"Larry, it's your turn at the workstation. I'm still stumped and I'm at the point where my thoughts are mush." Marianne is clearly strung out, hasn't been eating and sleeping enough. Larry can sympathize with that. They both have enough investment cashflow to have never needed to work to survive, and it's not like anything is physically preventing them from cooking or even just opening something canned. It's a shitshow. Rich and in his late thirties, yet all Larry wants to do is lay in his bed and wait for death. But he set up this rotation with Marianne for multiple reasons, including so that they could keep each other in what little momentum they still have.
"Ok. I'll be up." Larry replies, unable to keep the lethargy out of his voice. It takes another fifteen minutes for him to build the motivation to sit up, at which point he's able to more ably push himself into the pale ghost of a daily routine he has. A brief shower, a too-short brushing of his teeth, a single swallow of water. He looks at the food in the fridge, but everything has tasted bland to him for the past three months and he can't bring himself to go through the discomfort of eating yet.
An hour and a half into his shift, and Larry is sitting at the computer setup in the living room, staring at a minimalist login screen in the web browser. There's something wrong with this new banking encryption. No one, not even the other Gold Hats have made progress on breaking in.
He turns away and rests his eyes on the meager decorations in the room. His eyes linger on the broken picture frame in the corner, the damaged photo still familiar. The flash of hatred shoots through him as he remembers his parents. They were full on into the cryptocurrency craze when they conceived of him, living almost purely for the thrill of financials. He was raised fully immersed in that psychotic culture, which continued its economic fanaticism well into his late teens. Nobody knew back then just how maladjusted kids would be if they grew up that way. Larry was able to manage low-risk investment portfolios when he was seven, but didn't know how to connect with anyone who didn't live to see the monetary value of something increase. It wasn't until his twenties that he was diagnosed with Dopamine Deficiency Syndrome, and it took five more years for doctors to realize that he was incapable of feeling happiness that didn't come from short term economic gains.
Others, like Marianne, grew up in the same kind of household, inducted into the same cult of currency. Statistics say at least eighty percent of the "crypto kids" have this same medical impairment. No easy cure, and most of them don't have the patience for the slow and long-term gains of therapy. This was only made worse as the economy continued to stagnate due to the wealth-hording of the ultra rich. So some of them adapted. Larry has spent the last decade in part of a secret hacker alliance they usually refer to as the Gold Hats. Their only goal is to break into the largest bank accounts and redistribute the money randomly in order to make the economy move and shake again, to allow the sharp rises and falls of both tangible and intangible investments. Just so these few people can feel something. Feel anything.
Larry turns back to one of the screens, checking if the others in the network have any new ideas on cracking this new banking system. Nothing. In fact, less ideas as current theories are tried and fail. One of the members has been silent for two weeks now, after a pretty intense rant that riled up everyone else. He desperately hopes it isn't suicide. He needs the others to lie to him that they can always survive through these droughts of joy.
Because why live, if not for the thrill of the market?
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