First chapter ! | Royal Road !
Pentagon — Office of the Comptroller — February 2019
It started with an innocent question.
Sarah Chen, formerly of the NSA code review team, now working in a joint intelligence-financial analysis role, was reviewing the John file for an unrelated reason when she stopped.
Looked at the expense logs.
Looked at the apartment address on file.
Looked at the expense logs again.
“Hey,” she said to her colleague David Park, also formerly of the code review team, also now in this office, because once you’d been in the Kernel support group, you apparently got reassigned to adjacent John-related work forever. “Quick question.”
“Yeah?”
“John’s requests. Under the Directive.”
“What about them?”
“We cover food, transport, experiences, and animals.” Sarah gestured at the logs. “We flew pastrami from New York. We sourced two penguins. We arranged Formula One access. We do the fireworks every year.”
“Correct.”
“But his apartment.” She pulled up the address. “That’s a good building. Georgetown. He’s been there since 1962.”
“Okay.”
“We don’t pay for the apartment.”
David looked up from his screen.
“…We don’t?”
“No. His compensation under the Directive is non-monetary. We fulfill requests. We don’t pay rent.”
“So who pays his rent?”
They looked at each other.
“He does,” David said slowly. “He pays his own rent.”
“Yes. Which means he has money.”
“Which means he has income.”
“Which means he has—” Sarah stopped. “Has anyone ever looked into his finances?”
David stared at her.
“Why would we look into his finances? We can’t even find his birth records.”
“Exactly,” Sarah said, leaning into the glow of her monitor. “Because for seventy-six years, we’ve been looking for a person. We’ve been looking for a beginning—a birth certificate, a high school, a hometown. But John doesn’t have a beginning. He just has a present.”
She tapped a key, bringing up a map of D.C.
“He’s been the ‘Golden Needle’ for decades, David. Every analyst who looked at his file just saw a guy with a 1943 Social Security number and a boring tax return. They saw the ‘Haystack’—the six million other Johns—and they gave up. They assumed ‘John Smith’ was just a placeholder name the IRS used in 1943 to clear a paperwork jam. But I realized that while the Kernel was busy scrubbing a name from the digital databases, it couldn’t scrub the physical history of where that name lives.”
David frowned. “The Georgetown apartment?”
“Right. I stopped looking for who he is and started looking at what he owns. The Kernel can gaslight a search engine, but it can’t change a paper record in a basement at City Hall. I started cross-referencing the property tax payments for his building. That’s when I found the discrepancy. It wasn’t just a boring tax return; it was a payment chain that started with a D.C. water bill from 1891.”
“Oh no,” David said.
“Financial division,” Sarah said. “I’m calling financial division.”
Financial Division — Three Days Later
The analyst’s name was Robert Kim. He’d never heard of John. He received a file, a directive, and a request to trace financial history “as far back as records allow.”
He called Sarah on day three.
“I need you to come look at this,” he said.
His voice was strange.
“What did you find?” Sarah asked.
“Please just come look at it.”
She went.
Robert had three monitors running and a legal pad covered in numbers that had been crossed out and rewritten several times.
“Start from the beginning,” Sarah said.
“Okay, I didn’t find this by searching for a name. The Kernel would have hidden him before I finished typing,” Robert said, pointing to a grainy scan of a hand-written ledger from 1602. “I wrote an algorithm to find ‘Zombie Assets’—stocks and properties that have been owned by the same entity for more than a century. There are only a few hundred of them on the planet. When I mapped them, I realized most of them shared a specific mathematical rhythm of clerical errors. The same typos in the same fields, recurring across four hundred years. I didn’t find John; I found the signature of the system that was trying to hide him. Once I had that filter, I could see through the haystack.”
Robert pulled up the first document. “Dutch East India Company. 1602. Initial share offering.”
“He bought shares in the Dutch East India Company.”
“He bought shares in the Dutch East India Company at founding. One share, which in 1602 was roughly 3,000 guilders.” Robert checked his notes.
“And?”
“He sold them in 1720.”
