Upon landing in Taido in the early-morning and stepping off the plane, Carlos instantly sensed tension in the air. None of the airport staff in Taido were smiling; in fact they all had an anxious yet sporadically aggressive demeanour.

Before booking an airport taxi back to his apartment in one of Taido’s more affluent residential districts, Carlos decided to have a meal at a local café in the airport.

After ordering a full English breakfast and a latte with extra sugar, Carlos sat at a table across a wall-mounted television. Some breaking news was being reported on.

According to the news, all the Golden Nomad accounts had vanished after a freak electrical fire which happened at the head office the night before. Many of Nomad’s staff perished in the fire, including their Vice President, Tomas Kamiya. Several other staff members were missing, including the CEO; Carlos Hirano.

“What the hell?!” Carlos uttered out loud.

‘A fire at the office? Tomas… dead? No… No, this has gotta be a dream or some elaborate prank.’ he thought while pulling out his smart phone and dialling Tomas’ number.

A robotic female voice answered and said ‘The number you have called is disconnected. Please check the number and try again.’

“Darn it to hell!” Carlos cussed out loud before hanging up.

He then turned his attention back to the television where several furious and distraught individuals were being interviewed. According to them, their Freedom COiNs, which were stored on other trading platforms outside the Nomad app, also vanished.

“What. The. Hell…” Carlos uttered before calling over a waitress and asking “Miss. What news is this? Is this some comedy sketch?”

“What? No. This is the news.”                                      

“But it’s bullshit. The Nomad app can’t be down because it’s built and managed on a cloud platform supported by thousands of back-up servers across the world. Also, the FCs can’t just disappear like that.”

“Then explain it to my dad who put his whole retirement savings into FCs and lost everything overnight.”

“Wait… You’re serious… It’s all gone… Golden Nomad and ALL the FCs?!”

The waitress didn’t laugh and say ‘gotcha!’ but instead just gazed at Carlos with pursed lips and watery eyes.

Carlos’s shoulders slumped and he hung his head, and after a brief silence, he instructed the waitress to cancel his order and said to her “Everything’s gonna be OK. I’m gonna fix this.”

He then left the café and took a taxi back to his apartment.

 

Upon arriving at his apartment complex, Carlos noticed the street outside the gate was unusually crowded, with dozens of unfamiliar faces loitering outside.

He instructed the cab driver to drive through the gate and past the crowd.

Once near the front entrance of his building, Carlos promptly paid the cab driver and took the lift up to his unit on the fifth floor of the ten storey complex.

Upon entering his flat, Carlos wasted no time: he made a phone call to Rick, AKA Chairman Matsuda.

Matsuda immediately answered “Hello Mr. Hirano, I’m glad you called. You’ve heard of the recent developments I trust?”

“I can’t believe this is happening, man. I’m really flipping out right now.”

“Sure Mr. Hirano, but as bad as things might sound, it’s actually alright and there’s nothing you need to do. It’s all being handled on my end as we speak. Where are you by the way?”

“I’m at home. Just got back from the airport—Wait, what do you mean it’s actually alright?”

“Perfect, I want you to remain in your home.”

“OK but what’s going on, Matsuda? You haven’t told me anything!”

“I assure you everything’s going according to plan.”

“WHAT PLAN?!”

“Well since we’re at the end game, I guess there’s no harm telling you.”

“Spill it, Matsuda!”

“I’ll start with the disappearances of the FCs and Nomad accounts. Also, I’m not a tech guy, so I’ll explain it within my limited capability. In tandem with the reconstruction of the Nomad platform and the FC farming feature, I had Mr. Kamiya and some of your staff share some of your coding with us. Kamiya, along with my people and I, worked out there was a certain X variable in each of the FC’s formulas; the ones that needed to be solved before the FC could be unlocked and traded as a unit of value. My team was able to engineer a virus which would corrupt and nullify those variables, thus collapsing any digital token containing said variable. As for the elimination of the Nomad accounts, it was nothing that a simple kill-switch in the system couldn’t achieve.”

“Wait, I never asked Tomas to share any coding with you or anyone else, let alone create a kill-switch!”

“No, Mr. Kamiya performed those tasks at my instructions. Remember Mr. Hirano, I outrank you. Also, as for the office fire and the deaths of your staff members; those were necessary sacrifices. We can’t have Mr. Kamiya and Nomad Management spilling the beans. In any case, they would have become scapegoats; so it’s actually a mercy-killing.”

