The pen moved with a kind of grim hunger.
For three hours, Alexander Vance wrote. He filled twelve sheets of lined notebook paper with a script so compact and precise it resembled a cryptographic cipher. He did not pause for reflection or doubt; the facts flowed from some deep, cold well within him, as if his consciousness were merely a conduit for the downloaded data of a future that would now never be.
The handwriting was not his own. Not the anxious, looping scrawl of the boy who had inhabited this body yesterday. This was the angular, efficient hand of the man he had become—the man who had reviewed thousands of contracts, whose marginal notes had decided fates. It was a hand that trusted paper more than memory.
He began with the cataclysms.
*Lehman Brothers files Ch.11 – Sept 15, 2008.*
*Bear Stearns to JPMorgan (Fed-brokered) – March 16, 2008.*
*LIBOR manipulation scandal surfaces – Apr 2012. Key banks: Barclays first, then RBS, UBS.*
*Facebook opens to non-edu public – Sept 26, 2006. User growth: 12M end of '06, 50M end of '07.*
*iPhone launch – June 29, 2007. Stock (AAPL) price on launch: ~$122. Adjust for '07 split...*
*Bitcoin whitepaper – Oct 31, 2008. First trade value (2010): $0.0008 per BTC. Mt. Gox peak...*
The list grew, a chronology of chaos and creation. He noted not just the *what*, but the *how*. The triggers, the dominoes. The Federal Reserve's emergency lending facilities. The exact date the TED spread would blow out, signaling the frozen arteries of global credit. The names of the obscure mortgage-backed securities that would become toxic talismans—Long Beach Mortgage, Fremont General.
This was the negative space of his new world: the coming failures.
Then, the opportunities.
He drew a line down the center of a fresh page. On the left: **Seeds**. On the right: **Harvest**.
Under **Seeds**, he listed companies that were, at this moment, either unborn or insignificant. The names were incantations of future power.
*YouTube (founded Feb '05). Acquisition by Google for $1.65B in stock – Oct '06.*
*Twitter (project "twttr" launching mid-'06). Key moment: SXSW '07.*
*Palantir Technologies (founding contract with CIA '04). Private valuation explodes post-'08.*
*Netflix – begins streaming transition '07. DVD biz will hold, but pivot is key. Stock price Q4 '07...*
*NVIDIA – CUDA architecture released '06. Gaming now, AI/ML acceleration in 5-7 years.*
Under **Harvest**, he noted the eventual outcomes, the multipliers of value. He did not write dollar figures yet. Those were too fluid, too dependent on entry points. He wrote percentages, magnitudes of growth.
His mind, the analytical engine, was overheating with the sheer volume of cross-referenced data. He knew he was forgetting things. Obscure biotech breakthroughs, regional political shocks, natural disasters that shifted supply chains. He was a god with a faulty memory.
A sharp, hollow pang in his stomach broke his trance. Hunger. The raw, demanding hunger of a twenty-two-year-old metabolism. It was a sensation so vividly physical it felt like an insult. His fifty-three-year-old self had dined on seared scallops and kale salads; this body wanted cheap carbohydrates and grease.
He pushed back from the desk, his spine cracking. The room was dim, the afternoon light from the grimy window already fading into a dirty orange. He had been sitting in near-total silence, save for the scratch of pen on paper and the hum of the mini-fridge. The solitude felt different now. It was no longer the poverty of a struggling student, but the war room of a general preparing a campaign. The space had been transformed by the contents of his mind.
He needed air. And food.
He pulled on a worn leather jacket that smelled of rain and subway stations—a smell he'd paid thousands to perfumers to eliminate in his previous life. He shoved the filled pages under his mattress, a reflexive, paranoid gesture. It was pointless; no one in this world would understand their significance even if they found them. The code was not in the symbols, but in the timeline.
The streets of Boerum Hill were a time capsule, and he was its only archaeologist. He walked south on Smith Street, past independent bookstores still thriving, past cafes without QR codes on the tables. The faces staring at phone screens were looking at Nokia flip phones or BlackBerrys, their thumbs tapping out T9 texts. The soundtrack was not streaming playlists, but snippets of conversation and the bass line from a car stereo playing 50 Cent.
He saw the city with double vision. The scaffolding on a building wasn't just renovation; he knew it would become a luxury condo whose one-bedrooms would sell for $2 million by 2015. The "For Lease" sign in a window on Pacific Street marked a space where a farm-to-table restaurant would fail in 2009, then become a wildly successful artisanal coffee roaster in 2012.