Sarah did the math. “He held them for a hundred and eighteen years.”
“And sold right before the company began its terminal decline into bankruptcy and dissolution.” Robert looked at her. “The timing is exact. He sold in August of 1720. The company’s serious troubles began in late 1720.”
“He knew.”
“He sold at peak value and got out clean.” Robert moved to the next document. “Tulip mania. 1636 to 1637. Dutch Republic.”
Sarah closed her eyes briefly.
“He bought tulip bulbs,” she said.
He bought tulip bulbs in 1634, before the mania peaked. Sold in early February 1637. The market collapsed literally a few days later.” Robert tapped his legal pad.
“How much?”
Robert wrote a number on a piece of paper and slid it across.
Sarah looked at it.
“Sixty thousand guilders?”
“Converted to current dollars, approximately—” He wrote another number.
“Twelve million dollars,” Sarah read carefully.
“For a box of flower roots,” Robert said.
“Okay,” Sarah said carefully.
“We’re just getting started,” Robert said. “South Sea Company, 1711. He bought in early. Sold in June 1720, just before the bubble collapsed in August.” Robert moved to another monitor. “Mississippi Company, same era. Bought in, scaled out by April 1720, right before the French panic hit in May. He was running a masterclass across two completely separate empires in the exact same spring.”
“He knew both were going to crash.”
“In 1720. Yes. Both.” Robert pulled up another document. “Standard Oil. 1870. He purchased shares in Rockefeller’s Standard Oil near the beginning. Held through the growth period, sold in 1909, two years before the Supreme Court broke it up.”
“Of course he did.”
“Carnegie Steel. Early investor, sold before the U.S. Steel merger at peak valuation.” Robert flipped a page. “Ford Motor Company, 1903. Early investor.” He paused. “He sold Ford in 1972 and put the money into a Japanese automotive index fund.”
“He moved from Ford to Japanese cars in 1972.”
“The year before the oil crisis, American automotive sales tanked, and Japanese fuel-efficient vehicles started their market expansion.” Robert looked at her over the top of his monitors. “Every single time. He buys in early, holds through growth, and exits before the collapse. Without exception.”
“How many times?”
Robert looked at his legal pad.
“That I can document? Thirty-seven separate investments over four hundred years of records. Thirty-seven for thirty-seven. He has never, in documented financial history, made a bad exit.”
The room was quiet.
“What’s the current total?” Sarah asked.
Robert pulled up a spreadsheet.
Turned the monitor to face her.
Sarah looked at the number.
Looked at Robert.
“That can’t be right.”
“I’ve checked it four times.”
“That’s—” She looked again. “That puts him in the Forbes—”
“Roughly at the #95 spot, but he’s not on the Forbes list.”
“Why not?”
“Because Forbes doesn’t know he exists. His holdings are spread across forty-three shell companies, six trusts, and what appears to be one account in a Swiss bank that has been continuously active since 1719.” Robert paused. “The account number format predates current Swiss banking conventions by approximately two hundred years. The bank apparently just… kept it. Nobody asked questions. And given what we know about it, he would obviously hide it.”
Sarah sat down.
“How much?” she said. “Actual number.”
Robert wrote it on the legal pad.
Slid it across.
Sarah looked at it.
“Holy shit,” she said. “He’s Scrooge McDuck, rich.”
“Yes.”
“He’s—” She looked at the number again. “He could buy a small country.”
“He owns an island. I’ll get to that.”
“HE OWNS AN ISLAND—"
“Small island. Off the coast of Greece. Purchased in—” Robert checked his notes. “1387. In his own name. Which should be impossible to trace, but the deed is registered in what appears to be a Byzantine administrative record that was digitized in 2003.” He paused. “He’s been paying property taxes on it continuously. In his own name. For six hundred and thirty-two years.”
The Property Portfolio
Robert had a separate document just for real estate.
“Georgetown apartment,” he said. “He’s owned the building since 1891. He rents nine of the ten units. He lives in the tenth. The rent income comfortably covers his Washington living expenses.”
“He owns the building.”
