The Price of a Dream

“I can’t accept that,” Zamora Caster said softly.

“You must,” spoke an equally caring voice.

“Grandma, I—“

“You are stubborn,” the older woman scolded. “You need it.”

It was the truth, and Zamora knew it.. yet it didn’t feel right. Accepting such a

huge amount of money, especially from someone you love—it felt... wrong, somehow. She frowned.

Her grandmother’s patient blue eyes watched her with an unmistakable gentleness. Zamora smiled.

“I really can’t take it,” she said firmly.

“I already deposited it into your bank account.” She smiled at her granddaughter’s stunned expression.

“I’ll withdraw it and return it—“

“You will not. The last few years haven’t been kind to you.”

Zamora deflated. Of course, her grandmother was right again—first, she

began having problems at her IT job. After being offered a writing position—her dream job—she dutifully gave her two weeks’ notice and, for the first time in years, looked to the future with hope and happiness.

However, after only a month, she was fired without warning and spent the next five months unemployed. When she added in the repeated problems with her truck—her only transportation—her meager savings had been depleted in its entirety.

Being unemployed for so long was stressful at best, and hopelessly sobering at its worst. She prided herself in maintaining her own life alone, and on her own terms, but when faced with no income... being alone was suddenly not as empowering as she thought it was.

With no one to pick up the bills, she burned through her small savings at a rate she immediately anticipated.

Having so much free time had been advantageous in one regard, at least: she had begun writing her debut novel yet again. That in itself wasn’t anything to clap about. She had been writing this same novel for the last decade; it had been trashed and rewritten more times than she could count. Any author knows that struggle—the feeling that if you can’t write it the way you intend it to be written, it simply isn’t satisfactory. A writer is a painter of words, a musician of literature

—being “good enough” is not a thought that exists anywhere in that frame of mind.

This time, Zamora had approached her novel a bit differently than she ever had before: she started with an outline. Penning it neatly in a little black book, she meticulously outlined every major piece of plot, every twist in the story— and to her surprise, she filled that book up with the next two novels’ worth of plots as well. Without even thinking about it, she had planned out a trilogy. Where one book had been lovingly nurtured, two more had sprouted. It seemed like her lifelong dream of being a novelist was finally on the edge of being a reality.

“Well?” her grandmother said.

“What?” Zamora asked. “I’m sorry. I was thinking.”

“You need to take the money. I won’t be here forever, you know. Why can’t

you let me help you?”

“Because I want to be self-sustaining,” Zamora said. “I want to be able to take

care of myself, and not have to rely on anyone—“

“Everyone needs help sometimes, Zee.”

Zamora sighed. “I know, but it seems like I need help all the time..” Thankfully, after her five months of no income had passed, she had managed

to get a new job—working in IT. It was so strikingly similar to her old job that she hadn’t needed training, and she was delighted. However..

The new job unexpectedly went through periods where she wasn’t able to work, so her paychecks varied—but at least she had insurance. Over the last year, she’d noticed signs of illness, and now that she finally had insurance again, she was eager to get answers.

The results of her bloodwork had been concerning, and she’d been referred to a specialist—one she would see next month. In the last few months, she’d spend over two thousand dollars in medical expenses alone—not to mention, the problems with her vehicle.

She thought it was almost poetic—her truck was dying, and so was she. Zamora mentally chided herself for such thoughts.

I’m not dying, she thought. They’ll prescribe some pills or something. I’ll be fine.

“How much did you put into my account?” Zamora asked, dazed by the reality of the situation.

“Twenty thousand dollars,” her grandmother said as if it was nothing, as if twenty thousand dollars wasn’t the salvation from the inevitable: truck expenses, medical expenses, massive credit card debt.. it could take care of so much of it.

“You need it,” Zamora said.

“Not as much as you do,” the older woman chirped. Her expression left no room for doubt: she would simply not be swayed by argument.

“I don’t even know what to do with that much money,” Zamora said.

“I trust you’ll do what is right. I know you will.”

Zamora sighed. Arguing with her grandma was a fruitless endeavor, and she

knew it, yet..

“Please take it back,” she said gently.

The wrinkled woman clicked her tongue disapprovingly. “Stop arguing with

your grandmother,” she said lightly. “Surely you were not raised to be so—“ “Alright,” Zamora interrupted, her expression one of defeat. “You win.” The rest of their Saturday ritual went as it always did; lunch and spending

time together. When Zamora was ready to leave, she hugged her beloved grandma.

“I love you,” she said. “Thank you for lunch, and thank you for the money.” Though it pained her to accept such a large sum of money, she couldn’t refuse a request from the person she loved most in the world.