He stopped at a bodega, its fluorescent light spilling onto the sidewalk. He bought a bacon, egg, and cheese on a roll, wrapped in greasy foil, and a can of Coke. The total was $4.50. The mundane transaction felt surreal. He handed over a five-dollar bill, his fingers brushing the clerk's. Human contact. Simple. Unburdened by legacy or expectation.
He ate on a bench in a small, ragged park, watching pigeons fight over a crust of bread. The sandwich was too salty, the eggs rubbery, the bread doughy. It was the best thing he had ever tasted. Each bite was a grounding, terrible reminder: this body was real. This hunger was real. This greasy foil was real. The ghost in the machine had to eat.
As he ate, he planned. The ledger was step one. Step two was capital. Seed capital. The knowledge in his head was worthless without leverage.
His own immediate financial situation was dire. A checking account hovering around $300. A maxed-out student credit card with a $1,000 limit. A part-time data entry job at a dusty insurance brokerage in the Financial District that paid $12 an hour, ten hours a week. It was a financial geography of sheer cliffs with no rope.
He could not get a traditional job in finance. Not quickly. His grades were mediocre, his resume thin. The marathon of interviews, the networking cocktails—he didn't have the time, and this young body lacked the polish, the unshakable, entitled confidence he had cultivated over decades.
He needed a shortcut. A high-probability, near-term event where his foreknowledge could be converted into cash with minimal starting capital. The stock market was the obvious arena, but with $300, even a 100% return was meaningless. He needed a multiplier. He needed volatility. He needed a story the market would believe, just for a little while.
He finished the Coke, the sugar hitting his bloodstream with a jolt. His mind, fueled by glucose and desperation, scrolled through the memory banks of late 2005.
And then he found it.
A name. A biotech company. A catalyst.
*Keryx Biopharmaceuticals.*
In his past life, he'd followed it idly, a case study in speculative frenzy. In November 2005, Keryx would announce preliminary Phase III results for its drug Sulonex, for diabetic nephropathy. The data would be presented in a way that sparked wild optimism. The stock, trading around $4 now, would skyrocket to over $20 in a matter of weeks on monstrous volume, a classic "pump" before the inevitable, brutal "dump" when more complete data revealed the drug's severe limitations.
It was perfect. A short-lived, news-driven explosion. A bubble he could ride up and exit before it popped. It required no deep industry knowledge, just timing.
But to play it, he needed a brokerage account. And margin. A lot of it.
He crumpled the foil into a tight ball. A plan, cold and ruthless, began to crystallize. It had three parts, each more ethically void than the last.
**First, the Card.** His student credit card. He would max it out with a cash advance. The fees would be usurious, the interest catastrophic for anyone planning to pay it back. He was not.
**Second, the Broker.** He needed an online platform that would grant a reckless young man margin based on… enthusiasm. There was one, notorious in the pre-2008 wild west: *SureTrade*. Its risk controls were a joke, its margin requirements lax for "active traders." He could open an account, fund it with the cash advance, and immediately apply for maximum margin. With a few well-placed lies about "family assets" and "proprietary analysis," he might get 4:1. Turn $1,000 into $5,000 in buying power.
**Third, the Play.** All-in on KERYX calls. Out-of-the-money, short-dated options. The cheapest, most explosive leverage possible. If he timed it right—buying in the quiet days before the abstract release, selling on the first or second day of the feeding frenzy—he could turn $5,000 into $50,000. Maybe more.
It was grotesquely risky. It was financial suicide for anyone without his specific knowledge. One delay, one misinterpreted data point, and he would be wiped out, buried under credit card debt that would cripple this identity before it began.
He felt no fear. Only a cold, clarifying focus. This was the first test. Not of the market, but of himself. Was his memory accurate? Was his nerve intact? Was he willing to burn the first, fragile bridge of this new life to build a stronger one?
He stood, dropping the foil into a trash can. The sun had set. The city's lights were coming on, one by one, a galaxy of human endeavor. He looked up at the darkening sky between the rooftops.
In his previous life, he had built an empire on patience, on deep fundamental analysis, on the slow accretion of advantage. That man would have been appalled by this gambit. That man was dead.
The man walking back to the coffin apartment on Bergen Street had a different motto. One written in the secret ledger under his mattress.
*The future is already written. You are just turning the pages.*
Tomorrow, he would begin to turn them faster.