278,286¥

Things are starting to level off, and the money isn't pouring in like Gil had hoped. What are his options? His recent v-cast with Park reminds him that there might only be one, or even worse, perhaps it was all a scam.  

Transcript

 It had been weeks since Aron Bekker called me, and I still had not even sold my house. I didn’t realize that half the Americans walking around were probably here illegally. It’s probably not easy to get a mortgage when the government doesn’t know you’re here. Without selling the house I didn’t have a prayer, but I wouldn’t think about that. God would help me find a way.  So I should say I did have a prayer. 

The Giimmee page had leveled off. The rate was still growing, but whereas in the beginning I was being donated thousands of dollars a day, now it was dozens of dollars a day. I still appreciated it of course, (any of you reading this who donated I thank you from the bottom of my heart) but it wasn’t going to be enough. 

The only thing I could think of was to keep doing more v-casts and hope that generated more money. So I decided to call up Park and see what else we could do. I wondered if I invested more money in it, could we get more money back. 

“Well, like everything online, it is free unless you want to advertise it. I’m sure there’s more ways to get interest too —there’s some really crazy v-casts, but I’m sure you’re not willing to do what some other people are doing. Neither am I. And it might not even work. Why don’t you try the stock market? Or the crypto market or something? My friend fools around with the stock market.” 

“I don’t have a clue about the stock market. What would I invest in? I always thought the stock market was like gambling.” 

“Kind of, but I think you can have whatever risk you want. I don’t know much about it either. I don’t have any money anyway. I’m a teenager.”

“But your friend fools around with the stock market? How old is he then?” 

“He’s the same age as me, but TopTrader is a game, not the actual stock market. You play with fake money, but the market is real. You get points for whoever makes the most in a day. The person with the most points wins.” 

“Is he any good?” 

“He says he is.” 

“I don’t have the time to learn something like that.” 

“Maybe not.”

“Maybe he could tell me what to invest in.” 

“Maybe… Sorry, I’m just scanning down through some jobs here I searched…Professional hugger?” he said, and laughed. 

“What’s that?” 

“You cuddle with people for money.” 

“Like a hooker?” 

“Yes, but it’s just hugging.” 

“Clothes on?” 

“Yes pop, clothes on.” 

“Good.” 

“Why, you putting in a resume?” 

“No, but I’m glad prostitution aint legal. The world is bad enough as it is.” 

“Uh? Prostitution is legal.” 

“What? Since when?” 

“It’s been legal forever. You just can’t solicit...I think…” 

“Don’t tell me no more, Park. My heart can’t take it. The world is gone.”

“Oh here’s one you’ll like. You can sell your shit for forty dollars a bag but you need to be near the facility. They don’t accept it by mail, that would be disgusting of course.”  

“Are you making this stuff up?” 

“No, really. They recycle it for bricks.” 

“Like a brick shit-house.” 

“No, like a shitbrick house.”

“Wouldn’t be no good for me anyway. I only eats like a bird here lately. I don’t know why. Probably because I can’t cook.” 

“They accept bird shit. And dog…cat...” 

“No more shit. Change the subject. Gives me, what do they call it? PTCD?” 

“PTSD. Why would talking about shit give you post-traumatic stress disorder? Bad constipation story?” 

“No, the opposite. Never mind. Change the subject.” 

“Oh…okay, no more shit-talking.”

“Why don’t you search up jobs specifically for old people?” 

“You might not be old for long.” 

“By the way things are going, I think I will be…although it still wont be for long.”

“What about for dead people? You can manage people’s social media pages after their dead for a…good fee by the looks of this.” 

“Wouldn’t funeral homes do that? Or their shadows?” 

“Apparently, they do offer that in their extended packages, but they charge a fortune. According to what I’m reading here anyway. I don’t know about the shadows.”

“Well I don’t know anything about that. I only updates my social pages because I got to.” 

“As we all.” 

“I think I might have to accept the fact that if I don’t sell my house I’m probably not going to get the shot.”

“We’ll figure it out.” 

“Drop over we goes for a walk,” I said. “I’ll get the car to come get you.” 

Obviously Park knew what “go for a walk” meant. Privacy. 

“Don’t give up,” Park said when we were finally walking down to my wharf not long after. “I want us to be able to go have a beer when I turn thirty. What about smuggling? Apparently it’s making people rich around here.” 

I couldn’t tell if he was in on the game and seeing how I would react, or if he was joking. Either way, it scared me to think that it was town gossip. 

“I don’t know if I’d even joke about human smuggling. Big jail time for that.” 

“Big money too.” 

“You read that online?”  

“No, I just heard rumours about people smuggling in Americans and how they were making a fortune.” 

“People like who?” 

“People like Dad.”

“Judas! He shouldn’t have told you that.” I didn’t know exactly how much he told him. 

“I tricked him into it.” 

“That don’t surprise me —don’t step on that nail. I keeps forgetting to get rid of it.” 

