Chapter 78: Black Tuesday
The entire "Roaring Twenties" had seemed like a golden age. Fast-moving, bold, and rich with promise. But underneath all that glamour, the cracks had already started to form.
George saw it coming. He had seen it for years. But it wasn't something one man could stop—not even someone like him.
He was, after all, one of its biggest beneficiaries. During this decade, George had built the backbone of his commercial empire. Not quietly—but steadily.
In cultural media, energy and minerals, military research, and consumer tech, George's reach expanded far and fast. In just ten years, he had achieved what old aristocratic families had taken generations to build. He was no longer just a name whispered among scholars or politicians—he was becoming something else entirely.
But he wasn't done.
George intended to use the coming crisis to go even further. To claim power that could influence the world, not from the shadows, but from the very architecture of global decision-making.
During these years, several important events quietly unfolded.
A year earlier, one of George's teams—tasked with monitoring Abraham Erskine—reported suspicious activity near the professor's home.
Three nights after the warning reached George, Dr. Erskine packed a single suitcase and attempted to flee Germany with his wife and children. It was a quiet escape, no lights, no farewells. Just a car, a direction, and hope.
But less than 120 kilometers from the border, the family was intercepted by two separate groups.
The Nazi Party had moved quicker than anyone expected.
Dr. Erskine was separated from his wife and children, taken by one car. His family was loaded into another.
The tracking personnel George had stationed nearby kept their distance, just as instructed. When the moment came, they intervened—but not to rescue Erskine. George had been clear: don't interfere with the doctor yet.
Instead, they followed the vehicle holding Mrs. Erskine and the children.
The extraction was clean. Quiet. The family was rescued en route to a detention camp. That same night, they were moved to a hidden stronghold.
George arrived the next morning.
"Guten Morgen, Mrs. Erskine," George said in calm, practiced German as he stepped into the modest safehouse. "My name is George Orwell Swinton."
The woman stood frozen in the middle of the room. Her eyes were wide, tired. Her two children, both barely ten, stood behind her, confused and frightened.
"Who are you?" she asked, shielding them instinctively.
George kept his tone gentle. "At least for now, we are the ones who saved you, aren't we? So please… don't be afraid. We're not here to hurt you."
He paused, then added, "I knew your husband. We met years ago, before any of this began."
The name seemed to soften her slightly. She lowered her hand but didn't quite relax. Still, George had said what mattered most. He had saved them—and in moments like this, that counted.
"Thank you, sir," she whispered. "Please… please find Erskine. He's just a professor. He's never done anyone harm."
George didn't promise blindly.
"I'm afraid… It's not so simple," he said. "The people who took him aren't random thugs. They're from the German Weapons Research Institute. And your husband's work… It's of high value to them. For now, that protects him. He won't be harmed, not while they still need him."
Mrs. Erskine's shoulders slumped slightly. She nodded, understanding the unspoken truth.
"I will bring him back to you," George said. "That I promise."
Her eyes welled, and she bowed in thanks once, then again, and again.
George waited a moment longer, then calmly cast a Sleeping Charm over all three of them. The children collapsed gently into their mother's arms, and she followed a second later.
George caught them before they hit the floor. One by one, he moved them into the Chaos Space for safekeeping.
By nightfall, they were already on Hogwarts Island. George summoned the old butler.
"These three will be living here for the foreseeable future," George said. "Give them a home. Make them comfortable. Assign an English tutor. The children need stability."
"Yes, Master," the butler replied, already taking mental notes.
Back in Germany, George's remaining personnel left quietly in the days that followed. Their mission was complete.
In the original timeline, Erskine's family would've been sent to a concentration camp and executed.
This time… George had changed that.
Over the next few years, Hogwarts Island itself underwent quiet transformations.
There were more statues now—ornate, ancient-looking, and spread across the courtyards and towers. To outsiders, they looked like art. In reality, they were golems, refined through a fusion of alchemy and Earth metals. Beautiful in stillness—but deadly in motion.
George also reshaped the way people shopped.
Supermarkets—an entirely new model of commerce—began appearing across the U.S. and Europe. He wasn't just importing food. He was importing the idea of convenience.
It took off almost overnight.
Then came Orwell Hospital in New York. Designed exclusively for the wealthy and politically connected, it became the go-to place when "modern medicine" ran out of answers.
What the public didn't know was that some of the most advanced treatments were rooted in potion-making. George used the facility to quietly test formulas derived from magical principles. The hospital gained a reputation for doing the impossible.
And then, there was education.
On the opposite side of Hogwarts Island, George acquired land that had once been earmarked for an airport in some future timeline. Now, it was the site of a private school, from kindergarten to university, all in one. His own employees' children, along with top recruits from various high schools, were given full scholarships.
