The Card

Jake swept past the deserted table, grabbing the small black book that Victor had left after wiping the table down and taking the dishes. The restaurant was crowded and the air was thick with hearty Italian scents. Rich cheeses, tomatoes, and garlic challenged the chatter of silverware on plates and the buzz of conversation for sensorial dominance. A boisterous laugh would claim supremacy before quickly being replaced by a tray of milanese and alfredo and lasagna. As much as he would have liked to avoid them, Jake could see one of his other tables vying for his attention toward the other end of the room. He smiled and with a quick nod and finger wave, made his way in her direction. Jake approached quickly trying to wish away the beads of sweat that had begun to develop on his forehead. There was nothing he could do about it on the floor but hope they weren’t too noticeable.

“Yes ma’am?”

“Mm… can we please see a dessert menu and have this table cleared?”

Jake quickly glanced around the room for Victor who would eventually take 10% of Jake’s tips that evening, but he was nowhere to be found. The restaurant was not particularly large, but with three rooms and a full house a person could be easy to lose.

“Sure, let me get these out of the way.” Seeing his previously empty table being seated, Jake quickly grabbed the 2 dinner plates in front of the woman and her guest. As Jake had made no effort to separate the napkin nor silverware, the plates sat uneasily stacked on his forearm.

“I’m going to go get you your dessert menu and I’ll make sure someone comes and wipes this table down right away.” Jake forced a smile and turned away from the table, adjusting the dishes and hurrying away before the woman could ask for something else.

The restaurant had once upon a time been a house and had maintained it’s inner structure in the form of three rooms on the main floor. Jake was stationed in the middle room, sharing the 10 tables with another server, William. The front room contained the restaurant bar and a few cocktail tables, as well as the hostess stand and stairs up to the second floor bathrooms. Tucked into a corner by the bar was a small server area and stairs leading down to the kitchen. Although currently serving Italian, the restaurant had maintained its previous Turkish decor creating an unusual clash of pizza and Ottoman influence. The walls, like the bar, were red with black accents and gold trim. The cocktail tables were decorated in beautiful mosaics and in the other rooms silk pillows adorned benches inset into the walls.

Passing the bar to drop the dirty dishes in the kitchen below, Jake narrowly avoided a collision with William who was coming up the basement stairs with a tray that wobbled as if tempted to fall. Descending into the restaurant basement where the kitchen was housed felt oddly sacrilegious at times. The kitchen was loud, smoky, and chaotic, but mostly it was hot. At times it was ungodly hot. Jake felt the blast of heat from the top of the stairs and tried to hurry his already hurried steps.

Jake was in such a rush to drop the plates into the black plastic bin at the washer station that he nearly missed Victor, who was kicked back in joyful conversation with one of the food runners.

“Victor, I need you to clear table 24. They’re complainers. Please man, I don’t have time.”

Victor smiled and nodded. Having recently arrived in the United States from Latvia, Victor’s english was limited.

“Josef, please tell him, we need you guys, come on.” Jake pleaded with the food runner before wiping his forehead on his sleeve and heading back up the stairs to the main floor. Jake pondered a world where he needed to speak Russian to work in an Italian restaurant decorated by Turks.

Jake had nearly returned to his newly seated table before he made a u-turn to grab the dessert menu from the server station by the bar. With the POS terminal empty, he decided he would take the opportunity to close out the previous table guest. With a few taps on the screen, Jake pulled the table order up while grabbing the black booklet from his waist.

The whole world seems to flicker in a moment of shock. All of the noises and motion and smells and light seem to dissipate for just a brief instant before….

Jake caught his breath and felt his heart sink. The check for $118.47 was still in the book but there was no cash to be found. Jake felt his leg begin twitching in anger and he slammed the book on the desk. As the book hit the desk with a loud smack, it jettisoned a small black card that launched out of the booklet and onto the tabletop before hitting the keyboard and spiraling onto the floor. Picking it up, Jake noticed the card was cool to the touch and heavier than a normal credit card while slightly smaller in size. The card had no magnetic strip and was of such a deep black that Jake felt like he could fall into the darkness if he stared too long. As he flipped the blank card, Jake’s eye caught the glint of something deep within the black sea on one side of the card. He held the card up to his eye and twisted it under the light but was unable to determine the source of the odd reflection. Jake slipped the card into his apron pocket, sighing and doing his best to compartmentalize his anger at a guest running out on their bill and smile for his tables.

Jake lay in bed turning the black card over, again and again. Why did this guy leave this? What is it? He had never seen anything like it. Frustrated and tired, Jake tossed the card on the bed beside him before reaching over to grab his phone.

2:37

Wednesday, April 4

He had no messages, no alerts, no missed calls. Grabbing the mysterious black card from beside him on the covers, Jake held it below his phone. The flash was blinding in the dim room and Jake winced in response as his eyes refocused. Enlarging the picture on his phone, Jake’s eyes grew large as he pulled the phone closer to his face. This couldn’t be real.

Jake could hardly contain himself as his hand scrambled to grab the small black notebook and pen from the nightstand beside him. Coins clicked and clattered as they fell perilously to the wood floor below. With the notebook on his lap, phone in one hand and pen in the other, Jake tried to steady his hand long enough to write. The excitement he felt was palpable. Under the camera flash, his phone had captured 2 lines of text hidden deep within the dark depths of the card.

https://71zoh.lk

Ft74DZh1JXvY6CCoTP9n

After checking and rechecking his transcription, Jake switched to the browser on his phone and began typing in the web address from his notebook. His breathing felt labored and his excitement had transitioned rather roughly into feelings of anxiety. He had no idea what to expect or what awaited him when he pressed go on the phone browser’s keypad. He held his breath as he pressed the blue button. The single second the page took to load felt like an eternity and Jake was more than mildly disappointed when the page loaded up to nothing more than another deep black sea. There was nowhere to scroll and were it not for a fit of disappointment fueled random screen pokes Jake would have missed it entirely. Somewhere on the page, Jake had found a text field and was now prompted to write something. He slowly transcribed the second line of text he had pulled from the card, careful to rewrite it exactly as was originally written. This task proved difficult, as nothing seemed to appear anywhere on the page to indicate he had pressed a number or letter. 4 times Jake wrote the 20 character sequence before erasing it and restarting. On his fifth effort, he felt confident enough to once again click the blue go button.

The page loaded slowly, filling in the black void Jake was quickly becoming acquainted with before eventually revealing the sparse silver 2 lines of text, response field, and button.

00.500 BTC

Deposit to

Wallet Address ____________________

Deposit