The Accidental Rewind: My Second Life as a Comedy of Errors

Chapter 5: The Great Orange Stock Debacle

"The CEO of what, exactly? Managing the local Chuck E. Cheese?"

Leo’s voice was dry, cutting through Jovan’s moment of triumph like a rusty blade. He was still standing behind Jovan, arms crossed over his neon-green hoodie, looking at his friend with a mixture of pity and genuine concern for his mental health.

"The CEO of everything, Leo," Jovan said, his eyes still fixed on the complex math he’d scrawled on the board. "The king of the new world. The architect of the timeline. Also, do you have twenty bucks I can borrow?"

"And there it is," Toby chimed in, leaning against a lab table. He adjusted his thick glasses, the fluorescent lights reflecting off the lenses. "The 'CEO' needs a micro-loan for a sandwich. Truly, a titan of industry."

"It’s not for a sandwich, Toby! It’s for capital," Jovan hissed, grabbing his backpack. "I have exactly eight hundred dollars in my savings account from that summer I spent mowing lawns and pretending to understand my dad’s plumbing business. In 2014, that’s a fortune if you put it in the right place."

"The right place being what? A magic beanstalk?" Toby asked, hiking his bag up.

"Apple, Toby. Apple. Do you realize what’s about to happen to their stock? They’re about to announce the next three iPhones, a watch that tracks your heart rate, and eventually, they'll probably invent a way to charge you for breathing. It’s a gold mine."

Leo and Toby exchanged a look.

"You want to spend your entire life savings on a phone company because you think they’re going to make a watch?" Leo asked. "Bro, who wants a watch that talks to you? That sounds like a spy movie from the sixties. It’s never going to catch on."

"That's why I'm the visionary and you're the guy wearing a hoodie the color of a radioactive lime," Jovan retorted, already heading for the door. "Toby, you’re coming with me. Your dad has an account at that brokerage firm downtown, right? Sterling & Associates?"

"Yeah, but why do I have to be involved in your financial suicide?" Toby complained, though he was already following Jovan out of the lab.

"Because I need a witness! And because you’re the only person I know who can read a prospectus without getting a migraine. Come on, we have to get there before they close at five!"

"What about Physics?" Leo called out from the hallway.

"Tell Henderson I had a sudden realization about the curvature of space-time and had to go consult with the gods of finance!" Jovan yelled back.

The bus ride downtown was twenty minutes of Jovan vibrating with nervous energy. He kept checking his iPhone 5, his thumb hovering over the screen. He was visualizing the graph. The climb. The split. The dividends. In his mind, he was already picking out the color of his first yacht. Maybe something in a 'Camille-Eyes-Brown.' No, that was creepy. Maybe just 'Wealthy-People-Blue.'

"You’re sweating, Jovan," Toby noted, sitting beside him. "Like, a lot. You look like you’re about to pull a heist, not buy stocks."

"I am pulling a heist, Toby. I’m heisting the future. Do you know how many people in 2024 wish they could be in this seat right now? I have the cheat codes. I’m playing Life with the 'Unlimited Money' mod enabled."

"You’re playing Life with a 'High Fever' mod enabled," Toby muttered. "Seriously, though. Apple? Everyone has an iPhone already. The growth is capped, man. You should invest in something stable. Like oil. Or maybe that new streaming thing, N*****x? My cousin says it’s okay, but who wants to wait for DVDs in the mail?"

"N*****x? Toby, I... actually, yeah, N*****x is good too. But Apple is the play. It’s the brand. It’s the cult. Trust me."

They reached the office of Sterling & Associates, a sterile, carpeted room that smelled of stale coffee and expensive toner. A man in a sharp grey suit, Mr. Sterling, looked up from a mahogany desk. He looked like the kind of man who had never eaten a carb in his life.

"Can I help you, boys? Are you lost? The arcade is two blocks over."

"I’m here to open a custodial brokerage account, or use my existing savings passbook to execute a buy order," Jovan said, trying to sound like a man who didn't have coffee stains on his jeans. He slammed his bank book onto the desk. "I want eight hundred dollars worth of Apple. Every cent. All of it. Put it on the fruit."

Mr. Sterling blinked, his pen hovering over a notepad. "Apple? The fruit company?"

"Yes. Apple Inc. AAPL. The guys who make the iPhone."

Mr. Sterling let out a short, dry chuckle. "Son, I think you’ve been reading some very old magazines. Or perhaps you’ve been hit in the head with a very heavy Granny Smith."

Jovan’s heart skipped a beat. "What are you talking about?"

"Apple went bankrupt in 1997, Jovan," Toby whispered, leaning over to look at a ticker-tape screen on the wall. "Wait. No, they didn't go bankrupt, they... they were bought out by the government to make calculators? No, that’s not right."

"Apple Inc. doesn't exist under that name here, kid," Mr. Sterling said, pointing to his monitor. "The tech giant you’re thinking of—the one that makes the 'O-Phone' and the 'O-Tablet'—is Orange Corp. They’ve owned the market since the nineties. Steve Jobs? He’s the CEO of Disney-Pixar-Marvel. He never went back to the computer business."

Jovan felt the air leave his lungs. The room started to tilt. "Orange? You mean... like the color? Orange Corp?"

"The 'Think Different' people?" Toby asked. "No, wait, their slogan is 'Peel the Future.' Everyone knows that, Jovan. Are you okay? You’re turning a very vibrant shade of pale."

