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Prologue
1 Dakila
Manila, June 17 2027'What a way to spend my 17th birthday!' Dakila thought to himself.
Until yesterday his simulated single ladies had been steadily pumping money into his accounts. But today, with that latest anti AI release, Dakila had to spent hours on end running his virtual ladies in sync-mode, just to keep his targets from dropping out and moving on.
Dating sites are like that. Lose their attention and they move their main focus to new potential conquests. Dakila had too much time invested in his AI farm to let this happen now. Even in sync-mode Dakila needed to be on his toes with regards to the increasingly pervasively used Anti AI. Anti AI software doesn't just detect Artificial Intelligence, it also does a pretty good job cross-correlating discussions to detect scripted or cut & paste attacks by human scammers. Dakila was growing quite weary of trying to come up with different excuses for dropping off the radar for a few weeks. There had to be a way around it, there just had to!
Dakila had never been hit this hard before. Each of Dakila's ladies had its own unique AI. So while anti AI was always evolving, it was quite unusual if an update would cost Dakila more than one sim or more than one target.
Today was different. Fourteen sims and twelve high-value targets lost in just 20 minutes time! To make things worse, Dakila still being in a state of panic had ended up making a number of sync-mode cock-ups that had made him lose another six. 'There has been a death in the family my love', What a stupid twat am I! Shit!. Freaking moron! The first shitty excuse I came up with, and I go using the same stupid line in multiple sync-mode video chats! Fuck!
"Dakila, are you coming down, dinner is ready!"
"In a minute mom, I need to finish this"
As he spoke the words Dakila realized he had probably just lost another target. Shit, bloody sync mode.
"Mom? What is up Ligaya? Your mother died two years ago! At least that is what you told me."
Could he salvage this target? Damn, Theo was a big spender that the Ligaya simulation had been patiently milking for eight months now. Think Dakila, think, what would Ligaya say?
"Don’t be silly sweetie, it is my landlady's mom asking me for the rent again. She is taking care of the building while my landlady is away. She is a really mean woman, but if I call her mom she softens up a bit. I’m afraid she is going to kick me out of the building regardlessly. She really doesn't like me my darling. Could you send me another BareunCoin or two to help me pay my rent this week?"
As Dakila pushed the F6 key, the lifelike Ligaya simulation ran through a set of facial movement that had been Dakila’s ticket to success on oh so many occasions.
His AI combined aspects of a disarmingly childlike cuteness with enough of a sexual undertone to render these middle-aged horny westerners completely blind to the small flaws in the AI,
Dakila made none of the beginner's mistakes like making his sims too hot. No professional fashion models as template; No explicit sexual innuendo. No! Dakila’s sims were designed to be the type of girl that is cute but innocent. Not too innocent, no, and not too young. Don’t want to attract no pedophiles and through them attract coppers.
No, all of Dakila’s creations were based on local women in their late twenties. Add a bit of irresistible naivety and his own special brand of kitten-cute sensuality, and those midlife crisis horndogs would let their guard down just enough to slowly start milking them for BareunCoin. And to be fair, most of them really had it coming. Their ring fingers more often than not showed discoloration and indentations that could only be explained by a wedding band having quite recently been worn on them. No these assholes got what was coming to them, 'Karma motherfuckers', and if Dakila could make a lot of money by milking them to improve his finance, that was just a nice bonus.
Theo was one of the worst and thus one of the best. Four different sims were milking Theo. Each of the sims got dangled the prospect of romance and even marriage. Theo was clearly working towards a visit to the Philippines next summer, working towards taking advantage of what he believed to be real ladies. He must have thought himself a real player, but all the while the BareunCoin kept flowing into Dakila’s wallets.
"Will do my sweet Ligaya; same time tomorrow?"
As Dakila tried to come up with the right words to delay the next video chat for a number of days, a pop-up sprang into his screen. "No!" Dakila shouted out without thinking; "Yes, yes, yes! Oh shit!"
The puzzled face of Theo staring at him, or staring at Ligaya as far as Theo was concerned. This was big, much bigger than whatever Theo could provide for.
"Yes tomorrow is fine, see you tomorrow."
As the face of Theo showed even more confusion now, Dakila ended the video chat and opened his analysis window. "YES, YES, I’m the fucking king of the universe. Fucking yes."
"Dakila, you remember that we talked about your sexual obsession with sims, don’t you?"
As his mom came into his room holding a plate of food. Dakila quickly minimized the analysis window on his computer desktop.
"I’m starting to think your father was right about this Dakila. We are sending you to therapy, this is getting way out of hand. Here sweetie, here is your silog. I’ll give doctor Ocampo a call right away, your dad said she does wonders with obsessed teens."
