Author's Note About Eve's Hungry

Steve Jobs passed away one year ago today.  As they say, he left the world considerably poorer for his absence, but vastly richer for his all too brief existence.  Like many, many others, I mourned his passing as if I had lost a dear friend.  No other individual, who I never met in person, had such an enormous impact on my life.   I learned more from him than any teacher, was entertained by him more than any performer and was inspired by him more than any leader.   During rough times in my life, I took comfort in the fact that Apple, under Jobs’ brilliant guidance, was always working on some cool new thing that I could look forward to.  When I worked hard, I appreciated the amazing tools Steve had provided to help me.  When I was bored, I could always find something fun to do thanks to one of his wonderful gadgets.

I began work on Eve’s Hungry as a playful tribute to him.  A crazy story had circulated on the internet that Jobs had been caught carrying ninja shurikens when he was trying to board a plane.  It was, of course, false, but for some reason I could easily image that Steve secretly was a master of martial arts.  Not too long before, he had also vowed to “go nuclear” on Google for stealing iPhone intellectual property and there was much talk of a Apple/Google war.  I thought it would be fun to mix all these elements together and imagine a future world where Google and Apple were actually warring upon each other.  (For the record, I have no real bone to pick with Google, they’ve also created a lot of cool things, including the site I blog on.  But when your company motto is “don’t be evil,” you’re kind of begging to be satirized.  “So what if Google was really evil?”)

The one thing I couldn’t imagine in a future world was the absence of Steve Jobs.  It was well known at the time that he had been struggling with health issues, so in my fantasy I portrayed him as living to a long robust old age.  It has since come out that he was much sicker for much longer than the public knew, which is a testament to how courageous and determined he was.  Many of his greatest accomplishments where made when he was struggling against the cancer that would finally take him away.

His passing not only filled me with sorrow, but made me rethink this little project and consider abandoning it.  I was almost finished with the episode below when I heard the news that Jobs was gone.   After that, I couldn’t bring myself to finish it.  But as time passed, I kept thinking about Eve’s story.  I wondered if it deserved to be told, perhaps even more so since Eve was a voice to how Jobs’ had inspired me.  I thought about changing the story so she worked under Tim Cook, but I couldn’t bear to take Jobs away from her too.  I thought about referencing Jobs passing, saying he was secretly alive, but that seemed too depressing.

So right or wrong, I’ve decided to keep going with the project as it was originally intended.  A future fantasy that spins out from a specific moment of time around 2011 when Jobs had lead Apple to unbelievable success and the Google/Apple war was just brewing.  An alternative world where Jobs was still alive.  That is a world I certainly wish I could live in.

Mackay Bell

UPDATE:  Well, it's been three years and I finally finished Eve's story.  What began as a crazy goofy short story has become a… crazy goofy… novel.  But I think one with a lot of heart (not to mention some laughs and exciting action scenes).  I don't know what Jobs himself might have thought of it, but I like to think I did him justice in a fantasy future alternative reality way.  If you're interested, the novel is now available for Amazon Kindle.