with all of my possessions inside.”

“I saw a picture of it. Is it really such a great loss?”

I gave her my most ferocious glare.

“It wasn’t stolen, actually,” she continued, unmoved by what I thought had been a convincingly ferocious glare. Disappointed, I vowed to practice looking ferocious in a mirror again.

“What do you mean?” I stumbled over the words, confused.

“It’s technically not your trailer anymore,” she explained. “You’re in a conservatorship, remember? The conservator found the vehicle unsafe for you to live in and had it hauled to a storage compound. Don’t worry about it. It’s safe.”

I was reeling. Not only had this sweepstakes thing become a fiasco, but now I couldn’t even get my existing life back. I was going to be at somebody’s mercy, whether I took the money or not.

An eminent artist once sang, “Go on, take the money and run.” I supposed he was right.

I would do it. I would fall on the sword and accept the fifty million dollars. I would pretend to go along with things, for a while, at least. I planned to squirrel away small amounts of cash, saving for a sudden midnight dash away from my conservator’s clutches, like a prisoner plotting his big jailbreak.

But first I had to know my enemy.

“Who is my conservator? Who had the gall to lay a hand my camper without my permission?” I snarled.

“Me,” she said flatly.

I blinked, unsure I had heard her correctly.

“Did you say…”

“I’m your conservator, and any decisions I make will be made in your best interest, Terrence. I’m not your enemy. You can have a life of comfort again. I’ll make sure of that. You don’t need to live as a recluse, out in the desert, living in a home which is crumbling around you. Plus it wasn’t healthy. Did you know it smelled…”

“Yes,” I interrupted crossly. “Of old socks. I’m aware. It wasn’t a problem.”

“Well, the odor was emphasized in the report I received from the company who transported it. They said it was noticeable from outside the vehicle.”

I stared at the ground, cursing my horrible luck for winning fifty million dollars. I had lost everything. Now I had nothing but pretend wealth and this strange ‘keeper’ woman the court had appointed. I felt like a rescue pet that had just been adopted out.

“If I go back to Fred’s office, will anything be different? Will you still be my conservator?”

“Terrence, a judge ordered the conservatorship. Nobody in today’s meeting can do anything about it, even me. You need to fight that in the courts, and having sufficient money to hire lawyers sounds advantageous in that situation, does it not?”

She had a point.

And so, with a heavy heart, an hour later I watched Fred shuffle papers around his desk. (It was a glass desk, of course.)

I signed here, and put my initials there — no, right there — until I officially became the winner of fifty million freedom-robbing dollars, fifty million shackles wrapped around me by a corrupt judicial system whose decisions were for sale to the richest parent.

I was handed a door key to a room at a nice hotel nearby, given a debit card with a stipend too small to make a worthy getaway attempt, and the meeting was done.

I walked to my hotel room, threw a bunch of pillows together as a backrest, and sat down to process what I had just been through.

Never before had the law of Conservation of Luck been so vividly demonstrated in my life.

It is a horrible thing to win a lot of money. As soon as you do, you know you are going to have some awful event heading your way.

Here is the real kicker. That contest I won? The Grensfeld Industries Great Worldwide Sweepstakes? I don’t remember entering it. I had to look up who they were after Fred told me I had won.

It turned out Grensfeld Industries made heavy industrial equipment, the sort of machines used in places where people do very hard labor, and therefore places I do not frequent. How could I have entered their sweepstakes?

To my knowledge, there had been no night of blackout bacchanalia in my past, involving reckless untrained operation of a crane, or something of that sort. Nor had I gone shopping for road graders lately. It was most confusing.

My cell phone rang on the nightstand. I answered.

“Hello?”

“Hi, it’s Emily. I just wanted…”

“Who?” I interrupted, puzzled. Perhaps it was a misdial.

“Emily,” the caller repeated.

There was a pause. Finally, she continued.

“You don’t remember my name, do you? I’m your conservator, Emily. One more time as repetition is crucial for the learning process, my name is Emily. I am your conservator Emily.”

I could tell she was annoyed. I wanted to explain that I’m simply awful at remembering everyone’s names when I first meet them. It wasn’t something she should take as a personal slight. The right thing to do was to apologize and explain.

“Oh! That Emily!” I instead feigned recognition.

I heard her sigh.

“There is going to be a press conference tomorrow morning.”

Morning? I didn’t like the sound of that.

“The CEO of Grensfeld Industries will make a statement, and then you will speak. I sent you a script of the short speech you are to deliver via email. Please study it tonight and be ready to repeat it, or at least be able read it well in front of the press. I do not want you to go rogue on me. No freestyling, o.k.? Stick to the script.”

“Right,” I replied, cooperatively. “Stick to the script. Of course, I will need to add some humorous anecdotes to….”

“No!” Emily rebuked me fiercely. “No anecdotes. Just read the script.”

“Fine,” I huffed. “If you wish to underutilize my natural comedic talents, that is your affair, and the company’s loss.”

“O.k. Good. Thank you. I will have a limousine waiting in front of your hotel at 10:15. Please be on time. I will call you in the morning to check in.”

Ten fifteen? AM? Was she serious? What sort of morning person did she think I was?

“Oh, and Terrence, what’s my name?”

This was a real crisis. I hadn’t been told there would be quizzes.

“Your…?” I sought clarification, stalling for time.

“Name. My name. I repeated it multiple times about sixty seconds ago. What is it?”

I remembered her name sounded old-fashioned. Agnes? I felt like I was getting so close to remembering.

“Edith?” I threw out my best guess.

I heard a snort of pure disgust over the line. Then the call ended.

I wondered if I could get a pizza delivered to the room.