Bitcoin in the monolith

Through the corner of his eye Stanislaw saw the splintered wood of the door where the crowbar had jammed it open. His nose was swollen and bleeding now and he felt a grinding, searing pain in his jaw.

“Where is it?” cried the intruder.

“Where is what?” asked Stanislaw perplexed. He stared at the man whose face was covered in a black ski mask.

“The notebook. Where’s the little black notebook?”

“I…I don’t know what you are talking about” S mumbled.

“Where the fuck is it, you fucking liar!”

But honestly, S had no idea what he was talking about. The sheer violence of this creature was a force of nature. S had nightmares like this periodically but the reality of being a victim of such violent intensity was beyond his comprehension. How could this be happening to him?

Stanislaw was a composer of electronic music. He had studied under Kolinski at the Institute. His influences included Cage, Glass, Eno, Bach. He sought to establish multiple nonlinear themes that would create dissonance but resolve ultimately in harmony. He was a finalist for the Ellis Prize in musical composition and was recognized for his application of quantum harmonics to create an entirely new musical scale. Rolling Stone Magazine had described his work “Dystopic Elegy” as “a spirit in search of a lost world”, and his piece “Travail of Transcendence” as “a new genre being born from a syncopated techno back beat.”

The sound of splintering wood, the sound of his nose breaking. Briefly he thought “I am hearing the seed of a new piece…if I survive to write it…” He imagined his obituary, before his mind was obliterated by pain.

“Where’s your computer?” the intruder demanded.

“Over there” pointed S with a swollen dislocated index finger.

The intruder dragged him over to it by the collar.

“Open it”

“But I... I can’t see… you broke my glasses”

This comment seemed to give the intruder pause.

“Well, don’t you have another pair?” he asked in a surprisingly polite manner.

“Yes,”

“Where?”

“My backpack, top pocket in a case”

“Don’t move”

“I don’t think I’m going anywhere.”

From behind his cracked glasses Stanislaw saw a split image of the intruder disappear into the other room. Stanislaw hears boots against a hard wood floor, a bag dropping, zippers opening. The intruder returned. Stanislaw’s nose was now bleeding profusely. Stanislaw asked “Can you also get me a towel? I’m no good to you like this” This seemed to make sense to the intruder who disappeared again and came back with a towel. “Tilt your head up and apply pressure” he instructed like a paramedic.

Stanislaw obeyed. After the bleeding stopped, the intruder gave him his glasses. S gingerly placed them on the bent bridge of his nose, opened the computer and typed in his password.

Then the intruder pushed him aside, sat down and started typing at dramatic speed opening multiple files and typing in what appeared to be a complex code.

On the dark web, the intruder went by the name of Hieronymous. He was a drug dealer, and all his transactions were done in bit coin. He kept his bitcoin key in a file called “the little black notebook.” This key was complex and intentionally difficult for a human to memorize. There were no duplicate keys. Without it, twenty million dollars of his money would be lost. Somehow this key had disappeared from his computer. There were rumors that the NSA had released a virus to destroy illegal computer currencies. However, his collaborators in Belarus found the tag “EBM” on the program that seemed to have whisked it away. His hackers traced the URL back to S.

As part of his avant-garde experimentation, Stanislaw had released an automatic program to scour the web for eccentric sounds from cyberspace, a phoneme from part of a word, the sound of construction machinery, rain on a piece of metal, dishes dropping. He would stitch together these “noises of accidents”; find an underlying theme or common thread and modulate them. On his blog he says, “Beauty emerges from the mundane,” and “from the accidental chaos the human spirit can weave harmony,” and “to be human is to decrease the entropy.” He called the program “Eno Bach Machine”, EBM for short, and bragged about it on his blog. Apparently, his program had worked too well, and he had accidentally stolen the key to 20 million dollars’ worth of bitcoin.

“What’s this?” asked H, pointing at the screen. A black monolith was rotating in space.

“That? It’s Monolith by ERRA; one of my influences”

“Open it.”

