Side Hustle

I enjoy watching people.

When you live in a concrete jungle like I do, people-watching is the NatGeo experience of choice.

It brings you back to reality. It might also be the only way we who live in large storeys get to socialise. You might never know your neighbours. Not even what they look like. You might hear their kids laugh or scream sometimes, and you might wave to them as you pass and try to be friendly, but they have been warned not to talk to strangers. So that's where it ends. 

Close interactions in the concrete jungle are minimal. 

I am also a minimalist. 

Unless I absolutely need an item, I do not see the need to possess it. 

For this reason, I rarely buy stuff in shops or order them online. Every six months, I also do a mega cleanup. Anything I haven't touched within those six months gets sold at the second-hand shop. Sometimes I give out these items on those websites where others who need them have listed. 

I use a VPN for many reasons. One, ad blockers have proven to be ineffective in these times. With a VPN, advertisers cannot always track my IP address or my devices to send me ads about items they think I should buy. I avoid the enticements. 

That's why I was very puzzled when a drone dropped a box at my doorstep. I hadn't ordered anything in months. And my solitary lifestyle left almost no one who could send me a present. 

What was this? 

I was working on my laptop from my balcony window. I like to sit there and people-watch sometimes. The distraction of them walking their dogs, others jogging or with strollers and their babies brings some good mental refreshment. 

We might rarely talk to people. But we watch them. Sometimes we wonder about them, envy them, wish we were them, worry for them and even judge them. 

"How can she be having her fourth kid in this economy…?"

"How did he afford a new BMW?" 

" Oh, that granny at 4C. Who takes care of her…?" 

"Oh, looks like a new guy is moving in at 4A. He looks handsome…" 

"Oh, she ordered another package…"

I play and review beta video games for a living. For this reason, I am legally barred from playing many games commercially. 

To make ends meet in the soaring inflation, I moonlight as the Seer Trisgb. It's my online pseudo on gaming chat forums. For the right amount, I give hints to players when they seek to progress or win a game. 

You are judging me now. I know. 

" Where's your integrity," you must be thinking.

But thing is, online games have become multi-billion enterprises in our times. They are deliberately made harder to crack so that players can keep playing, purchase lives, another tool, another artefact, watch an ad for more power etc. We beta players help with that. All these just add to the huge piles of gold the corporations are already hoarding at the expense of the time, lives, financial security and general well-being of the players. 

Some players, the really good ones, also make millions playing and streaming these games. The trading of core game artefacts is also very lucrative. Their theft is rampant too. 

The Seer Trisgb is simply a facilitator whose person has bills to pay and dreams to chase. 

I do not intend to live in this expensive concrete jungle my entire life. I dream about a place on a tropical beach with rows of palm trees on the horizon. Or maybe a modern cabin on a farm filled with orange trees, and a dog and cat chasing each other in the blueberry bushes. Or maybe even alternate between the two. 

That's where the Seer Trisgb comes in. 

The seer is not the only one. 'Hinters' as they call us can be easily found in these online forums. Some are genuine, others fake. Others do it for fun, and some like myself do it for the money. Of course, what I do is illegal. I could spend years in jail for it. 

You will not believe how much players will pay just to pass a level in a game! I imagine they resell this information to their peers and recover their costs, which in the end helps dilute the power and revenues of the corporations. 

See, I am one of the good guys. I wear a white hat no matter my methods. The end here justifies the means. 

The Seer Trisgb is difficult to find. Remember the VPN? 

She appears and disappears on notice boards without notice. Her avatar is different on each appearance too. It helps to lose the trackers. 

To receive a clue, players send coins to an anonymous crypto address. I have thousands of those. I then procure the services of a coin mixer. They are the blockchain guys who help hide the movements of coins between addresses. In many instances, I use two to three coin mixers. For anyone looking, the trail ends there. 

In between playing video games to make a living, I trade crypto on the side. Well, I gimmick trading crypto. When the tax authorities come looking in the future when I finally cash out and buy my sprawling lands, I will lead them to my crypto trading portfolio. 

Years of investing and patiently waiting does pay, right? 

The Seer Trisgb hasn't appeared on forums lately. There has been a major crackdown. Several of us Hinters have had their coins hacked and stolen. I see the discussion on the chat forums. The corporations have been fighting back again it seems. This time more fiercely. They must have set one of the Hinters against the others. Set a thief to catch a thief they say. 

Or did they send a player? Have other Hinters been trying to reap where they have not sowed? It's hard to know for sure…

That's why I work alone. You can never really trust anyone in our times. Especially when you really want out. 

The crackdown is expected though. The corporations need the testers, but they can't really fight the 'Hinters' game. Even though they paralyse it from time to time. 

The Seer Trisgb is the best in the game. She gives the most accurate hints and is extremely hard to find they say. 

Even I admire her. 

She will be my salvation. The reason I will fly light like a feather, alive and breathing after being dead in my life for so long. 

Not all great games discussed there are from large corporations though. You will always find invites to play different games from all over the world in the chat forums. 

I usually follow the links. Carefully. When I finally cash out, I intend to build a game myself. I haven't quite figured it out yet, but I know it will be a spy game. Checking out many different unknown games helps me brainstorm on the idea. You never know which one will have the magic. 

Last week, I had clicked on a link to this strange game. A gargoyle would fly and ring a bell placed high on a church tower. Ringing the bell would take you to the next level. To reach the bell, you had to open various mysteries boxes for tools to help you build a ladder or a bridge to help you conquer the various obstacles in it. The boxes were quite intriguing. You didn't know what you would get. Sometimes you got nothing in them which took you back to the start. I had managed to move some steps, but upon opening the seventh mystery box, the game would crash. I had tried it at least thrice. 

"They still haven't quite figured it out yet," I had concluded saying it loud to myself.

A smart kid had probably cooked it up in their mother's basement I thought. Such unrefined games are common. Sometimes they come back bigger and better. I had moved on and forgotten about the game. 

It was on a Friday afternoon. I had just received my day's coins from a coin mixer when the drone dropped the package at my doorstep. 

I stepped away from my chair and went to the box. I hoped it had been dropped at the wrong address. Maybe it was for the shopper girl next door. And if the marketers were trying to send me a free sample then charge me later or send me upsells, I was going to return it. They had been using very aggressive tactics lately. 

I knelt and lifted the box. It was as light as a feather. Was there anything inside it? I turned it around to check a name, address or logo. It had none. This was intriguing. 

I took it to the kitchen table and with a knife cut it open. 

Inside it was a crisp white envelope facing upwards. Nothing was written on it. It had also been glued to the bottom of the box. I pulled and turned it. I then opened it. Inside it was a white card. I pulled it out. 

On it were two words in bolded black ink: "Seer Trisgb"

They had found me! 

"How?" I wondered shaken to my core. 

What mistake had I made? I was pacing around. I tried to retrace my footsteps. I banged my table so hard when I figured it out that my laptop almost fell. 

It must have been that gargoyle game! I should have known. I should have known better!

The game would crash at the seventh mystery box. Number seven! I should have known… 

I quickly put on my shoes carried my laptop, my hard disk and my wallet and ran out of my flat.  

It's been two weeks now and I have been living at a hotel two counties away. I still haven't come up with a solution yet. My tester logins still work. The chat forums have not yet discussed the case of the Seer Trisgb. 

Who exactly found me, and what do they want? I have been wondering. Do they know where I am now? 

I had been watching people for years. Turns out, all this time, somebody had been watching me too.