The global wealth distribution has been heavily off balance, the scales of capitalism have plunged so far into disproportion they will fall before they will be fair again. Jack and his widowed mother have economically crammed a century of mourning into an egregious year but failed to prudently pull a dollar of dividend out of a precocious penny; all the while all the affluence has impractically and practically belonged to one percent of the population.
Jack’s departed dad had all but literally bet the farm on the new government, voting for aristocratic candidates masquerading as bourgeois benefactors. Pulling the masks of democracy from their fraudulent faces the moment they took their offices: Popular promises of pursuits and patriotism were promptly repossessed by despotic regulations and obligations. Jack’s passed parent ultimately paid the price of that deception, and the family’s economic losses, by taking his own life rather than continuing his reprehensible reimbursement in stress, and he was not alone… suicide was rampant and not unexpected.
“Jack, I need you to go online and sell the last of our blue-chip stocks. Without your father’s trading and with the latest round of tariffs, our portfolio is no longer the cash cow we need it to be. Those dividends were our only income, and we’ll need money from the sale to continue to survive.” The widow’s voice shivered slightly as she tried to hide her apprehension and hoped her son had learned enough from watching his dad to do the needful; she knew that she knew nothing of what needed to be done.
“No problem, Ma. I can handle it. You don’t need to worry about a thing.” Jack responded confidently to calm his mother’s crudely concealed concern, but he only knew clandestine ways to market. He posted to the legitimate forums hoping to get some authorized trade assistance, instead, it only got more artful.
This particular dodger quickly got Jack to agree to an under-the-table trade of his dilapidated cash cow. He convincingly offered him three single-use digital certificates and some malware Jack could use to hack the Blunderbore Exchange: Milky-White stocks in exchange for three cybernated keys and an app called Beanstalk. Things Jack felt confident he could use to make more money than he would have by simply selling the shares.
Impressed with himself, and satisfied with the deal, he dropped the tablet he was using face down on the table and threw his arms up in a ‘V’, prompting his mother to ask, “Finished already… How much did you get?”
“I didn’t get any money mother. I got something better than that.”
“What could be better than money, you foolish boy? We needed money, how are we going to live?” Her speech broke again mid-sentence as tears of fear, anger, and disappointment stream down her face.
Jack’s heart broke and he offered her this simplified explanation, “I’ve got magic keys to the kingdom. With them, I can set us up for life.”
This only further angered the widow. “We will be broke for life. Get out of my sight!” She grabbed his tablet, gripping it hard and without regard, and threw it out the window into the yard; accidentally activating the Beanstalk application along the way. “Go to your room. I can’t look at you right now.”
“But Ma…” This time his voice broke from crying, so he slouched and slumped up the stairs to his bed.
In the morning Jack snuck back downstairs and outside to retrieve his tablet. He saw that the malware had been running all night and opened a port in the firewall for him. He used one of his digital certificates to authenticate into the Exchange and began to surf around. He stealthily navigated from partition to partition, folder to folder, until he came across one full of digital currency. Bags of gold! he thought and downloaded them through the Beanstalk.
When the widow woke, he showed her the new balance in their bank account. They reconciled and lived richly for a few months.
When the funds began to run low again, Jack launched the Beanstalk again. Using another one of his keys, he searched zealously for something better than the Bitcoins he found before. His due diligence paid off when he uncovered the algorithm the giant exchange used to create digital currency. With that, he could literally make his own money. I’ve got the goose that lays the golden eggs! he thought and downloaded it through the Beanstalk.
Again, Jack showed the widow their account balance, and again they rejoiced. They would never be low on funds again. He wished his father was around to see that. Jack was still angry that his dad had killed himself stressing over money, and so he launched the Beanstalk again that same night to use his final key.
This time he was searching for something more important than coinage. With his father still on his mind, he rummaged through the servers restlessly and relentlessly all night for requisite revenge. He heard the sweet music of a golden harp when he came across the source code of the firewall that protects the giant exchange. He quietly downloaded it through his connection, but the folder had a tracker app attached to it, and this time the giant gave chase; using the Beanstalk to trace his location.
“Ma! Bring me my Ax,” Jack yelled when he saw the giant was coming. The widow knew ‘his ax’ was the nickname for his Axon Smartphone, and recognizing panic in her son’s voice, she brought it to him straight away. He readily read through the source code, while his tablet was still downloading it, and found a fortunate flaw. Using the terminal on his phone, he was able to code a virus that would use that flaw as an exploit to bring down the firewall leaving Blunderbore Exchange completely vulnerable.
Jack immediately transferred the crippling code he created to his tablet, uploaded it through the Beanstalk, and then cut the hardline by deleting the Beanstalk before the giant could completely track him. In memory of his father, and in thinking about all those like him who similarly lost their lives: Jack anonymously published the firewall exploit and the currency algorithm to every public forum he knew. His posts instantly went viral and were shared and reposted time and again. In a matter of moments, people all around the world were using them to make their own money.
The giant fell fast and hard, and the global economy crashed right on top of it, killing it.
And Jack and his mother lived happily ever after.