‘Okay, I will leave you to it,’ said the woman, turning back towards the staircase with no further regard for the conversation.
Seeing her chance evaporating, Amanda called out. ‘Please, I’m looking for Satoshi Nakamoto. Can you help us?’
The woman stopped moving, but didn’t turn around. Lisandra shifted to her left, putting her body between Amanda and the woman. ‘You don’t just get to walk in here and demand to meet with people,’ she said, her voice desperate now as it was angry.
‘I’m hoping she can help me,’ said Amanda, dialling down her tone to one she hoped carried the very real sense that she too was desperate for help.
‘And what if you’re a Russian agent?’ Lisandra jabbed a finger at Amanda’s chest. When she laughed at the idea, Lisandra broadened her gesture to include Haber and Stornetta who started as if woken from a private reverie. ‘Who brings bodyguards with them to a museum?’
‘I’m not Russian,’ said Amanda, as if that would explain everything.
‘We’re not stupid,’ said Lisandra, shouting now. ‘They are too obvious to send one of their own. How can we know? Are you armed?’
‘Don’t be stupid,’ said Amanda, but a cough from behind her froze her sneer on her face.
‘Um, well,’ said Stornetta, flushing a little.
‘I knew it!’ shouted Lisandra.
Around them people had stopped what they were doing. No one had moved—yet. Amanda could feel everything slipping away from her.
‘I’m not here to hurt anyone.’ She saw Lisandra opening her mouth, eyes fixed over her shoulder. ‘Nor are they! God damn it.’ She pulled out the flash drive. ‘All I want is someone to help me access this.’ She held it in the air, arm outstretched above her head, for everyone to see.
The older woman turned, squinting at Amanda’s raised hand. ‘Who are you?’ she asked, her tone commanding, hovering on the edge of curiosity.
Amanda didn’t answer immediately, waiting for the woman to come close enough so she didn’t have to bellow across the gallery.
‘I’m Amanda Back.’
The woman, older still than she’d first assumed now she was close enough to get a proper look, shrugged indifferently. ‘I don’t know you.’
‘So leave,’ said Lisandra, cutting in. ‘You’ll not find what you’re looking for here.’
A flash of inspiration struck at Amanda like a peanut thrown at her forehead. ‘This belongs to Tangle Singh. He sent it to me.’
Lisandra looked disbelieving. ‘Anyone could have sent that to you.’
‘I don’t even know what it is!’ protested Amanda, lowering her hand and stashing the drive in her pocket.
‘It’s a flash drive. People used them when I was your age,’ said the woman. Then, slyly, head turned away, gazing out through the glass walls. ‘You knew Singh?’
Amanda sighed. Where to begin with that story? So she nodded, trying to stifle the weariness she felt whenever she was reminded of her life with him.
Lisandra’s eyes were focussed elsewhere, as if worried she’d left something undone that would end in catastrophe without her presence. ‘Amanda. Amanda?’ The word turned from memory to accusation on her tongue. Stepping up, she slapped Amanda across the cheek. ‘You’re that Amanda?’
Amanda stumbled backwards, tripping over the rubble at the foot of the statue. She was saved from crashing to the floor by Stornetta, who darted in and caught her.
Great, she thought, now I’m a damsel in distress. Just what I need right now. Standing back on her own feet, she saw that Haber had interposed himself between her and Lisandra. He was jittering as he always did, his fingers flicking, bending, his weight shifting from foot to foot. She’d grown used to it a little, but could see how threatening it would be to a stranger.
Others were drifting towards their drama, young men and women, no one over the age of thirty, no one with work that demanded they be in an office during a weekday.
‘Let’s be clear about one thing,’ said Amanda, turning from the older woman to Lisandra, brushing herself down in a bid to locate her dignity. ‘Tangle Singh is a complete fucking cock. As is usual, he’ll have slept his way into the building’—she held Lisandra’s gaze without blinking, daring her to start—‘then he’ll have told one lie after another before fucking off with something you thought no one in their right mind would consider taking, because it was so bloody obviously valuable to you.’