On the drive home, she sighed at her odometer. As always, she couldn’t see the number of miles she’d driven—there was always an error message of some kind. It had been months since she’d seen the numerical readout.. ironically, every time she got one message’s problem fixed, a new message would appear, signifying yet another failing component of what she deemed a “lemon” truck.

When Zamora got home, she immediately texted her grandmother to let her know she’d arrived safely. Her grandma sent back a heart-eyed emoji, and the young woman smiled.

I should pay off my credit card first, she thought. I’ll pay it off, and wait for my credit to update. I’ll use the rest of the money on a down payment for a different truck...

She considered her options. That would eliminate two problems, but what about the appointment with the specialist next month? How much would it cost? Without having any idea of what type of tests or treatment they’d recommend, she couldn’t accurately plan.

As she mulled it over, she turned on her computer. When she signed into her user account, she was bombarded with an unfamiliar sight. As she read through the unusual pop up, her heart froze in her chest and she started to panic.

Zamora rebooted into safe mode, thinking she could get around the issue at hand, but it was a fruitless endeavor. The message was displayed prominently and she read it again... and again, and again. Those words were all she could see.

The world around her seemed to darken, and it was as if she couldn’t breathe —like there wasn’t enough air in the room. She could feel her heartbeat in her head.

“Ransomware,” she choked out. The empty house seemed to mock her with its resolute and unyielding silence.

With her background in technology, she was familiar with ransomware. Her knowledge was general, though, and worthless in this situation. Ransomware was like nothing she had real-world experience with; it was foreign to her, and dangerous.

Had it been a year ago, Zamora would have wiped the computer’s hard drive and set it up with a fresh install of the operating system. But now..

She slammed her fists on her desk as tears started rolling down her face. She screamed in pain, rage—anguish. Sobs shuddered through her body.

She thought of her finally-finished novel. Through teary eyes, she looked at the small black book that had served as her faithful guide for that novel. Fresh tears fell in rivers, and snot dripped steadily onto her sleeve and desk.

Her lifelong dream had finally been completed only to be brutally torn away. In some twist of fate, she hadn’t uploaded a copy of the novel to her cloud storage—she’d been too paranoid about security breaches to risk it. She wanted to laugh, and would have, if it wasn’t so bitterly ironic. Her desire to protect her novel had resulted in its loss.

The truth was simple: if she’d put a copy in a Dropbox folder, or a Google Drive folder, she would’ve been safe. Accepting that truth was a far different matter.

This time, there was no one else to blame. It wasn’t a mechanic who failed to fix the backend of her truck. It wasn’t extra shots and tests that had been unnecessary. It wasn’t Zamora’s mother asking for expensive gifts that added so much to her credit card debt. It was her own failure to protect her dream.

As with most, if not all, ransomware, there was a price listed—a price to free those precious, now-encrypted files.. a cruelly large sum of money.

Twenty thousand dollars.

By a stroke of fate, she had that money. Given to her by her precious grandmother, the money resided safely in her bank account.

The money.. Zamora shook her head. She could not use that money for something like this, not when she desperately needed a better vehicle and medical attention.

Her eyes were drawn to the black book again. She had the outlines for the novels she wanted to write.

Analog technology still has its uses, she thought bitterly. I could write it again.

Yet even as Zamora had the thought, she knew better. For her, this was it—the farthest she’d ever gotten with her novel. It was finally finished, and even more astonishing was the fact that she was genuinely happy with what she’d written.

She touched her computer monitor in silent consideration. Her lip quivered.

The novel was her life’s work. Thirty percent of her life had been spent trying to write it, and if it ended now.. when it was finally done..

With a heavy heart, she tried to think about it logically. If she paid the ransomware, that twenty thousand dollars was gone. Her other problems wouldn’t be alleviated in the slightest. Nothing would have changed. It was something akin to spitting in her grandmother’s face and scorning her generosity and kindness.

And yet..

That tiny voice in her head—the one that dared to dream this dream since she was in elementary school—begged her to reconsider her choice.

Zamora knew she could let go of this novel, and try to write it once again. There was no guarantee that she’d be happy with whatever she wrote. Excluding that, there was no guarantee that she’d even finish it again if she started over. Every time she’d tried to write it before, she stopped. The longest she had ever made it had been thirty-two pages.

It was finished now. She had finally done it, and to lose it so suddenly.. it was a pain she could not bear.

With trembling hands, she typed in her bank information and hit the button to submit it. A loading symbol appeared, and she briefly wondered if she’d been

taken for a fool—perhaps they wouldn’t give her the encryption key. Perhaps the files were lost anyway, and the money as well—

“We thank you for your patronage.” She stared at the words in shock. There was an animation of a lock opening, and the pop ups disappeared.

She clicked through a folder on her desktop and double-clicked her novel. Her heart raced.

When the novel opened, she finally smiled. You cannot put a price on a dream.