[October 23, 1929 - Sterling Apartment, 11:47 PM]
Alexander hadn't slept in fifty-three hours. His desk was a graveyard of coffee cups and calculation sheets, each equation a small prophecy of tomorrow's apocalypse. The market would open in nine hours and thirteen minutes. In nine hours and fourteen minutes, the first domino would fall.
Or I'm wrong and we're fucked. But hey, at least we'll be memorably fucked.
"You should rest," his mother said from the doorway, her voice carefully neutral. She'd taken to checking on him hourly, like he might spontaneously combust from stress. Which, fair.
"Can't. Need to review the positions one more time." His handwriting had degraded from meticulous to manic over the past week. "Stanley executed our shorts exactly as specified. RCA at 505, US Steel at 261, General Electric at 403. We're leveraged eight-to-one. If I'm wrong—"
"We lose everything. You've mentioned that. Frequently." She entered the room, navigating the obstacle course of crumpled papers like a woman crossing a minefield. "And if you're right?"
"Then we become war profiteers, except the war is against the American economy and our weapons are mathematics and timing."
"That's... morbid."
"That's accurate. We're about to profit from the financial destruction of millions of people, Mom. Let's not pretty it up with euphemisms."
She sat on his bed, studying him with the intensity of a woman trying to understand how her baby boy became... whatever this was. "Your father told me what you said at Goldman. About Noah's ark."
"Seemed apt. Building a boat while everyone else insists it'll never rain."
"Do you feel like Noah? Chosen? Special?"
I feel like a fraud with future knowledge pretending it's intuition. But sure, let's go with biblical metaphors.
"I feel like someone who can see the tsunami coming while everyone else is playing in the tide pools." He rubbed his eyes, seeing stars. "And I feel guilty as hell for not screaming warnings from every rooftop."
"Why don't you?"
"Who would believe me? A fifteen-year-old kid saying the economy's about to implode? They'd laugh. Or worse, they'd investigate why I'm so sure. And that's a conversation that ends with me in a psychiatric ward."
"So instead, we profit."
"Instead, we survive. And maybe, once we have resources, we can help others survive too." He turned back to his calculations. "But first, we need to make it through tomorrow."
"You mean today." She glanced at the clock. "It's past midnight. Your doomsday has arrived."
Alexander felt his heart skip. October 24th, 1929. The date had lived in his head like a bomb timer, and now the countdown had reached zero.
"Mom," he said quietly, "whatever happens today, I need you to know I did this for us. For our family."
"I know, sweetheart." She moved behind him, placing her hands on his shoulders. "I just hope the cost isn't higher than the profit."
The cost is always higher than the profit. That's what makes it profitable.
But he didn't say that. Instead, he leaned back into her touch, allowing himself one moment of being her son instead of whatever he was becoming.
"Get some sleep," she said finally. "You'll need your strength for tomorrow."
"Today."
"Today." She kissed the top of his head. "My strange, brilliant, terrifying son. What have we created?"
You created a kid. The universe created whatever I am now. Blame management.
After she left, Alexander stared at his calculations one more time. Everything was in place. The shorts were positioned. The leverage was secured. The die was cast.
In nine hours, he'd either be vindicated or destroyed.
No pressure.
[October 24, 1929 - Goldman Sachs, 9:25 AM]
The trading floor was already buzzing when the Sterlings arrived, an electric tension that made the air taste like copper and catastrophe. Harold Stanley met them at his office, his usual composure cracking at the edges.
"Interesting day for a visit," Stanley said, attempting joviality that fell flat as roadkill. "The market's been... volatile this week."
"Volatile markets create opportunities," Alexander replied, keeping his voice steady despite his racing pulse. "We wanted to monitor our positions personally."
Translation: I want to watch the world burn in real-time. For educational purposes.
Stanley's smile had edges. "Your... hedges, you mean. Well, you picked an interesting time to be cautious."
The opening bell rang at 9:30.
For the first few minutes, nothing dramatic happened. The market opened lower, but that wasn't unusual. Alexander watched the ticker tape with the intensity of a predator stalking prey.
Then, at 9:43, the selling began.
A large order for General Motors. Then another for US Steel. Then another. And another.
The trickle became a stream. The stream became a river. The river became a tsunami.
"Dear God," someone whispered.
The trading floor erupted. Brokers screamed orders, runners sprinted between posts like their lives depended on it—which, financially speaking, they did. The ticker tape machine began falling behind—first by minutes, then by tens of minutes.
"SELL! SELL EVERYTHING!"
"GET ME CONFIRMATION ON RCA!"
"THE TICKER'S FORTY MINUTES BEHIND!"
"WHERE'S MY FUCKING ORDER?"
Alexander watched with the detached fascination of a scientist observing an experiment he'd run a thousand times in his head. But the human cost—the growing panic, the tears, the man in the corner having what looked like a heart attack—that was new. That was real in a way his memories hadn't quite captured.
These are real people watching their lives evaporate. Remember that. Don't become so cold that you forget.
"Your positions," Stanley appeared at his elbow, sweat beading on his forehead like condensation on a glass of panic, "are performing exceptionally."
"Define exceptionally."
"You're up approximately 300% as of..." he checked his watch, "...ten minutes ago. The tape's so far behind, God knows what they're worth now."
"Hold everything," Alexander said firmly. "This is just the beginning."
"How can you possibly know that?"
Because I've seen this movie and the director's cut and the behind-the-scenes documentary.
