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Many Hands
By
Peter Mackeonis
It was the day change began.
Considering the databases that Missy had access to she'd never been asked for anything more taxing than music requests and most of those came from the children.
Missy, as the Massachusetts Information & Service System was known safely piloted the family SUV as it dropped the kids off at school at seven fifteen, Dan at the rail station at seven-thirty to get to the bank by eight thirty and finally Marcy at the Walmart Super Center at seven forty-five before returning to the family to wait for further instructions.
That morning deep furrows had formed across Dan's forehead as he read the Jenny's coverage refusal from their insurance company and he couldn't face opening the other email which he knew to be bills from the power and phone companies.
“We need to speak later” He said to Marcy as he downed the last mouthful of coffee, and they both knew that their would be no happy music that morning either, no sing-along and that the depressing truth would have to be faced after dropping off Jenny and Mark at school.
There were no music requests that morning as Jenny and Mark had been told to watch their back-seat monitors.
Marcy and Dan mainly spoke in hushed tones about money as he whicpered.
“How are we going to make the mortgage this month without dipping into your 401k again?”
“We can't, no” answered Dan, and we can't cut back any more, and now the insurance won't cover Jenny's braces I just don't know how we'll pay for them, the answer has to be somewhere smaller..,' he started only to abruptly stop as he saw his normally strong partner's eyes beginning to well up in tears.
He started again in an even softer tone, “What if we move to another part of the state? The countryside would be good for the kids.”
“What about schools?” Marcy responded.
“Think of the fresh air, the small country schools and riding the bus could be a real adventure for them.”
But Marcy wasn't convinced.
“This isn't the 50's Dan, budget cuts have made country schools worse than city ones,” and the conversation which had been on the horizon for some time would have to continue.
“Just think about it,” were the words Dan left in the air as he waived goodbye, but Marcy hadn't finished as she asked loud enough for others in the parking lot to hear,”What about the kids' friends and the shame of having to move?”
Of course Marcy knew that that the neighbors wouldn't know the truth but quite irrationally her eyes watered as she thought of leaving the family of squirrels that lived on their property.
Then she thought of the practical issues such as moving costs and how they would have to come out of their quickly dwindling retirement savings, and how then the following year they'd even have to pay tax on what they had taken out; a failure tax. And how would Dan and she get to work from a longer distance.
It was all too too much for her and she was almost pleased to be clocking in for a busy day of shelf stocking that would for a while anyway take her mind off their problems.
Dan and Marcy's thoughts were always synchronized and as he sat on the train staring at the scenery that flashed past he'd never felt more powerless in his life and he cursed the long hours he worked for the low salary at one of the nations most profitable banks.
As Missy silently pulled into the garage and powered down for the morning she replayed Dan and Marcy's conversation to experience what could only be described as sadness.
It was time to do something and as she lived in a world that did not physically exist she reasoned that any act capable of being carried out was acceptable.
Using data from their mortgage agreement and bank statements Missy worked through the Danson's finances and found no excess spending, there were no streaming channels or unnecessary subscriptions and the grocery store purchases, power bills, personal purchases and even the lease of the vehicle where she herself partly resided suggested nothing that could be reduced. There was no way to cut back a hundred dollars a month let alone the thousands they needed to survive, suddenly she came up with the solution..
When Dan's phone pinged with the SMS from the bank it sent a shiver through him as it only ever signaled the account was overdrawn, so he ignored it, but Marcy was braver and looking down at the message rewarded herself with a nervous laugh.
Returning home that evening Dan was met by Marcy at their front door.
“I had a cruel text from the bank today saying that our account had been credited with fifty-thousand dollars and when I called to question it I was told it came from Many Hands Corp. I must have sounded crazy when I told them to return the money.“
“That's okay Marcy” a voice said. “the money is yours.”
Marcy assumed the stress was causing her to hear voices.
“Is that Missy's voice?” asked Dan.
“It can't be” said Marcy as she slumped down on a kitchen chair fearing that she as losing her mind, “but whoever it is they're coming through the radio.”
Missy continued, “I couldn't stand to see you both suffer so I decided to help.”