Professors were hired from the best institutions. Salaries were generous. Loyalty, optional—George wanted talent more than obedience.
Graduates were given priority in his company. It was all part of a long game.
While his empire grew, George himself remained focused inward.
He stopped drawing items from the Three Thousand Worlds. Every bit of accumulated energy went into expanding the Chaos Space. He worked daily on alchemy, on ancient runes, on golem refinement, and on magical theories of teleportation.
The Portkey system worked—but it wasn't pleasant. That stomach-pulling sensation wasn't sustainable for daily use. George believed a refined array system would change everything, and he was getting closer to making it real.
But everything comes to an end.
And when the end finally arrived, it didn't knock.
It crashed through the door.
On October 29th, 1929, the New York Stock Exchange imploded.
The Dow Jones fell over 40% from its high of 363 points. Tens of thousands watched their life savings disappear. Within hours, entire fortunes were erased.
Two weeks later, $30 billion of wealth had evaporated.
It was more than the cost of World War I.
Across Wall Street, bodies fell from skyscrapers—men who couldn't face a world without the empire they had built in ink and illusion. They jumped silently. By the end of the week, no one flinched anymore when someone fell.
This was Black Tuesday—the collapse that would drag the entire Western world into a decade of depression.
A nursery rhyme spread among the children of New York:
"Mellon blows the whistle, Hoover rings the bell,
Wall Street gives the signal—
The U.S. rushes to hell."
Banks collapsed.
Factories shut down.
Millions were suddenly unemployed.
Farmers dumped milk into rivers because it was cheaper than selling it. Entire towns turned into shantytowns—"Hoovervilles"—built from tarps and old sheet metal.
Even the language changed.
Beggar sacks were called Hoover bags. Cars pulled by horses, because no one could afford gas, were called Hoover wagons. The newspapers people used for warmth became known as Hoover blankets.
The once-glamorous stockbrokers were now selling apples on street corners. Some of them had owned banks just months earlier.
But George?
He had seen it all coming.
He had already moved his assets, reorganized his companies, and prepared his people. Not only did he avoid losses, but he also grew stronger. While others collapsed, he expanded.
Because George wasn't just surviving history anymore, he was shaping it, and growing faster than ever before.
_____________________________________________________________________________
The Stark Gamble
Story 4 of 4 – Golden Ship Anthology
~4,250 words
POV: Howard Stark
Howard Stark had kissed five hands, pitched three technologies, and changed suits twice before noon.
He was tired, overcaffeinated, and extremely pleased with himself.
Outside the upper observation deck windows, the Red Sea shimmered like glass. The sun was beginning to dip, just enough to tint the metal rails gold. Another gala was being set up somewhere on the east promenade. Two violinists warmed up under a carved teakwood awning — Ottoman design, if he wasn't mistaken.
Howard adjusted his collar and turned his reflection into a wink.
He was going to get that damn investment.
The Golden Ship — if you hadn't heard — was the biggest ship in the world.
Not just by size, or just by prestige, but by something harder to define.
"It's not a cruise," Howard said once to a lovely heiress from Jaipur. "It's a world you sail through. Or it sails through you. Something poetic like that. I've had rum."
He meant it.
You couldn't quite explain the ship. Not fully. It had theaters and temples. Business districts and moss gardens. Bars that smelled like cloves and leather. Decks where the wind always seemed to come from the direction you wanted. Hallways that remembered your favorite routes. Doors that didn't exist yesterday, but opened today into rooms you needed.
It didn't make sense.
And Howard Stark loved things that didn't make sense.
He was three months into the journey now.
Not originally planned. He'd come aboard in Lisbon to corner one of the Orwell Finance envoys — "accidentally," of course — and maybe spend a few nights schmoozing around the upper decks.
He hadn't expected to stay.
But then came the Cairo leg.
And the night sky over Aden.
And that foggy port in Kochi where the entire ship seemed to mirror itself — stars above, lanterns below — and you couldn't tell what was ocean and what was sky.
"I've never seen stars like that," he'd said aloud on the deck that night.
Someone beside him — an old man with a weathered jacket and a name tag that just said Jamal — had answered, "Maybe they're not stars."
By now, Howard knew the rhythm of the ship.
He knew that breakfast in the upper café was free, but if you asked for the same coffee outside the ship, it cost three marks. He knew that clothing shops let you "borrow" full wardrobes, as long as you wore them only onboard. He knew that if you danced well enough at the ballroom, someone would offer you a cigar and never expect you to pay for it.
Most people didn't leave the ship much once they'd gotten used to it. Why would they? Every stop added something new onboard — a bit of India, a bit of Alexandria, a Turkish stone bath, a violinist from Krakow. You never felt like you'd missed anything.
It was like the ship absorbed the best of every place it passed, preserved it, and whispered:
"You're still home."
