Black Gold
···Clunk!
Only after I got back to my room and closed the door could I finally let out the breath I’d been holding.
Ten thousand dollars in my hands.
Before my regression, I would have dismissed it as pocket change, but now it was practically the lifeline of our family of three.
If I couldn’t turn this money into more within a month, we would all fall into the slum exactly as fate had already arranged.
So how do I multiply it?
Making money was my specialty.
I had once stood at the summit of Black Diamond, the pinnacle of Wall Street, and my returns had been among the best there, too.
Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Tesla, Nvidia, Bitcoin······
Countless blueprints flashed through my mind.
But this was 1991.
It was an era before proper internet, let alone HTS.
If you wanted to buy stocks, you had to walk into a smoke-choked trading room and place your order with a white broker in a tie.
And on top of that, I was an Asian minor.
Those two facts alone made the barrier higher than anyone could imagine.
There were the trips to a broker’s office with my parents, whose English was clumsy at best, and the process of signing dozens of pages of contracts.
Real estate and auctions were no different.
I remembered all of it: the empty lot on the outskirts of New York where a skyscraper would soon rise, the barren wasteland where gold would be discovered, the abandoned warehouse where expensive antiques and artworks were sleeping······ all the things I had once cared about because they meant money and success.
But right now, my age, my seed money, and the fact that everything in this era was archaic were the only things that mattered.
Above all, with our father’s gas station plastered in red foreclosure notices and a move looming over our heads, I needed a faster solution than stocks or property.
Cash. I need cash. Right now, I need something that can bring in hard cash fast.
I’d leave proper investing for later.
In my head, I laid out three clear conditions.
First, within a month.
Second, if possible, by myself.
Third, without leaving Garden Queens.
Repeating those conditions to myself, I lifted my head.
······
Outside the window, I could see our father’s gas station, with its crooked old sign hanging at an angle, and the desolate land stretching endlessly behind it.
Beyond the gas-station sign, stained with grease and grime, there was nothing but weed-choked wasteland.
It was a view I would once have looked at with disgust and never a second glance.
But now it looked different.
Yeah. That’s the first place I’ll develop.
I called up the memory of my life before regression.
The day I had come back here after my parents passed away, when I was already well into my thirties.
······Back then, both the house and the gas-station building had already been torn down, and all that was left was an empty lot.
I had seen it clearly then.
Heavy equipment had just started moving into the middle of that wasteland.
Curious, I’d searched the news archives.
Garden Queens Post
- "Black Treasure" Discovered in an Abandoned Wasteland!
······A major underground deposit discovered just 10 meters below a wasteland in southern Garden Queens, which had been put up for auction in 1991, has sent the local community into a frenzy. Nearby residents can hardly hide their astonishment, saying, "We thought it was just useless land, but to think something like this was buried underneath it"······
New York Times
- The Miracle of Garden Queens: What Is the Wasteland That Was Left Untouched for 20 Years?!
······A piece of land on the outskirts of New York, in Garden Queens, long ignored by everyone, is belatedly drawing attention. Geologists say the area had possessed a special geological structure for a long time, and the story has become a sensation, with one of them remarking that "it was like having walked past a treasure island for decades without ever realizing it"······
Wall Street Journal
- The Twist in a "Worthless Piece of Land" and the Lesson It Holds for Investors
······A gas-station lot sold off at auction in the early 1990s by an immigrant family in Garden Queens is now being valued at hundreds of billions of dollars. At the time, local real-estate brokers mocked it as madness, but the result was the exact opposite. The case has since been cited as a textbook example of "hidden value discovery"······
National Geographic
- Undiscovered Resources Hidden Beneath American Soil!
······Experts estimate that vast untapped natural resources are still buried throughout the United States. The Garden Queens case is one representative example. One geologist said that "until someone has the courage to dig it up, that land is nothing more than useless wasteland," adding that there are likely many more such "sleeping treasures" across America······
.
.
Countless articles were pointing to the house and gas-station lot where our family had once lived.
Right. It’s still not too late.
Legally, the gas station, the house, and the surrounding wasteland all belonged to my father.