"Because panic is exponential, Mr. Stanley. Fear feeds on itself. Look at the tape—we're seeing maybe half the actual trades. When people realize how far behind the information is, when they can't get accurate prices, what do you think they'll do?"
"Panic more," Joseph answered, his face pale but determined.
"Exactly. And we're not even at lunch yet."
By 11 AM, the floor looked like Dante's Inferno if Dante had been really into financial markets. Brokers who'd been millionaires at breakfast were paupers by brunch. The ticker tape was running two hours behind—prices appearing on the tape were ghosts of trades long past, meaningless numbers that only added to the confusion.
"Thirteen million shares," Stanley said, his voice hoarse from shouting over the chaos. "We're going to trade thirteen million shares today. The system can't handle it."
"The system was never designed for failure," Alexander observed. "Only for endless growth. Funny how optimism becomes a structural weakness."
At 1:30 PM, the cavalry arrived. Or tried to.
Richard Whitney, vice-president of the Exchange and walking embodiment of old money confidence, strode onto the floor like Moses about to part the Red Sea. If Moses had been a banker. And the Red Sea was made of debt.
"U.S. Steel!" Whitney announced in a voice that had probably never been told 'no' by anyone poorer than God. "I bid 205 for 10,000 Steel!"
The floor erupted in desperate hope. The bankers were intervening! The ship was saved! The great and powerful had spoken!
"Now?" Joseph asked quietly. "Should we close positions?"
"Not yet," Alexander murmured, watching traders scramble to buy back their shorts. "Let them think it's over. Let them believe the cavalry has arrived. Hope is just another market to short."
The rally lasted two hours and fourteen minutes. Then reality reasserted itself with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer made of mathematics and margin calls.
"Now," Alexander said. "Close twenty percent of our RCA position. Lock in some profits."
Stanley, who looked like he'd aged five years in five hours, nodded to his traders. In the chaos, their orders were just drops in an ocean of devastation.
"You're still holding eighty percent?" Stanley asked. "The bankers—"
"The bankers just threw good money after bad. They might as well have tried to stop a hurricane with a hand fan." Alexander watched the tape. "This crash has been building for years. One dramatic gesture won't stop it."
By close, they'd traded over thirteen million shares. The ticker wouldn't catch up until after midnight. The market had lost $5 billion in value—about $75 billion in future money.
And Alexander Sterling, fifteen years old with memories of another lifetime, had just made his first fortune.
"Your positions," Stanley said, doing rapid calculations, "are up approximately 500% for the day."
"Hold everything else until Tuesday," Alexander instructed. "Monday will see a small recovery. Tuesday..." He smiled grimly. "Tuesday will make today look like a warmup."
[October 29, 1929 - Black Tuesday - 4:00 PM]
If Thursday had been a disaster, Tuesday was the apocalypse with a side of extra doom.
Alexander stood in Stanley's office, watching through the window as the trading floor devolved into complete chaos. Sixteen million shares traded. No buyers at any price for most stocks. The ticker tape had given up entirely—it would run until past midnight just to catch up with the day's carnage.
"Your positions," Stanley said, his voice barely above a whisper, "have netted approximately two point three million dollars in profit."
The number should have felt like victory. Instead, Alexander felt hollow. Through the window, he could see a man sitting on the floor, rocking back and forth, clutching worthless stock certificates. Another was on the phone, probably telling his wife they'd lost everything. Everything.
That could have been us. Would have been us. But knowing the future means—
"Close all positions," Alexander said quietly. "Every single one."
"The market's still falling. You could—"
"I said close them." He turned from the window. "We've made enough profit from today's misery."
Stanley nodded, too exhausted to argue. As the orders went out, Alexander wondered if this was how arms dealers felt—necessary but unclean, profitable but tainted.
As they left Goldman Sachs, walking past crowds gathered outside brokerage houses, past newsboys screaming about financial ruin, past a world fundamentally changed in five days, Joseph put his hand on Alexander's shoulder.
"You were right," he said simply.
"Yeah," Alexander replied, tasting ashes. "I was."
His mother, walking on his other side, said nothing. But her hand found his, squeezing gently. A reminder that they were still a family, still together, even if they were now wealthy from a wound that would take America a decade to heal.
That night, as October bled into November and the city counted its dead—fortunes lost, dreams shattered, lives ended by their own hands when the numbers became too heavy to bear—Alexander lay in bed staring at the ceiling.
He'd won. He'd played the game with future knowledge and won spectacularly.
So why did victory taste so much like defeat?
Because, a voice that sounded dangerously like a conscience whispered, you knew it was coming and did nothing to stop it. You could have tried harder. Warned more people. Done... something.
But he hadn't. Because warning people would have meant questions he couldn't answer. Because stopping it might have changed the timeline in ways he couldn't predict. Because, in the end, he'd chosen his family's survival over everyone else's.
Is this how it starts? he wondered. Is this how you become the villain of your own story? One justified choice at a time?
Tomorrow, he'd start planning the next phase. Sterling Enterprises. Howard Stark. The connections and companies that would matter when the next war came. The long game that stretched decades into a future only he could see.
But tonight, he allowed himself to feel the weight of knowing too much and doing too little.
Outside his window, New York wept for its lost fortunes. And Alexander Sterling, fifteen years old with two lifetimes of memory, closed his eyes and tried not to count the cost in anything but dollars.
Welcome to the game, he thought. Where winning feels like losing and the only rule is survival.
Time to build an empire on the ashes.
God help anyone who gets in the way.