‘You do know him, then,’ said the older woman, ignoring the look of fury on Lisandra’s face. She slipped around to Amanda’s side, taking the crook of her elbow. ‘Why don’t we get a cup of coffee and talk about something other than yet another man?’
Amanda could have kissed her.
THEY WALKED ALONG the staircase, up all five flights of stairs, back and forth around the outer edge of the building until they stood just under the glass roof, the bright white clouds above them casting a brilliant crystal light across the whole floor.
Holographic frames floated along the back wall, disturbed only by thin partition walls which foreshortened the depth of the building. People stood at desks, huge plants left to run wild but nurtured in raised beds as breaks between different pods of activity. Dark green leaves with huge scented white flowers broke the space, distracted from the crowd of individuals working industriously in every direction. The woman led them quietly, and unremarked, across the floor. Amanda caught snippets of conversation, clips of tech jargon, accents from across Europe, people speaking English, German, Spanish, Mandarin.
Whatever they were working on wasn’t art. Wasn’t rebirth of the gallery.
‘They’re not government,’ she whispered to her escort.
The woman chuckled conspiratorially. ‘No. We’re not. But we work for the good of others as well as our own.’
‘This—you—are the Grey Rose?’ asked Amanda, understanding what she was seeing. Suddenly the youthfulness of the crowd made sense, their individuality, the plethora of language, of ethnicity. And Tangle had been here before her. Preparing the ground, or fucking it up, which of the two remained to be discovered.
‘We are that of which you speak,’ said the woman.
They reached the far end of the floor, arriving at a small kitchen stocked with pots of teas and coffees, together with half a dozen kettles. As they approached, the handful of people lingering there, deep in conversation and nursing drinks, innocuously filtered away. Minnows drifting away from a pike’s approach.
‘I’m sorry, we have to heat our water when we need it. There used to be batteries for the solar tiles, but they’ve been requisitioned—stolen—for other purposes.’
‘The government knows you’re here?’
‘Oh, yes,’ she smiled as she spoke. ‘They know. They don’t mind as long as we’re not too power hungry or critical of whichever minister’s got their hand in the jar this week.’ She handed Amanda a coffee. ‘No milk either.’ She didn’t apologise.
‘Why wouldn’t you be critical?’ asked Amanda as Haber and Stornetta made their own brews, waving the woman away as if she was not to be trusted with something as precious as tea-making. When they were done, they too drifted away, with a final sidelong glance at Amanda. They started toward the nearest frame, asking those working there what they were doing. To her surprise, they weren’t dismissed but welcomed in, shown around.
‘We would; rolling brownouts, rising nationalism, a failure to provide for the Old Believers that left fallow land in which the Russians nurtured discontent already seeded.’ She raised a finger. ‘But what are these, compared to technocratic authoritarianism smothering democracy across the free world? Capitalism in the guise of your great friend, who only demands that you focus on the inconsequential in life, that you focus on the trivial and refuse to get angry as they steal your health, your labour? In the face of this, the rich dividing the poor against themselves so that no great inequity can be challenged, what is a failing power network?’
‘You sound dangerous,’ sai
d Amanda, and she meant it.
The woman held her tea in front of her lips, the steam rising just under her nose. ‘You’ve got a good social credit score.’ It wasn’t a question. ‘I guess you signed up early, keen to get better credit, to be a leader among your peers and demonstrate you were good to do business with.’
Amanda shifted uncomfortably. ‘It works. I get deals that make life better, offers tailored to the life I lead. I pay lower fees for financial transactions, it works.’ I also get better partners recommended on dating sites, better exchange rates, cheaper electricity, easier bookings in restaurants and at the cinema. She didn’t say the second list out loud. ‘I know people don’t like it, but it reinforces civility, reminds us that being good people builds society, doesn’t damage it.’
‘Unless, of course, you got tarred with your parents’ debt, or someone else ruined the score attaching to your apartment, or your identity is stolen. Or maybe your idea of a good community doesn’t match what an AI coded by white men think.’
