There was a blinding sunbeam the next morning pouring into Nate's tiny hostel bedroom. He woke up in a dazed way with a throbbing headache in his head, the pain there a burning reminder of last night. However cramped and messy with strange bits of furniture and books, there was a coziness within its disorganized messiness in the room. Nate narrowed his eyes at the dirty window over which the madness of the busy city poured—a constant buzz of horns, muted wails of sirens, and distant murmurs of early birds starting their day. Massaging his temples, he tried to recall everything that had happened.
The radiance of the flow chart, that blinding burst of gold light, and that feeling wherein his body had just grown lighter and so strong—it was all too mythical, too unreal. But when he sat up and took a careful look around, Nate knew that something was amiss. Gone were the familiar pangs of pain and ache that beset him after litter-picking at night; his limbs now smooth and untroubled, every movement a smooth effortless glide. The paranormal occurrence had washed away the familiar fatigue and ache. Pushing his legs off the rough edge of the bed, Nate paused for a moment to enjoy the comfort.
The room remained quiet except for the soothing song of the birds and the far-off hum of city noises. A pile of books and notebooks full of scribbled notes sat on top of the dented phone on the nightstand. Class lectures had yet to begin an hour from then, and Nate realized he simply could not afford to be late—both for his scholarship's sake, but for each minute, as he seemed to inch away from the uncertainty of his daily existence. But as he made his way to retrieve his backpack, he was caught by something out of the ordinary.
His phone, normally quietly sitting on top of the desk, now bore smudge marks in the shape of soft, flickering light. Small numbers danced on the screen as though virtual runes or ticker stock out of a finance program. Nate leaned forward as the numbers changed and cycled through values, percentages, and even short-term projections of trends that whirled his mind into wild speculations. Awe and confusion battled with his smile. "What the devil?" he growled to himself, gingerly lifting the device up. The moment his fingers touched the shining screen, the numbers vanished like smoke. Setting the phone upright in his hand, holding it as if it would incriminate itself—but now appearing entirely normal. Confused but not quite so, Nate stuffed the phone into his backpack with a vow to himself that he would be getting back at it in good time. Rushing to get ready, Nate set off towards the campus from his hostel.
The morning sun bathed the city in a warm hue of colors, but no matter how peaceful the dawning of a new day might have begun, Nate just could not shake off the tension. Not that anyone lagged behind him, lagging back, but that life around him seemed to throb with subtext. As he pushed his way along the crowded sidewalk, the colorfully lettered signboards of restaurants and stores caught his eye. Every shop seemed to flash with tiny symbols: numbers that danced just beyond the shop logos, as if every little thing had a hidden value or destiny to be revealed. The feeling only intensified once Nate reached his college.
He settled into his usual spot in the back of the lecture hall, not wanting too many eyes on him. His teacher, a thin man with pepper-salted hair and thoughtful eyes, began his lecture on macroeconomic trends. As the professor lectured, covering the room with numbers and charts, Nate's mind was elsewhere. The symbols and numbers he'd seen on his phone came alive in his mind, bleeding over into what he was learning about the room. He saw the percentage lines hover over the textbooks and even the ordinary pen on his desk appeared as if filled with invisible codes. His friends spoke softly to him, but Nate was isolated from them by an invisible, deep river of energy.
Every soft thought about market trends, every up or down in value flashed before him. The class degenerated into white noise as he struggled to keep his focus. He found himself, repeatedly, having out-loud monologues with himself in an attempt to piece together what was going on in his head. Was it just a side effect of the strange night, or was something more than phenomenal happening? By the time the class was finally over, Nate was sweating bullets and amped.
He navigated through the warm welcoming waves of a few students and found himself instead lost in the vast emptiness of the massive campus library. The quiet reading room was his haven, where he booted up his trusty old laptop and furiously typed away. He swam in the headlines, trying to find some lead—some note on a bulletin board, some article somewhere—by which the light flowchart, the light abnormality, or his unexplainable inability to explain an over-sensitive nature might be explained. And with each later results page, what he discovered was increasingly and increasingly and increasingly more logical than before. The sites he came across were filled with bizarre suppositions and distant speculation; his own search history was now akin to a paranoid's mutterings. Nate sat back in his chair, stunned. "None of this makes any sense whatsoever," he muttered to himself, and his heart dropped and became fearful. His head was a jumble of symbols and figures, and he couldn't imagine there was going to be an explanation that would be coherent. As he was getting ready to shut down his laptop in frustration, suddenly in his mind there materialized a sharp, clear voice.
[System started. User located. Welcome to Trader. System v1.0.]
Nate sprang and nearly stumbled forward. His heart pounded as he looked around the quiet library. "What the—" he could whisper, his voice hardly audible. No other in earshot of him heard the voice; indeed, they were so focused on reading that they did not even see his shock.
