"Ugh…"
A long, high-pitched screech of the train jolted Jason Wu awake. Cold sweat clung to his forehead from a nightmare. He sat up, pulled back the curtain on the train window, and cautiously peeked outside.
The train had just crossed the quiet, flowing Heilong River. On the eastern bank of the iron bridge, he could barely make out Chinese border guards, armed with rifles, patrolling the shore.
"Jay, where are we now?" asked a groggy voice from the bunk opposite him. A handsome young man sat up, rubbing his sleepy eyes in confusion.
"We just crossed the river. We're in Russian territory now," Jason replied absentmindedly, sipping cold herbal tea from his tin cup.
The young man was Jay Wu, Jason's younger brother — or rather, the younger brother of the original Jason Wu.
Now he truly understood the phrase "your body, my soul." To put it bluntly: this body held his soul, while his soul held another man's memories.
Had anyone said that to him in the past, Jason would've scoffed and called it the kind of mystical nonsense only bored eccentrics believed. But now, he was living proof.
Although he had inhabited this body for a month, everything still felt surreal. How had he ended up inside a young man's body in 1991? Stranger still — this young man was also named Jason Wu, also from Harbin. And most incredibly, this transplanted Jason had inherited everything from the original... including a pitifully limited education.
From the memories that had merged into his mind, he learned that the original Jason had a younger brother and a sister. The three siblings lived in a modest, unremarkable family in northern China. Their parents had died young, leaving them impoverished and unschooled — the textbook definition of illiteracy. Still, the original Jason had been clever. At just twenty years old — four years earlier — he'd joined the first wave of Chinese traders heading into the Soviet Union. And a year ago, he struck out on his own.
Everyone knew the state of the Soviet Union in those days. Despite widespread poverty, most workers earned over 100 rubles a month. On the open currency market, a single ruble could be exchanged for 2.8 US dollars, or nearly 30 yuan — at least in theory.
But the ruble's real value was questionable. It could be used to buy goods, but as a banknote, it was practically worthless — perhaps even less useful than toilet paper.
This was the Soviet Union's strange paradox: people had money, but the shelves were empty. Goods were scarce, and citizens relied on ration coupons and bribes to buy essentials. Piles of rubles sat useless in pockets and bank accounts.
Jason's predecessor didn't understand macroeconomics or currency policy. All he knew was that doing business in Russia was easy and profitable. As long as he could say a few basic Russian phrases like "khorosho" (good), "ochen khorosho" (very good), "privet" (hello), and "tovarishch" (comrade), he could rake in profits.
The Russian customers were generous — foolishly so. They'd pay fifty rubles for a cheap down jacket worth less than thirty yuan. They'd eagerly buy an entire pig's worth of pork for thousands of rubles. They'd fight each other over canned fish.
As one of the early traders entering Russia after the border opened in 1987, the original Jason had made a decent fortune over the past few years. By local standards, he was now considered wealthy.
But for the modern Jason — a time-traveler from decades later, with a university degree in economics and a background in high-level financial fraud — all of this was child's play. The Soviet Union, teetering on the edge of collapse, was a goldmine of opportunity. Anyone still dealing in pork, canned food, or cheap winter coats was thinking too small.
Jason had bigger ambitions. If he laid them bare now, he might frighten the train right off the rails.
When he left Harbin, he brought nearly everything he owned: 300,000 rubles in cash and another 300,000 in goods — mostly cigarettes. Originally, he had hoped to convert the rubles into U.S. dollars before leaving, but the strict currency laws made that impossible. Customs wouldn't allow anyone to carry large amounts of foreign currency out of the country. Fortunately, rubles weren't restricted, and Jason knew a storm of devaluation was coming. The writing was on the wall.
It was now February — early spring. According to his memory, the Soviet Union would collapse within a few months. Afterward, Russia would rush through a chaotic privatization of state enterprises. That was when the real looting would begin.
The Soviet financial market had only just opened. Foreign banks were arriving in droves, but none had yet established control. The larger conspiracy — the dismantling of a superpower — was still in its early stages. Jason wasn't worried about his rubles vanishing overnight. Not yet.
"Jason, what are you thinking about?" Jay asked, climbing down from his bunk and pulling on his leather jacket.
"Oh, nothing," Jason said, snapping back to reality. He looked at his brother and smiled. "Go wake Tina. We'll be arriving at the station in about ten minutes. Start packing."
"No need — I'm already up!" came a clear voice from the top bunk. With a thump, a slender teenage girl jumped down, landing on the train floor. She threw open the curtain and exclaimed, "Big Brother, is this it? Is this Bugsger?"
"What Bugsger? This is Blagoveshchensk — the capital of Russia's Amur Region," Jason replied with a chuckle.
"Blaga-whatever. Who can remember a name that long?" Tina Wu rolled her eyes and tossed her braid behind her shoulder. Peering out the window, she scrunched her nose. "It looks lame. Not nearly as nice as Harbin."
"Haha, you're right — it's not as good as Harbin," Jason said, motioning for her to sit down. "But here, we can earn the kind of money we could never make back home."
"Money, money, money. That's all you ever think about," Tina grumbled. At eighteen, she was still naïve, spoiled by her two older brothers. "I swear, if you're not careful, you're gonna drown in your own greed."
"Enough, Tina, don't say that," Jay interjected. Though only twenty, he was the more level-headed of the siblings. He knew that without Jason's hard work over the past two years, the three of them would have been homeless — or worse. Deep down, he revered his older brother. To him, Jason wasn't just family — he was their guardian, their savior.