True, they were headed for foreclosure and auction because he had foolishly signed as guarantor on someone else’s debt, but that hadn’t happened yet.
All I have to do is pay off the debt before then.
That only made the importance of cash feel even more real.
Stocks, real estate, everything was too slow.
What I needed right now was cash—only cash!
When I looked out the window again, the sky was already packed with dark clouds.
···Rumble!
Thunder cracked once, and then the raindrops began to fall.
Pat-pat-pat-pat-pat-
The sound of rain knocking on the window.
The weather’s helping me, too.
I immediately pulled my father’s old work jacket from the closet and threw it on.
When it rains in this country town, everybody stays holed up at home and doesn’t come out. No one will see me, and the ground will be nice and soft, too.
I moved at once.
My destination was the wasteland about 100 meters from the gas station.
* * *
I drove my father’s truck straight through the downpour.
The reason I’d bothered bringing the truck for a distance of only 100 meters was simple.
···Clunk! ···Clunk! ···Clunk! ···Clunk! ···Clunk!
It was because of all the tools piled in the back.
I drove the truck into the middle of the wasteland, where mud and gravel were mixed together.
Creaaak-
After stopping the truck and getting out, I could see our house, its lights burning beyond the horizon, with the gas station beside it.
I aimed the truck’s headlights at the wasteland.
This weed-choked land looked as though it had been abandoned for thousands of years.
There were shallow hollows all over it, like little valleys.
The slopes were steeply tilted, and the relatively flat ground had soaked up water until it had turned into a muddy swamp.
Rather than wasteland, it was closer to a low hillside, and the soil was so soft that no building could ever be raised here.
I dug through my memories from before the regression as hard as I could.
Let’s see. There was definitely a big hackberry tree here, and on the other side there was a rock shaped like a skull.
When I was little, the old men in the neighborhood used to talk about how Black people had been hanged from that tree long ago, which is why I remembered it.
Supposedly the Black people who were hanged there were left swaying like fruit, and that was why they called them "Strange Fruit."
I found the hackberry tree I remembered, and across from it I discovered the giant skull-shaped rock.
The place where I drove in my first shovel was exactly halfway between them.
Here.
With firm conviction, I drove the shovel into the ground.
···KWA-BOOM!
Every time thunder cracked, the earth flashed white.
Clang!
Before long, as the wet mud was scraped away, hard gravel appeared beneath it.
I broke it apart with the pickaxe I’d taken from the truck.
Clang! Thud! Clang! Thud! Clang! Thud!
For a long while I kept switching between shoveling and swinging the pickaxe.
Then water began to fill the hole.
Groundwater that had been flowing just beneath the surface had started to seep up through the soil.
Rainwater and groundwater both······ this is getting annoying.
But it didn’t matter.
I pulled the pump from the truck.
The storage shed at home had plenty of random tools like this, most of them scavenged or handed over by my uncle, who ran a junkyard and scrap business.
I lowered the pump into the hole and stretched the fifty-meter tarp hose far out behind me.
Rattle-rattle-rattle-rattle-rattle-rattle-rattle-rattle-rattle-
The pump kicked on and began sucking out the rainwater and groundwater that had pooled in the hole.
I could hear the hose spitting water somewhere off in the distance.
All the while, I kept digging and digging.
Because the soil was already soft, and because rainwater and groundwater had mixed together, the earth came up even more easily.
Once I’d dug down about five meters, the groundwater stopped surging up altogether.
Still, muddy water kept streaming down the walls, so I had to leave the pump running.
Thump- thump- thump- thump- thuuump-
I kept digging.
I was sweating more than the groundwater and rainwater spilling down beside me.
I should have eaten more kimchi stew before coming out here.
···Growl!
My stomach clock was telling me it was 2 a.m., the perfect hour for a midnight snack.
But like a crazed machine, I kept on shoveling.
Before I knew it, the pit had reached a depth of two meters.
Because this area had already dipped unusually low, that meant I was about 10 meters down if you measured from the flat surface.
That was exactly the depth I’d seen in the news article before my regression.
