“My uncle?” “Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the newly elected President of the United States.
And you, my dear Francis, are the son of his older brother, James Roosevelt.
You may be illegitimate, but blood is blood.
Your uncle is about to move into the White House, and I imagine a great many people across America will be eager to make your acquaintance.” Lucy bent down until her lips were almost brushing his ear.
“I’ll be in your care from now on, Mr.
Roosevelt.” Francis suddenly threw off the covers and staggered into the bathroom.
He twisted the faucet open, and icy water poured out.
Scooping it up with both hands, he splashed it across his face—once, twice, three times…
Unfortunately, the scene he had hoped for—waking up from a dream—never came.
When he finally raised his head again, the face staring back at him from the mirror froze him in place.
It was a young man’s face, no older than twenty-five.
Light brown hair clung damply to his forehead.
His features were sharp, his jawline well-defined, and there was a handsome quality about him that blended a scholarly air with a hint of rebellion.
‘No…
This isn’t me!’ Before the words had even left his mouth, a searing pain shot through his skull.
A torrent of memories crashed into his mind.
He saw a secluded estate on the outskirts of New York—the moment this body had been born.
Among the crowd stood a composed man in a tailored suit.
The resemblance between him and Roosevelt was unmistakable, nearly identical around the eyes and brows.
It was James Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt’s older brother.
The scattered fragments of memory continued to piece themselves together.
Francis witnessed the original owner’s life unfold before him.
Branded an illegitimate son, he had grown up unable to hold his head high.
Later, his father secretly sent him to Harvard to study law, but his temperament was restless.
He dropped out halfway through his studies.
After that, he drifted through life with nothing to do, living off the allowance from the family trust and occasionally speculating in stocks through the family’s connections, wasting his days amid luxury and indulgence until the present.
‘So…
I really transmigrated…’ After absorbing all those memories, Francis’s face trembled.
But in the very next second, overwhelming exhilaration surged through his entire body.
Back in the modern era, he had been nothing more than a professor at the Roosevelt Institute.
He had been filled with ambition, yet all he could do was watch America be devoured by capital while ordinary people struggled desperately beneath the so-called Cutoff Line, powerless to change anything.
But now, he had arrived in 1932.
The turning point in American history.
The very moment when Roosevelt was about to take office and the New Deal was on the verge of beginning.
He knew every major event of this era by heart.
He understood the personalities of every key figure and the story behind every important piece of legislation.
That unparalleled advantage meant limitless possibilities.
Perhaps…
Perhaps he truly had a chance to change everything with his own hands.
Perhaps, after his uncle’s death, he could continue keeping the capitalists by the throat and prevent the tragedy of a century later from ever happening again.
“Francis, what’s gotten into you?” A clear, pleasant voice snapped him back to reality.
Francis turned abruptly to find Lucy standing in the bathroom doorway, her face filled with confusion.
Suppressing the turmoil in his heart, he strode over, grabbed her wrist, and gently pulled her toward the door.
“Listen…
I think it’s time for you to leave.” A resentful expression immediately appeared on Lucy’s face.
She pouted playfully.
“All right.
Don’t forget to contact me, my lion…
Mr.
Roosevelt.” Francis gave her a perfunctory nod.
The moment Lucy disappeared through the doorway, he shut the door, walked over to the sofa, picked up a pack of cigarettes from the coffee table, and lit one.
As his mind gradually settled, Francis realized with perfect clarity that his situation was nowhere near as optimistic as it seemed.
He hadn’t transmigrated into Roosevelt himself, nor had he inherited Roosevelt’s authority or prestige.
Instead, he had become an illegitimate son who hadn’t even managed to leave his name behind in history.
According to the memories he had inherited, the original owner had only visited the Roosevelt estate in Hyde Park a handful of times as a child, accompanying his father to meet his famous uncle.
But that uncle was no longer the state senator he had been back then.
He was now the President-elect of the United States.
After all these years, he had probably long forgotten that he even had such a nephew.
If Francis wanted to get close to his uncle—if he wanted to enter his inner circle and realize his ambitions—he needed an opening.
“I’ve got it!” A flash of inspiration lit up Francis’s eyes.
On October 29, 1929, the Wall Street stock market crashed, triggering America’s economic crisis.
In 1931, a second nationwide financial crisis swept across the country.
And in just a few more months, at the beginning of 1933, during the Hoover administration’s lame-duck period, financial panic would reach its peak.
Michigan would be the first to suffer a massive bank run.
Then New York, Chicago, and the nation’s other financial centers would fall one after another.
More than 4,000 banks across the United States would be forced to suspend operations, pushing the entire American banking system to the brink of collapse.
After Roosevelt took office, his first major response would be the Emergency Banking Act.
If he could find a way to meet Roosevelt now, warn him that the coming wave of bank runs was about to reach its peak, and hand him a draft of a Crisis Response Plan, then perhaps this glimpse of the future would be enough to earn Roosevelt’s trust.
And the ticket into his uncle’s inner circle would be this impending banking crisis.
Having made up his mind, Francis didn’t hesitate for another second.
He immediately stood up and looked around the room.
Before long, he spotted an old-fashioned typewriter sitting on one corner of the desk.
Taking a seat, Francis closed his eyes and carefully recalled every detail of what was about to happen.
Back at the institute’s archives, he had read the congressional records from March 9, 1933.
He remembered the heated debates, Treasury Secretary William H.
Woodin’s testimony, and the final version of the act with its four chapters and twenty-seven articles…
But that wasn’t what mattered.
He didn’t need to reproduce every detail of the Emergency Banking Act.
That had required weeks of work from an entire team of lawyers and bankers.
All he needed was a blueprint—a proposal detailed enough and convincing enough to prove that he understood the nature of the crisis and had a viable plan to solve it.
Francis immediately opened the typewriter and fed in a blank sheet of paper.
His fingers awkwardly adjusted to the feel of the antique keyboard as he began to type.
[Title: Preliminary Recommendations for Addressing the Imminent Nationwide Banking Crisis] [I.
Crisis Assessment The Union Guardian Trust Company in Detroit, Michigan, will become the first domino to fall.] [Closely tied to the Ford Motor Company, the bank’s asset quality has deteriorated severely…] [The crisis will reach its critical point in mid-February 1933.
State governments will be forced to declare local bank holidays, but piecemeal responses will only deepen public panic…] The steady clacking of the typewriter echoed through the room.
Francis became completely absorbed in his work, forgetting the passage of time and even his hunger.
He was carrying knowledge across ninety years.
Transforming a twenty-first-century historian’s analysis of a financial catastrophe into an action plan for 1932.