CHAPTER SEVEN – TEMPORAL MECHANICS

The day started like most others and James rolled into work about eight, a lot earlier than if he was just dealing with the store, but he had promised Tommy that he would get the information for the potential deal to buy countrywide.  Today was the day that he was going to present what he had to him. It was a pain in the ass, but since it had already happened he knew what was coming and how to avoid it.

He wasn’t a legal expert, but he had all of the court records, names, times etc so that he could consult with more lawyers to figure out what they could do.  The fact was he had talked to several already, but more information was always good. As he unlocked the door to enter though he smelled something weird. The lights were already on as well.

James followed the aroma to the diner in the middle.  It was ablaze with the logos and lights that it normally did when it was in full use, usually at night during gaming events.  He entered through one of the doors and saw Tommy sitting there having an omelet.

“Morning sunshine,” Tommy said between bites.  “Tell the chef what you want and he will make it.”

James looked back into the kitchen and saw a man working the grill.  “What the hell is going on? I don’t remember telling you I was presenting what I found to you today.”

Tommy stopped a moment and looked at him, “I didn’t know.  I thought you said you needed a couple of weeks?”

“I got done ahead of time.”

“Well then, that makes today a double event.  I am meeting with Todd’s lawyer today in New York.  I got a call from him yesterday.”

“So now it’s all coming together?”

“Of course, a private will reading.  I assume you want to tag along, while we travel you can pitch what you got to me.”

“That works.  When are we leaving?”

“As soon as you eat and grab what you need to.”

Soon, after the best breakfast he ever had, James and Tommy were off to a regional airport that wasn’t far from their store.  The Sparta regional airport was just one strip and a few hangers. James had never been there before and had no idea that his friend had a plane there, or even knew anyone with a plane.  But given the story he had been told and what he had witnessed he was bound to believe almost anything at this point.

They arrived at the airport and didn’t stop at the small terminal there, instead the driver kept going to the edge of the field and then towards the hangers through an open gate.  When they reached the farthest hanger a small just was sitting on the tarmac with its engines running. The door was open with the stairs down and a very attractive flight attendant.

The car stopped and the driver opened the door.  They both got out and walked to and into the plane.  The attendant followed them on. She pulled the stairs up and closed the door.  Then went to the cockpit. Soon the plane was taxing on the runway and prepared for take-off.  The usual spiel came over the speakers and they buckled in. Soon they were in the air and flying along at cruising altitude.

The legging blonde attendant came over to them.  “Is there anything I can get you gentlemen?”

“I will just have a beer,” Tommy said.  He then looked at James, “It is a full-service flight there bud, you can have anything.”  He winked as he finished the sentence.

James thought a minute.  “Just a pop.” The attendant smiled and turned, winking at Tommy as she went to the front to get their drinks.  “What the hell did you do as Todd?”

“Well its not like I could have a wife and kids, is it?  Besides it is consensual. They are paid to do the job they do, everything else is just a bonus.”

“What do you mean they?”  As James finished the sentence, A redhead and Burnette attendants came from the back of the plane.

“I mean officially they work for the estate of Mr. Matherson.  They are just that, attendants, but select persons can partake in extra benefits.  Well just me. But I have only flown on here twice before when I had too.”

“Anyway, back to the business at hand.”

“Yeah.  Once we get to New York and meet with the lawyer, then we will discuss your thing and take action from there.”

Their drinks arrived and James settled down a little.  “I do have a question though, I am sure you knew it was coming eventually.”

“The future?”

“Of course.”

“Remember how one can’t go back farther than they have existed, but they retain their age?”

“Yeah.”

“Well the one time I jumped to the future, it was ten years.  As soon as I arrived I felt pain all throughout my body. I saw a doctor.  Nothing was wrong with me per say, I just had the body of a regular fifty-year-old.”

“You aged when you jumped?”

