Bitcoin Clowns, page 16
part #3 of Master Shanghai Series
I did not really know what I was looking for, but I thought it makes sense to first scout out any potential issue in the relatively unfamiliar territory. The further I walked from the door, the less light there was. I pulled out my cell phone and powered up the torchlight app. The light fell on the towers ahead of me, creating a matrix of shadows on the wall. Then I spotted it with the corner of my eyes — there was an irregularity, in fact, an irregular shaped object, animal, or (please no, God!) some kind of spirits as Candice had said, to my right. A chill ran down my spine.
I turned around with the speed of light and tried to flash that irregularity out, and it was then I saw on the wall that a growing shadow was trying to jump at me from behind!
“Ahhhhh!” I screamed and braced myself.
“Hahaha!!! Why are you so scared?”
I turned around to look at the source of the laughter, only to find my own girlfriend laughing her ass off at the expense of my fragile heart. “What on earth are you doing here?!”
“To give you a surprise!” She came over and pulled me back on my feet.
“Oh well, I don’t like surprises!” I had been saying this to everyone for years, and somehow I hadn’t remembered to tell my girlfriend. “No, seriously. Why are you here?”
Marvey’s mouth spread into a wide mischievous grin. “Rebecca hired me to be your assistant! Today’s my first day!”
“She what?” I wanted to ask if Rebecca knew about her fuck-ups last year but then I told myself that could not possibly lead to anything good. And then I realized what actually happened. Rebecca hired me back precisely because of Marvey.
“We are gonna be colleagues again, my dear,” Marv winked at me and grabbed my hand towards the door.
You might say I am a romantic, for at that moment I just wanted to kiss her. Her lips, her cheeks, her neck. It was perfect that we were alone in this noisy, warm room where no one could see nor hear us. I leaned on the frame of the server tower and pulled her close to me.
Marvey tried to pull away from me. Giggling, she said, “We’re at work!”
“Yes, let’s work,” I held her by the waist and said, “smell, I showered. I even put some cologne on.”
“Which sketchy sauna did you go to?” Although she was wrinkling her nose, she did seem quite keen on sniffing me.
“Kelvin Zhang’s,” I let her know. “VIP treatment and everything. I had suuuch a good night’s sleep there.”
“You were having such a fun boy’s night in, and I was mopping around the house alone worrying about you…” she grumbled, but didn’t full out get mad at me when I was nibbling the skin of her neck. I sensed that she liked it just as much as I did for she couldn’t stop sniffing me.
“You stink…”
“That’s not possible.” I was appalled by her comment. “I almost doused myself with the entire body of Calvin Klein cologne in Kelvin’s bathroom. Maybe I overdid it a bit.” As a tech-professional, I was never someone to use a scent nor deodorant with perfume, but that should make me more sensitive to the appropriate level of body fragrance instead of less.
“No, really,” Marv insisted, pulling her head away from me. “Smell it yourself.”
I lowered my head and sniffed my shoulders. “Wait a minute…” There was indeed an odd odor, and it seemed not to come from me but from behind me. Then it hit me what it was. The smell, a choking mixture of burnt copper and plastic was unmistakable. I turned around and shone my cell’s torchlight at it, only to find that the server was smoking like a steak on a grill! Seconds later, the module at the back burst into flames. Panicking, I waved my torchlight around to find that this stack was not the only one that was smoking and spewing fires!
I knew I should be doing something about the smokes or the fire, but it was only now in the flickering, burning flame that I could see clearly what was inside the server case. What appeared to be our original server had been completely reconfigured and refitted with eight graphics cards and nothing else but the bare minimum.
This was a mining rig.
“Let’s get out of here!” Marv grabbed my arm and pulled me towards the exit.
I was reluctant, for I wanted to know what Teddy and Simon were mining. I pulled out the computer screen and keyboard from the rack and check what was running, and my suspicion was confirmed. They were mining PissCoins! I dashed to check the rest of the servers, they were all doing the same.
