Shaking things up a little

“Please don’t do it.”

I looked at Lex. He looked exhausted and on edge, done with it all but still apparently felt fierce enough to plead with me for the sake of humanity.

“Seriously, this algorithm… it will destroy all.”

I hovered with my finger above the key. Until thirty seconds ago, we agreed this was the only thing we could do. The only way to save the planet, ourselves, generation Z so to speak.

My fingers twitched.

“Why not? Maybe it’s good to shake things up a little.” 

“Shake things up a little? SHAKE THINGS UP A LITTLE?” he threw his hands up in a desperate gesture. 

“This will invalidate money. This will make everything anyone worked for useless. This will create chaos, panic and disaster.”

I shook my head, my short hair just long enough to hit my eyes and tickle me annoyingly.

“Nah, people will still have property. It’s only electronic money. Elon musk will not suddenly be homeless, neither will we. It’s a redistribution of power.”

“Yes, and you do not believe chaos comes with that?”

I put my hands in my lap, fidgeting with the little cube I kept there. One side had a light-switch, the other little metal balls that turned, the third some kind of cog… it kept my hands busy when stressed.

“I don’t know. I just think it’s beyond stupid that some people are so rich they have a Lamborghini for each day of the week, while others have trouble paying the dentist bill. So yeah, I’m going to shake things up a bit.”

I let go of the cube and pushed the button.

“Right. No turning back now. Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeere we go!”

Next to me, Alex put his face in his hands, the classic image of a guy giving up on all.

In front of me, the computer virus I created was sent to my whole contact list. Well, not my list. I’m not thàt stupid. But to everybody I know and everybody who signed up for the newsletters for the most expensive brands I could find and hack. A little irony for those who appreciate it: we would bring the world down using the ones who had the most to lose. My virus would sneak up in computers and then worm it’s way into the bank software they inevitably had. There was no turning back: I released upon the world a virus that would make electronic money useless. Replacing each and every number found in bank software with a random different 64-bit number, making rich people poor and the other way around. Not that I had the illusion the poor would get to be rich; but neither would the rich. Within minutes the whole world would be infected and I would be to blame. Except, nobody would know that I was to blame. I covered my tracks. 

On the other side of the table my mum looked at me with a sad look in her eyes. 

“What have you done?”

“I uploaded a virus to equalise wealth. It worked, didn’t it? Only, I didn’t really cover my tracks as well as I thought, otherwise I would be home and not in prison I guess.”

She sighed. 

“Yes, it did work. You always had a habit of getting things to work the way you wanted it. But all is chaos now. People can’t eat anymore, people don’t know what to do with themselves. There is no food in the stores, because people all just left their jobs.”

“Prison seems to work just fine” I mumble.

“I heard that.”

“Well, it’s true. I’ve heard it might not be the case in different countries, but we’re way too organised to not have our crooks and menaces to society locked away I guess.”

My mum closed her eyes. This visit was clearly taking a lot out of her.

“You’re not here for society’s protection, you’re here for your protection.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Not everybody who was filthy rich came by their riches legally, and pissing those people off is a fairly dangerous thing to do. You’re all over the news, but nobody knows your face, your full name or where you are. The reason I know you’re here is because you reached out to me, otherwise I wouldn’t even know. The neighbours think you still are in the north to study. I asked the police to keep you here until things quiet down a bit. But yeah, they can’t schedule a trial because they can’t risk letting the world know even in which country you are.”

I fell silent. With all my cleverness and optimism, I did not think of this.

“Oh.” 

“Yeah, oh. Anyhow. Dad says hi and you’re an idiot, your brother wants to know whether he can have your computer. I told him that’s probably confiscated. And the rest of the family hopes you find a safe way back from your travels.”

“On which I went when the world went to shit because I am that adventurous.”

“You were studying social sciences. Nobody thinks you’re the mastermind behind this and I’m going to keep it like that.”

“Well, do they really think I’m stupid enough to go on holiday now?”

Silently my mum squeezed my hand and grabbed my bag.

“When did I became such an arrogant idiot?” I asked as she got up to leave.

“Blame your father, I do. Or myself. I should never have married someone as intelligent yet uncaring for authority as him.” She smiled wryly. “He promised me an interesting life. At least he delivered on that.”

Despair came over me as she left. I didn’t want to be left alone again. Nobody knew I was in, so nobody else visited. She was the only friendly face I’d seen in weeks and yet I even disappointed her.

“How long will I be here?”

She shrugged.

“No clue. They can’t press charges very easily, all the evidence is circumstantial and lots of it is erased or halfway. After you messed up the financial bit, lots and lots of people dived in to mess up everything a bit more. I understand the first attack left the gates wide open. Mortgage registers got swiped clean, whole bank systems exploded. Even some of the paper archives were burned. According to the law, you should be out of here after 90 days unless they schedule a trial, but I doubt they’ll keep you the whole term. You literally can’t do it again, and they got their hands full.”