He circled around the nail and walked down on the beach. 

“Enough of this,” I said. “Let's do another v-cast right now. I need the money and I need it quick.” 

“I’m not really prepared,” Park said. “I don’t have any questions ready.” 

“We’ll just wing it!” I said. “More fun that way I figure.” 

He looked at me and smiled. “Aren’t you nervous?”

“I would have been, but after...”

“After what?” 

“Don’t matter now.”   

*

“Who do you think you’re going to hang out with if, when, you get the shot,” was Park’s first question, once we were all set up again. This time there were three people in the audience. “I’m sure you won't be hanging out at the retirement home with your twenty-five-year-old body.” 

“Why not?” 

“What happens when they all die off? You’ll have to find new friends then.”

“Most of my friends are dead anyway. But I’m sure there will be lots of people my age getting the shot eventually.” 

“Eventually? They don’t have time for eventually. No offense.”

“None taken.”

“Only the rich people and I got a feeling you don’t know many rich people. It probably won't be until my generation gets your age that it’ll be cheap enough for middle-class people. Even then the poor probably won't afford it. So you’re going to have to learn to get along with young people. But that don’t seem to be a problem for you anyway. If our Yi immersions are any proof.”

“Well, I like exploring, but I’m not sure about all that political stuff.”

“That’s the best part!” 

“If you say so.”

“Shooters are for meatheads.”   

“I was always young at heart, but I don’t know if I would feel comfortable hanging around with anyone under thirty. I don’t even know what we would talk about.”

“I’m nowhere near thirty. We talk all the time.” 

“We’re family.”

“But we don’t talk about family things much. So there you go. I think you could hang around with people of any age.”

“Still different.” 

“If you’re the first person to get it in Newfoundland, you’ll be a celebrity, that’s for sure.”

“I never even thought about that.” 

“Do you think you’ll be able to handle it?” 

“I guess. Will I have to do interviews and stuff?” 

“You won't have to do anything I guess. It’s a free country. Sort of. But people will expect it I bet.”

“I wouldn’t be able to handle doing interviews all the time.” 

“But…you’re doing one now.”

“It’s different with you. You’re my grandson.”

“What about a partner? Do you see that happening down the road?” 

“Partner?” 

“Like a girlfriend, or, I don’t know, a second marriage? You are talking about going back to college after all.”

He must have seen a weird look on my face because he tried to take it back, “Maybe I shouldn’t have asked that…” 

“No, it’s okay,” I said. “I just wasn’t expecting it. I think when you’re doing something like this it brings out questions that you normally wouldn’t ask.” 

“I know,” he said. “It’s weird isn’t it? It’s like in here we’re different, more open versions of ourselves.”

“I wonder what does that?” 

“Maybe the formality of it cuts away the trim, and gets right to the core.”

“Could be.” 

“You still didn’t answer though,” he said, smiling. 

“I…I can’t say that a partner is the first thing on my mind right now, but, you know, if being young again means all the things that comes with being young…with being….you know…”

“Nope. Don’t know.” 

“Do I have to say it? I only knows how to say it one way. I don’t have all the big words you got in your noggin.” 

“I honestly don’t know what you’re trying to say, Pop.” 

“Horny! I’m talking about being horny.” 

You could hear the five people in the audience laughing at that, while Park put his fingers in his ears and shouted, “La-la-la-la…” He was exaggerating, but not really. I’m sure he didn’t want to hear his grandfather talking about sex.      

“Lets move on,” Park said. 

“Being horny is a part of human nature,” I said. “And when you’re—“ 

“Lets move on.” 

“And when you’re young—“ 

“Pop!” 

“And when you’re young you tend to be even more horny. You probably can’t go five minutes now without thinking about girls.” 

“When did you start saying ‘Judas?’ Do all religious people say that? You’re the only person I know who says it.” 

“My grandfather used to say it, and I started saying it, almost…like…poking fun, but not really?” 

“Ironic homage?” 

“Is that like sarcasm?”

“Sort of, but without any mean intent. A kind imitation, but in respect at the same time.”  

“Yeah, that’s sound about right.” 

“The problem with poking fun like that is that eventually the word starts to feel natural.”

“You’re right on the money there young fella.”

“So lets talk about the call.” 

“Aron Bekker? Yeah, it’s still hard to believe.”

“How sure are you that it wasn’t a joke or a scam? Some shadows are really good at imitating voices.”

“I thought that was illegal?” 

“When did that ever stop anyone?”  

“It wasn’t just a call. It was texting first.” 

“Have you texted him back since?”

“Yep.” 

“Did he respond?” 

“Nope.”

“Oh boy…that’s not good.” 

“He’s a busy man. But who knows these days —maybe it was a scam. Either way, I’m going to try to get the money.”

“Make sure it goes to the right place, Pop.” 

“Oh, it will.”

“So what did he say anyway? What was he like? Supposing it was actually him.”

