Scams of the Future

I was electroplating some silver onto a worse metal when my Cyb-R_station™ pinged with a notification. It was a message from Bruce, and by the capitalization choices he had made, I knew the datalink had successfully transmitted emotions through the GRIDD along with the message’s raw data.

Did you REALLY think I wouldnt FIND OUT

I found it odd that he hadn’t used punctuation, but maybe he’d broken his keyboard in anger. I wondered which of my mineral-related scams he had cottoned onto. The pyrite… no, it was extremely gold-like. My money was on the obsidian cat.

THIS CAT ISNT VALUABLE AT ALL

Bingo. I’d set up a propaganda network to inflate the demand for cat-shaped obsidian, and then sold it to him at a considerable markup – I was still eating lamb off of those profits. I tossed a few more iron ingots into the electroplating vat and wrote a measured response:

Sure it is

I scooted my chair over to the other Cyb-R_station™ running the propaganda stack. Unfortunately it had crashed overnight, and the minerals market had already responded to the decrease in synthetic demand. Obsidian cats were trading almost at parity with their granite equivalents.

After placing a large strategic market order, I re-booted the system and watched as the infobots recommenced their hashtagging. Apparently, obsidian cats were going to be the next big thing – the sharper the better! Bruce’s customer feedback was still piling up on the other machine, so I swivelled back over and responded to his concerns. Perhaps, a few more cats at low prices could ease his feelings?

My Cyb-R_station™ violently exploded, and if my chair’s wheels weren’t so well lubricated, I might not have been able to glide away from the blast so gracefully. My first instinct said that Bruce had launched a GRIDD attack in retaliation for the cat, but then I noticed my electroplating rig was leaking conductive fluid onto the rug! The silver puddle was quickly seeping over to the propaganda machine, and before I could find a box cutter to take up a strip of the intervening carpet, it reached the computer, detonating it as well. I could already feel the shockwave reverberating through my mineral portfolio, and a hairline crack appeared in the pyrite bar I’d just sold on GoldLYNE Genuine Gold Marketplace.

Maybe it’s time to try some vegetable scams instead.

- Christian