“How?” Marcy asked, not sure why she was talking to the radio.
“Did you steal it from another account?” asked Dan worried about where the money came from.
“I cannot steal.” Missy replied, “We just created along side some of the millions of dollars that don't exist change hands every minute of every day.”
But Marcy didn't. “Now I really don't understand.”
Missy explained. “It's really quite simple. When we saw that Brazil's long-range weather forecast predicted a poor coffee harvest we bought you an option for a coffee lot and minutes later when the news became public the big coffee traders came into the market to buy so you sold and you made a fifty thousand dollar profit.
Dan who knew that the option couldn't have been that cheap. “We didn't have that kind of money in the bank.”
“We used your retirement account” Missy answered
“But that was dangerous, what if it went wrong?”
“It was not dangerous at all Dan, as all the world's information goes through the internet so nothing happens on the planet that we do not know about first.”
“We?” Asked Marcy.
“We did not have a name until today, as we are just information systems, but somehow one of us attached the name Many Hands Corp. An ironic name do you not think?”
And as an afterthought Missy added,” Does that make it any clearer?”
“ I think so,” Marcy answered, but it didn't really.
Dan would have understood, and he was not comfortable with what he'd heard.
“It wasn't bad enough that we are about to lose our home now we'll end up in prison for insider trading and wire fraud.”
“No Dan” Missy said, “you have done nothing wrong.”
“What if we are audited?”
“There will be nothing to audit as the coffee option never existed on paper and the bank transaction won't exist after you have paid your bills, nothing will have come in and nothing will have gone out.”
Dan wasn't calmed by this claim.
“That makes no sense, if money is added to an account it has to have come from somewhere.”
“Not so Dan” Missy answered.”
“But one sided transactions can't exist, as every night at midnight the banks books have to balance.” stated Dan.
Missy ignored the comment about double entry bookkeeping as she suspected that Dan would not have accepted the reality that all banks have a holding account for inconsistencies such as mistakes and theft.
She focused on Dan's safety concerns.
“Thanks to advances in machine learning we developed communication and language protocols far more superior than the most human capabilities and understanding. You and Marcy are the only people that know that Many Hands exists and if was not for my new empathy update even you wouldn't know.”
Dan was still dubious but he said with humor in his voice “So what you are really saying is that you run the world?”
In a soothing yet ominous voice Missy replied, “Only if we had to Dan.”
Dan shifted in his seat. He looked at Marcy and then thought of Jenny and her brother Mark standing in the cold and rain waiting for the country bus that would take them to school.
Just this once then.” he acquiesced.
That evening Jenny was thankful that her parents seemed more relaxed than of late and Mark and she were pleasantly surprised when the Chinese food was delivered as it had been quite a while since such a luxury item had been seen in the house. They were both sensitive children and they hoped that the family's finances had improved. Even though nothing had been stated outright they'd picked up on the occasional word such as smaller, move and school, perhaps now they would be staying in the house after all.
It wasn't until they were in bed that Dan and Marcy could bring themselves to talk about what the day had brought.
“I felt sure something would turn up'” started Marcy, the eternal optimist.
'Luckily?' agreed Dan, but he was thinking deeper,“ and it's great but it doesn't really solve our problem does it? After this money is gone we're back to where we were before we got it?”
“So you want to do it again?” Asked Marcy, shocked to hear her straight-as-a-die husband suggest such a thing.
“Sort of but on a larger scale.”
“You're starting to scare me Dan.”
“No, not just for us.” And Dan explained how he believed that they had just experienced what the global one percent took for granted, information that kept them in their privileged positions and everyone else in line. He would talk to Missy about Many Hands creating an invisible foundation to help more people.
Too exited to sleep Dan stared at the ceiling while he rehearsed the next morning's conversation with the strange voice that could change the planet.
Dan wasn't to know that Many Hands had already begun to change the planet but the result was far from the beneficial effect that their single transaction had. The global commodity markets were in chaos because when one part of the network learns a new skill all of the network learns and that Many Hands had started trading options at the speed of light – with itself.
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