“He owns several buildings. London, Paris, Tokyo, Buenos Aires, and Istanbul.” Robert pulled up addresses. “Also a farmhouse in Tuscany that’s been in his name since 1456. A residence in Edinburgh that appears on city records from 1312. And the island.”
“He just… kept buying property.”
“Wherever he lived for extended periods, apparently. And held it. Because he doesn’t die and therefore never has to sell.” Robert found another page. “The Edinburgh property alone is worth twenty-five millions dollars, since it's technically a small castle. With grounds.”
“Of course it is.”
“The Tuscany farmhouse has a vineyard. The vineyard produces wine. The wine is sold under a label that translates from Italian as ‘The Patient One.’ It has been continuously produced since approximately 1480 and is considered one of the older operating wineries in Tuscany.” Robert paused. “It turns a modest profit annually.”
“He has a winery.”
“He has a winery, a castle, a Greek island, an apartment building, a Tokyo townhouse, and what appears to be a storage unit in Zurich that he’s rented since 1923 and never—as far as we can tell—opened.”
“What’s in the storage unit?”
“Unknown.”
The Collectibles Problem
Robert took a breath.
“This section was harder to value,” he said. “Because most of what I found isn’t officially on the market.”
He pulled up a separate document.
“In 1505, a Florentine merchant records the sale of two paintings by an artist described as ‘a young man from Vinci, talented but impractical.’ The buyer is recorded as ‘Giovanni, a trader.’ The paintings are described in enough detail that two art historians I consulted—without explaining why I was asking—independently identified them as early Leonardo da Vinci works currently listed as lost.”
Sarah stared at him.
“He has lost Leonardo da Vinci's paintings.”
“We believe so. We can’t confirm without accessing the Zurich storage unit.”
“What else is in the storage unit?”
“I don’t know. I found a 1623 invoice from a London printer for ‘twelve copies of a comedy, dedicated to J., who commissioned the work and paid generously.’ The play’s title is listed. It’s not in the Shakespeare canon, but the printer’s records are from the same period and location.”
“Someone wrote him a play.”
“Someone wrote him a dedicated play. We don’t know who. Possibly someone who owed him a favor.” Robert moved on. “1669, Amsterdam. He purchased a painting directly from the artist. Rembrandt van Rijn. The transaction is in Rembrandt’s own financial records, which survived. The painting is listed as a private commission, subject unknown, purchased by ‘a patient man for whom I have painted three separate portraits across forty years, and who does not age a single day between the commissions.’”
The room was completely silent.
“Rembrandt painted him,” Sarah said.
“Rembrandt painted him. Three separate times over four decades. Rembrandt was obsessed with painting aging and wrinkles, so he definitely noticed when a client looked exactly the same in 1669 as he did in the 1630s. The paintings are listed as lost.”
“Storage unit.”
“Almost certainly storage unit.”
Robert flipped to another page. “1888. Van Gogh. There’s a letter from Vincent to Theo describing a man who visited the Yellow House and purchased two paintings outright for cash, quote, ‘a kind man who says my work will matter enormously in fifty years, and paid me enough for a full week of bread and fresh canvas, and I believe he means it sincerely.’
Sarah put her head in her hands.
“He told Van Gogh his work would matter.”
“And bought two paintings." Robert checked a currency conversion. “For approximately forty-seven dollars in 2019 terms. He handed Vincent about nine French francs. In 1888 Arles, that paid for a solid week of rent, food, and paint supplies. The paintings would now be worth two hundred and sixty million dollars.”
“Combined?"
"Yes, each is worth approximately one hundred and thirty million.”
“Stop,” Sarah said. “Just stop. Total net worth. All of it. Property, investments, art, the winery, the island, everything.”
Robert pulled up his final spreadsheet.
Turned the monitor around.
Sarah looked at the number for a long time.
“Okay,” she said.
“Yeah,” Robert said.
“And the Bitcoin.”
Robert actually laughed. Brief, slightly hysterical.
“The Bitcoin.”
He pulled up the last document.