‘All of those things can be undone,’ said Amanda.
‘If you’re educated. If you have the means, time and knowhow to navigate the system.’ She took a sip of tea. ‘That’s not the real injustice, though. You’re right that it reinforces behaviours. It reinforces that being a dissenter is bad, that living a life someone else deems unworthy is not just neutral but actively penalised. Being poor, having no buffer, no slack to allow you to adapt to life’s little showers is also penalised. What I find hardest to get over is how the poor pay more for their services because they’re seen as untrustworthy. Why should a poor person pay more for their heating than you just because they’re poor?’
‘It’s got nothing to do with wealth,’ said Amanda hotly, angry with the idea. ‘If they refuse to behave in a way that builds their score, what should I do about it?’
‘Perhaps you should look at whether it’s just to measure someone like that.’
‘So what, then?’ demanded Amanda, irritated.
‘Nothing. The question I’d ask you is this: why should there be only one way to live? One way to be civilised? Why does the state—or worse, private companies—get to decide who’s trustworthy? They crystallise everything that’s bad about humanity into ossified structures whose goals are not ours. People say “I’ve never been affected by this thing” when the thing benefits them personally, when it remains invisible to them because it’s always been in their favour.’
‘Because most people don’t care,’ said Amanda. ‘And I resent the idea that I’m one of the privileged.’ She gestured at her skin. ‘I’m not white, I’m not a man. I didn’t grow up rich. I know about privilege and I’m not it.’
‘You define yourself by your liminality. I guess that’s worked well for you. Standing between worlds, banging on the windows, demanding you be let in.’ She stopped talking, looked at Amanda, expecting her to respond.
‘You know the phrase “coconut”?’
‘We say “banana” where I’m from, but yes. White on the inside. We all have our burdens, Amanda. You and I have used them to our benefit, and neither of us is fooled by the other’s claims of their inherent problems.’ She put her coffee down, patted Amanda on the wrist. ‘Come, you didn’t come here to listen to me tell you the life you’ve led oppresses millions of others.’
Amanda drank her coffee, refusing to engage, waiting for the woman to move on to her point.
‘I can help you, but you need to know what I care about. I’m not against anyone.’ She laughed as if the statement was her grand joke. ‘Sounds ridiculous when you say it aloud. It reads better than it speaks.’
‘You? You can help me?’ asked Amanda, looking around. She’d assumed Nakamoto was young, male and undoubtedly watching their conversation from a safe distance. ‘This is a test, right?’ She spoke to the room, turning her head to keep the woman in sight but deciding she was irrelevant.
‘I’m Satoshi Nakamoto,’ said the woman with a swift bow. ‘I invented the blockchain as a very young woman; people changed the world with what I made. Now, as I hover in my early seventies, I see those changes and realise they weren’t all ones I would have wished for.’
CHAPTER FIVE
‘YOU’RE NOT NAKAMOTO,’ said Amanda. ‘Everyone knows the story of how the blockchain was invented, and everyone knows Nakamoto was a fiction, a nom de guerre for the group who invented it.’ She didn’t mean to be aggressive, but in her years of dealing with the mediocre, mainly men, who were nevertheless extremely satisfied with themselves, she’d found it was easier to pounce on obvious bullshit than try to navigate around it.
The woman claiming to be Satoshi Nakamoto stood very still, face frozen in surprise.
‘I’ve found calling out complete rubbish has a great way of levelling the playing field,’ said Amanda. ‘What I’m really interested in is why you’d make this claim. Here of all places, when everyone on the floor knows you can’t possibly be Nakamoto.’
The woman found her wits, closing her mouth, blinking twice in quick succession. ‘If they don’t laugh at my face, if they tolerate my presence and even defer to me in matters such as yours, then perhaps you need to reconsider.’ She sounded neither distressed nor upset, but Amanda could see nervousness at the edges of her face, an uncertainty that hovered like a nimbus around her.