“Why would you do this?!”

“To restore the true value of the Sakashima Dollar. There was an over-supply of dollars in circulation, so we needed as many people possible to convert their cash into an asset engineered to self-destruct at our discretion. Now that well over three quarters of the population had gone all-in on FCs, now was the time to pull the trigger. Thanks to you, the Sakashiman Dollar’s true value had soared three hundred percent of what it was prior to your vacation.”

“What the freaking hell! The FCs were a perfectly good replacement for the Dollar!”

“Therein lies the answer to your own question; the word ‘replacement’. The fundamental goal was never to replace the Dollar. Gosh, could you imagine what would happen if that were to occur? The Sakashiman Dollar has been our official currency since our country gained independence; and we, the Central Bank, had been the stewards of our currency and financial system ever since. Did you seriously think we’d let ourselves be usurped by a pathetic little upstart like Nomad?”

Suddenly, the intercom near the front door rang, and a familiar male voice could be heard through the speaker; “Carlos! Open up, man! I gotta talk to you!”

Carlos said to Matsuda over the phone “This conversation isn’t over! And you won’t get away with this!”

“Au Contraire. There’s nothing we need from you anymore, and I doubt you have long to live. Bye.” Matsuda said before hanging up.

Carlos pressed the button near the intercom to buzz in the man on the other side.

 

Within a couple minutes; Carlos’ old neighbour, who he remained friends with since Nomad’s re-launch, Luis Saima, arrived outside his door. The young man’s face as red as hot coal and his eyes were filled with tears.

“Luis—It’s gonna be OK, I can fix this!” Carlos said in an attempt to console him.

“I put every dollar my fiancé and I had into FCs, and… It didn’t just go down, it all freakin’ disappeared! And your office burned down and all your people died! How’re you gonna fix this, huh? How’ll you help me get my money back?!”

“I— I’m still Carlos Hirano. I’ll make it work somehow, I promise!”

“Oh man! My woman’s gonna leave me for the guy who bought silver instead of your shitty COiNs! The bank’s gonna repossess my car! I’ll never launch my videogame! My life’s freakin’ over! Thanks for the memories Carlos, you jerk!” Luis then pulled out a handgun from under his shirt.

“No wait, Luis! Don’t!”

But before Carlos could wrestle the gun from Luis, the distraught young man inserted the barrel in his mouth and pulled the trigger. BLAM!! Blood, brains and skull fragments splattered all over the door and walls of the corridor outside.

“On no! Oh crap—NO!” Carlos screamed. He felt compelled to do something, but what?? Carlos had no training in first aid, and even if he did, how could anyone save a guy whose head literally exploded from the inside of his mouth?

From a distance, Carlos heard the lift doors chime before opening. Over a dozen angry men with metal baseball bats and wooden two-by-fours exited the lift.

“Holy moley! He killed Luis!” said one of the men.

“No! It’s not what it looks like, I swear!” Carlos replied.

“All the same, you did this to him! He wouldn’t have been suicidal if you hadn’t scammed the crap outta all of us!”

“YEAH!” the crowd loudly agreed.

One of the dozen angry men rugby-tackled Carlos to the ground and began punching him.

Two other men pulled the assailant off Carlos, before one of them told the angry man “I know you’re mad, Takagaki. We all are! But not here.”

Another man in the crowd said “I say we do as planned. We take Hirano out to Town Square, tie him to a lamp post; and we all take turns smashing him like a piñata ‘til he’s dead!”

“YEEEAAAH!!” the men in the corridor roared before punching and kicking Carlos as he lay on the floor to soften him up.

The dozen angry men then carried Carlos’ bruised and pummelled body out the building with Luis’ remains. They then tied Carlos up with electrical wire and put him in the back of an SUV with Luis’ headless body, before driving off to Town Square.

 

As if Carlos’ day couldn’t get any crazier, within the first two minutes (give or take) since leaving the apartment complex, a speeding Mack truck collided into the SUV; which sent it flying into the front window of a Chinese restaurant.

The final thought in Carlos’ mind was ‘God, this better be a mercy-killing. Surely you can’t be so cruel by letting me survive this.’