Alex poked me in my ribs. We were enjoying an uncharacteristically nice spring day in April, though the weather could not totally dissipate the feeling of chill I got from the armed forced meandering through the crowd at the market.

“What you get?” 

I looked in my basket.

“Ehm, pasta, and vegetables. Stuff to make food tonight.”

“Fair enough. I got a new pair of shoes!”

I looked to his feet. 

“They don’t look new.”

That earned me a head-thump.

“Very funny. They are in my bag. Nobody wants these, so they go to the trash I think”

Together we walked over the rest of the market. It reminded me of a flea-market of days past, with coupons instead of money for the most basic needs. Idyllic in a way, a cutthroat business in another. Some people gave away too much, other bargained too strongly. For the middle ground this system worked perfectly; they knew what they wanted and they traded accordingly, not asking too much nor too little. To prevent further riots, the army was part of the decor, as they always seemed to be nowadays.

The world was slowly settling in to a new status quo. Riots were less frequent, food and the most important amenities were generally available again. Living arrangements were still an issue. There was no money to buy a house so you could only get them by trading or by being the first to occupy an empty one. There were listings for houses where people could indicate that they vacated the premise, but the system was far from flawless and often properties were squatted before the new owners could get there. The army was in theory available to sort these issues, if there was not a riot of problem to solve. Some of the big mansions became group homes for people who just wanted to live somewhere and didn’t care who with. People who were good with their hands never had a problem though, they were always welcome to join whenever a room was free. A lot of the big houses were falling in disarray, as the owners had no way to afford handymen apart from personal favours or trading away property. Try to get your roof fixed without the right materials to trade or the right connections to pull on, and you’d be helpless. 

“Ever regret what you did?”

The question sobered me up right away.

“Every day. But also, never. Don’t know. I still think the world didn’t work the way it was, but I’m not sure it does now. We need to find a new equilibrium. It’s gonna take a little longer than the year and a half we had now. I mean, some societies are doing great, others not so much.”

Alex nodded. I had showed him some of the videos I got from the more violent areas of the world, where money used to be a means to an end, but now all was about power. The power to kill or be killed, to be the top dog. Money was fun and all, but some people wanted power for power. Now that economical sanctions were nothing and that the armies of the world were either busy in their own countries or else had fallen in disarray, their foothold had become stronger. I felt incredibly guilty over that, but had no clue how to change it.

“You know it was not just you, right?”

I looked up, again disturbed in my endless stream of thoughts.

“I mean, yeah, you definitely threw the first stone. But people kept on throwing. You found the backdoor, and then the collective internet barged in and destroyed not just the electronic money, but property and connections. The first few days there were so many news stories about how banks were hacked by several hackers at once, how paper-trails were destroyed, how people started to make their own alliances and mini-kingdoms. That chaos was not just you, you just loosened the cord, the cat and all other animals ran out of the bag them selves.”

I leaned into him, relishing the warmth of his arm around me. 

“I know. But I started it. I threw the first stone. Like, we blame the murderer of Franz Ferdinand for World War I. In that way, I’m to blame.”

Alex fell silent.

“Will I ever know whether it was the right thing?”

He shrugged, dragging me along in the motion.

“Don’t know, don’t care. It’s not like you can either undo it or do it again. We have to live with this now. This is our new reality. We’ll never know what happened if you didn’t.”

“They lynched billionaires.”

“Well, they did treat their staff like shit.”

“Millions of people starved between realising that the food was not coming anymore and being able to provide for themselves.”

“And hundreds of millions were able to get more food now stockpiling and throwing food away doesn’t provide a profit anymore. Systems are starting up again. It was touch and go for a while, but most systems work again now.”

I kept silent. His optimism wasn’t with me. I kept on mentally replaying the video’s I saw of people dying of hunger, the stories I read of medication that became unavailable. True, a lot of the companies started up again. Now you could often get bread by showing you worked for the pharmaceuticals, pay your shoes by exchanging it for some math classes to your neighbour and coupons were there when absolutely needed, but a lot of trading happened with, so to speak, closed wallets. Not everyone believed in the system, but it was all we had.

“What if they create a new kind of money? What happens if we fall back into the absurd caricature of capitalism that we had?”

Alex sighed.

“Then we’ll see what happens then. There is absolutely nothing we can do about it now. Change what you can’t accept and accept what you can’t change. Come, let’s get an ice cream. My neighbour has amazing ice cream and she owes me for the massive amount of sage I gave her last week.”

He dragged me away from my thoughts, unto a new world that still had to decide whether it was better or worse than the last version.