But there was still no sign of anything at the bottom of the pit.
A sliver of anxiety lifted its head.
······What if I remembered the news article wrong?
······What if the article had been a lie in the first place?
······What if I got the location wrong from the start?
But that couldn’t be.
No matter how I thought about it, the details of the article came back to me with perfect clarity, and it hadn’t been a single story from one paper or another, either. The hackberry tree where the old Southern white men had once hung Black people in a line was still there, too.
I kept working the shovel and pickaxe.
When the soft yellow earth ended, a layer of hard gravel would appear; when the hard gravel ended, the soft yellow earth would return again.
I kept digging downward like a pilgrim walking a thorn-strewn road.
······
By now, the depth had passed three meters.
Anyone who had ever dug a hole knew how monstrous that was for one person to do alone.
If this particular hollow hadn’t dipped so much lower than the surrounding land, I would never have managed it myself.
This is strange. Why isn’t anything showing up?
Despite my crystal-clear memories from before regression, doubt began to creep in.
I braced my aching back and leaned against the wall.
Rumble-rumble-rumble-rumble!
Just then, the pump outside finally stopped as well, probably because it had run out of fuel.
Should I come back tomorrow?
For a brief moment, weakness flitted through me.
But then—
No. I can’t give up here.
The regrets of my last life and the will to seize this one were not something I could afford to treat so lightly.
Thinking of my parents’ faces, the ones I had failed to protect, I tightened my grip on my blistered palm.
I drove the shovel I was holding hard into the bottom of the pit.
···Thunk!
At that very moment.
Fwish-
An odd sound came from below.
“?”
Wondering what it was, I looked down.
Fwish- fwish- fwish-
An odd noise was rising from the bottom where I’d driven in the shovel.
A pale gas was surging up from underground, pushing against the shovel I’d planted there.
As the shovel rocked faintly up and down, thin cracks began to spread across the bottom of the pit.
Bubble-bubble-bubble-bubble-bubble······
The gas bursting from the cracks was mixing with the groundwater and rainwater, creating a strangely sticky foam.
“!?”
Sensing something was wrong, I let go of the shovel.
Then I hurried up the rope ladder hanging against the wall.
Even as I climbed, the strange sounds coming from below grew louder and louder.
Fwish! Fwish! Fwish! Fwish! Fwish! Gloop-gloop-gloop-gloop-gloop-gloop-gloop-gloop······!
The moment I finally hauled myself out of the pit on all fours.
Bang!
Suddenly the shovel from the bottom of the hole shot up into the air and out of the pit.
···Thwack!
It slammed down right in front of my nose.
I looked back down into the pit.
KWA-RURURURURUUNG!
The groundwater and rainwater pooled at the bottom were all being sucked through the cracks in the floor.
At that instant.
KWA-BOOM!
With a deafening blast, a shockwave burst out as if the stratum itself had snapped in half.
A pillar of black liquid shot high into the sky.
As if bewitched, I stepped closer to it.
Pat-pat-pat-pat-pat-
What was falling over my face now was not rain.
It was black, with a faint reddish tint mixed in.
It was so thick as it slid down my cheeks that it felt almost like honey.
And it was warm—warm enough to feel as though I’d been drenched in human blood or milk.
······I finally found it.
That’s right. What I’d been searching for was a oil field.
The United States had plenty of these small "pocket oil fields," and I had found one of them in our own backyard.
And not just any one—this is one of the real prize deposits, over 100 million barrels worth!
What was now pouring down in front of my eyes like rain was crude oil.
I had dug up the thing called black gold.
······. ······. ······.
I spread both arms wide toward the black-rain sky.
Suddenly, I remembered a famous movie that would be released about three years from now.
The Shawshank Redemption.
I remembered the poster clearly.
The protagonist, Andy Dufresne, after being wrongly imprisoned and then escaping from prison, standing in the rain with his arms stretched wide.
I followed him and spread my own arms wide, letting the rain fall over me.
Andy Dufresne in the movie escaped prison and won his freedom.
And now our family would escape the suffocating misery of poverty and win economic freedom, too.
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