The voice of the echo returned gradually as if from a hidden speaker in his head.
[User profile analysis… Feature activation… Synchronization complete. System is ready.]
Nate's breath caught in the back of his throat. This was not a dream. Apparently, last night had ended on something out of his most wild fantasy—a system now running in his head. "Who am I?" Nate hesitated, wildly glancing around the vacant room. He was talking to himself, but not a human voice and not one he recognized. It was clinical, precise, and reassuring in its lack of emotion in a way.
[I am the Trader System, designed to provide full analysis, predictions, and enhancements to increase your financial capabilities.]
Nate's head reeled. His mind raced as he tried to make sense of it all. "What does that mean?" he finally was able to stammer, both frightened and thrilled. The Trader System's voice responded immediately, speaking on without pause.
[You are granted the ability to perceive the true value of any object, possession, or fad in the marketplace. When you have acquired your riches, new abilities will be revealed, adding to your power and your physical strength.] Wonder and astonishment blended into one in Nate.
It was hard to accept that a new batch of a radiating chart with which he was not familiar would provide him with an unnatural power like seeing numbers and values in things at once.
But his own experience during the day testified that he was not the man he once was. He was able to remember the sensation of his body being lighter and senses sharper. Then this voice had not just offered an answer but a promise—an assurance that his energy and even his money could be beaten by this strange new force. With the ideas being bandied about in his head, something else began to form in Nate's head.
[You have $2,000 in liquid savings. Would you like to start trading?]
The figure flashed before his inner eye, a virtual balance on a high-tech screen.
Nate hesitated for a long, feared instant.
The allure of ready money, the dream of escaping his daily drudgery, thrilled and appalled. His entire existence had been a battle to survive the day, from the early-morning scrounging through garbage to the ongoing fight against poverty. And then, all at once, this opportunity, a possibility that could change everything. He had thought fleetingly of the hard mornings and bitter nights, of the never-ending cycle of work, even of the enigmatic, thrilling meeting last night. That brief adventure with the laughing women, who had mocked him and spoken of an existence that would be sensuality and love, kept revolving in his mind like a brooding recollection. Their shining faces and roguish smiles had evoked visions greater than life itself. Was it conceivable that this power, this thing in his mind, could be the key not only to wealth and riches but even the love he'd ever dreamed of? ".Alright," Nate panted, his own voice trembling with determination and fear. "Let's do it."
The system's response was then almost instantaneous. Nate pulled his chair back, his heart racing as the system flooded his mind with waves of information. He read graphs, charts, and columns of numbers he never was able to understand before—now. The world around him shed its familiar guises to reveal him unseen realities lying hidden beneath.
To him, the Trader System offered him possibilities and perils as pawns on a chessboard, for him to find out the rules and make his move.
While the idea was foreign and even terrifying, so too was there that sense of definition which was taking shape in Nate's mind. Every element of the world was a value system and a trend. The air itself vibrated with possibility, and even the books stacked to the brim around him whispered in soft, numerate voices. Soon he realized that the system was not just a key to riches but a doorway to something greater. Each passing second boosted his confidence. The text messages merged into a cacophonous din, presenting him with the potential of gain, power, and even love.
Though Nate had been playing around with his new power, he had been considering the classroom that morning. In the descriptive class, he read forgotten among disciplined economics words. Since the Trader System was already working, he was able to glimpse nearly the pulse of every trend of the market. Numbers flashed in his head as he recited the words of the professor repeatedly. He was thinking in his head predicting outcomes, laying infinitesimal bets on the peaks and troughs of the stock prices that single-handedly he could detect. It was thrilling and a bit dangerous; with every second, he grew braver, more inclined to bet on chance that might enrich his life.
A thrill of excitement ran through him as he recalled the system's final question in his mind. The potential for making his own fortune was like a memory of good times—of long-standing, unfulfilled dreams. His heart pounded not just with the thrill of gain but with hope to begin his life anew as one. With every furtive calculation and every incendiary epiphany, Nate was reminded that life could be more than merciless poverty. Surrounded by the faraway rumble of the library, surrounded by stacks of books and soft murmurs of other students, he let himself dream that perhaps, possibly, he could be something greater than a dumpster diver trash-picker living a pathetic life.
But there in the back of his mind was the persistent question. "Is it for me?" he thought to himself. "Do I believe in something I did not choose and know nothing about?" They were soon answered with quick certainty, however, by a second message from the system.
[Features will unlock incrementally with each successful transaction.]
Confidence booster and alert mode initiated.
A rush of heat across his chest, and Nate was suddenly invigorated and somehow reassured. As if guided by some supernatural force, with the promise not just of wealth but of tapping into abilities he had never had the courage to imagine. He recalled the way his body had felt last night, how each step now carried a hint of something magical. The future never looked brighter than the numbers on his phone yesterday. Nate closed his computer after a fleeting moment of contemplative stillness and started packing up his books.
