A White Mare

by RandomBlank


Chapter 5: Articles of Mass Destruction

A renovation crew was replacing the roof on the old house, and another was laying foundations for the new barn, but otherwise the place was unchanged. Dawid dropped me off and turned around to keep fighting in the courts while I headed towards my barn-home.

The stable-side door opened, and Celestia burst out, galloping towards me. We hugged, and she nickered softly, holding me close.

“What have you done, you crazy horse...” I muttered. She whinnied and galloped in a circle around me, throwing her head around wildly. We ran together back home.

It was mostly unchanged since I was taken away, the one difference being a Kinect attached to a large plasma TV screen on the wall.

“Got to playing games?” I asked.

She snorted and stood in front of the screen. The desktop came up, and I observed how, through shifting her ears and tilting her head, she was controlling the interface at a proficiency exceeding my use of keyboard and mouse.

“Good work there. But how are your efforts with the beacon? I see the barn is progressing nicely, but how about the ruby dust?”

“Somewhat delayed with the crisis,” appeared on the screen. “Nothing critical, though. Got tugboat and barge, still assembling the crew.”

“You caused a worldwide crisis just to get me out...” I shook my head. “Tell me everything. Dawid was short on details, he told me to ask you, and I didn't really follow the news while in jail.”

She pulled up the directory of chat logs of TorChat on the screen. She marked a group of them, then opened the first. She nodded towards a mouse and a keyboard on the table in the middle, then headed to the kitchen. The aroma of something cooking burst out as she opened the door and vanished inside.

I began reading.

TIA: You wished to meet me.

SEC: Yes, we'd like to see you for an interview.

TIA: If you mean apprehending and interrogating me, forget about it. I can prove my innocence over this medium, and once it's clear I used only public information, you will drop the charges.

SEC: This is not how we conduct interrogation.

TIA: But logs of this chat are surely attached to the file of the case. If they contain information acquitting me beyond doubt, not dropping the case would be illogical. Dragging us both across the ocean just to make a show of your own lack of understanding of the domain you're supposed to guard through having the lawsuit thrown out of court? Hardly worthwhile.

I smirked at how Celestia dropped a bit of extra information about her location, just to keep the other party interested in listening, in the hope she would slip up and reveal too much about herself. It was obvious the SEC person was uninterested in finding any acquitting information, but they would try to get Celestia to reveal herself.

SEC: All right, let's give it a shot.

TIA: I can reveal some of my business methods and sources of information. That way it will become clear my methods were legal and I didn't need any insider information to act.

SEC: That might work. So what are your special sources of information?

TIA: Don't be coy with me. The sources are varied, but the key is in interpreting them right. Let's take one trade which I failed to complete before my assets were frozen, so you can observe the market and see its reaction to my preparing action. Check the market value of tungsten.

SEC: About $700 per kilogram. The price has doubled over the last two weeks.

TIA: I have depleted the market by purchasing 3,500 tons of tungsten, and my action drove the prices way up. Now selling it I would double my investment. Why didn't anyone do this before me?

SEC: I don't know, you tell me.

TIA: Yet again I repeat, don't play coy with me. Sure, over a billion of initial investment is a lot, but for a chance to double it in a week, many would try. Why didn't anyone attempt it? Why does the price curve drop sharply just after the purchase, instead of climbing as it should? Why does it drop way more on the next day, and then stay at $250/kg sharp for the next three days? Only to rise to just a notch below the initial price for another three?

SEC: Lothar c.o.'s stockpile.

TIA: Yes, the supposedly bottomless stockpile, from which they sell at contractual price to the seven largest ammo manufacturers in the USA, resupplying it whenever the market price drops. There were four attempts at depleting the market in the past. All were completely thwarted by Lothar flooding the market with tungsten from their stockpiles and then mercifully rising the price to such a level that an investor with frozen capital would sell at a minimal loss. I did exactly the same thing as my predecessors. Why did my tungsten double in value now? Where is Lothar's flood?

SEC: Apparently, Lothar decided not to release all the tungsten in their stockpile.

TIA: Good joke. Lothar is currently buying at three times what they were selling two weeks ago. The big secret out in the wild is that it has no stockpile anymore. They sold it all to the ammo manufacturers, and just kept a small buffer for current needs, to create appearances and strike fear into hearts of wannabe monopolists. Now they have sold the remainder of the stockpile, and currently they are buying from the tungsten manufacturers at three times what they sold it for, just to meet the quota with ammo manufacturers. And that might be your clue to investigate me for possessing this - apparently insider - information.

SEC: Yes, I don't see how you could have possessed this information. This would be their most guarded secret.