“Exactly.  I figure if I had stayed I would have stayed at that age, but it makes it awkward.  I have no idea what the shock would do to me if I jumped farther. I think it is the universes way of keeping a check on time travel.”

“By the way, aren’t you worried about what the ladies might hear?”

“No, they are in the back.  After take off they go back there unless called.  We don’t have to worry.”

James looked around and realized they weren’t there.  The cockpit was closed as well. It was just the two of them in a nice leather interior jet traveling from Michigan to New York.  “I guess I can’t knock the travel arrangements.”

“You better not.  As I was saying though.  I mean it might be because traveling back is easier since everything is already set.  If you go to the future so many unknowns are there, that settling on one makes the process hit the traveler the way it did me.”

“That goes against everything science fiction has told us.  I mean time travel to the future is real according the relatively.”

“That isn’t time travel that is moving at different speeds through space time.  Relative to those moving slower, time passes faster. Just jumping around is different.”

“So you do know what is going on?”

“Hell no.  I just made the machine, I have no idea how temporal mechanics work.  Its like the first boats. Man figured out wood floats and made a raft, but he couldn’t explain the physics around it.  He just knew it works. Maybe someday someone will figure all this stuff out and make a time machine that counteracts all the things mine can’t.  Like how later ships could be made of steal and all that jazz.”

“So, you are just a humble boat builder with no idea how it really works?”

“Nope.  I just did some basic quantum math, applied it with engineering and poof, time travel.  The finer details are someone else’s problem.”

“You will have to tell me more about it someday.”

“Not how to. That is going to die with me.  Besides you are a finance guy, once I get past intermediate physics I would lose you.”

“Good point.”

CHAPTER SIX – REAL ESTATE

“So you had a guy that did all of that for you?”

“Of course, it’s not I like I was going to stay the whole time and manage finances.”

“So you got lucky and found the right guy then.”

“Actually no, it took me five times to get it right.  I would leave enough instructions to cover 30 years. Once I made contact I would come back here and see what happened. If the held to the contract I would keep them, if not I would go back and change who I approached.”

“Seems like a lot of trial and error,” James said as he grabbed another roll from spread they had assembled.

“Well I had to be sure that it would get done.  I wasn’t going to leave something important like this to amateurs.”

“Fair enough.  I can’t imagine that thirty-years’ worth of information remained accurate though.”

“It didn’t, I had to go back and revise a lot, thus many of our conversations.  But I wasn’t going to do that for each schlub I tested. I figured if they followed the information to the letter, then good or bad I would know.  The first four tried to make things better when it got bad. I didn’t need thinkers, I needed followers. Nice, blind, obedient, followers.”

“So once you found the right guy, then you adjusted as you needed.”

“Correct, which brings me to my next point, and you.”

“Now we get to the good stuff.”

“Not really, unless you find lots of numbers and trading transactions fun.  I really can’t see how you did this for a living all those years. I took a few classes so I knew the topic and I found that boring.  Doing it for a living day in and day out, I would go insane.”

“I like numbers, what can I say?”

“That you like working here better.”

“Oh, I do, I get to deal with numbers and the nerdy shit I adore.  Not as much in the number department, but enough to make me happy.”

“So I think I have something that could make you potentially really happy.”

“What would that be?”

“I want you to pitch me a deal that would make a literal fuck ton of money.”

“I’m not in the market that much anymore.  I mean I still browse the journal occasionally, but nothing that I can think of that magnitude.”

Tommy leaned over as James took a bite of an eggroll and smacked the back of his head.  “Why the hell would I want you to pitch me an unknown? I have a damn time machine. Pitch me something from the last twenty years that could do the same.  Thing about it as a sure thing. If you have access to capital and resources at any point in time, that we can get too, what would you do to maximize profit?”

James pondered a moment while he rubbed the back of his head.  “Maybe take advantage of the housing crash of 2007 and 2008?”

“I tried that.  I got the securities that said it would fail.  I made some, but not a lot. The losses were eventually capped, for me at least, at around five billion.”

