I don't need no superpower of determination.
I fucking create saffron out of thin air.
I have the power to ransom the entire spice-producing agricultural economy of central Asia (and Pennsylvania.) With 250,000 kg of saffron produced worldwide every year, I need to yeet only 685 kg of saffron out of my body every day to develop a majority in the global saffron market. The average retail price of a kg of saffron in 2018 was $3000. A kg of coke might be $24,000 in the U.S., but at least my product is legal.
I take a mid-March road trip up to Pennsylvania. I seek out the Dutch. In an old brown farmhouse 20 minutes northeast of Lititz, I find him. A man dressed in sepia-toned farmclothes stained with red dust, suckling on the crimson stigma of a Crocus sativus. The saffron flower. I offer him a simple proposition. I have already purchased 25 hectares of land adjacent to his current saffron farm. He expands his operation and lets no one besides his workers on site, and I handle the selling of the product- he receives $40,000 a month in return. I have successfully surreptitiously secured my shell business.
After undercutting my Spanish, Iranian, and Turkish competition into the ground, I buy up their fields to morph into nature reserves, eliminating the threat of returning businesses. I have a stranglehold on the worldwide market. I bring my prices up to more comfortable margins, yet still below the previous $3000 per kg. Forbes publishes an article on the now-millionaire Pennsylvania Dutchman who has taken over the world saffron market. He goes on to the Today show, spouting bullshit about luck, perseverance, and hard work. After, he calls me up at his hotel room and we chuckle at the stupidity of the common folk. As he goes to hang up, I hear a slight nervousness through his cackles. Though we have been working together for years now, he has still never understood the truth. He never questions where the surplus saffron comes from, though the sheer amount of vermilion spice that is "made on his farm" leaves him baffled.
Returning home after the sun has set, leaving a smattering of reds and oranges on the sky, he sits on his eggshell porch under candlelight. In the rocking chair his father crafted so many years ago, he scribbles on a yellowed piece of paper, casually multiplying and dividing numbers of thousands and millions in his head. He's done all these calculations before. His harvest yields before he met me, divided by the square footage of his previously modestly-sized farmstead. Though he is certain my farming skills pale in comparison to his own experienced mind and weathered hands, he multiplies the number to 140% of its value to account for any increase in percent yield. Then, times the current square footage of "his" land. An immensely large number. Out of the recesses of his mind, he pulls a mental image of the Forbes article I printed for him two summers ago. A different number, though rounded, towers over his calculations like Goliath unto David. It's impossible. A god-fearing man, he wonders again if He stood in front of him on that cold midday in the ides of March. A thought he has always had, and had always hoped was both truth and fallacy. For as much as he wishes he could meet the true Him, no loving God would be so self-serving as to only benefit himself and an Amishman from the eastern woods of Pennsylvania. Picking up the candle, he pinches the paper at the midpoint on its right side and brings it into his living room, ritualistically placing the sheet on top of an identical stack nearly two feet high. Steps creak as he walks toward his bedroom. On the mahogany bedside table, he sets down the candle. Sliding into bed next to his wife, he snuffs out the candle to go slip into an restful sleep.
I lean backwards, stretching my neck to relieve myself of the tension built up after craning over a computer monitor for the last hour. On my screen is the farmer's bedroom. Him. His wife. I close out of the camera feed and stand up. Heaving a contented sigh, I leave my office, not bothering to turn off the computer or lights. I shuffle my feet through the floors of my spice mansion. Making my way to my bedroom, I pass under the arched doorway and go straight into my Supima sheets. I stare up at the mahogany arch to read the words inscribed in gold leaf. Contrasted against the deep brown of the wood is the phrase to end the farmer's inquisitveness.
Proverbs 16:6- Through loyalty and love, iniquity is appeased; through fearing the Lord one avoids evil.
fuck the amish ayy
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