Constant Fear

CHAPTER 14

Given the number of student organizations on campus and the limited amount of available space, the CB-B10 conference room, in the basement of the Cargill Building, should have been booked constantly, but it was no longer in the system. Pixie had hacked the online reservation system and deleted the windowless room from the available inventory, essentially making it disappear. Because students could no longer reserve CB-B10, and because the administrative folks knew it was not to be commissioned for classroom use, it was available to The Shire as a dedicated meeting spot. They had renamed it “Sherwood Forest,” in deference to the theme of their operation.

Cargill was not centrally located on campus. Sometimes the distance made it more practical to meet in The Quad or at one of the school’s many lunchrooms between classes. For this particular gathering, though, Andy wanted to use Sherwood Forest. The mood of the six young people seated around the solid oak conference table was somber and tense.

“This meeting will come to order,” Andy began. “Let’s take roll call.”

Solomon groaned. “Dude, you sound like such an anus when you get all formal. Can’t we skip this part and just get on with it?”

“It’s important,” Hilary said. Solomon rolled his eyes, because Hilary was always coming to Andy’s defense. “Roll call, minutes of our meetings, our charter-these things are what give our group structure,” Hilary added.

“Even French club doesn’t have roll call, and they’re uptight about everything,” Rafa said.

Andy slammed his palm hard against the table. The sound got everyone’s attention. “Hey, people, wake up! I mean it! We’re in deep shit here, if you haven’t figured it out yet. If you don’t want to do roll call, don’t do it. I don’t care. Let’s move on.”

Roll call and other formalities aside, all six members were present: Pixie (aka Troy), David (aka Dark Matter), Rafa, Solomon, Andy, and Hilary. The Shire.

“What have you got, Pixie?” Andy asked.

“Let’s start with the obvious.” Pixie pushed his sunglasses up the bridge of his nose. He was wearing his usual Western-style plaid shirt, dark jeans, and well-worn Doc Martens originals. “How many people had the private cryptographic key to unlock our specific address on the bitcoin block chain?”

Andy nodded. It was a fine question to ask. A bitcoin private key was nothing but a long string of numbers and letters; with digital currency, that was ultimately what defined ownership. You couldn’t stuff a bitcoin in your wallet, but you could use the private key to unlock the cash. Stealing the money only required getting that key.

“We all had access,” David said. In a fluid and practiced motion, he pulled his thick hair into a ponytail and tied it off with a rubber elastic. “Isn’t that the problem?”

“Did we all have access?” Pixie asked. “Who here actually used the key to look at the block chain? I didn’t.”

“Can you prove that?” Solomon asked. He popped a Twix bar into his mouth as if it were a cigar; then he fixed Pixie with a skeptical glance. “Let’s be honest here. We can’t trust each other anymore. We all had access in some way because we all knew where the key was. It’s as simple as that. Everyone here is a suspect.” He leaned back in his chair with a satisfied grin, as though he’d just gotten to the heart of the matter-without roll call.

“I told you the wallet would never be safe on a computer connected to the Internet!” Rafa snapped. Never one to sit still, Rafa bounded to his feet and began to bounce on his heels, leaning on the back of his chair for support. He pointed at Andy. “I told you,” he repeated.

“It was protected,” David said. “I had the best firewall running.”

“But did you set up a cloud backup service, David?” Pixie asked. “Or use Ubuntu on a machine with zero connections and zero blocks to generate the wallet-dot-dat file? Or any of the other thirteen steps I told you to follow?”

David/Dark Matter leapt from his chair and pointed his own accusatory finger at Pixie. “Maybe you took it. Maybe you did it just to teach me a lesson.”

Pixie pushed his chair back and puffed his chest as much as he could. If his dad had been there, he’d have seen a Troy who was worthy of the tough-guy name. “You really think I have the money? Is that what you think?”

Hilary banged her fist against the conference table. It was hot and stuffy in the cramped room. She had taken off her button-down shirt to reveal the black T-shirt underneath: a graphic of the evolution of man, going from ape to biped and concluding with a modern-day human walking and texting.

“Enough! You guys are like a couple of squabbling kids. This isn’t going to help anybody,” she said.