“The door’s locked!” Marvey screamed at me.
“Who locked the door?!” I turned to look at her in shock.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
“Someone come help us!” Marvey shouted near the door and kicked it numerous times trying to catch someone’s attention. The problem was that the server room was inside the computer lab, where no one ever walked into unless they worked in the department. And presently, Ted and his team were in God-knows-where.
The smokes were slowly obscuring our visions. I fumbled my way towards Marvey who stood by the door with the small window, trying to wrench it open.
“How come the fire alarm hasn’t been triggered?”
“It better not!” I pulled up my shirt to cover my mouth and nose, while instructing Marvey to do the same. “The system will start releasing inert gas and there won’t be enough oxygen for us in the room. We need to get out of here!” Fires in server rooms would trigger fire suppression system that replenishes the room with inert gases as the oxygen was being burnt off, which meant any human in here will suffocate to death very soon, as the system tried to starve the fires.
“What?!” Marvey looked at me in shock.
“Sit down,” I pulled her lower with me to the ground, so that we would breathe in less smoke.
In the chaos, Marvey pulled out her phone and asked me to call somebody. It was then I found out I hadn’t a single phone number of the likes of Candice and Rebecca in the office in my brain.
“Shittttt!”
I did not explain when Marvey asked me what happened, and called 110 instead. “The fire department’s coming,” I assured Marvey after the call. The fire department would take at least five to ten minutes, but that was better than having no hope at all. All we could do was then to stay alive until they came. We sat on the ground near the door and held each other tightly.
“We’re gonna be fine,” I said to Marvey, although I was getting anxious as the fire spread from one tower to another and they were getting closer and closer. We squeezed ourselves further into the corner next to the door.
Above our heads the alarm finally blinked and beeped. A critical level of smokes had been detected and the pipes in four corners of the room started to blast gases into the room. One was directly above our heads. To be very honest I had no idea what I should do at that moment, but instinctively I pulled Marvey’s head into my chest and held my breath.
“I am so sorry to get you in trouble all the time…” I whispered in her ear, and I thought I cried a little. Marvey wanted to raise her head but I did not let her. She squirmed in my embrace.
Chapter 30: Savior
Suddenly I heard the jingle of keys.
Someone was on the other side of the door, and was trying to unlock it. I reached over and started to slap the door with my paws to get the person’s attention.
Through the haze, I saw the person pushed his face closed to the window and peered inside. We were sitting on the ground below his eye-level, so I banged the door a couple more times with the nine S.O.S. Morse code configurations to tell him that we were down there.
I did not expect the person on the other side to understand more than the fact that we needed help from my vigorous banging, but to my surprise, he returned a short, long, short signal to me. That was the sign for letter R, for ‘Roger’!
My eyes lit up on the thought of being rescued by someone who understood me. Well, my eyes also lit up because of the roaring flames as well, I was sure.
Seconds later, I heard another jingle. Then there it was. — The clicks of the turning locks were very faint but for some reasons I heard it clearly, likely a product of my heightened focus in the desperate times. As soon as the door cracked open, I passed Marvey, who looked as if she was about to pass out, over to the man on the other side of the door, and I climbed out after her myself. The man whose face was covered by the muff of his hoodie, I now realized, was the same guy that was in our apartment, and the same guy that had appeared in the hotel before I was kidnapped by Axe.
Instead of staying out after rescuing us, he went into the server room, as if he was immune to the situation.
“Hey!” I called him back, but he already slipped behind the wall of smokes. “What are you going in there for?! Come back!” I couldn’t figure this guy out.
In any case, Marvey and I were now saved, but Marvey did not look good. I did not mean the dark soot on her face (and probably mine, too). She needed oxygen. I took one last look at the server room that was completely blanketed in white smokes and I carried Marvey out of the lab screaming for help.
Candice was appalled when she saw us, and smashed the glass of the fire call point to alert everyone in the building. Very soon, everyone came out of their offices and meeting rooms, and ran for their lives down the fire escape.
