Chapter 14: Future
The next day, I woke up after the best night of sleep I'd had since being reborn as Francis Jacob Pritchett. Brenda also woke up smiling, though her joy quickly shifted to worry as she remembered her parents would be home early. She urged me to leave.
Being a good negotiator, I bargained for one more round in the morning (she used her mouth, since she was still very sore).
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"Why do you both look like you came back from a spa?" Manny eyed me and Jay suspiciously.
"Manny, how could I have gone to a spa yesterday? I was at a wedding," I answered smoothly, keeping a straight face.
"I thought Jay finally let you use the bathtub," Manny voiced his suspicion.
"The only reason I don't let you use the bathtub that much is because you take forever, and you infest it with those foam kits," Jay remarked sarcastically.
"I like to smell good," Manny retorted.
"Kiddo, you can manage that without perfuming the whole house," I joined in.
Gloria, who was finishing another pot of coffee, smacked both Jay and me before kissing Manny on the head. "Stop picking on mi niño," she scolded us.
"I'm not a kid, Mom," Manny crossed his arms.
"Manny, you can go use the bathtub, but don't overdo it with the bubbles," Gloria said, making him beam as he hurried off to bathe.
"So how was the wedding, Jake?" she asked me.
"Pretty good! The bride was all pure," I commented with a grin, earning another smack on the arm.
"What?" I raised my hands.
"Yeah, don't get cheeky," she said, thinking I'd made an innuendo (which she wasn't wrong about).
Jay shot me a reproachful look, but deep down I knew he was proud (even though he would never say it out loud). He's old school; he'd certainly prefer a problem like mine over me being locked away in my room playing video games.
And as good news often comes together, I received a message on my phone (another good one). After three weeks, the prize money had finally arrived. I now had one hundred and two million dollars in my account.
Finally, I was getting tired of not having my own money, even though Jay gave me a luxurious life without any shortages.
"Good news, Jake?" Gloria noticed my smile.
"Oh, no. I was just remembering yesterday," I said, dodging a flying soup ladle.
Each day I trust Jay and Gloria (and the rest of the family) more and more, but I thought it best to save this information for later.
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A few days passed, and Brenda's Prom was approaching (followed soon after by her departure).
We made the most of those days, Brenda becoming more daring during our study sessions (and now with money, it was easy to get reserved spots for us to have fun, even though I was underage)
As much as my feelings for her kept growing, I knew a long-distance relationship was impossible. And I wasn't going to give up the family I had gained just to follow her to Yale.
"I finally bought all the call options," I murmured while looking at my new notebook (an Apple PowerBook G4). I also had spent those days operating in the stock market, buying several calls (as I still didn't have a trustworthy person to do it for me).
I purchased 17 million call options of Amazon, 16 million of Yahoo, 16 million of Dell, 3 million of Netflix, 3 million of NetEase, and 5 million of RIMM (the company behind BlackBerry), all expiring in December of this year, 2003.
And 25 million Apple LEAPS (Long-Term Equity Anticipation Securities) expiring in Jan/26 (the longest call possible, since the currently rule allowed up to 30 months to expiration).
"If everything goes according to the numbers I remember, just the December 2003 calls alone should be worth 800 million dollars after the 35% tax. That's how absurd it is to invest in calls knowing the future."
I kept thinking out loud, "And the Apple LEAPS are even more, will be worth 3 billion net in January 2006"
Worst case scenario, I still have 16 million dollars in cash, 57.6 million from the other ticket, and the books in the publishing phase. Not to mention the rest of my knowledge.
"What to do about the future," I murmured again. "Revealing the resolution of the Langlands program (my greatest achievement) now would be impossible, it wasn't called the 'Grand Unified Theory of Mathematics' for nothing.
I was called a genius since forever, and it took me 15 years to accomplish what they said was impossible, at the age of 23.
I could release the Fundamental Lemma (part of the Langlands program)."
I don't think much about taking Ngô Bảo's work (2009); I would have solved it earlier if we had been born in the same year. Now it's my turn.
"And in other areas, there are Graphene, Perovskites, mRNA vaccines, CRISPR-Cas9..."
"But aside from Graphene, which will be discovered next year, there's no rush for the others." I took a deep breath. "I don't have a terminal illness any longer, no need to burn through so many things. I'm not in a hurry, and life here is pretty good."
I lay down on the bed, staring at the ceiling. "Might as well do high school. I basically spent most of my life in college, maybe new experiences will be good."
Maybe the memories of the old Francis made me even more curious about what a school life would be like.
"Jaaaake," I heard the shout I was more than used to, "breakfast."