TIA: Lothar doesn't subcontract transport to any companies other than its own daughter company, Lothar Cargo. Lothar Cargo doesn't use any third party fuel stations; it just buys fuel in bulk and uses their own fuel station network. By tracking how much fuel Lothar Cargo purchases, comparing to their competition, I can judge how much Lothar C.O. transports of its wares. Last year their fuel purchases rose by 30% for a period of three months, even though they have no storage facilities for such amounts of fuel. There were no visible changes in sales or purchases on the wholesale market. This coincided with Finland’s army's approaching deadline on phasing out lead ammo and replacing it with tungsten. The ammo manufacturing companies noted a 5 to 15% sales rise in their quarterly reports in the tungsten ammo domain.

TIA: And that was all I needed to guess Lothar had decided to use the opportunity to empty their warehouses at a profit, selling the stockpile under the condition the sale remained secret.

SEC: That sounds interesting, but it's a very big coincidence, hardly a business method.

TIA: There are seven more markets held in check by companies on the market with analogous situations currently. Four of these seven companies are bluffing like Lothar. There's about $2,800,000,000 to be had in a matter of four weeks, a week per market, with an initial investment of $80,000,000 if you start with the one with the shallowest market and reinvest the gains by depleting the next market. The things to look for are a single company with a dominant position on the market, keeping the prices low with threat of flooding the market with their stockpile, with fixed-price contracts for a price higher than where they keep the market, using a single cargo contractor or own fleet, and the cargo company using own fuel, not trading it and not storing too much. Correlating market opportunities for the stockpiled wares confirms the suspicions."

TIA: Determining the right four companies out of the set of seven with help of the conveniently attached spreadsheet is left as an exercise to the reader: http://vj5pbopejlhcbz4n.onion/fa/fuel_bluff.xls

SEC: That is... very interesting. We'd like to have some time to verify your assertions.

TIA: See me back tomorrow at the same time then.


I tried the link, but the page failed to load, giving me a 404 not found.

I closed the log and picked the next one. The SEC confirmed that the data given matched, but they expressed doubts – Celestia hadn’t earned a penny with that method, despite her locked-down stockpile of Tungsten being twice its original worth at the moment. She provided another proof, a method that worked on the timescale of seconds, and which she had used to quadruple her initial investment obtained with Bitcoin, though due to size of the markets involved, the river of money earned that way had dwindled down to a trickle, but it still worked, if at vastly reduced efficiency. Again, they requested a day to verify the information.

The third day brought a shift in the pace.

TIA: Is that sufficient to convince you?

SEC: It is interesting, but it's still not what earned you the big money. Besides, that's all for the wholesale market, not for the stock market.

TIA: Meanwhile, someone correctly identified osmium as the smallest of the four markets held in check by a bluff, and I see the rapid confusion-hit trades ongoing far past the period necessary to confirm that they are working indeed. I will show you a third method today, one that earned me a lot and in the stock market. Have fun with it, but if by tomorrow my associate is still jailed, and my assets still frozen, I will keep releasing my other business methods, one per day.

TIA: Here's your toy for today. Network traffic analysis predicting panic reactions a minute ahead of time, and allowing them to distinguish panic-driven buying from panic-driven selling with sixty-percent accuracy. http://vj5pbopejlhcbz4n.onion/fa/traffic_panic_correlation.xls
I'm awaiting the resolution tomorrow.

I clicked the next log.

SEC: Since today is Saturday, and the stock market is closed, we were unable to verify the method.

TIA: Yesterday, before the market was closed, I saw a thirty percent increase in the number of tiny spikes in sales and purchases followed by panic reactions shortly, so don't lie to me. As promised, here's the next method: http://moneytips.com/articles/cross-market-correlations.html

SEC: That's an article on some public portal. Do you want me to believe you made billions using tips publicly available for everyone?

TIA: I made billions using a method I published this morning on a public portal. NOW it is available for everyone.

The log ended there, and I switched to the next one. Sunday. Obviously the market was still closed. Celestia had just notified the SEC that she had released one more method. They didn't appear impressed. So, I had to see the first day the investors had a chance to use the new tips.

SEC: Would you care to explain what is happening on the market?

TIA: Every little twitch on the stock market is sending wide ripples over the wholesale market, and vice versa. The cross-market correlation method brings easy immediate profits, but used large-scale, sooner or later it will enter harmonics between two sectors, and some stocks are going to crash. But hey, look at this, I published another article. http://investoradvice.com/tips/hunting-season-for-megacorps-is-open.html

SEC: That's not a very nice title.

TIA: That's not a very nice method. It allows the little guys to bunch up on the big guy who kept oppressing them. It's not a method to earn big money, it's a method to eradicate a big competitor through teamwork with little investment and little risk. I didn't use it personally, as obviously it requires a large number of cooperating participants, but I am completely convinced the effect will be visible very soon.

SEC: If you're planning to coerce us into releasing your associate, you're trying in vain. We don't bend to this kind of pressure.

TIA: We'll see about that.