“What on earth happened?!” Rebecca came running at me with a pen, which I felt like she wanted to stab into my chest. “I left you guys with the computers for two minutes and everything’s gone to shit?!”
The firemen had arrived and were busying dealing with the situation inside the server room. The paramedics that came slightly later spotted Marvey and me, and rushed over to check if we were okay. Rebecca, fuming like the servers, was very upset and she blasted Candice with the harsh remarks that were supposed to be for me.
Marvey was carried out on a stretcher and I followed her to the hospital, leaving Candice to deal with the boss alone almost too gladly.
Chapter 31: Club
I woke up on the hospital bed in shock.
My chest heaving up and down, I stared directly into the bright lamp above my head and wondered where was I. My hearing came back to me slowly as I begun to realize what had happened. The last image I had in my mind was Marvey on the stretcher and I supposed that meant I had fainted in the back of the ambulance on the way to the hospital.
Marv, where’s Marv?
Next to me other patients and their families were busying enacting the daily plays of I-will-get-you-fired-for-negligence with the nurses that were rumored to occur in public hospital almost every day. How could I possibly fall asleep in this noise? I chuckled and tried to get up. Just when I was clenched my fist in order to mobilize the muscles in my arms, I felt the crunch of a piece of paper. I sat up and held it closer under my eyes. The scrap of paper looked very familiar and at once I realized that it was the paper that Marvey found at home, the paper that the mysterious man who saved us had left.
My wallet was other personal possessions were in the small desk locker, and yet this piece of paper alone was in my hand. What had happened?
I read the combination of alphabets and numbers written on it again.
5Kb8kLF9zgWQnogidDA24MzPL6TsZAY36hWXMssSzNyFYXYB9KF
The key was so long that it had to be a private key, and the fact that it started with a number 5 meant it was for a Bitcoin wallet. How much Bitcoins was in it, I wondered.
Presently, I saw my mother and father walking towards my bed.
“Er zi! Son!” My mother rushed towards me and gave me one of the most animated embraces of the century. “You’re awake! Oh, thanks the sky and the earth! Thanks to the kind Bodhisattva, thanks to Goddess Guan Yin…”
“Mom, I’m fine. I just fainted,” I reassured her it was no big deal. I felt totally myself again.
My dad stood behind her and gave me an odd ‘I’m glad you’re okay but what the hell were you thinking’ look that only a son could read. “You are always getting into trouble.” He grabbed the two empty plastic chairs from my neighbor’s side when he was not looking and sat my mom and himself down comfortably. “If the job is dangerous, then don’t do it anymore.”
“Yes! What kind of crazy workplace is that? Kidnapping and fire and heaven knows what will happen next time. Don’t go back anymore. That place has bad Feng Shui!” My mother urged and started to peel an orange from the grocery bag they bought along.
“Where’s Marvey?” I asked them eagerly.
“Your girlfriend is fine. She is awake and is resting in the women’s wing. The doctor said she could leave tomorrow if the result of the body check is fine,” my mother said with a sour expression. “Jong, the poor girl is suffering so much since she started dating you. I feel really sorry to her mother and father… I was going to have the Master take a look at your birthdays, but I think we don’t even need to do that anymore. The two of you are just horoscopically incompatible. Even a blind man could see it!”
“Mom!” I frowned at the conclusion she made from the episode.
“Your mother might be right,” my father commented. “You can’t ignore the signs.” He rarely spoke of his opinion about Chinese horoscope and astrology, because he was educated during the period of Cultural Revolution to condemn all such traditional divination as mere superstitions. Believe it or not, my dad who thought eating dark-skinned chicken could help turn your gray hair black was a science-man back then (and still now probably in his head). I supposed he was so desperate that he had left all his science at the door when he rushed over here to see me.
“We’re fine. Think about it this way,” I said, “I survived every accident since I met her. That shows how horoscopically compatible we are. We’re good for each other’s fortunes.” My mother appeared perplexed on hearing my reversal of logic. My dad, on the other hand, was just not convinced, but he didn’t say anything about it.
