Today's frontier is hidden from the physical world, burbling and buzzing along the interconnected wires, routers and computers of the Net. But the possibilities for trade are far more fabulous than could ever have been imagined 100--or even 10--years ago. That's where Bezos comes in. His van rounds a corner, passes an airfield, heads down a two-lane road and pulls into a long driveway that leads to the biggest warehouse you've ever seen. The place is known as the Coffeyville Distribution Center, and Bezos (pronounced Bay-zos), who's never been here before, is giggling with excitement. He tells the driver to stop so he can snap a picture of a workman pounding a HELP WANTED sign into the turf. Bezos, 35, a meticulous documentarian, is worried that his life is scrolling by too fast to remember, a life that is so fantastic as to verge on the unbelievable. So he takes plenty of pictures and awful, jittery amateur videos. At the very least, they'll help tell his story to the Bezoses' first child, a boy due in March.

Here in Coffeyville is another piece of the proof that Bezos' early and fervent belief in the Internet--that it would rock retailing, that it would change the way we live--stands as one of the more prescient assumptions ever made by a businessperson. "We're trying to build something lasting," Bezos says, looking at this 850,000-sq.-ft. monument to free trade. The warehouse is stocked with books, CDs, TVs, stereos, video games, software, toys. And yet only 10% of the area is being used. The rest is stretch space, here for the ongoing e-commerce revolution.