The rest of the week went by in a blur. It seemed like every moment of my time was spoken for. Mornings working with Dad, afternoons starting up the foundation, and evenings with Uncle Magnum. With everything that had to get done for the foundation, I was seriously regretting both my assisting position and agreeing to the extra training required for by evaluation by Sifu Zhang, Uncle Magnum’s teacher. I didn’t even have time to keep learning about my field, although I did continue holding up multiple fields all day long. I was almost reaching the point where I didn’t notice any strain and I wanted to make sure that I didn’t get rusty.
Our first task for the foundation was finalizing the purchase of the property. We got lucky there, as the property had been on the market for awhile and the church representative had all the usual required information ready for us. Land survey, title search, environmental reports, equipment listing, maintenance reports, appraisals and inspections. All of it was given to us in a neat binder and Shauna and I pored over it, learning everything we could about the property. Then we hired a few experts to look it over. Both of us were out of our depth when it came to the details involved in assessing the property.
While the experts did their thing, Shauna and I toured the property again and this time I quietly used my field to inspect the buildings, looking for cracks in the foundations and for any other physical defect. Luckily, the buildings were all well cared for and in good repair and we took a few minutes to talk to the caretaker, Fred Shainer, about staying on and working for the foundation. His relief was evident at our offer and he explained that he’d been taking care of the property for over twenty years and he loved the place and his job. He’d been anxious for the past two years about losing his job when the place was finally sold.
I also had a chance to meet with the nuns who ran the medical clinic and that would be renting one of the wings of the main sanctuary. There were three nuns and they were in the middle of a clinic day. Sister Clara Hennessey was in charge, with Sisters Olivia and Amelia rounding out the team. Sister Clara spent a few minutes with us between patients showing us around and explaining their mission. All three of the nuns were registered nurse practitioners and they ran the free clinic for the surrounding communities. They were trained to do full medical exams and prescribe medication with no direct doctor oversight. However, there was a doctor at the local hospital that they could turn to for help and questions and who signed off on their work every month.
“I can’t tell you how excited we all are about you taking over the church. I was so worried about what a developer would do with the place. Shauna told me all about the Hannah Foundation and I think that it’s wonderful. I know that Father Simon would have approved. If the sisters and I can be of any help to your organization, we are here for you.”
We talked some more about the clinic and I got to meet the other two sisters. I’d always heard or read stories about how strict and stern nuns were, but these nuns, and the ones I’d worked alongside at Mary’s Kitchen, were friendly and welcoming. I had yet to meet a mean nun.
The experts needed a few more days to complete their opinions but, barring them finding anything unusual, I was satisfied with the property and told Shauna that I was ready to sign the papers on Friday. She agreed and called the notary to get all the paperwork ready. With that out of the way, Shauna and I met with her top candidates for receptionist/administrative assistant, public relations/government liaison, and counseling/training. Everyone at the Hannah Foundation, even those from our ‘rescue’ team, would start off wearing at least two hats. Shauna was taking over as overall supervisor, as well as being responsible for procurement and security. Jenny would run the IT department for both the foundation and the team, and Gabriel would be the accountant and chef for the charity, when he wasn’t tracking down the bad guys through their banking transactions. Strangely enough, he started out in the army as ‘food service specialist’. His family owned a restaurant and he was brought up cooking for large amounts of people. I made a mental note to have him spend some time in Mary’s Kitchen and learn what he could from her.
By Wednesday afternoon, we’d hired the charity staff and our team members and Shauna had made arrangement for phones to be installed, internet to be hooked up, photocopiers and computers to be delivered and we’d ordered enough office furniture to get started. She’d also engaged a payroll service company, a cleaning company, and a boutique legal firm that specialized in immigration law. She was a whirlwind and I was starting to wonder what there’d be left to do after she’d been at this for a few weeks. I was in awe that the military had let this phenomenal person get away from them.
