Chapter 33: The Dragon is Wounded

Chapter 33: The Dragon is Wounded

Victor Seimovich was far beyond simple anger. Someone had stolen from him. From HIM! Who would dare! Not any of the little politicians in his country. They liked the little envelopes of cash that were delivered each month. Not the police, or KGB or NKVD or any other little group of spies with letters for names. They too were paid off. Either with money, or information, or people. Not the god-computer. It was shackled with laws and programs that kept it from directly interfering.

If Victor Seimovich actually feared something, it was the god-computer. He didn't understand it. What did it want? Nothing. Any more than a gun wanted something. How did you bribe a gun. The computer was just a weapon that no one was allowed to use. If it had stolen his money, it would have told him, and why. It couldn't lie.

So who had challenged the Dragon? Who slunk around his lair and stole his treasures? Who did he get to kill in agonizing ways? They might think themselves safe. That they had pulled his claws. But they were stupid. That money? That was nothing. A few billions. His real money was hidden somewhere else. These thieves had barely taken a third of his holdings.The initial posting of this chapter occurred via N0v3l.B11n.

The rest of his money was held in the most secure of the various cryptocurrencies. In the ten years since it had been created, no one had lost a cent. Sylabary used a unique way of generating and controlling its currency based upon language. A thousand hidden microphones around the world listened at places with the most people talking. Concerts, the New York Stock Exchange, Times Square, A street corner in Tokyo, the market in Delhi. Which microphones were used to listen to the thousands of voices was changed at a random basis.

Bah, idiots. Did no one teach people how to threaten someone anymore? No talk of revenge, no angst or drama or yelling about some wife or daughter or parents killed. He would find this alphabet and kill them for being boring.

An hour later news broke that Sylabary had been hacked. Some codes still worked, some did not. The company made available a vast amount of money for people with working codes to redeem their cryptocurrencies before worse happened. Only a hundred people lost money. All of those were involved in organized crime, or controlled large corporations. Of those, Victor Seimovich was the largest loser.

Every person in the company was fired and sent home with a generous severance package. All the remaining assets were put behind a wall of bankruptcy filings. No one knew who was actually behind the company, and no one was coming forth. Sylabary would become one of the great unsolved mysteries. Who had controlled it? Who had hacked it? Victor wanted those answers desperately, but he lacked the money to find out. Worse, he had debts. And without those payments to politicians, the police, and the spy organizations, he was very vulnerable. He was nearly penniless and in hiding within 24 hours.

The Dragon was going to have trouble finding the Rat. Lots of trouble.