Free The Twain Maxim by Clem Chambers

month he would hit the ten billion, and on he would go to a hundred billion and continue until he was the first trillionaire in the history of the world.
    The moustache was good: he looked like a serious fellow. He had scraped the beard off the week before.
    Every now and again he would minimise his trading software and look at the wallpaper on his desktop. He thought about resetting the default, but instead he stared at the picture of Jane. He wanted to call her, but how could he?She had said it all in her email. He wasn’t the guy for her. Of course he wasn’t. He was no brick-shithouse special-forces officer, with a chiselled chin and muscles on his muscles. He was no martial artist, PhD genius superhero. He was just a common bloke with some freaky crystal-ball-reading skill. Princesses didn’t marry milkmen, goddesses didn’t fall for mortals, and money didn’t buy love. In fact, it poisoned it.
    He was trading so big now that he could tell the market knew he was there. When he went long the market rose, and when he went short it fell. He was becoming part of the market itself. That was strangely gratifying. He was bullying the world.
    The phone rang. He brought up his trading software to cover the picture of Jane.
    It was Davas. “Jim, what are you doing?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “You know what I mean.”
    “I’m trading.”
    “I can see that.”
    “I know. So what?”
    “What do you think you’re doing?”
    “Making money.”
    “You’re making too much. You’re bending the markets.”
    “So?”
    “If you keep bending them, they’ll break.”
    “Oh, really?”
    “Yes, really. How much have you made? Four, five billion?”
    “Eight.”
    “Eight.” Max paused. “And where do you think all this money’s coming from?”
    “You?”
    “No, not me. From everyone else.”
    “So?”
    “It’s too fast, Jim. If you’re doing what I think you’re doing, you’ll break the bank.”
    “There is no bank.”
    “Of course there is. It’s the Bank of Everybody.”
    “Why should I care?”
    “Because you’ll end up hurting people, so many, many people. You’re producing an inefficient market that will choke and die. Without the market we all perish.”
    “You’re exaggerating.”
    “What are you going to do with all this money? Don’t you already have enough?”
    “That’s fine coming from you, Max. You have more than Bill Gates.”
    “Yes, Jim, but it’s the gains of a lifetime of work, not treasure plundered in a few weeks.”
    “I’m not plundering – you sound like Jane.”
    There was a short silence. “Jim, you have to stop. If you go on there’ll be untold suffering. You’ve already driven the markets into panic.”
    “Me?” said Jim. “What are you talking about? I’m just surfing this.”
    “You’re not. You’re causing it. Can’t you tell?”
    “You’re not serious, right?”
    “I’m very serious, Jim.”
    He began to laugh. “Have I cracked the game?”
    “Yes.”
    “Is that what the models say?”
    “Yes.”
    “I knew I could,” he said. “I just knew it.”
    “You know you must stop, then, don’t you?”
    Jim’s mouse hand was aching. He flexed his fingers. “Tell me again, Max – tell me I’ve beaten the market.”
    “You’ve won, Jim. The moment I realised what you could do, I knew it was a risk you’d try and then might not stop.”
    “And did you win the game, too, Max?”
    “Yes, my friend, and I, too, had to stop. You know my game is different now.”
    “Yes,” said Jim. “Ten billion would be nice, though.”
    “Jim, you can always revisit it. Take it slowly. Put it in my treasuries and it will be ten billion soon enough.”
    “A hundred billion would be nicer still.”
    “Would you want the attention that would bring? I think not. What you have now will be hard enough to keep secret, and if it becomes known, your life will be spoilt. Trust me on that.”
    “What am I going to do?” said Jim. “This is the only game I can