He stepped out of the library, onto the sun-baked campus, with spring in his step. Passing by on his way back to the lecture hall to attend his next class, he overheard some of the students in hushed whispers and snickering as they passed. Amongst their ranks, he overheard a familiar laugh—a laugh that was heard last night. One of the women from the group of shadows, curly dark-haired with intelligent eyes, smiled cheekily at him as she passed. For a moment, Nate's cheeks flushed with a sense of heat spreading across his face. Had she sensed anything else about him, anything which now was making him seethe with an inexplicable inner heat? Striding on, he still thought of the teasing and flirting looks of that evening in conjunction with the computerized information in his mind. The promise of love, as uttered in the flirtatious glances, now with the promise of wealth and status of the Trader System. His was an active and promising world—a different world from those days when despair alone filled him.
In class too, as Nate sat once more in the back row, his brain calculated both the lesson's material and the hum in the background of the buried digital interface.
As the professor taught impossibly dry material about economic theory and fiscal policy in a monotonous drone, Nate calculated minute odds and games of intellect with the numbers he sensed. The whole lesson was the backdrop to his internal dialogue with the system, which gently gave him feedback and information on how the market was moving. Though still having a little trouble with some of the tougher theories, a faint smile played on his lips. The combination of reading and the stealthy excitement of his new power confused him as if he existed in double—normal fashion and with deep, hidden magic. Nate lingered behind class at the doorway, then stood torn whether to run or remain safe within the college realm.
His thoughts swirled with concepts and possibilities as his mind returned to the promise of the system. He recalled the sharp cold, dark nights of rooting through garbage, poverty, and the boundlessness of need. Now, courtesy of the Trader System, all that tangible thing, all that sticker price, all that brief flash of electric code, inched mankind a little closer toward a better day. And in the recesses of his brain, the sweet, lusty recollection of the club's mysterious women and their flirtatious compliments ensured that the emotional dimension of his metamorphosis would thrive, making his new life even more beautiful. Nate's day was just beginning, and already with each second ticking away, there was the aroma of transformation.
And as he walked across the campus quadrangle, student rumour tattle and leaves brushing against his ears along with the soft electronic rhythms now mainstream. He was walking himself towards a life that he had never before thought about, not even dared to dream of having such a life, but the nearer he got to being able to take it, to making the money, the power, and even affection. He finally made up his mind that it was time to test his new skills.
That afternoon in his sparsely-furnished hostel room, Nate connected his reliable old computer and opened a small trading software. With a nervous gulp, he entered the first trade command the program suggested. The screen interface changed suddenly, and for a few minutes, Nate just stood there in awe as the people around him seemed more real than real. Every market fluctuation was like a personal message to him—a puzzle to be solved using his head and heart. In the quiet of the room, as the hum of the computer mixed with the ring of the city in the distance, Nate had no doubt regarding trust in the system.
At the back of his mind, ghosts of the smiles of the night before in game, of kisses in the game, had surfaced to taunt him, providing him with a sense of confidence. A promise of allegiances to be made in the future, new allegiances, might be constructed upon as his influence grew wider. The vision of a future that was comprised of wealth, power, and passion was so seductive that even the most straightforward exchange felt like embarking on a great adventure. He clicked "confirm," and the machine bathed him in a deluge of numbers that caused his heart to pound. A half-relief, half-elation laugh escaped him. There would be ups and downs, risk and reward, and maybe a little trouble in between. But he was ready to learn, to progress, and to confront the unknown.
And when the night started to fall over New York, Nate was uncomfortably lying in his tiny bedroom, the faint light of streetlamps filtering through the dirty window.
He returned to what had happened throughout the day: the strange glowing digits on his phone, the heavy information clouding even the mundane things of a typical day in life, the mysterious voice that had asked him to activate the Trader System inside him, and the polite, banter-like exchanges with creatures who could perhaps be more than friends. All the memories now were filled with the new reality in his life. In that still of night, one final message echoed in his mind, soothing and motivating.
[System tip: Confidence and good judgment today will show more capability tomorrow. Keep trading to reach your potential.]
Nate smiled softly into darkness.
His destiny was unclear, yes, but it was full of the promise of transformation—of wealth, of power, and of love. He felt that the journey would be filled with challenges and surprises, times of danger and fits of laughter, clandestine meetings and stolen looks with those who believed in him. For the first time in his life, promised numbers instead of threatening, and all winks of knowledge were a chord in a vast, secret symphony. With a determined sigh, he breathed softly to himself in the safety of darkness, "Tomorrow, I'll move one step forward." And as he finally drifted off to sleep, the soft hum of the Trader System went on with him—a soft reminder that his destiny was no longer completely at the whim of poverty and desperation, but at the whim of a radiant future full of endless possibility.