Chapter 14: The Apple Investment
January 9th, 2008. The day everything changes.
Not for everyone. For most people, it's just Tuesday. But I'm watching a live stream of Steve Jobs on stage, and my brain is lighting up like a Christmas tree made of future knowledge.
"One last thing," Jobs says, his voice carrying that particular mix of showmanship and genuine belief.
The tingle hits so hard I have to grip my desk. Not painful, just intense. Images flood in: lines outside Apple stores. Stock charts trending vertical. A company logo becoming ubiquitous. This smooth glass rectangle changing how humans interact with technology forever.
iPhone.
He announces it. The crowd goes wild. My hands are shaking.
I'm already pulling up my banking website, opening a brokerage account I should've opened months ago. The stock price stares back at me: $12.69 per share.
In ten years, this will be worth over two hundred dollars per share. Adjusted for splits, even more.
I transfer $5,000 from my savings—money I've been carefully building from shop profits and some of the Walking Dead sales. It's not smart. It's most of my emergency fund. But the certainty burning in my chest won't be ignored.
Buy. Buy now. Buy everything you can afford.
The transaction processes. I own 394 shares of Apple Inc.
My phone buzzes. Howard: Raj and I are coming by for lunch. Want anything?
Just bring yourselves, I text back.
Twenty minutes later, they walk in to find me staring at my computer screen, watching the stock price tick upward.
"Stuart's imaginary money empire expands!" Howard announces, seeing my brokerage account open. "What is it this time? Internet money? Imaginary friends? Pet rocks?"
"Apple stock," I say absently, watching the price. It's already up thirty cents. "Just bought five thousand dollars worth."
The silence is deafening.
"You did what?" Raj moves closer, staring at my screen. "Stuart, that's your entire savings."
"Most of it, yeah."
"Based on what?" Howard's not laughing anymore. "A phone announcement? Apple makes computers. They're not a phone company."
"This phone is different." I lean back, trying to project calm I don't feel. "It's going to change everything. Look at it—touchscreen, internet, iPod, phone, all in one device. This is the future."
"Or it's an expensive failure like the Newton," Howard counters. "Remember the Newton? Apple's last mobile disaster?"
"The Newton was twenty years ago. Technology's different now."
"Stuart." Raj sits down, concern written all over his face. "This is very risky. You just invested your emergency fund in a single stock based on a product announcement. What if it fails?"
The concern is genuine. He's worried about me. So is Howard, despite the jokes.
And I can't tell them the truth. Can't explain that I've seen the future, know this company becomes the most valuable in the world, that this phone creates an entirely new category of technology that dominates the next decade.
"I've got a good feeling about it," I say instead. "Like with the Walking Dead. Like with the Iron Fist comics. Sometimes you just know."
"Those were comic books," Howard says. "This is five thousand dollars in the stock market. Totally different risk profile."
"I know what I'm doing."
"Do you?" He's not being mean, just honestly questioning. "Because from where I'm standing, this looks like gambling."
They don't buy anything. Just stand there looking worried while I try to explain market analysis I don't actually understand. Eventually they leave, unconvinced, and I'm alone with my decision.
Did I just make a huge mistake?
No. No, I didn't. The tingle was stronger than ever. The certainty is absolute. Apple's stock will soar. The iPhone will succeed beyond anyone's imagination.
I just have to wait.
That evening, I pull out my secret spreadsheet. The one I keep triple-password protected. The one that would get me institutionalized if anyone saw it.
I add Apple to my tracking list:
Apple Inc. - $AAPL Purchase: 394 shares @ $12.69 - Total: $5,000 Future projections: 2010: $30/share 2012: $90/share (split adjusted) 2015: $120/share 2020: $300/share
My hands shake writing the numbers. Not from fear—from the sheer weight of knowing. These aren't guesses or hopes. They're memories from a future I shouldn't have access to.
I add more to my Bitcoin position while I'm at it. Another $3,000. Howard and Raj's concern fresh in my mind, but I do it anyway. Because in thirteen years, that Bitcoin will be worth almost two million dollars.
If I'm right. If the powers are real. If this isn't brain damage from the void.
But I know they're real. The Walking Dead proved it. The Aquaman figure for Raj. Wil Wheaton showing up exactly when my Magnetism power should be working. Sheldon befriending me so quickly.
Everything's falling into place exactly as the tingles suggest it should.
I close the spreadsheet and lean back in my creaky desk chair, looking around my apartment. Stuart's apartment. Still barely furnished, still smells faintly of the previous tenant's cigarettes that no amount of air freshener can quite eliminate.
But it won't always be like this.
In a few years, I'll be wealthy. Quietly, privately wealthy. Wealthy enough to never worry about money again. And nobody will know why or how.
Just Stuart Bloom, the comic shop owner who made some lucky investment decisions.
The isolation of the secret crashes over me again. Howard and Raj were genuinely worried. They care about me. Want me to succeed. And I lied to them. Not directly, but by omission. By pretending my investments are hunches instead of supernatural knowledge.
How long can I keep this up?
Years, probably. As long as I'm careful. As long as I don't get too specific about predictions. As long as I let them think I'm just unusually lucky.
The guilt twists in my stomach, sharp and uncomfortable. But what's the alternative? Tell them I died and came back with powers from the void? That I can see fragments of the future? That everything I touch turns to gold because I'm cheating reality itself?
No. The secret stays buried.
I put away the laptop and try to sleep. But my brain won't stop calculating. 394 shares of Apple. If it hits $200 per share, that's $78,800. At $300, it's $118,200. One investment, made in one afternoon, could eventually make me more money than the shop earns in years.
And I still have Bitcoin. Thirty-thousand-plus coins that will eventually be worth millions.
I'm sitting on a fortune that doesn't exist yet. And the only people who might notice are my friends, who are already worried I'm making terrible financial decisions.
Maybe I am, I think, staring at the ceiling. Maybe this is what addiction looks like. Not to drugs or alcohol, but to the certainty of winning. To the impossible advantage of knowing what comes next.
But I'm not addicted. I'm strategic. Every investment is calculated. Every decision based on knowledge that's proven reliable.
The tingles haven't been wrong yet.
I fall asleep eventually, dreaming of stock charts and Bitcoin prices and friends' concerned faces. In the dream, Leonard asks me how I know things. And I try to answer, but every word that comes out is in Klingon, and nobody understands, and I'm alone in my shop surrounded by perfect organization and infinite wealth that feels like prison.
I wake up at 3 AM, sweating.
It's fine. Everything's fine. The investments will pay off. The friends will never find out. The secret stays buried.
I repeat it like a mantra until dawn.
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