THE GREATEST OF ALL TIME

Zachary's smile blossomed into a full grin after he placed his phone down on the table beside him. He was about to receive more than five million Norwegian Kroner. He even felt a bit dizzy trying to conceptualize such a vast sum of money. It was probably enough to last him an entire lifetime if he resorted to living a humble life back in DR Congo. With that amount of money, he could even put up a large building in Lubumbashi and live off the proceeds from its rent for the rest of his days.

But he first pushed his excitement to the back of his mind, deciding to work on opening the Twitter account before thinking about anything else. He didn't want Emily to keep bugging him about the issue. So, without any dilly-dallying, he rose from his seat—and then walked across the room to pick his new laptop up from a nearby cabinet.

He'd bought the computer only a week ago so that he could easily search for information on the internet at his own convenience. Since he was about to acquire some big money, he wanted to use his knowledge from his past life to acquire more assets and make himself wealthy in the process. He had learned the hard way during his previous life not to put all his legs in one basket. He wanted to remain self-sufficient throughout his entire life, even in case of the remote possibility that he got challenges in his career and lost the system.

Zachary had thought about investing for quite some time and came up with a few ways to make big money. First, he'd decided against touching anything related to gambling.

As a pro footballer, the eyes of the press would be on him at almost all times. So, if he invested in betting and continuously won big money, someone would eventually notice the abnormality. That would attract unwanted attention, which he didn't wish upon himself. Moreover, the press could tag him as someone involved in match-fixing if his winnings became too unreasonable.

With all that in mind, he'd decided to go with investing in companies that were about to go public or selling shares. Although he wasn't so much interested in IPOs and stocks during his previous life, he still had a bit of knowledge about the famous companies that'd gone public between 2008 and 2014. That was thanks to one of the web novel group chats he'd joined in his previous life. Zachary remembered one person in the chat listing all the companies he would invest in if he ever got the chance to go back in time.

From the chat, Zachary had obtained information about famous companies like Twitter and Tesla Motors, which had shares listed at low prices during 2013. For instance, Twitter would IPO later that year. It would perform well for a few years and cause a sensation due to its success. But then, its price per share would dip below its IPO prices in 2015, thereby disappointing the majority of its investors. So, he was planning on buying the Twitter shares and then selling them the following year—that's before the prices could start declining. On the other hand, he was well aware that the price per share of the Tesla Motors company would skyrocket over the next twelve years. So, he intended to invest most of his money in the company before other investors could start noticing its potential.

"Let's start by opening this Twitter account," Zachary mumbled, settling down back on his sofa and opening his laptop. He then quickly booted it up and connected it to the internet before going through the motions of registering a Twitter handle once again.

With the verification codes sent by Twitter, he managed to open the account without any hustle that time around. He managed to fill in all the required information within a minute. He then took a selfie and posted it as his profile picture to complete the registration. He'd finally opened his first social media account in both his lives. He sure hoped it was worth all the trouble.

Zachary was about to close his laptop and return to watching the TV but then stopped suddenly. Out of the corner of his eye, he'd noticed a lot of activity going on with his account. The notifications were populating his screen at the rate of bullets moving out of a machine gun's muzzle. A bit curious, Zachary leaned forward and clicked on the notification tab to view what was going on.

****

Notifications (32)

All Mentions

* Nicki Nielsen and 20 others followed you.

* Marta Romano and 15 others followed you.

* Emily Anderson and 30 others followed you.

....

....

* Emily Anderson sent you a direct message.

* Mina Rose sent you a direct message.

....

****

For the following two minutes, Zachary watched with mouth agape as notifications flooded his computer screen. Within that short time, his followers had already increased to more than a hundred. He couldn't help but wonder whether Emily had put up an announcement somewhere that he would be opening an account that morning. Otherwise, he could not find a reasonable explanation of why he was gaining followers and receiving messages at an abnormal rate. But Zachary decided to first open Emily's message before thinking about anything else. So, he clicked on the message tab right away before opening it to view its contents.

****

<- Emily Anderson

@Emily_Anderson

A Football Agent that is working for CAA Base Limited. Also, a lawyer by profession.

12K following 30K followers

Joined March 2009

Hello Zach,

Congs upon opening the account.

Ignore the notifications and messages and trying tweeting something for a start. It can be the Tippeligaen table, your picture, or anything else that relates to you.

Cheers,

Emily, your agent.

****

Zachary closed the message tab and then deliberated for a moment about what to post. Since he didn't want to post anything too personal, he decided to go with the Tippeligaen table.

So, he just searched for its image on the internet before uploading it as his first tweet on his verified account. When he completed the process, he leaned back into his sofa and observed his handiwork.

****

<- Tweet

Zachary Bemba

@ZacharyBemba

I just looked at the Tippeligaen table and got more motivation to train with all my effort this week. We're almost back to the top. #Rosenborg #Tippeligaen.

1 Strømsgodset 26

2 Rosenborg 25

3 Aalesund 20

4 Viking FK 20

5 Brann 18

6 Haugesund 17

7 Tromsø IL 15

8 Sogndal IL 15

9 Sarpsborg-08 14

10 Hönefoss 13

11 Vålerenga 13

12 Lillestrøm SK 12

13 Start 12

14 Sandnes Ulf 10

15 Odds BK 8

16 Molde 6

****

No sooner had he posted the table with the teams and their respective points than the number of notifications from his new followers started increasing. His eyes couldn't even take it anymore. Some followers were retweeting his post, others commenting, while a few were sending him direct messages. But since Zachary didn't want to get in a battle of words with his new followers, he closed the browser and shut down the laptop before starting to watch the morning sports news on his TV. In the meantime, he made a mental note to request Emily to hire someone to manage the account. Otherwise, he wouldn't be able to handle all the notifications and messages from his fans—that's if they were to continue flooding his account at such a fast rate.

**** ****

Emily arrived at the restaurant of the Scandic Nidelven Hotel at exactly 8:45 AM, to the minute. She found the three Red Bull representatives waiting for her on one of the tables at the far side of the eating place.

Among the three representatives, Emily recognized only one: Mr. Jerome Friedrich, the person in charge of marketing for Red Bull in Norway. He was a giant of a man, probably six feet tall, and with a big face and bushy beard. He appeared to be a comical and fun-loving person. Emily at least thought so. His face was always outlined by a warm smile whenever she chanced upon him.

"Good morning, Emily," Jerome said as soon as Emily approached the table. "Thank you for agreeing to meet with us today." He added, extending his giant hand for a handshake.

"Good morning to you, too," Emily said, taking the hand without any hesitation. "Thank you for having me."

Mr. Jerome Friedrich smiled, nodding. He then turned to the two middle-aged men beside him. "Allow me to introduce my friends first before we get down to discussing business," he said, his tone casual. "This here is August Fassbender. He is the head of marketing for Red Bull GmbH in Germany. The thin man next to him is Thomas Koch. Don't just judge him by size alone. He's the overall head of marketing for the entire Red Bull GmbH company all over the world. I think with this line-up, you can see how serious we're about Zachary." He added with a bit of humor, triggering amused smiles from the two men.

"Oh" was all that Emily could manage. She had come hoping to meet some marketing people from Norway and possibly a local CEO. But instead, she was face-to-face with the overall head and another representative of the energy drink from Germany. Emily's mind couldn't process why Red Bull, an energy drink giant popular all over the globe, would commit such a line-up to negotiate a simple endorsement contract. Moreover, that contract was for a budding footballer that'd just started his professional career in Norway. It was simply absurd.