James stopped chewing and just stared at him a moment.  “Only five?” he said as pieces of eggroll dropped from his mouth.

“I am serious here dude.  The amount is not an obstacle.  Take a few to actually think and get as stupid on me as you want.  I mean even look at things that didn’t work out that well, and if they can be fixed and profit us then pitch that as well.”

James thought for a few more minutes as he finished the eggroll that had been plaguing him for too long now.  He started off at three six-foot Millennium Falcons that Toys R Us had for displays in the late 90s. They were engaged in a static position from a dogfight they were caught in, it was a thing Tommy had done with them.  At a grand a piece, James expected them to be that way for a while. For whatever reason though this sparked a thought.

“Countrywide!”

“Well sure, maybe someday I could franchise out, but that isn’t in my immediate plans.”

“No, the home loan company that was one of the main culprits of the crappy loans that brought about the housing collapse.”

“Oh yeah.  They really screwed the pooch on that one.”

“Anyway.  Bank of America bought them for like 4.1 billion, actually 2.5 when the deal closed.  But they lost a ton of money on the deal over the years as things were worse than they thought along with taking on all of Countrywide’s legal problems.”

“How big a loss are we talking?”

“About 40 to 50 billion.”

Tommy audibly gasped.  “I want to make money man.”

“I get that.  They went in thinking they knew what was going to happen.  But if we know all of that and how it will play out before hand then we can take it over and potentially turn that into, I don’t know 100 billion?”

“That is a huge difference.”

“Yes, it is, but if we have everything in place before we take it over, head the lawsuits off at the pass, and knowing when the markets will recover at what times in what markets we can take all of that property and mortgages and optimize revenue.”

“Sounds like a lot of leg work.”

“How far did Kirk have to go to get Spock back?”

“Fair enough, what are the main things we will need?”

“Well to even have a shot at it, we would need some kind of heavy financial company to have the credibility to buy them out.  The government has to approve the deal, that kind of thing. And I will have to do a lot of homework. I just hope we can have everything in place to make it happen.”

“Remember the Y2K scare?”

James looked at him weird for a moment, “Off topic, but yeah.”

“In 1995 I set up a small computer repair company that had every conceivable variation of fixes for the problem.  Every system, network, whatever. You might have heard of it, Safe Systems.”

“Of course.  They are still big in computer repair.  Not as big as back then.”

“Nope.  I used it to tackle that problem and make a ton of money.  Since we already had the fixes, we could do it faster and get more contracts.  Once 2001 came I pretty much stepped back and sold the thing. Now it is just a shell of its former self, but it did what I needed it too.  The point is, I found a problem that was huge, figured out how to take it on and profit, and then did it. Computers are my space though, now I am looking to you to figure out yours.”

“Well give me a week or two to do some research.  Then I will come to you and see what we can do to get ready.”

“Sounds like a plan.  Now pass that fried rice.”

CHAPTER FIVE – MY AGENT

May 1976 – New York City, New York

A younger man in an Air Force uniform is in the waiting room of Robert Patterson, Esq.  Business was slow today, but Robert was making people wait anyway. He wanted them to think he was busy.  It was finally time to talk to the sole person in his office, besides himself and his secretary. He figured the man was here for a power of Attorney or a will or something simple.

“He will see you now,” the secretary said from behind her desk as she hung up the phone.

Todd Matherson stood up and grabbed the briefcase that he had brought with him.  He smiled at the lady as she directed him to a door to his left. He opened it and entered.  Behind the desk in the office sat Mr. Patterson, a middle age mad who was losing a little of the top while gaining a bit in the middle.  He stood and offered his hand. Todd shook it then took the seat he was offered.

“How can I help you today young man?”

“How trustworthy are you?”

“Excuse me?”

“I am looking for someone who I can trust implicitly and who can follow instructions.”

“Well if you are worried about anything that we discuss it is covered under privilege.”

“I am well aware of the law Mr. Patterson.  I am asking about the ability to do as one is told and not asking any questions.”