"Orange Corp..." Jovan whispered. "It’s the Mandela Effect. The toaster didn't just send me back; it’s a parallel reality. The names are different. The brands are different. If I buy Orange, is it the same? What if it’s a bubble? What if in this world, Orange is the company that invented the Zune?"

"Do you want to buy Orange or not?" Sterling asked impatiently. "The price is six hundred dollars a share. Your eight hundred bucks will get you... one point three shares. Hardly worth the paperwork."

"Six hundred dollars a share?" Jovan gasped. "It’s already peaked! I’m too late! I’m ten years too late in a world I don't even recognize!"

"I told you," Toby sighed. "You’re acting like a crazy person. Let's just go. We can spend the money on tacos and those new fidgety-thingies that kid in the back of class was making."

Jovan’s ears perked up. "Fidgety-thingies?"

"Yeah," Toby said, gesturing with his hands. "You know, those little plastic bearings. You spin them. They do nothing. My neighbor, Mr. Henderson’s brother, started a company for them. 'The Spin-Go.' He’s looking for investors because the bank told him it was the stupidest idea in the history of plastic."

Jovan’s eyes widened. A memory flashed in his mind—not from this timeline, but from his original one. 2017. The Great Fidget Spinner Craze. Every child in the world had one. People were making millions selling pieces of plastic that spun for three minutes. It was a global fever dream.

"The Spin-Go?" Jovan asked, his voice trembling. "Is it... is it a prototype? Does it have three weighted arms?"

"Yeah. Why? You think people are actually going to pay money to spin a piece of trash?"

Jovan looked at the 'Orange Corp' logo on the wall—a bright, neon orange with a bite taken out of it. It felt wrong. It felt like a trap. But the fidget spinner? That was universal. That was a law of nature.

"Mr. Sterling!" Jovan shouted, making the man jump. "Forget Orange! Forget the fruit! Is there a listing for 'Spin-Go Prototyping and Manufacturing'?"

Sterling sighed, typing into his computer. "It’s a penny stock, kid. It’s trading at... four cents a share. It’s a 'junk' rating. They’re facing a lawsuit because a kid swallowed a bearing."

"Buy it," Jovan said, his voice cold and determined.

"Jovan, no!" Toby grabbed his arm. "That’s literally throwing your money in the trash! It’s a failing toy company!"

"Buy all of it!" Jovan slammed his hand on the desk. "Eight hundred dollars. At four cents a share... that’s... that’s twenty thousand shares. Do it. Right now."

"It’s your funeral, kid," Sterling said, his fingers flying across the keyboard. "I’ll need you to sign these disclosures stating that I told you this was a moronic move and that you are of sound mind, which, for the record, I don't believe for a second."

Jovan signed the papers with a flourish, his hand shaking. As the printer whirred to life, spitting out his confirmation of ownership in 'Spin-Go,' he felt a strange mix of terror and triumph.

"You’re an idiot," Toby said as they walked out into the cool evening air. "You just spent your college fund on a toy that doesn't even have batteries."

"Toby, listen to me," Jovan said, stopping at the edge of the sidewalk. "In three years, every person in this city, every student in our school, and probably every bored office worker in the country is going to be holding one of these things. And I own twenty thousand units of the primary patent holder."

"Or," Toby countered, "you own twenty thousand shares of a company that’s about to be evicted from a garage in New Jersey."

"It’s a gamble, Toby! Everything is a gamble! I thought I knew the script, but the script has been rewritten in Crayon! I have to adapt!"

Jovan leaned back against a lamppost, the weight of the realization finally hitting him. If 'Apple' was 'Orange,' and Steve Jobs was making The Avengers, what else was wrong? Was A****n a bookstore that only sold cookbooks? Was G****e a search engine for finding lost socks?

His 'future knowledge' wasn't a map anymore. It was a minefield.

"Hey," Toby said, his voice softening. "You okay, man? You’re doing that vibrating thing again."

"I just... I realized something, Toby," Jovan said, looking at the setting sun. "I came back here thinking I was the smartest guy in the room because I knew what was going to happen. But if the world is different... then I’m just a guy who’s guessing. Just like everyone else."

"Welcome to being eighteen," Toby said, punching his shoulder lightly. "It sucks. Want to go to the arcade? Camille is probably already there, waiting to humiliate you at pinball."

Jovan’s heart gave a small, painful tug at the mention of her name. Camille. Was she different too? In this world, did she still like the stars? Did she still talk to him until 3 AM? Or was she a 'variant' too?

"Yeah," Jovan said, straightening his jacket. "Let’s go. I have a date with destiny. And a girl who’s going to laugh at my 'I Heart Calculus' shirt."

"Wait, you're actually going to wear the shirt?"

"If I lose, I have to. And Toby?"

"Yeah?"

"If I ever mention 'Blue Hawks' again, just hit me. Just hit me really hard."

"Deal," Toby grinned. "I’ve been waiting for permission to do that since middle school."

As they walked toward the neon lights of the arcade, Jovan felt the confirmation slip in his pocket. He was a majority shareholder in a failing plastic toy company. He was failing calculus. And his best friend was ready to deck him.

But as he saw Camille’s silhouette through the arcade window—the way she tilted her head when she was laughing at something Leo said—he realized that some things didn't need a stock ticker to be valuable.

He just hoped the world didn't run out of ball bearings before 2017.

Jovan (Internal): If the 'Spin-Go' doesn't take off, I am officially the poorest 'time traveler' in the history of the multiverse.

He pushed the door open, the sound of 8-bit music and laughter washing over him. The future was buffering, the timeline was broken, and he was broke.

But Camille was waving at him. And for now, that was enough.