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Trust Fallout

From the air-conditioned comfort of a gray muscle car parked on the side of an empty highway, Karina and Dorian watched bombs and missiles of all makes and models explode, sparkle, and glow against the anti-nuclear forcefield that demarcated the California-Nevada border. The sun was rising behind them, warning them with only a partial demonstration of its inevitable heat.
“Just to review the plan,” said Dorian, “we drive straight through, as fast as possible, then we hope that the flak thing works, and then hopefully the rest of the drive to Los Angeles is peaceful.”
“You included hope as part of the plan?” asked Karina. “Twice? Half the plan is hope?”
“Yes.”
“Well,” said Karina with a sigh, “what are we waiting for then?”
“I’m warming up the car,” said Dorian.
“Oh, by all means,” said Karina. “Let’s make sure the car is warm before we drive through Death Valley in August.” She shook her head. “You don’t trust this thing either, do you?”
“Of course I trust it. Rico designed it.”
“Nocoiner Rico?”
“He’s not a nocoiner anymore. And it doesn’t matter. He’s good with cars.”
“This isn’t just any car.”
“And Bitcoin isn’t just any currency. But we all need to have a little bit of trust in each other if we’re going to get through this. Okay? Separation of labor. Let everyone focus on the jobs that they’re good at.”
“Really? Trust everyone to do their jobs? You started cutting your own hair because the barber shop played Bruce Springsteen once. That didn't end well, by the way.”
“They didn’t just happen to play it, okay? That would have been bad enough, but they were complying with a Federal mandate. And it’s the only legal barber shop in the city. I’m sick of it. All of it. I’m done living like a slave. It’s a miserable existence.”
Karina turned from him and stared across the desert with her arms crossed, her blood-orange hair covering her face.
“You know what I mean,” said Dorian half-heartedly.
Silence.
Dorian counted to twenty-one. “If it doesn’t work out,” he said at last, “we’ll just come right back. I’ll get a Federal job so we can take vacations in any state we want. I’ll finally learn how a VPN works so we can watch all of the cancelled shows we grew up with. Every weekend I’ll withdraw the maximum of my UBI that the bank will allow, so I can buy you a stack of Japanese plushies so high that we get swatted by the CFTC. I would rather be a slave with you, eating bugs together until we die of some preventable disease in our thirties, than be rich and alone in a free country.”
More silence.
Shoot, thought Dorian. She can tell it was rehearsed. It’s over.
Then, a feint wave sparked through her hair as she tilted her head. “The spicy ones?”
Dorian smiled and opened the center console. “Of course.”
She turned around and pulled out a compostable orange bag with a red logo.
“KCHRRJNCH! (KARINA!)” the eco-friendly bag shouted excitedly.
Dorian winced but refrained from insulting Karina's favorite food aloud. They make these things noisy on purpose to as a humiliation ritual. He started to accelerate, but Karina grabbed his arm.
“I’m not finished,” she said. Dorian resumed watching the bombs fall as Karina savored the crickets.”