"Mo-om, please mom, It is not an obsession and I said I would be right down mom, I turned 17 today, aren’t I old enough now to have earned some fucking privacy?"
Dakila's mom turned her head looking at Dakila annoyed and a bit angry with a hint of indignation, but then a huge smile formed on her face;
"Happy birthday darling. We will be talking about that potty mouth of you tomorrow darling. For now, enjoy your silog, Whenever you are done with your sims, come down for some birthday cake, OK."
As his mom left, Dakila reopened the analysis. 'Is this real? If it is, I'm richer than Alec fucking Yi! I need to check against my own block chains. Maybe Mahalia is fucking with me.'
As Dakila started a new analysis using the keys that he had found earlier in a file on the laptop, Dakila had some time to contemplate what was happening. 'If this turns out to be real, who created this file and how did it end up on Mahalia's boyfriend's laptop? And why was the file placed in such a peculiar place? It was almost as if someone had wanted Dakila to find this file.'
'Focus Dakila, focus.' Mahalia had asked him to look at her boyfriend's laptop. A laptop that would not boot up anymore. Damn you Mahalia if this turns out to be your idea of a practical joke. Dakila and Mahalia had been inseparable friends since as long as he could remember. But recently, since Mahalia had hooked up with her 26 year old muscle-brain boyfriend four months ago, they hardly spent any time together anymore. The dumb goon worked for a private security firm and judging from his car and condo, the no-neck asshole was doing quite well for himself. So when Mahalia had asked him to look at Kidlad's laptop, Dakila hadn't exactly been overthrown with joy. Kidlad was a dumbass compared to Mahalia. Why did she have to go out with such a complete moron. But it was Mahalia that asked him to look at the laptop. Refusing Mahalia something? Anything? No, that wasn't an option, ever. 'Let her find out herself. When I'm filthy stinking rich she will see I'm a better man than he is.' Enough distractions, the keys file!
The laptop wouldn't boot for the simple reason that the boot partition contained nothing but a single file named 'private.keys'. No kernel, no bootloader files, no nothing, just the mystery file. This could not have been an accident. No fucking way that Mister Musclebrain had done this to his system himself. But then Mahalia and Dakila used to play innocent practical jokes on each other. But never something like this though. She was not dumb, but not computer minded either. So who had put this file there? In a place where it would be found by the first technical person to get his hands on the laptop. Someone had wanted this file to be found. Found by someone other than Kidlad.
A beeping sound and a new popup window announced the second analysis was done.
"My God, it is real!" Dakila spoke softly.
Dakila had guessed the file could have been a concatenation of private keys and had run a search throughout the system's file-system looking for candidate public keys and signatures. And boy did he hit the jackpot. Hundreds of thousands of private keys had matching signatures on the laptop's disk, but that wasn't the most shocking part. The shocking part was the files where these public keys were located. Bleeding blockchains! The run on his own blockchains confirmed his suspicions. The keys in the mystery file were private keys linked to unspent outputs in the blockchain. Currency! Money! Loads and loads of real fucking money! The motherfucking motherload!
"No wait, this is impossible!" Dakila shouted out. "Seven hits in my own wallet file? No! What the … ?!!"
Dakila's mouth dropped open and he looked at his screen with a blank stare and his mouth half open for almost a full minute. A minute that for Dakila felt more like a week. Then clarity returned to Dakila. This could mean only one thing! One option and an option that felt almost too far-fetched: Quantum computing! Quantum computing on a massive scale! A fucking quantum blockchain heist!
"A motherfucking quantum blockchain heist!" Dakila whispered to himself, "This is big!"
Dakila started hyperventilating. He grabbed a plastic bag. Calm down Dakila you have this!
'Need to move fast! The heist hasn't happened yet, or at least not on a huge scale. You can do this, remember the retirement plans! Fake passports, offshore accounts. Off-grid pacific islands. Mostly everything is in place already. But who is Kidlad working for? People who can pull off a quantum blockchain heist? 'Jesus, Marie and bleeding Joseph, if these guys catch me!' Dakila thought. 'Calm down, breath, they won't catch me! Need to do this now. Breath Dakila, breath. How do we do this? Don't want to collapse the world economy. Don't want to bring the world's law enforcement down on this!'
Filter it! Yes! Only old blockchains and only unspent outputs that have been dormant for more than ten years maybe twelve. Yes, that should do it. Nobody should even notice….
"You can do this Dakila. Don't rush it. Set it up carefully. Retirement at 17! Damn Dakila, you are the king of the universe!"
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