Morning all. I hope you are having a great morning and are recovering from the shock of a regularly scheduled Monday. At least Mondays always feel vaguely shocking to me as I get back into an externally driven schedule. But such is life. And at least we have a new writing prompt. So Timers set and off we go.
Every now and again one of these prompts sparks a story idea that comes out condensed as my brain tries to get as many elements on the page it the time allotted. It it like the reverse of the drifting story where I don’t get a glimmer of the plot until the end. This time I got a condensed version, like a concertina-ed story idea. I’ll have to expand it later.
Tuesday, August 19th: The bubble popped.
The bubble popped. Ralph knew it would but no one listened to him. Everyone was making so much money and no one thought it would ever stop. He made money as well, but he watched the signs, studied the trends and got out before the bubble popped.
They made fun of him as after he left the price of shares kept going up for the following month. He smiled and said that he would take the loss. He tried to accept their mocking with grace. He told them he felt sure the shares would decline soon and he was happy enough to leave them to their profits as he felt the risk was more than he was willing to take.
He heard a lot of ‘no risk no reward’ and tried to ignore the smirks and smug looks by those who felt they were so much braver and so much more market savvy.
Then, the bubble popped. He expected it but thought the shares would just start a decline. It was a theory born of market research and the general belief that all good things must come to an end. Even he hadn’t expected the bottom to drop out so dramatically.
Now there was no talk of risk taking. No one felt superior. Ralph kept his mouth shut and listedn into commiseration to those who lost what their shares earned seemingly overnight. All convieniently forgot that he had invested, had sold up and didn’t lose buckets of money. The others spoke to him as though he had never dealt with stocks and trading at all and knew nothing of the system.
Now in place of no risk no reward, Ralph heard variations, of you have no idea how the world of finance works. Again Ralph did his best to stay quiet, to not say I told you so. As others needed to tighten their belts after the bubble popped, some quite dramatically and for the foreseeable future, Ralph made certain that publicly he fell in line. He showed no luxury purchases and let others choose the restaurant when they went out. He kept quiet and therefore averted any enmity.
It was depressing though, to be so totally disregarded by the others. Still he assumed it was because his business did not revolve around the world of finance. He understood the market and invested when he felt it was warranted, but it was not his career.
The fact that many who didn’t see the bubble about to pop made finance their careers worried him somewhat. He made a note never to take their investment advice or work with them in any financial capacity, but otherwise kept quiet.
He noticed that as the others worked to find ways to recover lost revenue, searching for the next big stock to rise, he started spending less and less time with them. Part, he realized was his schedule. He wasn’t around a lot. The other part he realized was that he was being invited less and less to their gatherings.
He assumed that someone remembered what actually happened and thought of his mere presence as an I told you so. He was certain they would get over it at some point, but wasn’t too terribly worried. There was more than enough to occupy his time and instead of actually looking for them, he found other interests to take up his free time.
One of those things was classical music. He once thought of it as music produced long ago by a handful of people, but a chance encounter opened up an entirely new realm. He was on his way home from a concert when the call came in. That fateful call that changed everything.
Ten til Midnight 