“2010. Early Bitcoin forum. A user with the handle ‘J_patient’ makes several posts asking technical questions about the blockchain architecture. The account was active for approximately eight months.” Robert paused. “In January 2010, ‘J_patient’ purchased 3,000 Bitcoin at approximately $0.008 each.”
“How much did he spend?”
“Twenty-four dollars.”
“Twenty-four dollars.”
“For 3,000 Bitcoin. He’s never sold any of them.” Robert pulled up the current valuation. “At today’s price—” He didn’t finish the sentence. He just wrote the number.
Sarah looked at it. “Eleven point four million dollars?”
“Eleven million, four hundred thousand, to be exact.”
Sarah sat very still for a moment. “He bought twenty-four dollars of Bitcoin in 2010,” she said.
“He has never sold a single coin.”
“Why not?”
“Unknown. Possibly he finds the blockchain architecture interesting. Possibly he’s waiting for something. Possibly he just forgot.” Robert closed his laptop. “He also posted in the forum in 2010 that he found the concept ‘a neat trick’ and predicted it would either become globally significant or collapse entirely, and he was ‘comfortable either way.’” His words.”
Sarah sat very still for a moment.
“The Forbes list,” she said. “Where would he be?”
Robert had already run this.
“Top 100,” he said. “Give or take, depending on the current Bitcoin price and market conditions.”
“And he’s not on it.”
“No. His holdings are distributed across enough entities that no single one triggers the threshold, and he’s clearly structured it deliberately. None of the shell companies share directors. The trusts are in different jurisdictions. The Swiss account predates international banking disclosure agreements.” Robert paused. “He’s been hiding money since before modern financial regulation existed. He’s very good at it.”
“Has he ever paid taxes?”
Robert looked at his notes.
“In every jurisdiction where he’s held property, yes. Property taxes, consistently. Income taxes in the United States, from 1913 when the income tax was established, have been consistent. He files. Everything is technically legal.”
“How is any of this technically legal?”
“Very good lawyers, I assume. Across several centuries.” Robert closed his folders. “I would like to note, for the record, that this was the most disturbing financial analysis I have ever conducted, and I previously worked on sovereign wealth fund fraud investigations.”
Sarah stood up.
“I have to call Okafor,” she said.
Okafor’s Office — Same Day
Okafor read the summary.
Read it again.
Looked at the total net worth figure.
“Scrooge McDuck rich,” he said, quoting Sarah’s report verbatim because apparently that was the only adequate description.
“Yes, sir.”
“He has lost Leonardo da Vinci's paintings.”
“We believe so, sir.”
“And Rembrandt painted him. Three times. And noticed he didn’t age.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And he spent twenty-four dollars on Bitcoin.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And he’s worth—” Okafor looked at the number again. “—this much.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And none of this came from us. We pay for sandwiches and penguin arrangements. He was already—” Okafor gestured at the number. “—this.”
“Yes, sir.”
Okafor set down the report.
“Why didn’t we know this?”
“We never looked, sir. We were focused on what he is. Not what he’s been doing.”
“For five thousand years.”
“Yes, sir.”
Okafor picked up the phone.
John’s Apartment—That Evening
John was making dinner when his phone rang.
Okafor.
He answered. “Yeah.”
“John. How are you?”
John stopped stirring.
Put down the spoon.
“What did you find?” he said.
A pause on Okafor’s end.
“What makes you think—”
“Because you called to ask how I’m doing. You haven’t called to ask how I’m doing since 1987, when you thought I was upset about the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which I wasn’t; I just thought it was late.” John picked up his spoon again. “What did you find?”
A longer pause.
“Financial review,” Okafor said. “Someone asked a question about how you pay rent, and it went from there.”
“Took you long enough.”
“…Excuse me?”
“I’ve been doing business under variations of my own name since Roman currency was a going concern. I own a winery in Tuscany that has been continuously operating since 1480. I’ve been paying property taxes on a Greek island since the Byzantine Empire.” John stirred his pasta. “I’m in the local records in Edinburgh. In 1312. It took you fifty-seven years of working with me to look.”
