Page 94 of Tangled

51

A Bloodbath of Killer Whales

Colleen

Colleen trotted to the rear of the yacht, where Anjali was reclining next to Jian in deck chairs on the shaded top deck in the late afternoon sun, holding his hand. Her laptop rested on her knees.

Dang, those two were just so sweet.

Colleen asked her, “Has the brouhaha started yet?”

Anjali glanced up at her, her enormous dark eyes amused. Her head bobbled on her neck like she was dancing. “Of course. The Killer Whale who calls themselfTriple-X-Lehman-Brosis hinting in the comments that the dip is a buying opportunity for the minnows. Those assholes. They’re probably selling every last scrap of GameShack stock they own and trying to prop up the price with disinformation so they can offload it. I hate how they take advantage of the little guys.”

Colleen nodded. “The stock market is nothing but a Ponzi scheme. Let’s protect those minnows and sea bass from buying too early.”

She settled down beside them on a deck chair and started locking comments and pushing back on the bad advice the Killer Whales were doling out to the smaller investors. They didn’t delete the comments because that might have tipped the Killer Whales off that the moderators were watching too closely.

Anjali, as PikachuMod, typed in the secret moderators’ group chat, The Killer Whales are hunting today. We need to push back and keep them from eating all the minnows and sea bass, or at least their money.

Colleen typed back as QueenMod, Those jerks. They’re liquidating their positions and telling the small fish to buy to prop up the price.

Anjali looked at Colleen over the top of her phone. “That was what I said.”

“And you were right.”

Anjali scoffed.

In the group chat, several moderators were incensed that the Killer Whales were once again chewing up the minnows, but ScholarMod asked,@QueenMod, don’t you work at GameShack?

She wrote back, I got fired last week, but I can absolutely tell you that there is no way that GameShack is divesting itself of its streaming service or filing for bankruptcy. They have oodles of liquid cash and real estate as collateral for any loan.

Those weren’t the only assets over at GameShack, of course. That massive stash of their cryptocurrency CurieCoins, which were stored in the virtual vault that Tristan and Colleen had discovered, far exceeded the value of their streaming service and real estate.

Colleen still thought it was weird that GameShack was hoarding CurieCoins.

Anyway, she and Anjali kept the little fishies calm in the main chat rooms and told them towaitand see.

Wait.

Because the minnows should hold onto their money.

They shouldn’t buy the dip yet.

They worked through the day, Tristan trading in his bat cave of computer monitors, and Anjali and Colleen on laptops and phones lying on the deck of the yacht. Colleen was soaking up the sun while Anjali lay right beside her under the shade of an awning, and they waved to the rich people strolling along the pier to their yachts.

Anjali asked her, “Do you think Tristan can get us into the yacht club over there? They have a pool.”

From their vantage on the top deck three stories above the waterline, they could see over the lower yachts to the building on the shore. Members wearing white slacks or skirts with blue blazers despite the July warmth strolled into the building, while servants in black suits did their bidding. People wearing swimsuits hung over the wall around the roof on one level, laughing and drinking fruity-looking drinks.

Colleen told her, “I’ll see what I can do.” She hesitated, but she asked, “Are you and Jian still engaged?”

Anjali threw her a friendly scowl like Colleen must have lost her mind.“Of course.”

“Oh. Okay. Cool.”

The New York Stock Exchange closed at four o’clock Eastern Time, which was ten o’clock at night in Monaco. Anjali and Colleen had moved into Tristan’s computer cave because the heat was getting stronger.

Colleen set her laptop aside from where she was sitting at the end of Tristan’s magnificent computer desk, the screens blasting blue light down on them. Three of the graphs scrolling over the screens froze as New York and Chicago ceased stock trading for the day.