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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Crimster" data-source="post: 207985" data-attributes="member: 2511">Julia looks over at Ray and nods.“Yes, that was when he gave up drinking.  Never touched a drop of alcohol ever again.  But that wasn’t the only thing that changed in Alan.”  Julia looks down at the remains of her tea, as if trying to divine some mystery from the dregs.“What I’m about to say, I’ve never told anyone.  Alan never actually told me to keep it a secret – but it is so fantastical that I had little choice.  I’m telling you, because you’ve been through… we’ve been through… an odd day.”  She reaches over and grips Ray and Randy’s hand.  “And it may have something to do with what has happened here.“All during the early years, Alan and I lived in a small one bedroom apartment in the Valley.  We had a bed, a broken down refrigerator, and little else.  We made very little money, though we always had dreams of one day buying a house.  We would drive through Bel-Air and pretend that we were going home, but deep down we thought we’d never live in such a beautiful neighborhood.  But then came that night.  That terrible night.  Suddenly, with the hospital bills and the month that Alan had to take off – we were in debt up to our eyebrows.  I remember the day I told Alan that we only had a couple of hundred dollars in our savings.  He turned to me from his desk and quietly said that he had taken it out.  All of it.”  Julia pauses, a quirky smile on her face.“I was furious!  How dare he spend our money without speaking to me about it!  He listened to me yell, sat there quietly, and said, ‘It’ll be all right, Julia.  Trust me.’  And when I asked what he did with it – he simply said, ‘Intel, up 32%’, and went back to whatever he was doing.”  Julia smiles even broader now, lost in the memory.“He took all our money, borrowed against our cars for another ten thousand, and invested in a little known company called Intel.  And of course… it went up.  Way up.  Thirty-two point nine percent that next week.  Alan was right, and we were suddenly doing much better than we were.  Much, much better.”  Julia looks around at each of you.“I know what you’re thinking.  Impossible, right?  It’s all true, though.  From that day Alan was a wonder at the stock market.  Not because of his genius with math, but because he had these… funny dreams.  Dreams about the future that would always come true.  Sometimes it was about the next day, sometimes it was… much, much farther in the future.  In the beginning, he tried to help people.  When he saw people getting hurt in his dreams, he tried to stop whatever disaster was going to happen.  But it didn’t work.  The future in an odd way, was.  Alan couldn’t change it.  So, we just saw it as a blessing.  All of this –“ Julia motions to the house.  “is all Alan’s doing.  Ray, I remember one time, you asked how could two professors afford such a large house in Bel-Air.  Alan replied that he was simply ‘good’ at the market.  Now you now how good.”“But you should know this.”  Julia grips her tea cup tightly for a moment and shudders.  “All the money we have… All that we’ve given to charity… Alan’s wondrous gift… He would have given it up in an instant if he could undo what happened that night.  If he could somehow give the lives back to those poor kids, he would do it.  But he didn’t know how.  It was a gift… but with a terrible price.”  Julia looks to you, hope on her face that you believe her incredible story.</blockquote>

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