“I don’t like where this is going, I would never partake in anything illegal.”

“I never said what I wanted was illegal.  I will be blunt then. How would you like to do as little as possible and make a ton of money?”

“Who wouldn’t?”

“The problem is that most people eventually start to ask questions.  Would you have that problem?”

“I think we are done here.”

Todd stood up and placed the briefcase on Mr. Patterson’s deck and opened it.  The lawyer stared in disbelief. The case easily contained $25,000. “Now that I have your attention, can we get down to business?”

“Um,” Patterson adjusted his tie. “I don’t see why not.”

“I understand you have a practice to run, so I won’t demand too much from you for now.  I will keep it simple for now too, so both of us can figure out if we can trust each other.  For you, to see that I am serious, for me to see if you can do as you are told.”

“What is the money for?”

“Your retainer.  I will offer you work for the next six months.  Each transaction after the first will see you paid for it.  This will cover the first.”

“What are these transactions you want me to do?”

Todd pulls a letter from his pocket and places it on the desk.  “In the envelope is a set of days and times that you need to be here.  On those days you will receive additional instructions to execute. Being a finance lawyer, you know people and procedures for most of the actions that will be requested.  Those that you do not, you will be instructed to learn or outsource to people who can.”

“Why not just give me the instructions direct?”

“Plausible deniability for everyone involved.  In addition I have documents here for you to sign.  I took the liberty of having a third party draft these.”  Todd took some papers from the back of the brief case and handed them to Robert.  He took them and read through them.

“These are very detailed.”

“Yes they are.  Even if I already trusted you I would still have these drawn up.  I can’t take any chances.”

“I understand.”

“And since you will not get instructions until they are to be handled, you can claim ignorance if anything does happen.  But no one should ever find out as long as you say nothing.”

“I would like to go over these if you don’t mind.”

“I understand.”  Todd stood up, then took $10,000 from the case and put it on the desk.  “I will return tomorrow to see if we have a deal then. I will also say this now, I am aware of inflation and cost of living.  So right off the bat don’t get greedy on me.”

The next day Todd returned.  The secretary was not there; Robert was at the front desk waiting for him.  “Mr. Matherson, I have been looking forward to your return.”

“Is everything in order then?”

“I see no reason that I can’t do what you need me too.”

“Good.”  Todd hands Mr. Patterson the briefcase.  “In there you will find a bankbook with the funds to execute the first round of directives.”  Todd reached in his pocket and hands Robert two cards.

“What are these?”

“The first is the card of the accounting firm you are to use.  They will be alerted to how much you have been instructed to invest and where.  They also receive the bank records. Any deviation will be a breach of contract.  The second is a piece of real estate that I suggest you buy.”

“I am not a real estate guy.”

“I have it on good authority that it will go for sale on the cheap, within a year you can flip it for ten times the buying price today.  If you don’t want it, then I will grab it. Besides I tossed a little extra in here so you could afford it.”

“Where does an Air Force Sergeant get……..”

Todd looked at him sternly for a moment.  “What was that?”

“Oh nothing.  I am still getting used to keeping my thoughts to myself.”

“I hope for both our sakes that you learn it fast.  Don’t you have something for me?”

Mr. Patterson hands Todd an envelope with the signed documents.  “There you are.”

“Thank you.  Now for starters, you need to keep your eyes on a new Index fund starting and get in on HBO.”

“That new satellite company?  That is a fad.”

“Trust me it is worth it.  You will receive more specific instructions soon.”

“When can I expect you again?”

“I am not sure.  I will stop in from time to time.  Like I said we will see how you do over the next few months and then go from there.”

Of course Todd already knew that Patterson would check out and do just fine.  It was in fact his fifth attorney. After each initial meeting with each lawyer he would jump back to the present and know immediately if they screwed him over.  Mr. Patterson would not only keep his mouth shut, but would do far better than Todd could have imagined.