Chapter 98: Chp 94 : His Pocket Deepened
Al was not a hero nor a saint. He even dared to call himself a bastard, but not in a literal way. His father did marry his mother.
He was a selfish bastard who only cared about himself and his family. Although he had undying trust for his family, human is still a human, they could someday make a mistake.
As President Reagan had ever said, 'Trust but Verify'.
Knowing that there would be a nuclear plant accident that would strike Ukraine and even the whole of Europe, he would just sit back and enjoy the history to run its course.
Why would he risk himself or his family to give information to the USSR government that disaster would come in front of their doorstep? Who would believe him anyway?
But somehow he felt bile raised to his mouth. He just felt sorry for the disaster that would happen and pray to whatever forces for giving them peace, they earned it.
After he did, he felt a burden clear from his shoulder. He felt this was a prove of even with any other shits like fused soul or supernatural phenomena that occurred to him, he still had a heart as a human.
Skipped to the good part, in March; few good things happened to him.
For example, the thing happened on March, 13th 1986.
Microsoft was finally going public. He, who was also the shareholder who had at least 17% of the shares was also got the benefit from them.
Nancy Smith, his trusted investment manager of Nidavellir Investment went back and forth to attend the board meeting of Microsoft IPO.
From the October stockholders meeting, Bill Gates committed to begin the IPO and put together a "syndicate", a group of investment bankers sharing the risk of underwriting, and finally came to several 114 firms, led by Goldman Sachs and Alex. Brown.
[Underwriting: issuing shares of a company such as the amount of money to be raised, etc by another party for IPO]
Nancy fought tooth and nail to maintain at least 15% of their shares in Microsoft and writing an agreement for buying the shares at a premium price to maintain it and promise to not interfere with their works.
But the board must agree to at least giving Nancy a right to join this board meeting and suggesting ideas.
Microsoft and its underwriters agreed to finalize the $21 price per share and when the market opened in the morning, the price kept rising until the end of the first day to $28, giving the market cap of $777 million.
Bill Gates, owner of the 45% shares worth $350 million soon became the youngest billionaire of the year, or is he?
Then the name of "Queen of Wall Street" was heard again. It said that Nancy Smith, the investment manager of Nidavellir Investment was also the spokesperson of the owner of 15% of stocks worth at least $50 million with an initial buyout of at least $15 million. Her eyes were really sharp!
Not only that, but her boss was also owned other shares that worth at least more than $500 million.
"Thanks, asshat for making me shone in the limelight again!" Nancy called from her office in New York.
"Honey, thank you very much for stealing the show from me. That at least gave me under the radar for a while. I'll give you a raise, Nan." He said, "No, I'll give a blank check for you."
Although Al couldn't see it, he believed she was rolling her eyes now.
"You're not afraid I'll drain your bank account with that check?"
"I know your integrity Nan, I trust you, but don't forget what Reagan said."
"Yeah, yeah, trust verify shit."
"But damn Bill Gates, he was worth at least $300 million by now! I should have joined the IT industry from the start!" He whined.
Nancy smiled from ear to ear, "You wanted to build the IT company?"
"Did you read my mind?" Al also smiled.
"Please, you already had animation, visual effects, and game company. It won't be weird of you to add more, you seemed to know about computers better than 99% of people in the USA." She said.
"Okay Nan, as usual. Find me some talented people who could manage this company."
"Of course I will, but I need a favor, Al." She said and paused for a moment.
She saw how a computer software company that didn't need much capital but able to almost penetrated the $1 billion market cap until it could be called a unicorn.
Al sensed her nervousness and knew she also wanted to get the pies in this industry.
"Nan, how much equity did you want?" He asked.
Nancy was stunned, he knew what she was thinking. She just sighs, this little boy was too smart for her.
"What do you think? There were a lot of new start-up companies growing like a weed now. Microsoft is an exception, how far do you think your company would grow? I will just trust your kindness."
"I'll give you undiluted 5% shares. Wait! Before you protest, I knew it seemed small, but do you know how far Microsoft would grow?"
"Um, maybe $5 to 6 billion?"
"Wrong, it would be a trillion-dollar worth company!"
She gasped, "Stop joking Al, no way a computer could be that worth."
"Nan, right now the computer user is only less than 10% in the USA. What happened if the computer got cheaper, software became easier to get and the whole world started to apply computers on their home?"
