Scorpion by Christian Cantrell (novel24 .txt) 📕

is some kind of pulsating distortion—a pixel-twisting fisheye warp at the rate of about one cycle per second. The delay in picking up Quinn’s call and the hurried movement through the halls was not about finding a quiet place to talk. It was about trying to clear the prodigious, rhythmic emissions of whatever it is she is building—whatever she and Simon are about to try for perhaps the very first time.

“I’m sorry to bug you. I just don’t know who else to ask.”

“About what?”

“Cryptocurrencies.”

Henrietta’s face brightens. “What about cryptocurrencies?”

“If you were an international serial killer who moved money around using crypto, how would you go about doing it, and who would you work with?”

“PLC,” Henrietta says unhesitatingly. “Plutus Lakshmi Crypto.”

Quinn is old-schooling it with a ballpoint pen against the back of her boarding pass. “Who or what is that?”

“It’s a Qatari start-up run off The Grid.” She seems to have volumes more to disclose, but she wavers. “You do know about The Grid, right?”

“I do.”

“Good. PLC is the biggest crypto broker in the world. It’s like a hub. Nothing happens in crypto or alt-currencies that they don’t track.”

“Who runs it?”

“The twins. Naan and Pita.”

“Naan and Pita,” Quinn repeats as she scribbles. “As in…the bread?”

“Their parents were foodies, I think.”

“Do they have a last name?”

“Christakos-Dalal.”

“How do I get in touch with them?”

Henrietta draws her glossy pink lips back and shows her cute little teeth—a look that says to Quinn that she is not going to like what she’s about to hear.

“What?”

“I don’t know if you can.”

“Why not?”

“They’ve kind of…gone dark.”

“I thought you said they were on The Grid.”

“They are, but nobody has seen or heard from them in months.”

“Is PLC still functioning?”

“It seems to be, but Naan and Pita have completely stopped communicating. No visitors, no interviews, no posts. Nothing on social media.”

“Wait a second,” Quinn says. She turns around and checks the flight board behind her. “I can be in Doha in ninety minutes. What if I just go knock on their door? Can you do that on The Grid?”

“We can get you the necessary authorization,” Henrietta says. “But are you sure that’s a good idea?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean you want to figure out who the killer is, but you don’t actually want to find him, right? And you certainly don’t want to trap him. What I mean,” Henrietta says like a teenage daughter giving her single mother sage dating advice, “is that if you go on-Grid, you need to be very careful.”

21

  ALTERNATE REALITY

PLUTUS LAKSHMI CRYPTO, or PLC, is run by the two most famous names in alt-currencies, who also happen to be fraternal twins. Naan and Pita are half Indian and half Greek—the products of parents who met and fell in love twenty-two years ago in Dubai after opening high-end eateries across the street from each other and competing for the lucrative lunchtime business of the energy industry.

After getting married, Dion and Anna Christakos-Dalal moved to Israel, where they opened an Indian-Greek fusion restaurant, and where Naan and Pita were welcomed into the world. As the twins matured, they found that they were far more interested in the Tel Aviv technology scene than in multiethnic cuisine, and when they were only thirteen, they figured out how to use the shadowphiles to reveal some of the most sensitive and confidential information on the planet: the identities of every Michelin Red Guide restaurant inspector currently in active service. Using cheap, off-the-shelf cameras and open-source facial recognition software, Naan and Pita were able to flag reviewers upon approach. The Christakos-Dalal family then provided their marks with an elevated and curated culinary experience, and eventually became the only restaurant in Israel to earn a coveted three-Michelin-star rating.

But it was cryptocurrencies that ultimately captured the twins’ imaginations. In their minds, with the exception of DNA hacking and general artificial intelligence, cryptocurrencies were about as profound as innovation got. Most entrepreneurs hoped to develop technology that would disrupt established markets in order to generate wealth; cryptocurrencies skipped the middleman and disrupted wealth itself.

Value has always been associated with scarcity—a concept usually either unprovable or fleeting. Not only was there no way to know how much gold remained in the ground, but there were numerous efforts under way to mine asteroids, which threatened to instantly devalue every precious metal on the planet. In the realm of cryptocurrencies, on the other hand, scarcity was mathematically provable. Ownership was cryptographically verifiable. Done correctly, cryptocurrencies were objectively superior to legal tender and precious metals in every way that mattered—except that most traditionally rich and powerful people didn’t have any.

Naan and Pita came to realize that every form of wealth was nothing more than a social contract—agreement among citizens as to what had value and what didn’t—and that, as in any social contract, the people had the right to renegotiate the deal any time they wanted. All it took was consensus. And generating consensus was exactly what cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies did best.

Four years later, Naan and Pita landed on The Grid in order to protect themselves from capricious tax edicts and liberal interpretations of archaic monetary regulation designed to discourage international economic revolution. Even though their net worth as measured in USD sometimes fluctuated by as much as billions several times per second, they were undeniably the most extensive and wealthiest holders of cryptocurrency in history. But personal wealth had never been their objective. Naan and Pita wanted to fuel a revolution against greed and tyranny—to dismantle the planet’s system of rule, not through war, but through unity.

Dion and Anna visited their children often. In addition to their immediate and extended families, the twins were also well loved by most of the crypto community, the media, several celebrities, a handful of progressive world leaders, and all of their exclave neighbors. Naan and Pita eventually became internationally famous for their tasteful gatherings featuring what Zagat proclaimed to be the most exclusive and sought-after buffet on the entire Arabian Peninsula, and the Qatari monarchy