1 Where it begun?

It was a beautiful early spring morning where the sun just started to rise with the first drops of dew making their translucent appearance and the beginnings of life sprouting across the city while I bathed in its magnificence was the same day my story started…

'Or so I like to remember it as so.'

West of the city of Tréal, in a large condominium complex on the 27th floor was my small 2 bedroom apartment with a fairly clean appearance and a lack of much besides a few gadget like pieces of art from old shipwrecks I collected here and there, a comfy leather couch and a big screen hung on the wall for my viewing pleasures.

Sitting in front of an old worn down oak desk, there I was in all my glory, a man of average height with a crow's nest of black hair sitting in front of my laptop scrolling down the endless wonders that is the internet in my bathrobe.

I was at the pristine age of 23, having left my parent's watchful eyes after having realized I wasn't cut out for college and lacked the ambition to do much else. I moved out and got myself a small online job to pay the bills as working for a boss just didn't suit a man of my standards. And that I fucking hated commuting and waking up at times that my body, mind and spirit simply did not acknowledge deserving the need to co-exist with my wakefulness.

Yup.

I was one of those guys who simply hated regular jobs but never really worked hard enough to get anything high end from an academic perspective anyways, just like my last girlfriend thought.

Well, they can go screw themselves is what I say. Why?

Because, my online job which started out as a small online shop for cool stuff I found on the internet has turned to becoming a niche market for collectors of various oddities found in shipwrecks, ruins, excavation sites and my best source… overseas pirates. (That last one has a funny story too.)

These various products I gathered over time are then resold on the market to my group of faithful collectors! How do I get them? Usually what I get are the leftovers that the three main groups of vultures leave to us commoners or so I like to describe it as. Or that they simply miss with their massive goddamn radars. The three being:

Government (Military, military… more military) Damn poachers!

Research institutes(i.e researchers, archeologist, geologists, etc) Damn poachers!

Museums ( Yup, those rich bastards have stolen my deals a number of times!) Damn poachers!

You see, there is a large market of undiscovered stuff appearing every year or reappearing after a long time but they aren't always snatched up by, my previously mentioned, big 3. Leaving some space for people like me to sweep in, if the timing is right, to catch these fishes that slipped through the net. All this leading me to my current situation, where I may not be wealthy but I am a pretty well off for a bachelor who lives on his own without a degree. Pretty cool yeah?

Pretty cool indeed.

Now this just happened to be what I am doing right now, scrolling through one of my favorite auction house for new oddities that may have surfaced during my binge drinking last night.

Scrolling through the list of newly added items, I was generally just searching for anything that didn't seem like a pile of "complete" garbage but usually that ends up being what they look like regardless and it takes a keen eye to judge the value of some of these items.

I usually check every morning and evening for new stuff but it seems this morning was a bust. I logged off and went to make a cup of coffee to help me with the mild headache from drinking when I just so happened to get a notice on my phone with my, personalized, alert ringtone. Checking to see what it said, it read:

"URGENT- SOMALI FRED – AUCTION OF Est. 500 Yrs. SHIPWRECK! STARTS IN 15 MINUTES!"

"OH BABY! Fred, I knew you never disappoint, you ugly bastard!" Rushing to my laptop with a grin, I get right back on to the auction house and went into Fred's profile and just as promised, a new auction alert was counting down the time at 14minutes 23 seconds remaining with a listed 12 items of potential value.

Excitement washed over my face as I saw those words.

Reason?

Because Fred here is the leader of his own diving crew that scour the Arabian Sea, East of Africa, for loot that may have been sunk over the sea's history, which lead me to meeting him when he just started selling some of his stuff a year ago on reddit. ( Which by the way, I berated the living pirate shit out of him for doing)

Got him signed up on the auction house and using it, in return for priority on his auction alerts and since his stuff are all from actual diving sessions with videos, and images of the locations found. I just had to get something from him whenever he posted an auction mainly because he usually finds some cool shit.

Which is exactly why I like Fred, like me he has an eye for these things when he goes diving and you can usually find a one or two really worthwhile picks every now and then, which have given me great benefits from reselling to collectors through my own channels.

Now enough about the smelly pirate!

Time to see what he looted, and so I started browsing his auction introduction which gave a small resume and image of the items being auctioned off.

Reading through the first few items, I couldn't help but chuckle a little at Fred. 'Fred, buddy, you seem to have had a little shitty trip compared to usual.' I thought as I looked through the first 4 items being painting frames with minor lines of gold embedded into the metal framework. Probably a value of 100-300$ for the lot or so I judged as I found these to be pretty useless to me, unless I was willing to melt the gold out and somehow scavenge whatever is still "potent" gold but too much work, I say.

Oh a nice little treasure chest, well as nice as a 500 year old looking box of wood and steel can be and some little trinkets that have somewhat survived the passage of time. Though I don't always believe Fred's "Time" estimates. He isn't a historian after all, I always took care to remember that.

Still nothing impressive, as I scroll down and find a piece of jewelry which looks to be an emerald necklace that is incredibly worn down but the jewel seems shiny and he set it at a base price of 150$ due to the jewel and the appreciation of the antique due to time. This thing could probably go for 350$-500$ depending on who I pawn it off to. I might just get it if it stays below 300$. "Added to watch"

Something I always do when I want something, just add it to my personal alert system so that when there is 5 to 10 minutes left to the items auction time, I am back on the auction waiting to buy it out, hopefully at least.

Anyways, back to browsing… wait, huh?

I tilt my head in confusion at the images posted for this odd looking thing that Fred added on here. I'm confused because the thing doesn't really look old at all. Compared to the dying corpses of his previous items, this thing looks like a goddamn newborn!

'Looking back, that really was the day. The day, where all this started.'

Jupiter Ortus, Reminiscence