I picked the log for day seven.

SEC: We do not negotiate with terrorists.

TIA: Oh, but terrorists do illegal things. Show me one thing I’ve done that is illegal. I think, looking at the state of the market, with me doing nothing except publishing advice articles, four by now (you should be able to locate the fourth one yourself easily), I believe the proof I did not perform any illegal insider trading is out there in the open. I dare you to show one illegal thing I’ve done, and I dare you to claim it was insider information that allowed me to bring the market to its current state.

And then there was the eighth day.

SEC: We have frozen the market. Our best economists are working on undoing your damage. And I got an anonymous tip that Mossad is after your “associate”.

TIA: Then you’d better inform your anonymous tipster about this: http://vj5pbopejlhcbz4n.onion/fa/doomsday-advice.docx http://vj5pbopejlhcbz4n.onion/fa/doomsday-explained.docx

TIA: I will only release this if my associate is killed. Of course, I will only release the first part. Good luck reaching enough investors with the second document before ones compelled by the first one set the world on fire. And in case you start distributing the document which is the vaccine today, keep in mind I have other such mass-destruction thought-devices. And you’d better consider the eventuality that one may be published automatically if I'm not there to reschedule the publication.

TIA: Now for today's article. I guess you've read it already; I hope you like it. I wish all the luck to your economists, but personally I'm convinced the day you unfreeze the market will be the last day of Sony... unless you wish to cooperate. I CAN undo almost all of the damage.

TIA P.S. Tomorrow's article will contain tips about trading outside the stock market.

SEC: I need some time to analyze the documents provided.

My heart was pounding loudly. I could only guess what that doomsday advice was. Probably something that would lead to a global war. The links, like the others, were deleted.

The logs ended there. Today was the ninth day.

I heard stomping from the kitchen. I stood up and headed there. Celestia stood over an open pot with the cutting board in her teeth, tilting it to drop freshly-cut parsley leaves. She put the board aside and nodded towards the rack with plates, then she picked up a spoon with her teeth and stirred the contents of the pot.

The kitchen was a mess, but I just couldn't get angry at her. I placed two bowls and one spoon on a tray, then I proceeded to fill them with the... stew? Soup? I brought the tray to the living room and set it on the table, while Celestia turned the stove off.

Celestia was not a good cook. The rough cut of the vegetables was excusable, you know, no hand to hold the vegetable while chopping. But the beans were hard, the onions were a little burned, and the stock was so oily, there was a thick layer of fat floating over the top. Despite that, I soldiered through the whole bowl, just watching her as she'd blow at hers, waiting for it to cool down.

Finally, her bowl was cool enough. She took a mouthful and her eyes filled with fear. She spat it all back into the bowl.

“You ate it? It's terrible!” appeared on the screen on the side wall.

“It wasn't so bad.”

“I'm sorry. I tried to do something as an apology for taking so long and getting you into that in the first place...”

“And you were ready to burn the world down to set me free. You really don't need to apologize to me. I'm truly humbled. And I'm sure you'd be an excellent cook if you only had your horn for finer control.”

“I'm not. Sorry. I hoped this world changed that. It did not."

She nudged my face with her stew-covered mouth, and as I wiped it, we both laughed, each their own way.

An icon popped up in the corner of the screen. Celestia activated it, and the communicator popped up.

SEC: Hello, this is the secretary of finances speaking. I'm here with the President of the United States. I'd like to inform you that the chief of the SEC has been arrested on charges of insider trading - after all, testimony of a suspect is insider information of the SEC. I sincerely apologize for the trouble he has caused. Supposedly you can undo the damage to the markets?

Celestia entered the answer.

TIA: It won't be easy, but with enough resources and some help on your side, I should be successful.

SEC: What do you need?

TIA: I will need one trillion dollars of credit and fifteen minutes of exclusive access to the markets to place my bids before the markets are open. The trillion dollars will be returned within three days, no worse for the wear, regardless of success or failure of my actions.

SEC: And what about the business methods you have released so far?

TIA: I will affect the market in ways that will make them harmless. Over time, the affected entities will learn to cope with the new threats, and my protection will cease to be necessary. All you need to do is not obstruct me.

SEC: How can we trust that you won't just take the money or crash the market even worse?

TIA: Why would I do this? You have seen my doomsday scenario, didn't you? I don't need a trillion dollars to destroy the market, but I need it to fix it. You will have to accept my promise. As long as you mean no harm to us, we don't mean harm to you. With your permission, once the market is stabilized, I plan to take some steps of good faith, improve the economy and the livelihood of all. Don't obstruct these plans, and the results will be beneficial for everyone, involved or not.

SEC: The president agrees to these conditions. We need a day to allocate the funds. They will reach your account next evening, and your trade options will become available at 9:15 AM Eastern Time the morning after that, fifteen minutes before the market is open.