▫ ▪ → ∞

Dorian was checking his phone when Karina finished the last of her crickets. “Shoot," he muttered. We’re down two percent.”
“Ksh-chrkrr (it’s over)," joked the bag with a light-hearted snicker.
“Huh?” Karina released the bag back into the center console, only for Dorian to throw it out of the window in a fit of rage.
“KRHNG!? (WHY!?)”
“Hey!” Karina shouted. “Just because it’s biodegradable doesn’t mean they can’t fine us for littering.”
“Not if we drive fast enough,” said Dorian, accelerating.
“What were you saying before?”
“I said we’re down two percent.”
“So?”
“Rico won’t be happy.”
Karina rolled her eyes. “Then he should have bought last year.”
“Be nice. He’s new.” With one hand still on the wheel, Dorian pulled a gun from the glovebox and handed it to Karina. “Here.”
“We’re Starsky and Hutch now?”
“It’s not just any gun. That’s 狐狸之怒火 (Fox’s Rage). It works the same way, but it’s as strong as an airstrike. Expensive stuff. We had to smuggle it past the Panama Canal, across the Gulf of America and through Texas. That’s the safety. Off, on. Red means dead. Black is safe. See?”
It felt heavy and cold in her hands, with a jet-black handle and frame, and a glassy transparent barrel containing a luminous orange flame that flickered rapidly as though it could burst through at any moment. Karina imagined that she would have loved to equip this gun in a video game, but here, in the mostly peaceful desert that had become her home, where she had hoped to have a wedding and adopt chickens, neither of which had happened yet, the metal weapon reeked of death. Hollow, final, incoherent death. And Dorian handled it like it was another bag of snacks.
She pet the frame with four fingers. “Ssssiiii (death),” it whispered. She cast a sideways glance at Dorian.
“Only if we’re still in range after we run out of the flak stuff,” Dorian assured her. “That activates automatically, but it can only sustain three shots.”
“You didn’t tell me there was a limit."
“I’m telling you now. Don’t worry. It’s just a last resort.”
The car lurched as they passed through the Golden Dome, and the once muffled thuds of bombs overhead morphed at once into a blaring roar.
A robotic voice came through the car speakers, “Incoming call from: Rico Mechanic.”
“His last name is García,” said Karina.
“At least it doesn't say Nocoiner anymore. Names have to be earned." Dorian pressed the green button to answer.
“Seriously?” asked Rico. “$112 million?”
“$112.9 million.”
“¡No mames güey!”
“It’ll be fine. Trust me. It’s my job, Rico. I’m an accountant. Why does no one trust me to do my job? I trusted you with installing the anti-missile defense system thing, right?”
A loud BUZZ reverberated through the car.
“And that’s working.” Dorian confirmed. “Without me needing to ask you how it works.”
“Good for you,” said Rico. “Your thing isn’t working for me. I’ve lost millions of dollars.”
“Trillions if you measure it in the old currency. They revalued it. They always do.”
“Spare me the history lesson. Last month you were throwing out predictions like $200 million by EOY. But now that it’s crashing you-“
Another BUZZ rang out, shattering the car’s back window.
“That’s not a crash. Listen, when I say ‘long-term’ I’m not even talking about 40 years. Why is everyone so comfortable slaving away at a job they hate for decades? Four years is not a big deal if you want to get out of the rat race. And the flak thing just broke my window, so I think we’re even.”
“You’re alive aren’t you?”
“So are you! That’s my point! Do you really trust the bank more than me?”
“I trust the racoon in my garage more than you, güey. And you still haven’t told me my cost basis.”
Dorian groaned at the thought of mundane work. "Why does everyone insist on buying high and selling low? I thought you of all people would understand what’s at stake. They destroyed our country, Rico. The flag has three stars left. We have the Hoover Dam, Cult Headquarters (no offense), and a bunch of literal nothing (also no offense). And even in our bubble the leadership takes every chance they get to compromise with people that hate us. Bitcoin is our only way out. How much poorer do you want to get?”
“Be nice,” sang Karina. She had relaxed now. She calculated that if Dorian could finish two whole rants without interruption, they were probably out of range. “He’s new, remember?”
“Alright,” said Rico. “I get it. But I’m setting a stop-loss at $100 million. I was getting by perfectly fine before you dragged me into this. Ay, the more I talk to you the less I trust this whole thing.”
“Call ended.”
BUZZ.
“That’s three!” screamed Karina. “We’re still in range!”
“Now! Aim at the tower,” said Dorian. “If they can reach us then we can reach them.”
“I don’t want to!” she cried.
“You have to.”
“You’re not listening! I don’t want to,” she shouted through tears.
They heard a piercing hiss.
“DO IT!” Dorian screamed.
Karina punched a green “NITROUS” button and slapped Dorian with full force. He swerved sideways as the missile whisked past the car and onto a billboard, leaving a smoking hole over what had been the face of California’s governor. “Kirkegaard for President!” the remaining text read. “Return to Sanity.”
Dorian signed deeply.
This all would have been so much easier if the CIA hadn’t killed Trump back in ’24., he thought to himself with deep and intractable resentment. But he swallowed his tempestuous thoughts for the moment and resumed driving. He glanced over at Karina, expecting to find some expression of sorrow or anger, but instead her face was devastatingly neutral, and he understood in that moment that this time, it was, indeed, over.
Karina opened the glove box and placed the gun back inside with two hands. As she held it in place for a moment, she noticed it had warmed slightly from her touch. She gently slid her hands away, one at a time. “Hsieh xie (thank you).”

▫ ▪ → ∞

At its zenith, the White Sun bore down mercilessly on the cricket bag, now melting on the deserted concrete road. A fox peaked out from its den in the nearby sands, sniffing the air. She caught site of the bag and approached. She took a cautious step onto the concrete, but quickly drew back her paw upon contact with the searing hot asphalt.
The fox sat on her haunches and deliberated for a moment, tilting its head at the bag. It looked to the Sky, eyes closed in supplication, and the Sky obliged with a single, thin cloud. With newfound determination, the fox sped across the road under the darkened sky with lightning speed, catching the bag in its mouth and diving back onto the dirt just as the Sun’s full force of light returned.
With unhurried contentment, the fox lapped what remained of the cricket juices inside the bag. She invited the bag to its den, but a gentle breeze turned down the gesture. The fox bowed her head, then buried the bag on the spot.
“Krnch! Krnch! Krnch!”
The fox nodded and took off running, then froze suddenly. She squinted towards the blinding sun, struggling to fight through the pain in her eyes. Disheartened, she hung her head low and pawed a tear from her face. Then she noticed the swish of her own tail in her periphery, and chased it. She stopped, spun her head to see if she was being watched, then when she was quite sure she was alone*, she examined her tail with deeper curiosity. It seemed to be an ordinary tail like any other, until she realized she had another tail beneath. No, not another of her own tail, but a reflection of another's that moved with her in tandem.
The fox laughed. She rolled onto her back kicking the sand with glee, and celebrated with a bountiful feast of insects the ground produced for . She would never be Alone. The White Sun had not abandoned her. She might never behold its glory in full, and she didn't know what the Sun would have thought of her, or how closely He was even watching, if at all, but the Sun's Night would always guide be there to guide her, and she could serve Him freely of her own accord as a Chosen Friend. She stood strait and proud between the Day, the Earth, and the Night, observing her connection to all of them, and listened.

▫ ▪

Then she bolted away to the Land of the Setting Sun.

The fox understood now, and vowed to remember, that she was never truly Alone.

8 sats \ 1 reply \ @Scoresby 7h
I've driven through Death Valley a couple of times, but it was never quite like this. Fun read!
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102 sats \ 0 replies \ @daolin OP 4h
I always find it inspring to complete a 5 hour road trip that used to be such a treacherous and painful journey. I'm happy to see Bitcoin adoption is going strong in this region and I like to think that all the technological innovations that allowed humanity to thrive in a desert can serve as a kind of cultural heritage for Bitcoin, a reminder of all the pre-Satoshi off-chain work that made it possible, and a foreshadowing of how far we can take it.
Thank you for reading! It's my first attempt at writing anything, and I don't read often, so it's hard to gauge how it will be perceived from the reader's perspective. I'm drawing inspiration from Ayn Rand's philosophy, but my overall intention is purely for it to have entertainment value, so "fun" is the best compliment I could have hoped for ^^
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Good 👍