Chapter 3: The Money-Making Plan

As Zoe sat in the vehicle, she couldn't help but reminisce about the images she had seen earlier. Could it be possible to live over a hundred and twenty years? Yet, according to the information she had received, by 2039, the average human lifespan had already reached such lengths. Thanks to advancements in biotechnology, which had developed potions capable of significantly slowing down the aging process, human lifespans had increased dramatically!

From that point on, biotechnology became the most lucrative and hottest industry in the world.

What came next were the chambers she had seen—could those have been hibernation devices? The exorbitant cost of hibernation, in exchange for time. It all seemed too science-fiction, too surreal, making it difficult for her to digest. She couldn't even be sure whether these images and related information were truly from the future or merely hallucinations.

But... what if they were real?

Zoe's heart couldn't help but race. How close were humans to achieving immortality? It might never be possible, but living to two or three hundred years old could perhaps be within reach.

If she missed out on that era and only lived to seventy or eighty, wouldn't that be a huge loss?

In the blink of an eye, the taxi arrived at its destination. Zoe paid the fare, grabbed her bag, and stepped out of the vehicle. She looked around; everything matched her memories perfectly, even the familiar faces of the elderly chatting nearby.

"Excuse me, does Tom Perkins live here?" Zoe asked someone.

"The Perkins family? What do you want with them? I heard they were in a car accident this morning, and the whole family is gone. It was so tragic!!" The elderly woman shook her head in lament. Zoe was taken aback. Could it be that her cross had affected this timeline, causing her own family in this reality to perish?

Regaining her composure, she entered a small shop on the street and purchased a deck of playing cards, pens, paper, and the like. Then, at a nearby motel, she spent twenty dollars on a room.

After shedding her outer clothing and sitting on the bed, Zoe felt quite uncomfortable. This discomfort stemmed from her body's unfamiliarity—different muscle memory, from the way she walked to the difference in height, there was a significant gap!

She needed to adapt to her new body and also prepare for the plans ahead.

In her previous life, she had been aimlessly drifting through society, dropping out of high school and thereafter working on construction sites, in restaurants, as a driver, wandering the streets, dealing marijuana, and collecting protection money from students. Eventually, she learned how to cheat at poker and frequented various unlicensed, tiny card rooms, changing locations every one or two months.

Throughout this time, she had sporadically dated girls, all of whom cared solely about houses and cars. If she couldn't provide them, it meant she lacked sincerity, it meant she didn't love them. Damn it!

The last relationship ended with her being strung along for half a year, spending a considerable amount of money, only to be cast aside and become the laughingstock among her friends. It was then that Zoe vowed never to marry and harbored resentment towards young women. Engaging in heated debates on various online platforms about feminism was a common occurrence.

After her parents passed away and there was no one to pressure her into marriage, she spent her time frequenting nightclubs and clubs, places like the one with thirty-six styles of stripping. Some of the strippers there didn't know as much as she did!

To put it nicely, it was a life of a prodigal; to put it bluntly, it was being homeless and jobless!

Now, with this chance at rebirth, regardless of other factors, she couldn't afford to live as she had in her previous life. She wanted to be wealthy, to spend money extravagantly, to be a person of means. If the life-extension potions were real, she wanted to live for two or three hundred years!

Perhaps by then, there would be technology capable of performing sex-change operations, and she could become a man again!

Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle... Skillfully shuffling the cards, cheating, controlling the cards, attempting, failing—muscle memory wasn't something that could be achieved easily. Zoe needed to make money, but how to get that first pot of gold? Once you had money, everyone knew you could invest in real estate, e-commerce, or gaming to make a profit, but the initial accumulation was the problem.

Alone and after much thought, the simplest path was still her old trade: gambling and cheating to earn that first pot of gold.

As dusk fell, she went out for a meal, spending a few dollars, and then returned to her room. She took out her pen and paper and carefully recalled, writing swiftly.

In 2006, during the FIFA World Cup in Germany, Italy defeated France 6:4. The match first ended in a 1:1 draw after 120 minutes of play, and then Italy won the penalty shootout 5:3, claiming the championship.

This was the only piece of World Cup information she knew because she wasn't a sports fan. However, a friend from her previous life had bet on this match and won over seven thousand dollars, boasting about it constantly, so she had remembered it.

What else? Stocks!

Between 2009 and 2019, the U.S. stock market was in a bull run, making money even while doing nothing. It was the same friend who had bet on the World Cup. He had entered the stock market in the first half of 2005 and ended up losing so much he nearly went bankrupt, so he exited decisively. After the global financial crisis, he re-entered the market, haphazardly bought a few strong stocks, and made a fortune.

Zoe tried her best to recall and wrote on the paper:

In 2009, buy shares in Apple, Inc., Alphabet Inc., Facebook, Inc., JP Morgan Chase & Co., and The Coca-Cola Company.

That was all she could remember. She didn't usually study stocks, and recalling these was already her limit.

To be honest, as long as she had initial capital and entered the stock market in 2009, made money for a few months, then earned a sum during the World Cup, and returned to the stock market until the bull market ended, that money would likely be enough for her to live on for a lifetime!

Thinking this way, Zoe felt her mouth go dry and her body become hot. She was eager to get that first pot of gold. As for the matter of becoming a woman, to be frank, it was less than one percent as important as making money in her heart!

Gender changes had become quite common later on, and the androgynization of men was severe, with even schools promoting the legalization of teenage gender transitions.

With money, one could live well. Cold, hard cash was the ultimate truth!