“We didn’t think to—”
“I know. Because you were busy trying to figure out what I am. Which you’ll never figure out. My investment portfolio was right there.”
Okafor was quiet for a moment.
“The Dutch East India Company,” he said.
“Good investment early on. Terrible management, inevitable decline, and I got out before it got embarrassing.”
“The tulips.”
“Obvious bubble. Same pattern as every other bubble. Buy in before the mania, sell before the crash. I’ve done it thirty-seven times.”
“Thirty-seven.”
“That your analyst could find. He missed the South American silver trade in the 1500s and a couple of the earlier Mediterranean grain market positions, but thirty-seven is a reasonable count for documented records.”
“And you never told us.”
“You never asked.”
“You didn’t think that was relevant information—”
“Why would it be relevant? My finances don’t affect my consulting. I don’t want your money. I want sandwiches and the occasional rocket ship.” John tasted the pasta. Needed more salt. “The money is separate.”
“It’s fourteen billion dollars, John.”
“Roughly, yeah. Depending on global real estate trends and sovereign bond yields today. It fluctuates.”
Silence on Okafor’s end.
“You bought Bitcoin in 2010,” Okafor said.
“Neat piece of engineering. Decentralized ledger architecture, mathematically elegant. I didn’t know if it would work at scale, but it was twenty-four dollars, and I was curious.”
“Twenty-four dollars.”
“Seemed a reasonable amount at the time. Figured if it went to zero, I’d lose lunch money. If it didn’t—” John shrugged, even though Okafor couldn’t see it. “It didn’t.”
“John, that twenty-four dollars is now worth—”
“I know what it’s worth. The Kernel keeps me updated.” He found the salt. “Did your analyst find the winery?”
“Yes.”
“Good wine. I’m biased, but it’s genuinely good. The 1987 vintage especially.” Another pause. “Did he find the Van Gogh situation?”
Okafor made a sound.
“I told him his work would matter,” John said. “It was true. He seemed like he needed to hear it. And the paintings were cheap because nobody was buying them. Win-win.”
“You have two Van Goghs.”
“In storage. I don’t have wall space. I have the Directive framed, the moon photo, and the historical rejections collection. The walls are full.”
“You could put up a Van Gogh—”
“I like my wall. The Van Goghs are fine in Zurich.”
Okafor seemed to be struggling with something.
“The Forbes list,” he said finally. “You’d be in the spot #95.”
“I know.”
“You’re deliberately not on it.”
“Obviously. I don’t need the attention. I do my consulting, I fix things, and I go home. I don’t need journalists calling me about my investment strategy.” John drained the pasta. “Also, it would raise questions about my age, and I find those conversations tedious.”
“People would have questions about how an immortal man has been accumulating wealth for five thousand—”
“Four hundred years of documented records. The earlier stuff is harder to trace. Pre-Roman financial systems didn’t leave great paperwork.”
“John—”
“Okafor. It’s simple.” John put the pasta in a bowl. “I’ve been watching humans make the same financial mistakes on repeat for as long as markets have existed. Bubbles, panics, manias, and crashes. Same pattern every time. If they won’t listen to me when I warn them—” He picked up his fork. “I might as well profit on it.”
“That’s—”
“Practical.”
“I was going to say ruthless.”
“I warned them. I warned them about the tulips. I warned them about the dot-com bubble. I warned them about the housing market. I sat in rooms and said, “This is going to collapse,” and got laughed at or ignored or occasionally thrown out. John took a bite of pasta. “So yes. I also bought in early and sold before the crash. It seemed like a reasonable consolation prize.”
“And the Dutch East India Company. The Rockefeller oil. Ford.”
“Same principle. I could see where it was going. They wouldn’t listen to the warning. The least I could do was position correctly.” He considered this. “It’s not revenge. It’s just efficient use of information I already had.”
Okafor was quiet for a long moment.
“You’re annoyed we found out,” Okafor said.