S complied. Music pulsated through the room with the lyrics:

'Memories I can't recreate

Wreckage beyond what we could calculate

An affection that fluctuates

Familiar speech in a new tongue that I cannot translate

These wandering eyes provide confirmation of idle actions

Holding keys to open doors, we're too afraid to enter

We scrutinize, but execution falls short

Disgust for lack of action

Cover your face with your hands and look away'

But S heard something else. He had let the EBM program inject additional code into the piece and the frequency was modulating. The program had, in effect, created a new tongue, and S realized that indeed the “key” that the intruder was searching for was embedded in this new synthesis:”holding keys to open doors.”

“I understand now” said Stanislaw. “If I give you want you want, will you leave me alone?”

“Yes, I just want what’s mine” the intruder lied.

“I never meant for this to happen”

“But it did, didn’t it. Unintended consequences.” Hieronymous pulled a pack of cigarettes from his black leather jacket and lit up. As he inhaled S heard the immolation of the tobacco fibers and paper.

S opened his EBM program and the musical tracks pulsated in visual representation; he added several filters until there was an eerie pulsar like tone that repeated over and over again. He converted the musical notation to a text file, and saved it to a USB drive”

“Here’s your key” announced S.

“Thanks,” said H. He put the cigarette in the edge of his mouth and put the USB stick in an inner pocket of his jacket with his cigarettes. Then he pulled a 9 mm from the back of his pants. But just as he was about to execute Stanislaw, a sniper’s bullet shattered the window of the apartment, pierced the back of H’s neck and exited through his right eye. H slumped to the floor. The cigarette stuck to his mouth continued to smolder.

S heard his heart thumping in his chest. He swung around in perplexity and knocked over his computer stand, he ran across the room and tripped over a table. He got up and twirled around again in a chaotic grotesque ballet. Somehow despite a complete state of panic, a line of thought entered his mind; “I have to get out of here.” He knelt down beside the intruder. His hand groped through the dead man’s jacket and pulled out the USB stick along with the pack of cigarettes, a lighter, a thick wad of bills, and a cell phone. He gathered up these new tidings along with the 9 mm, ran into the foyer threw them in his backpack that he found upended on the floor, slung it across his shoulder. As he ran out of the apartment, he realized that he had forgotten his own wallet. He also thought that he should have removed the intruders ski mask and taken a photograph. But he did not have his wits about him and had no training in espionage. After all he was just a musician trying to bring harmony to the world. All these thoughts raced through his mind as he ran to the elevator. Suddenly the elevator pinged, and the little red light lit up on the top of the elevator frame. A new guest had arrived. S raced to the stairwell exit and escaped just as the elevator door began to open.

He ran out the stairwell exit into the alleyway. He turned onto 137th St then to Broadway. His face bludgeoned and bloodied, his shirt torn where he had been collared. His right hand twisted and swollen. He took the subway to 14th street. People looked at him strangely then looked away, except for a man who was obviously homeless, who pointed at him and said: “Where’s your mask? Put your mask on.”

He had several in his backpack and put one on. Upon reflection he also realized that this would help to hide his bludgeoned face and broken nose. In his state of panic he had forgotten the pain in his face and hand; it started coming back to him now. He went into a CVS and bought some medical supplies, and some water with the intruder’s cash. Then he went into an army/navy surplus store and bought a new t-shirt and fatigues off the shelf without trying them on. Lastly, he went into a liquor store and bought a bottle of Southern Comfort. Now fully supplied, he took a room in a walk up used mostly by prostitutes.

The bathroom had an old fluorescent light that buzzed like a fly and flickered in and out. The tap from the sink ran weak and was brown with rust, and who knows what else. There was no water in the toilet bowl. There were no towels. He debated calling room service. His hands were trembling now. He tore open a wad of gauze and poured alcohol and iodine over them and wiped his face. There was a large gash above his eye and the bridge of his nose was now dramatically swollen. His right index finger was dislocated. He yanked it back in place and screamed in pain and began to cry. He took a swig of Southern Comfort, swished it around and spat it out. then he took a bigger swig and swallowed.

He laid out the items he had taken from the intruder on the bed. The pack of cigarettes, the lighter, the phone, the gun. The wad of bills. He counted them: 20,000 dollars including the money he had already spent. It was his lucky day.