I read a review of the movie “Limitless” recently and saw a reference to the short story “Understand.”  I’m going to cut to the chase here and say that the short story is better than the film.  Stop reading right now if you don’t want to read my nitpicking and spoilers.

Okay, you’ve opted for the rest of the post which will likely contain spoilers.  So, the main character goes to a loan shark because he needs $100,000.  Why?  He just parlayed $800 into $7500 on the stock market.  Later he suggests to the loan shark that he’s good for the $100k because he has quadrupled his money four days in a row.  Let’s just say he’s only tripling his money and he starts off with just $800.  How long would it take to make $100k?

Well, at the time he met with the loan shark he said quadrupled in four days.  Let’s just say he’s at day four.  Day 1: $800.  Day 2: $2,400.  Day 3: $72,00.  Day 4: $21,600.  Day 5: $64,800.  Day 6: $194,400.00.  With $21k in his pocket he couldn’t wait just two days to get more than double what he was asking the loan shark for?  It would have been infinitely easier to take the money he had in his portfolio and parlay that into more money than it would have been to take $100,000 in cash to someplace legitimate that could accept the money and put it into his portfolio.  Any transaction over $10,000 in cash needs to be registered anyhow.

And why didn’t he pay off his loan shark immediately?

And, where the hell was the SEC in all of this?  They would have clamped down on a guy who went from $800 to playing with millions in just a few days.  Not to mention the red flags caused by walking into his brokerage house with $100,o00.

He had enough medical knowledge to talk to his parents about their friend’s health, medication, and provide recommendations – but not enough to spend the time to learn about the pharmaceutical he was taking?  Why would this not be his first priority?

After being found at the crime scene of his dead friend he opens the doors for the cops – and no one frisks him?  His friend was a known drug dealer.  Why wouldn’t they pat down a guy who looked strung out?

What happened to the murder of his friend?  Who did it?  Were they caught?

What happened to his ex-wife?  Once he found a cure, did he help her out?  Why the hell was she limping too?  Does everyone who have side effects from NZT limp after taking it?

Why was he wasting his time working for DeNiro?  He was haggling over a mere $40,000,000?!  He had $2,000,000 when he sat down to lunch and met DeNiro for the first time.  In four days he would have had more than that.  By simply sitting down to lunch with DeNiro and meeting with him again in a few days he would have lost more money than he made working for DeNiro for weeks of babysitting a silly little merger.

And, what the hell was his big plan that he was alluding to the whole time.  The plan that required money?  Running a campaign?!  That’s it?  That’s his grandiose plan?!  What for?!  Yay, you’re President.  Now what?  Money and power is great and all, these are means to an end – not really ends in and of themselves.  What was he going to do?  Spread democracy and freedom?!  Why not just say this.

Why would DeNiro care if this guy worked for him if DeNiro had purchased the company that made NZT?  He could have an army of these guys.  Assuming they’d still want to work for him after becoming super smart.

Why did none of the other smarties do anything interesting with their powers?  None of them worked out the kinks in the chemical or found a way to duplicate it.

***

What would I have done?  Now, this is one of those silly little guessing games where you try to think about what you would think about if you were a lot smarter.  However, I can’t imagine the priorities would have been any different from what I would imagine right now.  The first time he took the drug he knew he needed to have more.  So, if I had been in his shoes, my story would have gone a little something like this:

1. Grand plan.  Everything else is pointless unless you’ve got a grand plan.  Once a person hits a few million dollars money becomes somewhat arbitrary. 1  If you triple your money every day, you’re never going to be more than about two weeks from one billion dollars.  Without a plan of some sort, that money is pretty much useless.  So, if it is saving the world, ending war, hunger, disease, poverty, or just moving to an island made entirely of cocaine, there’s got to be some kind endgame.  For a smarty-pants, deciding on the grand plan shouldn’t take more than about 30 minutes.
2. Read everything.  The drug lets you put together connections between things, so why not feed it?  Read everything, especially all medical texts necessary to understand pharmaceuticals inside and out.
3. Supply chain.  The goal is to have a supply of the drug with an eye towards designing a better version with no side effects or something to eliminate the side effects.  And, who’s in a better position to figure all this stuff out than the person who’s taking this wacky drug?
4. Money.  Money is important if you want to do things and someone who was really this smart would want to do things.  So, why not spend a little time and write an awesome high frequency trading algorithm?  It’s legal, fully automatic, and makes stupid amounts of money.

1. Or, so I would think.  I can’t really say, seeing as how I don’t have a few million dollars.  If you’d like to know for sure, just loan me a few million dollars for the next 50 years and I’ll let you know. [↩]