New York City, September 1945
Rain fell like ash from a dying sky. The war was over, but for James RienHeart, the real battle had just begun.
He awoke in a sterile military hospital, blinking against the flickering overhead light. His chest ached, but it was nothing compared to the shock pulsing through his mind. One moment, he had been in bed in 2025, scrolling on his phone. The next, he was staring up at a ceiling fan spinning in slow, hypnotic arcs. He had the body of a twenty-five-year-old, lean and bruised, wrapped in bandages and silence.
A nurse entered, surprised to find him awake. "Private Cohen? You're lucky. They had you tagged for dead."
James didn't respond right away. He could feel it—this wasn't just a dream or coma hallucination. His memories, intelligence, and knowledge of a century's worth of history were all intact. So were the three gifts he'd discovered in that timeless darkness before waking.
First, an unshakable knowledge of the future—certain key events were fixed. No matter what he did, World War II would end, the Cold War would rise, and the internet would be born. It was a compass in chaos.
Second, immortality through lineage. If he ever died, and he had a son, he would awaken in the son's body with all his intelligence and an even stronger vessel. As long as his bloodline continued, so would he.
Third, each rebirth would sharpen his mind and body further. James wasn't just a man anymore. He was a living legacy engine.
He touched the dog tags at his neck—"Jacob Cohen." Jewish-American. Recently discharged. Declared KIA two days ago but was found alive under a pile of rubble outside Munich. The perfect ghost to wear.
---
Three days later, James stood in a cheap suit on Wall Street.
The city smelled of oil and ambition. Men in grey hats pushed past each other like they had somewhere to be even if they didn't. This was the belly of the beast. If he was going to build an empire, it would start here.
He'd spent the past days reading every paper, scanning post-war economic charts, and mapping out the cracks in the American economy. There was fear in the market and confusion about whether the post-war boom would hold. But he knew the next twenty years—cold wars, hot economies, recessions, gold crashes, and oil shocks.
"Excuse me, sir," a young man said, bumping into him. The stranger looked frail, with a leather portfolio and the stink of desperation. James read the name tag: Eugene Bloom. A junior clerk, barely keeping his job.
Opportunity.
"You work for Bartlett & Sons Brokerage, right?" James asked.
Eugene blinked. "Yeah. How'd you know?"
James smiled thinly. "Because I'm about to make them a lot of money. And you're going to help."
---
Within a week, James used his soldier's pension and forged his identity to invest in gold futures and post-war steel. He predicted a brief recession in early 1946, one he knew the Federal Reserve would fumble to control. When it hit, Eugene's superiors at Bartlett & Sons were stunned at the accuracy of "Cohen's tips."
By the time the summer of '46 rolled in, James had turned $3,000 into $140,000—a fortune in its own right. But it was nothing compared to what he needed.
He created a network—quietly. Hired a lawyer, Saul Mendel, whose family had fled Poland. Found a dying printer in Brooklyn and bought it under a shell company. Recruited GIs who had seen too much and needed a clean job. And through all of it, he wrote.
Every night, he recreated novels from memory—"1984," pulp thrillers and war epics he remembered selling millions of decades in the future. But he didn't publish them. Not yet. He saved them—dozens of manuscripts, each one marked and archived under different pen names. A treasure chest for the future.
For already-published classics like Tolkien's The Hobbit, James had another plan. He wouldn't approached the publisher yet. Not until he had real capital, not until he had leverage. Tolkien's rights would be acquired cleanly, legally, and from a position of overwhelming financial power.
"You're flooding your vault with stories," Saul remarked one night. "You don't even have a publishing house."
"Exactly," James said. "Not yet. But when I do, I'll own the ground everyone else is trying to rent."
He looked out the window at the glowing skyline of New York.
"This is just chapter one."