Nancy became silent, her mind worked like a jet engine turbine, and finally-- her brain clicked.
She gasped like she was hyperventilating and said, "Al, if you are 10 years older, I would immediately come to England and proposed to you right now!" She screamed while having an unremoved smirk on her face.
"Damn Nan, you love money and moneymaking skill, not me. I will reject you if you did that." Al joked, but he knew how much she loves the job more than she would love her future husband.
Wait, she was already married to her job. He also knew she was a hardcore feminist so the possibility she needs a man in her life close to zero. Fortunately, she was not the bitch type feminazi.
After he closed the line, he also received a call from Mary about Academy Award.
The film <Out of Africa> won 7 awards including the best film, becoming a big winner of 58th Academy Awards.
While his film, while nominated as the best-adapted screenplay didn't win.
The other film he was starred in <Back to the Future> only won best sound editing. He didn't even know that there was an award for that category. But there was no award for the best stunt choreography?
His godfather, Steven Spielberg also did not win any of the awards for his film <The Color Purple>. His breakthrough to the art film for the first time was a failure.
It seemed the Academy Award judge still saw him as a summer blockbuster director and had a hard time seeing his transition.
He also gave him a call and his condolence. From his tone, Steven seemed really mad at Academy judges but what could he say.
If he did voice his dissatisfaction, they would have him marked and maybe he would be stuck in nominations for tens of years.
And speaking of his film <The Color Purple>, it seemed that one of the actors called Steven and asking him for a favor to contact Al.
When he asked Steven who was it, he answered it was Oprah Winfrey. Because of the shooting, he told Mary and Ari to close his business contact so he could focus on the acting and his other job as assistant director.
Oprah was calling him? Maybe he would contact her later after he went back from England.
~~~
Aaaand, He was right.
It was on 26th April 1986 when the Chernobyl power plant's reactor located in Ukraine went meltdown.
That nuclear disaster did happen and Stanley was forced to cancel the shooting again for at least one or two days until British authority.
The poisonous radiation that spewed into the atmosphere drifted over to Western Europe, causing a spike in radiation-related diseases and deaths in the years following the disaster.
Creating a famine for dairy products and made Al more depressed because he could only eat canned food for a week until the food association deemed the food safe from toxic radiation.
In the immediate aftermath of the accident, the UK government banned the sale of sheep across thousands of farms on the basis that the animals had likely ingested radioactive material from fallout absorbed by plants.
Another thing he was depressed about was the problem involving Robin. She has been staying with him since he was discharged from the hospital, and she has been skipping school since then.
The school board turned a blind eye after they knew who has been skipping school. The moment they heard Graham's name, they seemed to excrete a cold sweat.
Back to Robin's problem, a second after Chernobyl happened, Robin began to have a sickness and always throwing up.
Robin decided to follow him to Kubrick's mansion and crash a room there.
But since that day, she always screaming in her sleep, she was having a nightmare and had a little breakdown. So at midnight, she escaped to his room and to get comforted by him and Vivian.
Oh yeah, for the information, since the beginning he stayed here; three times a week, Vivian sneaked into his room and slept with him, just sleeping. Get your mind out of the gutter, reader.
They were looking at Robin who was lying weakly on his bed.
"What happened Roby?" Vivian asked, "Is it because of radioactive poisoning?"
Al shook his head, "No, we've gone to the hospital and they said she was okay. The problem with her was more about her mental health."
"It must be that nuclear accident affecting everyone else. It's like I could feel how the whole of Europe had felt. I felt so sick, suddenly a wave of sadness and angst came to flood me, ED." She weakly said.
His mind clicked. "Is this thing about you being an empath thing?" She nodded.
"What's an empath?" Vivian asked.
"She could feel other people's emotion, Vi. But I never knew that she could be like this bad."
"Maybe that nuclear plant accident was worse than we imagined. It affected all Europe for god's sake." Vivian said.
"Can you turned it off?" Vivian asked.
"I would do it from the beginning if I knew!" She shrieked and pulled her hair.
"We just needed to find a person who also had it and we can ask them how," Vivian said.
"That's the problem, the people like you were almost got a zero percent population. To find them was a needle in a sack." Al said. "And most of them didn't realize that they had it."
"I found him and I just realized it now." Robin raised her head.
"Who?"
"It's you, asshole!" Robin screamed to his face.
To Be Continued...
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