Metacortex co-founder Decius Wadsworth didn't want controversy. He just wanted to say "thank you" to the city where he made his fortune. So he sponsored the "Piece of Blue Sky" concerts (coming March 31), at various city parks, which will cost attendees what he had when he started: nothing.

"I tell people we started Metacortex with nothing but a 'piece of blue sky' - no shippable product, no staff, just a dream. Because of where we were in the computer revolution, we lucked out. A lot of people in this town helped - financially, and in other ways. I want to say thanks in a big way. I'm sorry some people think it's a magnet for trouble, but I think everything will turn out fine in the end."

A City Council meeting last week was raucous and full of anti-concert voices. Pliny Earl Chase, of Vauxton, put it this way: "With this Redpill movement in the city, predisposed to violence and mayhem, any gathering is a tinderbox. Add rock-and-roll, and it's soaked in gasoline. I'm staying home with the doors locked."

Organizers are undeterred. "We're hiring a large number of security personnel, and don't anticipate any problems. This is a celebration of joy, peace, and dreams fulfilled. Call it hippie nostalgia, but you won't see rumbles - it'll be one big love-in," Wadsworth claims.

Asked whether the concerts are modeled after Apple Computer cofounder Steve Wozniak's free " US " concerts of the late eighties, Wadsworth demurs. "They're their own thing. Similar, I guess, but these are for today, now."

One difference is the announcement of the talent lineup. The US concerts headlined many of the most prominent musical acts of their day.

Wordsworth is staying mum about who's booked for the concerts. But "nobody, I swear to God, will find this less than a life-changing experience. "

Wadsworth and his partners founded Metacortex thirty years ago, their initial products simple games and a word processing program, "Probable Word," which is still widely used today. An early contract to develop an operating system led to explosive growth. Metacortex, now a subsidiary of Ouroboros Corporation, helped make Ouroboros the fifth-most capitalized corporation in the world.

Wadsworth retired four years ago, living a mostly hermetic lifestyle in his famously inaccessible mountain chateau, Spindrift, designed by architect Giovanni Porta.

When asked why, after years of seclusion, he is making this public gesture, Wadsworth shrugs. "It's time. That's all."

It was a passion for practical jokes that first got Decius "Deece"

Wadsworth tinkering. He found he could alter the frequency on his toy walkie-talkie to link with the neighbor's baby monitor. He delighted in burbling "mama, dada" into the microphone, watching the excited parents rushing to baby's room to witness her first words, only to find her asleep.

A similar device for creating static on television, and one which caused rock-and-roll to inexplicably play over schoolroom loudspeakers, led to much mirth among his friends.

One which caused vending machines to vend multiple sodas or candy bars on a single coin landed him before a judge. He solemnly swore never to steal again. "And I haven't, except for market share from the competition," Wadsworth says.

Soon thereafter, with a couple of friends, he founded Metacortex.

"Computers were hobbyist items, then. Toys for grownup boys. But printed circuits, driven by military procurement, got better and cheaper every year. It was possible to dream that we'd soon have computers in every home, like a Ray Bradbury story." Wadsworth says.

Computers need programming, and this became Wadsworth 's passion. He created statistically-governed games, which also called for rudimentary animations. "Green Rain," a simple game in which a tiny man runs from umbrella to umbrella, dodging the titular assault, is still available, in an emulative version, on the internet. Metacortex created "Probable Word," the popular word-processing program, the first to make anagram, pun and cryptology tools standard components.

But it was the operating system, commissioned in Metacortex's fifth year ("we were more broke than anybody knew," says Wadsworth ) by Ouroboros Corporation, a leading manufacturer of industrial computers and other electronics, that launched the company into the stratosphere. Within five years they broke ground on their famous headquarters (infamous for the number of window washers who have died outside its complex contours) in Morrill.

Metacortex drew large numbers of young programmers to the city, whose disposable income led to the proliferation of nightclubs for which the city is famous.

Wadsworth never lost his taste for pranks. After a young Metacortex programmer had a nervous breakdown after receiving a cell phone in an overnight parcel (he attempted suicide by climbing out a window, but lost his nerve), for weeks afterward, Metacortex employees received cell phones in a similar manner, which promptly rang, delivering murmured code words and instructions in a voice that sounded much like Wadsworth's "with the lamest English accent ever," according to one employee.

Most Wadsworth-watchers agree that he began to lose enthusiasm after the Ouroboros Corporation purchased Metacortex. The change in corporate culture, a new emphasis on integrated product lines and market control, all contributed to his restlessness. He was also rich beyond his dreams.

One could hardly blame him for wondering: what next?

About this time Wadsworth started work on Spindrift, his Xanadu-like retreat in the mountains north of the city. No reporter has ever been there, but workmen speaking anonymously describe an eccentric modernist villa, improbably thrusting out over an abyss, with secret rooms and passages, stairways to nowhere, and an abundance of carved, cryptic symbols. Most of it was fabricated off-site and helicoptered in at a cost estimated to range from 70 to 140 million dollars.

The cost may yet rise; rumors say Wadsworth , with the blessing of his architect Giovanni Porta, is still adding to the installation.

Wadsworth is unmarried, but lives with his longtime companion, Agnes Driscoll.