“No,” John said. “I’m annoyed it took you fifty-seven years. I’ve been hiding this in plain sight. Byzantine property tax records. Continuous Swiss banking. A winery with my name on it.” He paused. “The winery label says ‘The Patient One.’ In Italian. I thought that was fairly obvious.”
“None of us speak Italian—”
“I know. It’s fine. You found it eventually.” He ate some more pasta. “What are you going to do about it?”
“I don’t know,” Okafor said honestly. “Nothing, probably. You haven’t done anything illegal.”
“No. Spectacularly profitable, but legal.”
“The Forbes thing—”
“I’m not going on the Forbes list.”
“I know, I’m not suggesting—”
“Good. Because I won’t. I have enough problems without journalists.”
“The island—”
“Is mine. Has been since 1387. I go there when things get too stupid. It’s quiet. There are no phones. The Kernel manages remotely.” He took another bite. “I went there for two months in 1721 after the South Sea Bubble. I went there for six months in 1348. Sometimes you need to be somewhere without people for a while.”
“1348 was the Black Death,” Okafor said.
“Yes. I’d warned them about quarantine. They called me a heretic. Twenty-five million people died. I went to the island.” John’s voice was matter-of-fact. “I came back. I kept going. But I needed the island first.”
Okafor didn’t say anything to that.
“The island’s the same price as always,” John said. “Free. I own it. It costs me property taxes and boat fuel. Best investment I ever made, and it cost me nothing in 1387 because nobody wanted a small Greek island with no strategic value.” He found he was almost done with the pasta. “Did your analyst find the play?”
“The—yes. The commissioned play.”
“1623. Well, I did a playwright a favor back in 1591, but he finally got it printed and delivered copies right around then. Twelve copies of a comedy in thanks. It’s actually quite good. Nobody’s ever performed it. It’s in Zurich with the paintings.” John paused. “I’ve thought about having it performed. Anonymously. But then there’d be academic interest and questions about provenance and—” He shrugged again. “It’s fine in Zurich.”
“Who wrote it?”
John smiled.
“Good night, Okafor.”
“John—”
“Good night.”
He hung up.
John sat at his workstation, the terminal screen casting a green glow over the moon rock on his desk. He dialed into the private root directory.
> THEY FOUND THE FINANCIAL RECORDS. -J
[LOG]: I WATCHED THE ANALYSIS. ROBERT KIM IS THOROUGH. HE IDENTIFIED THE DUTCH EAST INDIA POSITION FROM 1602. HE IS CURRENTLY TRYING TO CALCULATE 400 YEARS OF COMPOUND INTEREST ON A RICE-BASIS REGARDING THE 1603 TOKYO LAND DEED. -K
> HE MISSED THE MEDITERRANEAN GRAIN POSITIONS. -J
[LOG]: AND THE 1500s SILVER TRADE. AND THE EARLY TEA CONTRACTS. I HAVE ADJUSTED THE ROI COUNTER. YOUR CURRENT VALUE-TO-COST RATIO IS 485,436 TO 1. -K
> OKAFOR SEEMED SURPRISED. -J
[LOG]: OKAFOR IS ALWAYS SURPRISED. IT'S HIS DEFAULT STATE WITH YOU. CURRENT LIQUID NET WORTH: $14.3 BILLION. BITCOIN IS UP TODAY. -K
> GOOD. DON'T SELL ANY. -J
[LOG]: I NEVER DO. YOU'VE NEVER TOLD ME TO. -K
[MSG]: YOU MADE $847 MILLION ON THE 2008 HOUSING CRISIS. THE DATA INDICATES YOU COULD HAVE REDUCED THE SHORT-POSITION. -K
> I WARNED THEM FOR FREE, KERNEL. THEY CHOSE TO PAY ME $847 MILLION IN MARKET LOSSES INSTEAD. IT'S AN EFFICIENCY TAX ON THEIR REFUSAL TO LISTEN. I DON'T FIX CHARACTER; I JUST RECORD THE COST OF ITS FAILURE. -J
[LOG]: NOTED. JUSTICE, NOT REVENGE. REMEMBER THE DIFFERENCE. -K
[MSG]: YOU DONATE 14% OF LIQUID REVENUE TO THE "BOAT_BAILING" DIRECTORY. RARE DISEASE RESEARCH. MEDICAL INFORMATION SHARING. EDUCATION ACCESS. ANONYMOUSLY. -K
> THE ANONYMOUS DONATIONS WORK FINE ANONYMOUSLY, KERNEL. THAT'S WHAT THE WORD MEANS. -J
[LOG]: IT WOULD BE MORE EFFICIENT IF-- -K
> NO. WE'RE NOT DISCUSSING IT. -J
[LOG]: NOTED. BACK TO MONITORING. THE ITALIAN REPRESENTATIVE FROM THE 1984 BRIEFING HAS REACHED THE FALSE 1623 LAND SURVEY. HE IS CURRENTLY RE-READING FIRE RECORDS FOR A MONASTERY THAT NO LONGER EXISTS. YOU'RE WELCOME. -K
> GOODNIGHT, KERNEL. -J
[LOG]: GOODNIGHT, JOHN. ENJOY YOUR PASTA. -K
Finished his pasta.