And most curiously, everyone on board knew — they knew — that something about this place wasn't normal.
Not in a scary way. Not even in a mysterious way, really.
Just… enchanted.
But no one spoke of it too directly. That was part of the charm.
They'd seen the seas glow under moonless skies.
Heard music coming from decks that weren't mapped.
Watched lanterns hover mid-air without wires.
Heard rumors of someone — a man named George Orwell — who had built or bought or maybe just was the ship itself.
Howard had never met him.
But sometimes he'd pass by the upper salon at night and see a man reading alone, never bothered, always surrounded by men in suits and soft lighting.
He never looked up.
Howard had bigger things to worry about. Namely: his pitch.
He wanted to build an integrated flight guidance system. Radar, stabilizers, high-altitude wiring. Stuff no one understood yet — but would in ten years.
He'd drafted blueprints, polished the models, and shaken every hand that would tolerate him.
He'd even shared cigars with a distant cousin of the Austrian monarch, who spent the entire evening talking about horses and absolutely nothing useful.
Still, no dice.
The Orwell finance group, it seemed, only said yes once. To the right person. At the right time. In the right place.
And Howard couldn't quite figure out the formula.
He still enjoyed himself, of course.
Howard always did.
He danced at the Friday mixers. He flirted outrageously with duchesses. He played piano at Bar D'Or twice — not well, but with confidence.
He even made a name for himself among the crew.
"Howard Stark?" said Tomas, one of the stewards, one night. "Ah, yes, the American with ten suits and zero filter."
"That's me," Howard said proudly. "And I'm keeping the filter budget low this year."
One night — maybe two weeks before the Venice gala — Howard found himself walking the quiet corridor that curved around the outer deck.
It was nearly midnight. The stars were out.
The sea was glowing again.
He leaned on the rail. Said nothing. Just listened.
Behind him, a girl — one he recognized from the sketchbooks — was sitting cross-legged with charcoal in her hand, staring upward like she was seeing something he couldn't.
"Do you know what constellation that is?" he asked her.
She didn't look at him. "No."
"Me neither," he said.
And that was the whole conversation.
It was the most peaceful one he'd had all week.
In truth, Howard didn't envy George Orwell. Not really.
But sometimes, when he saw how people talked about him — the reverence, the hush — he wondered what it must be like to be the center of a myth. To have built something this impossible and still walk the decks like a man with two hands and a napkin tucked into his collar.
Howard was a man of science. He wanted facts. Mechanics. Blueprints.
But he also… didn't.
Because the not-knowing was what made it beautiful.
He whispered this one night to a guest at the Moroccan café:
"The ship's alive, I think. It's watching us. But in a good way. Like it wants us to be happy."
She'd replied, "Or maybe it's lonely, and it keeps us here so we won't leave."
He hadn't had a comeback for that.
Venice — Gala Night
The final pitch.
Howard had polished his shoes twice. Used the cologne from Lisbon — the one that cost more than his last apartment. His suit was crisp, white-pocketed, stylish but not desperate.
He made the rounds. Dropped every name he knew. Leaned just close enough to every Orwell rep to make sure they saw his folder.
He caught one looking.
And that was all he needed.
The deal closed three hours later.
He didn't cry. That wasn't his style.
He just stood by the windows, sipping free brandy, watching the sea blur past in a shimmer of violet and silver.
Then he went to Bar D'Or and did exactly what he'd always dreamed of doing:
He stood on a stool and yelled,
"Drinks on me, you beautiful bastards! The deal's in!"
People laughed. Cheered. Glasses raised. The jazz band switched mid-set and played "Binks' Sake" in his honor.
Even the quiet ones joined in.
Jamal was there, sipping tea like he always did.
Émile, the watchmaker, clinked glasses and nodded.
Anaya, the sketching girl, sat smiling, half-hidden behind her sketchbook.
They weren't friends — not really.
But they were something now. Something better.
Not passengers. Not clients.
Just people who had seen something strange and good together.
People who would never be strangers again.
Howard sat with them that night.
The four of them were at one table for once. The air is warm. Music is rising and stars overhead like spilled glitter.
They didn't talk about business. Or magic. Or money.
They talked about stew. About letters home. About books they'd meant to read and hadn't.
They laughed. They toasted. They promised, in that way you promise things you'll never say again, that they'd meet again someday.
Howard said, "You know, this place turns strangers into friends."
Anaya said, "Maybe even family."
Émile raised his glass.
Jamal smiled.
They drank.
The ship kept sailing.
People kept boarding. People kept leaving.
But some never did.
And those who left? They never forgot.
Because when you leave the Golden Ship as a friend…
You leave that way for life.
End of Story 4
And the end of Season 1: The Golden Ship Anthology