“It was a quick call. He told me about an old movie, Brewsters Millions, and then about some Spanish traveler who was looking for the fountain of youth…” 

“So he said the same thing as he did in his press conference?” 

“What? Oh…no, I’m getting it all mixed up now…he said…I had a year to gather up the money, or I’d have to get in the queue with everyone else.”

“Oh pop…that really sounds like a scam. I have to say.” 

“I didn’t think con artists had that much patience.” 

“Long con. A year is not that long to wait for a million yuan.” 

“Well, like I said, I’m going to gather up the money anyway. If I can’t get it I can’t get it. Maybe the queue will be faster then.”

“Probably wouldn’t hurt to have a lawyer or someone to make sure it’s all legit before you buy it.”   

For the rest of the v-cast we talked about how different generations talk. I still had some of the old Newfoundland twang and grammar. Melvin still had a few words here and there. But with Park it was pretty much gone. Or at least it seemed that way to me. As for my grandparents, they basically spoke another language compared to kids these days. 

After the v-cast I still kept researching ways to make money. A side-side-side hustle I guess you could call it. He mentioned a professional hugger, so I had to check just to see what it was all about. As I said before, I liked hugging people, but it wasn’t as easy as I thought. I thought you’d just walk in the door, give a hug, pat on the back for good luck, and Yechen’s your uncle. But no, you needed to learn all these techniques, like holding hands, spooning, staring into people’s eyes, head in lap, talking — and even with the same sex! I got nothing against the gays but I wasn’t going at that. No sir.

But I still didn’t want to die. 

And strangely that feeling was stronger than it had ever been. Maybe before it only seemed like a foolish pipedream, but now that I had really put my mind and body into it, I wasn’t going to give up for anything, no matter if it killed me. I had accepted that I was going to get old and die and go to heaven obviously, but now this didn’t have to be true anymore I figured what’s the big rush? See, I don’t like stress and I could never really understand ambitious people. Why do they want all those headaches? I just wanted to work my nine-to-five job, take care of my family, go to church on Sundays, retire with a pension, and if I was lucky, die in my sleep when I was an old man. I didn’t realize that when I became that old man I wouldn’t be any more ready to die than when I was forty. I was still healthy after all. Slower, but healthy. But now that I knew that I could reset the clock, and start over, all those dreams that I forgot I had were starting to come alive again. You don’t have to be ambitious to have dreams. One thing I always wanted to do was visit the holy land, and walk that Jesus trail, where he walked during his ministry. From his childhood home of Nazareth to when he lost his temper at the temple in Capernaum. Amy had no interest so I never really pushed it because I don’t like arguing. I just brought it up in conversation one day and she said, “Yes, that’s just what I’m going at, walking cow paths all over Kingdom Come! You know how hot it gets over there? You off your palm or what?” 

So that was the end of that. Then.

There was only one way to make the kind of money I needed if I didn’t sell my house, and that was what I had already done, even if I hadn’t planned it. Smuggling magas. I had never been so afraid in my life as I was that night, but truth be told, when things started happening I didn’t have time to worry anymore. When every sense in your body is turned up on ten, all the other BS goes away. I can barely remember my great-grandfather Lusby, but he fought in the First World War. 

He was in the first Newfoundland battalion that started in Gallipoli. So not only did he have to run across fields under fire and mortar, but he took part in trench raids, where he had to sneak into the Turk’s trench in the middle of the night and kill them with his bare hands with spades, truncheons, bayonets, knives, fists, and I dare say even teeth if need be (he might have still had some at that age). If you were lucky you might get a shot or two out of your rifle before some Turk was on top of you. Imagine, a teenage boy who had never been in the city of St. John’s in his life, let alone the other side of the world, and had probably never been in a fistfight in his life, and then he finds himself beating a stranger to death with a small shovel in a country he never heard of before he landed there. 

He was a cranky old fella who hardly spoke to me other than to growl when my brother or I were making too much noise. Like most of the men who came back from that war, he didn’t talk about it, but one day — he must have been in a rare good mood — I got up the nerve to ask him if he was afraid whenever he had to jump into a trench (the only reason I knew he took part in trench raids was because I heard Nan tell Mom). I was only a little boy so I can barely remember the conversation. All I can remember is one thing he said. “Only time I whudn’t afeard was when them Turks was tryin’ to kill me. Even if jus’ afore that I was shittin’ in me clothes.” It wasn’t until that skipper’s son accidentally fired off the gun that I understood what my great-grandfather meant. Most of the things we’re afraid of is in the future. In the moment you don’t really have the time to think about it. Now make no mistake, I did shit myself from fear beforehand, but after that I was kind of just living in the moment. 

I couldn’t see any alternative. If I wanted to live forever, I had to break the law. That was it. Either that or spend the next fifty years greeting people at EverythingStore. As an old man that could be alright for a few years, but as a young man that simply wasn’t going to be good enough for me. Not anymore. No sir.