The Hourglass

"P 16,954,763,180. Approximately, $1,234,306,759,504. Hmm, so that's what's left of your P322 Billions of net worth after five years of hiatus, Joe. A lot of your investors pulled out their stocks after everything that happened." Cass said.

"Well, not bad. I'm actually expecting something lower than that. You know what we need. Is it enough to buy them?" I asked.

"Hmm, we're short of a couple of billions."

"Billions? Really? Lemme see." Cass then projected the market prices of everything we need.

"Can you uhhm, compare the market prices today to the market prices five years ago?" Cass then projected what I asked.

"Inflation started when the war erupted. The flow of commodity supply is disrupted by local insurgencies as a war tactic." Cass projected a graph that shows the rise of the said incidents.

"S-so the war had already started years ago!?" I was surprised as I saw the number of occurrences.

"YES. Local insurgencies sparked the start of the war. Nation leaders took different views regarding this. It led to the formation of new alliances that significantly affected currency rates. This angered most of the neutral parties and it elevated and turned into WW4. All these started just right after you hibernated me. See?" She replied.

Makes sense. I never watched the news in five straight years. I just lived a normal life. I can't believe that it affected everything around me.

"The war led to the increase of the demand of these goods and led to price increase as well. Something's not right. Is there any recent incidents related to this now?"

"Zero. But the war goes on." Cass confirmed.

"Wow. 𝘊𝘢𝘱𝘪𝘵𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘴𝘮 𝘪𝘴 𝘥𝘰𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘪𝘵." A realization hit me.

"They started the war. Whoever they are their goal is not to win it. It is to use it as a decoy to deceive the public and to justify the rise of the prices of their products while maintaining a stable production cost. The more this war drags. The more their pockets are filled."

"𝘎𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘥 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 𝘯𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘴. 𝘐𝘵 𝘫𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘦 𝘪𝘵𝘴 𝘧𝘢𝘤𝘦𝘴."

It's a dark part of human nature and only a few know that it is a problem. That it could only lead to one thing; chaos.

"So, are we stopping a war again? Are we going after the rich now?" She asked.

"I don't have all the time in the world. Find where the dirty money is. Let's give them a taste of their own medicine."

"Copy" She went ahead and scanned every data that flows online.

"...We can't prune a plant completely if we're just cutting its branches. We've been doing this wrong the whole time!" I added as I finally figured it out.

Almost forty five percent of the money that was circulating around the globe at that time was from illegal transactions such as Illegal drugs, Scams, Human trafficking, Underground weapon and ammunition markets, Local insurgencies and more... Forty percent higher than what it was when I lead the world.

"We never learn." I sad conclusion I said to myself as I saw the numbers right infront of me.

As soon as peace is attained greed takes over. And when war or a catastrophic event breaks in due to greed, everyone realizes their mistakes and wants peace and stability again. A vicious cycle that has to end.

"We need to go where this all started. We need to find the roots. We need to build this machine no matter what." I said.

"I've traced all the dirty money. 86% goes to war funds. All the remaining money goes to their expenses and leisure." Cass projected a record of multiple bank transfers and video footages of unusual meetings.

"Their funding all sides to let the war drag further. Bank records say it all. It never stops. Anyway, just get a portion of these funds and disguise it as increased transfer fees in the black market. The transfer fee rates in the black market are always changing. They'll never know. I have to work in the shadows. I don't have time to join this madness." I commanded.

And in just a matter of hours, two billion pesos acquired.

"Done. What's next, Joe?"

"Wait. Keep these going and send the money anonymously to anyone who has a bank balance below a thousand pesos. Divide the per minute earnings to them randomly. It's their money to begin with. Those bastards will never know they are filling a bottomless pail."

"Done." Cass set auto transfer to random bank accounts all over the Globe.

"Great. Now we can start."

I travelled from The Philippines to the East Antartica Plateau. The coldest place on Earth. In this place lies my biggest secret. This is where Cassandra's server is kept. This is where the stone is kept as well. I chose this for the reason that only this place can normalize the temperature of the stone's reactor. Due to the stone's power, the reactor heats up rapidly that it explodes if it is not in the right room temperature. For the stone's case, it would be minus 90°C.

Only I knew the existence of this secret facility. Even Ed never knew this place. The stone's power is too great to fall into the wrong hands. I'm not willing to risk it for anything.

Months passed. The world didn't get any better with the dragging war. Millions were killed, injured, and displaced. They didn't even know what they died for.

Meanwhile, I had already started rebuilding prototypes of the time machine like I did before. The manufacturing was smooth. With the help of robots and Cass, the right precision was achieved but on one quiet night of May 7, 2032 a serious problem came.

We were working on the time machine's fail safe reactor. It was past 10PM.

"Hey, Cass. Please run diagnostics for chamber fou--" I fell flat on the floor.

Cass transferred her consciousness to the robots near me. Then, she immediately scanned me. Thanks to the databases we've acquired from Elon's colony, Cass was finally able to recognize the problem.

After three hours, I regained my consciousness.

"What happened?" I asked Cass. My whole body was a stone. It can barely move.

She was quiet. For the first time, she didn't have an answer to my question within five seconds.

"So it's already that bad, huh, Cass?" I figured out why. It must be the side effects of the pills Ed gave me.

"Do you really wanna know it, Joe?" She said as I tried accessing the files in my mind but Cass kept on blocking it.

"Look if I'm dying, at least I wanna know how."

Cass then unlocked the files and I read it all in my mind.

My cells were slowly deteriorating. The substance in the pill worked like a ticking time bomb. They disassemble when they enter the body and reassemble when it reaches a certain threshold. Its effects were scheduled to trigger at a certain time. The reason why Cass never detected any harmful substances until they regrouped just hours ago. Plus, I had the worst lifestyle in the past five years.

"Cell regeneration?" I suggested.

"With the amount of substance that's residing in your body, the level of cell regeneration we currently have could only decelerate its effects...

"Radiation?" I suggested again.

"Radiation may be a treatment to kill unwanted cells but not this one. It loves radiation. It will only hasten the effects."

"So... "

I took a deep breath and asked the billion dollar question.

"How long do I have left?"

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"You only have a month left to live, Joe."

[𝚝𝚘 𝚋𝚎 𝚌𝚘𝚗𝚝𝚒𝚗𝚞𝚎𝚍...]