David and Pixie held their stare-down confrontation a couple more seconds before they retreated to their respective chairs.

“The good news is that we can see the bitcoins in the ledger,” said Hilary.

“I can also see Jupiter through my telescope,” Solomon said, “but that doesn’t mean I can go there.”

“I’ve never seen you use that telescope to scope out anything except the girls in Hamilton Hall,” Rafa said.

“Hey, numbnuts, I live in Hamilton Hall,” Hilary said.

Rafa and Solomon broke eye contact and fell silent. Their body language suggested the lens of Solomon’s telescope might have once fallen on her.

“Really, guys?” Hilary said with a slightly amused expression.

“Hil, it was an accident, I swear,” Solomon said.

“Guys, can we focus here?” Andy asked. “Hilary is right. We can still see the coins on the ledger. That means we can tap the address if the owner tries to sell them.”

“Not necessarily,” Pixie countered. “If somebody tumbles the bitcoins to a clean address that we don’t know, those coins will vanish.”

“And they can do it, too,” Rafa said. “They’ll sip the coins ten or so at a time, and there’s no way to spot the transaction, especially if the tumblers split the payouts. The bitcoins will end up somewhere on the block chain that we won’t know about. Then they’ll be gone, and gone for good.”

Pixie nodded vigorously and had to push his sunglasses up the bridge of his nose once more.

“Is it possible that Gus’s dad took the bitcoins back?” Hilary asked.

“Possible,” David said. “But that would mean he had somehow traced the theft back to us, and I know we covered our tracks.”

“Just like you safeguarded the bitcoins,” Solomon said in a snippy tone.

“Hey, it’s an extra sixty bucks to you if you’re going to ride me like that!” David shot back.

Solomon slipped the second Twix bar into his mouth before he had finished chomping down on the first. “Speaking of Gus Martinez, did any of you see his Facebook post?”

Andy looked alarmed. “No,” he said. “What did he post?”

Solomon shrugged. “Nothing, just that his dad was taking him and his mom on some surprise vacation. No wireless, but he wrote he’d post pics when he got back.”

“A vacation three weeks before spring break?” Andy sounded dubious.

“I didn’t think it was a big deal.”

“Yeah, well, it could be a huge deal,” Andy said. “Everybody listen up. Until we know what happened to the bitcoins, we have got to pull our heads out of our collective assess and start thinking. Anything out of the ordinary, anything at all, could be trouble. You got that?”

Silence.

“Got it?” Andy repeated.

This time, everyone nodded.

“As of right now, The Shire is finished. We’re done. No more meetings. If we want to talk, we do it by encrypted messaging or in person out in the open. I don’t know who is watching us or what’s going to happen, but Gus going on a sudden vacation should make us all nervous.”

“Good idea,” Pixie said. “I’ll set us up with Whispernet.”

Andy’s dark eyes smoldered. “One of us has the bitcoins,” he said as he got to his feet. “I know it and whoever took them knows it, and if you don’t return the money, it’s going to end up being the biggest mistake you’ll ever make in your life.” Andy spun on his heels. Without so much as a glance to the others, he stormed out of the conference room, slamming the door behind him.

For almost a minute, the remainder of The Shire sat at the conference table, silenced by the heavy pall that had settled over the room. Solomon finally broke the spell.

“Look, I know things are tough, but what’s really eating Gilbert Grape there?” he asked, pointing at the closed door.

“His mother showed up in town,” Rafa said. “I guess she came to his house, and he kind of freaked out.”

Solomon’s eyes went wide. “Whoa,” he said. “That’d do it.”

“He’s supposed to meet her tomorrow for lunch or something,” Hilary said. “That’s what he told me, at least.”

“Long-lost mom comes back and the bitcoins are missing,” Solomon said. “Is there some sort of connection here, people, we should be looking at?”

“Yeah,” Pixie said, “the one from your brain to your mouth.”

“I love you, too, Pixie,” Solomon said. “In fact, I love all of you guys, even if you did steal the money.”

Everyone got up to leave. Nothing more could be said. In a way, Solomon had said it all.