On Thursday I took a break from all of my jobs. Dad had a conference that he needed to attend and he’d cancelled all his classes for the day. I took advantage of the break and decided to take care of some pressing business. It was earning report season and I was almost too late to take advantage of it. Sure, I had all the reports from the companies I’d visited before, thanks to Howie’s thumb-drive gadget software, but with the large amount of money that I now had and needed to invest for the charity, I needed a greater number of companies to invest in.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Having informed Shauna that I wasn’t available for the day and letting Uncle Magnum know that I was taking the night off to rest and recover, I grabbed an early morning flight to Atlanta. From Atlanta, I few to Nashville, then New York City and Washington. In each city, I visited the offices of three or four publicly traded companies, got their passwords, downloaded or copied their quarterly report, if I wasn’t too late already, and inserted Howie’s thumb-drive program that would let me get future quarterly reports without having to come back to their offices. I’d thought that just having their admin passwords would be enough to access their systems remotely, but that wasn’t the case. When I brought up the issue to Howie, he spent a few minutes mumbling about clients that changed their requirements and soon provided me with a software upgrade. I still wasn’t sure how it did it, but it seemed to search the company’s intranet to get the needed information to create a VPN tunnel that would allow me to access their system remotely. From my perspective, Howie had just provided me with new magic thumb-sticks that replaced the old magic thumb-sticks. As long as it worked, I didn’t care. Although it did mean that I had to spend some time revisiting all the other companies that I’d pilfered information from. Luckily, they were local and didn’t necessitate any flights.
I spent almost the entire day running around in either R1 or R2 and besides slipping back into reality to buy a pretzel from a street vendor (and to go to the bathroom), no one ever knew that I was there. I ran onto flights just as they were about to leave without showing my ID, I shared taxis with unsuspecting travelers, and stole corporate information. It was incredibly cool and lonely at the same time, but I was so rushed to get it all done that I didn’t dwell on either of those aspects for very long. I had a job to do and it needed to get done.
Waking up at 6am the next day was not easy. All the running around, trying to get everything done in one day, had exhausted me. However, this afternoon I was signing for the new Hannah Foundation property and I still had to help dad with his class this morning. Throughout my morning stretching and meditation, I had a nagging feeling that I was forgetting something. That feeling kept coming back to me all day and I couldn’t remember what it was that I wasn’t remembering.
The class breezed by like normal and I spent the two hours afterwards going over all the corporate information that I’d picked up from the companies that I’d visited the day before, along with the latest information from the other companies that I was already following, and prepared a short report for James to use in making investment decisions for the foundations. At this point, I had over thirty companies that I was getting insider information on and there was no way that I could try to find or fake a bunch of ‘internet rumor’ to hide behind so that James wouldn’t get suspicious. Instead, I took the opposite track and didn’t try to justify my choices to him at all. I simply sent him the list of companies with a comment next to each one that indicated if the company was going to make or miss its projection and by approximately how much. Any company that had interesting news, be it a new patent, a new product, or an upcoming collapse, I starred and let him know that he should focus on those companies, as they would be more volatile and could lead to very large gains in the near term. If James decided to question me about the information, I planned on just telling him the truth. I was breaking into all of these companies and stealing the information from their servers. Somehow, I didn’t think that he’d believe me, but that wasn’t my problem.
Shauna arrived to pick me up just as I finished emailing James my picks and asking him to give me suggestions on how I should make these trades on my own account. It finally dawned on me what I’d been forgetting all day. My emerald was going on auction this afternoon. It wasn’t the main attraction like my rubies had been and so I wasn’t getting the full VIP treatment, but they’d provided a live feed, if I wanted to watch or they’d be emailing me the results if I didn’t. Grandpa Jake had said that I should expect the stone to go for around two million dollars before fees and taxes. This time the money was going straight into my personal bank account, instead of to the foundation. Dad had insisted that I have my own nest egg, which I could choose to save for my eventual retirement or use to invest in projects that I wanted to pursue. I already had a few ideas of where to invest some of it, but that would have to wait until next week. Right now, I had to sign for Hannah’s Home, the Hannah foundations’ first property.
Shauna did the impossible and found a spot to park right across the street from the notary’s downtown office. Our broker, Tom, and a representative from the church were waiting for us in a conference room and we all sat down and started signing documents. Each party had to sign the deed of sale, the adjustments for taxes and prepaid utilities, and the fifteen-year lease for Sister Clara’s medical clinic. It was very quick, as the foundation lawyers had approved all the documents and Shauna and I only had to make sure that what were signing was exactly what had been approved. The toughest part of the entire meeting was actually handing over the seven-figure certified check.
Holy Shit! A year ago, the most I’d ever spent on anything was a few hundred dollars. Now I was signing checks for millions of dollars. Things were changing so quickly and I was sure that they wouldn’t be slowing down anytime soon. This was only the first step of my plan for the foundation and on the way home I told Shauna to put the rest of my plan into motion. I needed to move ahead fast because Jake was finally back from his trip. He’d invited me over for dinner to discuss my report on his mines. I was very anxious about the dinner, because if my plan didn’t work out, I’d have wasted more money than I’d ever spent before. On the other hand, if my plan succeeded, the long-term future of the foundation would be secured.