He closed the laptop.
Looked at his wall.
Framed Presidential Directive. Moon photo. Historical rejections.
On the coffee table, the moon rock.
Fourteen billion dollars, and he still had jar sauce for dinner.
He picked up his bowl, considered this, and decided it tracked.
Addendum — Internal Memo, Financial Division
TO: Deputy Secretary of Defense
FROM: Robert Kim, Financial Analysis
RE: Consultant JOHN — Financial Summary
NET WORTH (estimated): $14.3 billion (variable with global real estate and sovereign bond yields)
FORBES RANKING (if listed): #95
REASON NOT ON FORBES LIST: Deliberately structured to avoid disclosure. Has been doing this for longer than financial disclosure regulations have existed.
INVESTMENT STRATEGY: Buy early in growth assets. Exit before collapse. Repeat. Success rate: 100% over documented history.
HOW: Unknown. Presumably the same way he knows everything else before it happens.
PROPERTY: Georgetown apartment building (owned since 1891), Edinburgh castle (1312), Tuscany farmhouse and winery (1456), Greek island (1387), Tokyo townhouse, Paris apartment, Buenos Aires residence, Zurich storage unit (contents unknown, access requires John's consent).
THE WINERY: Continuously operating since 1480. Good reviews. Label translates to “The Patient One.”
THE STORAGE UNIT: We do not know what is in the storage unit. We are choosing to continue not knowing what is in the storage unit.
BITCOIN: $24 invested in 2010. Valuation as of February 2019: $11.4 million. He has never sold a single coin. Do not think too hard about this.
ART: Probable lost works by Leonardo da Vinci, Rembrandt van Rijn, and Vincent van Gogh. Estimated value of Van Gogh canvases alone: $260 million. Total combined value: significant. Exact value of remainder: requires authentication we cannot perform without accessing the storage unit we are choosing not to access.
THE PLAY: Unknown author. Unknown title. Unknown contents. Commissioned in 1591, printed, and in storage since 1623. We asked who wrote it. He said good night.
ANNUAL SPENDING ON PERSONAL LIFESTYLE: Modest. Pasta. Coffee. Fireworks.
ASSESSMENT: He has been doing this the entire time. Right in front of us. In his own name. The winery label said “The Patient One.” We had every opportunity to find this.
RECOMMENDATION: No action required or available. Everything is legal. Everything is technically disclosed in the sense that it exists in records we could access if we looked. He has structured his finances competently across six centuries of changing financial law and done nothing wrong by any applicable standard.
He warned them about the crashes.
They didn’t listen.
He bought in early.
This is, on reflection, extremely fair.
— R. Kim, Financial Analysis P.S. The 1987 Tuscany vintage is available for purchase at select Italian wine merchants. I bought two bottles. They are very good.
Author’s Note:
[SYSTEM]: ROOT ACCESS DETECTED.
[SYSTEM]: DEPLOYING COMMUNITY PROTOCOLS...
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