[WP] Your time is almost up. The Grim reaper is coming for you but you know the secret. If he can’t get to you within the next two days then you legally cannot die. The ball is in your court and you’ve been preparing for this day. (by u/ninjasura)
Day 5 of 30 r/writingpromptsproject
The first step to being a god is becoming a barrister. Death was not a king or a crone as some of the ancients thought, It was not a skeleton; it did not ride a buffalo or carry a scythe. No, tdeath was a bureaucracy.
Death was a middle manager pushing around numbers on a spreadsheet. Death was a creaky legacy system strained under its ever expanding scope. Death was not a wild and unbridled rider. In the 22nd century death had been yoked. Yoked and directed, but not eliminated – a power like death was far too useful to be destroyed.
Allistair Nguyen was fucked, and he had no one to blame but himself. No one had put a gun to his head and forced him to buy 20 Million Tropicana Corp. call options strike price $2222 expiring 2/22/2222. In fact, his day trading terminal warned him repeatedly, entreated him tenderly, even came close to cajoling him quite clandestinely that anyone buying options that deep out of the money had a death wish, and was something he should absolutely reconsider doing.
No one had gathered hostages and demanded he set up a labyrinthine system of derivatives around that initial bet. It certainly wasn’t predestined nor was he compelled by some higher power to construct a mighty wall of swaps, futures, and forwards shielding that first shameful bet from view.
Maybe he’d had a death wish, but probably he’d just been bored. Likely he’d let his success so far – and it was looking more and more like a string of good luck rather than good stewardship at this point if he was honest about it – go to his head. Not that it mattered. Those options were a ticking time bomb on a short fuse. And the byzantine structure surrounding it a pile of dynamite that was going to detonate in exactly 2 days and blow him and everything he’d worked for to smithereens.
Simple machines and complex financial instruments shouldn’t be mixed. And if you are, definitely don’t get a lever involved. An inclination and a plan – that’s okay (but risky). A small wage not unknown. Anyone you asked would tell you that wheeling and dealing sometimes is unavoidable. But leverage? That’s how you get screwed.
Simple machines and complex financial instruments shouldn’t be mixed. And if you are, definitely don’t get a lever involved. An inclination and a plan – that’s okay (but risky). A small wage not unknown. Anyone you asked would tell you that wheeling and dealing sometimes is unavoidable. But leverage? That’s how you get screwed.
And boy was Alistair screwed. He’d borrowed and bet a sum of money that was mind blowing. He’d wagered everything he had, and everything he’d ever have. And at a time when death was reserved for the foolish and foolhardy, it was a lot of money
