Bail-Out: A Short Story

It was early 2014, and gold's bull market was almost at the thirteenth anniversary point. Hugh Mueller had gotten a junior analyst's job, in 1998, with the now-huge Japteus gold fund. He was promoted to fund manager in 2006, over the heads of more senior analysts who didn't care. They were happier at their desks and staying private investors.

Mueller was now the officially recognized #1 manager of a large fund for 2013. He had arrived. The money was pouring in faster than he could invest it. He was no longer shunned; he was popular. His gold niche was no longer laughed at; he was close to revered. Everything was going much better than he could have reasonably expected. The big guys - the Masters of the Universe - were welcoming he and his wife into their circle.

He was triumphant - but what bubbled up from his psyche jarringly clashed with the fame bestowed upon him. Hugh Mueller was becoming a nervous wreck, now enslaved by the fear of losing it all....

[Warning: This story's for adults. There's one graphic bit.]

• Bail-Out
  

Gryphon Mill

In the land of Wrilk, where gold was a magical metal which bestowed power, Grez plied his honorable trade. With his boy apprentice, Plud, the man was a gryphon catcher: an experienced master of his trade. Gryphons, although not easy to catch, carried gold in their gizzard that gave them power... and gave profit to the gryphon catcher. The right one made for a prize of a pet, for which nobility and gentry would pay in platinum.

Grez had indeed captured a prime specimen - prime enough to show to the King's Chancellor himself. It put up little resistance after being taken, and grew fond of Plud. That should have worried the old veteran...

• Capture
• Training
• Escape And Capture
  

Hawaladar

The return of inflation had been very good to Albert Finney. A newly-retired hedge-fund principal, he had latched on to resource stocks. He had also taken positions in the now-huge commodity carry trade. The central bankers had indeed scotched the demon deflation, but at the cost of reviving the Beelzebub of inflation. The year that Albert decided to retire early, 2020, saw official inflation hit 14%. Unofficial inflation was much higher.

Contrary to what his still-active colleages thought, he had not retired because he had burned out. He did so because he was worried about the economy burning out. The inflation juggernaut was unstoppable, even with legislative sterilization remedies; Albert knew well that in the long run, the currency would all be dead. Resolving to do something about it, he found himself joining a conspiracy of goldbugs determined to save as much of the economy as they could.

In doing so, he would place a heavy adult responsibility of his teenage son Neil and his distant relative Dylan. How heavy, both would find out...

• Ancestral Ties
• To Hawala
• Conspiring
  
• On A Mission
• To Trouble
  
• And Back
  

Aid For The Downtrodden

It was truly unusual to find a social-democrat English professor with a real love for the writings of Ayn Rand, but Professor Devon McKinley fit the bill. Not being consumed by politics, his love of literature trumped his aversion to libertarianism. His fascination with non-literature naratives, plus a chance encounter with an old sitcom, led him to discover the goldbug world and become a monthly buyer of gold. Due to his accumulation, he was now sitting on almost 120 ounces at a nice profit - although he was more in it for the subculture-watching than the money. Despite his own political views clashing profoundly with the goldbug norm, he had acquired some virtual friends from that world.

One of them now desperately needed his help...

• The Professor
• And The Runaway
• Safe
  

End Of The Road

Jack was a slacker, but the kind that didn't make much trouble for the law. Supple enough to slip by when the cage door descended, he wasn't the kind to commit an outright crime - let alone making a stand while doing so. His character was that of an adapter.

That changed in 2046. Jack, having had it, deliberately brought a gold coin back from Canada. Gold being illegal for private citizens to hold since the crunch of 2021, it was an obvious crime. The way he did so was brazen, which also was a first for him. Seventy-five was an odd age to take up a life of crime.

In a time when people were sequestered into peer groups and the goverment reserved the right to airbrush books and movies to remove subversive elements, it was quite the stand...

• Reminiscing About
• Busting Loose
• And Standing Tall
  

A Gold Rasputin

Eric Pappas rented a car for the weekend, and took a long journey into the wilderness - beyond even rural - for one purpose: to find the gold guru that everyone was talking about. Traders, analysts, account executives had flocked to this guru's isolated retreat. His advice was becoming legendary.

Eric was in for the surprise of his life...

• The Voice Of The Forest
• Hearing
  

Shade In The Made

Edward Campbell was a disciplined independent trader with a future, which his girlfriend could see but he didn't think of. He liked trading, and was really good at it - good enough to make his living while accumulating a fair amount of capital. The gold penny stocks he traded paid off, and he knew how to play them. He was used to moving into the thick of trouble - the kind of trouble that comes with gut-churning drops. Unknowingly, thanks to he confronting a front man for a troika of seriously mean dudes, he was headed for trouble of a very different and much more serious sort.

• Work
• The Player
• And A Friend
• Nudge
• Confronting
• New Life
  

Machine Beats Man

Harold Garland, the most senior partner of Enlightened Capital, was in a fix. A veteran investment-theme trend chaser, he knew that the next hot trend was gold. The only trouble was, a gold expert meant a goldbug. A goldbug and the highly trained Fed-admiring professionals at Enlightened would be like brown shoes with a blue suit.

But gold was to be the latest trend, and Enlightened needed to jump on it. Garland desperately needed a workaround. And Iain Quan, a top of the line natural language recognition system programmer, was just the man for the trailblazing job...

• Initial Conditions
• First Iteration
• Second Iteration
• Third Iteration

Gold Digger

Wayne Kindall didn't know what he was in for when luck and a friend got him enough work for a job-hunting trip up to Fairbanks. Making the trip in 1933, he only dreamt of steady work. He would find work, all right, but not the kind he expected. A slip of a girl named Mattie was about to make sure of that.

• Opportunity
• Knocks
• Flat
• Epilogue - 1965

Cut And Run

Jack and Nadine Moreau, a successful professional couple, are well nestled into the upper-middle-class success track. So are their two kids. Although financially battered, they were well on the way to a comfortable retirement while in their forties. The trouble was, their retirement plans informally included a future inheritance from Jack's widowed and cantankerous father Frank.

Frank does things his own way; always has. For the last four years, he's put his money in gold. Nadine, having well-researched ideas of her own, aims to set her father-in-law straight.

• Preparation
• Execution

Escape Artist

Ike Leyden, private detective, wasn't a solid citizen. He not being able to go legit, his assignments got dirty. His latest job involved him helping out a genuinely solid citizen, though one with unusual ideas, to get some important packages to the Cayman Islands. The deal was dirty, Leyden was sure, but he couldn't quite put his finger on the filth...

• The Gig
• The Show

Sovereign Destiny: A Short Story

Josh Kelleher was just going for a ride, not knowing that it was a ride that would change the course of his life from drifter to man of means.

• Sovereign Destiny

The Inside Scoop

No doubt about it, Earl Cappel was a hot broker who was on the verge of arriving. He not only had charm and smoothness, he also had a hidden trump card: an uncanny knack at spotting takeovers in the gold-mining circuit. There were some who thought he couldn't be that lucky...

1. Lucky Broker, Lucky Client
2. Manufactured Luck
3. Action Affirmative

The Wild North Run

San Fyfe and Jay Mohr, two experienced security guards with Pender Security, are making a gold run for the Northeaster Mining Company. The van they're driving has special security-tight features, designed as a come-on highlighting Pender Security's top-notch devotion to keeping high-value items safe. Intended as a showcase run, it turns into a run gone wrong...

1. Introduction
2. First Run
3. Second Run

Expert Advice: A Short Short Story

All gold junior speculators have times when nothing seems to go right. Nick Catricals, finding himself in one of those binds, decides he needs help.

• Expert Advice