“Let me call your aunts and uncles,” my dad said, “they were all worried about it since Chinese New Year.” He pulled out the brand new Huawei that I bought for him recently.
“Can I use your phone?” An idea quickly formed in my mind.
“What are you going to do?”
“Something important!”
“Kids these days are on their phone 24/7, even in the hospital,” a stray auntie walked by our bed and commented, giving my dad a look of contempt along the way. “It’s the fault of the parents. What kind of parents will produce what kind of kids, you know?” She asked no one in particular. “There are plenty of chairs everywhere but people have to steal their neighbors. Like I said, bad parents are just bad examples.”
The implied assault touched a nerve in my dad. “What did you say?!” He stood up angrily and walked towards the woman.
“What can’t I say?” The woman shouted at my dad. My mother rushed over to his side to placate the situation.
“It’s just some chairs! We’ll let you have them if you need them.”
“It’s not a matter of chairs. It’s a matter of principles!”
“You’re not being logical! We’re already trying to be nice and let you have them…” my mother said.
“You don’t have to reason with the idiot, it debases you,” my dad said to my mom.
That seemed to have triggered an avalanche of all ill-feelings the woman had suffered in her entire life. She started yelling. Two nurses stopped and turned around to look at the situation as my dad threw sarcastic remarks in reply to her every insult.
Man, they were so freaking noisy.
I had other things occupying my mind at the moment to worry about these senseless squabbles that were so common in the overcrowded Shanghai. Everyone’s misfortune is always someone else’s fault, and people think that shouting could solve all problems in the world. The best way to deal with them was to ignore them. I can assure you, that solves all problems in the world.
A cell phone in hand, I looked up the wallet address that held all of Salamander’s Bitcoin once again online, and when I had found it, I made a test transaction of 0.001 BTC to a test wallet address I had set up with the private key on the note. The system accepted it.
The system accepted it!
I saw my transaction being verified by the nodes as the thought appeared.
What it meant was, the mysterious man who saved Marvey and me, had also given us access to twenty thousand Bitcoins, equivalent to a hundred and sixty million USD as of today’s Bitcoin price.
What the hell?!
“Congratulations! You’re in!” A text message from an unknown number said. I was pretty sure that was just a coincidence, because how could anyone possibly know I had just received an incredible windfall? I dismissed the message without reading the rest of it, but then ten seconds later, the phone vibrated, showing that it had received another text message. “To the lucky one” these English words flashed across the top of my dad’s cellphone screen.
Now that was odd. Either one of us was now the target of some serious Nigerian scams or something. I tapped the message open and read it, to get my mind off the escalating verbal abuses unfurling in the hospital room. (Don’t worry. Most people are more talks than walks over here. I trust my dad to handle the situation in whichever way he sees fit.)
“By sending 0.0001 BTC to the address of your choice, you have now activated your membership to the prestigious RX club. Please return a letter N if you’ve made a mistake, otherwise, return a letter Y to receive further instructions.”
This was interesting. It was a no-brainer that I replied ‘Y’.
“Wonderful! The address you have used will from now on represent your identity in the club. Your current engagement ranking is 173. Please note that the next Judgment Day will occur on the 28th of February at 5 PM GMT.”
I waited for another message to arrive, but there was none, and there was nothing else to explain what these messages were about. We were supposed to be intelligent enough to understand it ourselves which meant, there was no way this was a coincidence or a mistake.
I was starting to understand where this was going — the piece of paper the mysterious man left at my home was in fact an invitation, or in fact, a kind of test which one had to pass before being accepted into some sort of, I gathered, cryptocurrency hacker’s club. The test was resisting the temptation of stealing Bitcoins from the address, all twenty thousand or more of it, but smart enough to activate our membership by triggering a minimum transferable amount to our own BTC address, as an equivalent to verifying a user’s email address during any kind of online account sign up.