‘You’re not old enough.’ But now Amanda was guessing. She’d never read the papers behind digital stores of value, cryptocurrencies, Merkle trees, whatever. Everything she knew had been gleaned from working among quants and traders who cared a great deal.
‘Thank you for saying so.’
‘If it’s true, why are you telling me, of all people?’
Satoshi shrugged, as if asked why she was revealing a family recipe for chocolate cake. ‘I’m not shy about it now. I’d rather the world didn’t know, I’m not one for interviews, but even if they were interested it’s so long ago I’d be nothing more than a curio, a sidebar for the gossip page.’
‘So you’re here, soaking up the atmosphere, changing the world.’ Amanda didn’t believe a word of it, but there was no point arguing, not now she’d called it and the woman had strode on through without a moment’s pause.
‘All of those things and none.’ She sighed, as if they’d run out of time, as if errands needed seeing to. ‘You’re here to get access to this drive. It’ll take me moments to sort it out for you, but then what? Tangle sent you this for a reason.’
‘I have no idea,’ said Amanda, unwilling to open up a debate on that front.
Satoshi walked away from the kitchen, leading Amanda halfway across the floor to an unoccupied spot with empty desks. She waved her hands through the air, up, across, down and then back. Two person-size frames opened up in the air. With a flurry of quick, practised gestures, Satoshi activated her access to the systems.
Bending down she pulled up a tile in the floor underneath the frames. From within the darkness underneath, she yanked out a bundle of cables. Stopping, she held out an empty hand in Amanda’s direction.
‘Satoshi’s obviously not a real name. Even those who tried to work out who I was didn’t really get it.’
Amanda watched as she sorted through a chronic spaghetti of cables, coming in yellows, whites, reds, blacks and blues; thick, thin, covered in plastic sheathes or fabrics.
‘My real name’s Ichi Oku. Born in Japan, but grew up in Canada. Lived in Toronto till I was eighteen. All immigrants live there at some point after they arrive. Spent much of my life as a second-rate economics professor at a minor US university.’
‘What’d you focus on? Your research?’ asked Amanda, as much to see if there was any depth to her story as out of professional curiosity.
‘You know economics?’ asked Ichi, holding up a thinning sheaf of cables to winnow out those that weren’t relevant, carefully threading out exotic connectors so they didn’t break as she pulled at them.
‘Enough,’ said Amanda. ‘I’m a banker, after all.’
‘Of course you are,’ said Ichi. ‘Ah ha.’ She had one sunshine yellow cable in her hand, ending in a strange adaptor Amanda didn’t recognise. ‘Where’s your drive?’ asked Ichi.
Amanda retrieved it, holding it in her closed hand for a moment, pondering the sense in handing it over to a mad old woman in a ruined museum in Estonia.
‘I’m not going to eat it, you know,’ said Ichi. She snorted. ‘I’m vegan.’
‘Of course you are,’ said Amanda and gave her the drive.
‘We’re all predictable in our own little ways,’ she replied. Without any fuss she plugged the drive in, then stood up, flicking at the holographic screens, sliding between different operating systems until she found one that was almost entirely text-based. ‘God, they were basic. It’s amazing to think I was already middle-aged by the time we’d gotten to application based software. You grew up with it.’
‘It’s as simple as plugging it in?’ It was Haber. He’d found a pretzel from somewhere and was nibbling at the edges, picking off individual salt crystals one at a time and popping them into his mouth.
‘No,’ said Ichi. ‘First we check no one’s put a surprise on there for us. After that, then, yes,’ she looked disappointed to admit it was so easy. ‘We plug and play.’
They let her work. Haber was tearing at the last curves of the pretzel when she said, ‘All done. Let’s see what Tangle sent you.’
Amanda closed in, standing by Ichi to see better. ‘What is it?’
‘It’s encrypted,’ said Ichi.
‘You people are hackers, aren’t you?’ asked Haber.
Amanda spotted Stornetta on the other side of the floor, surrounded by a gaggle of young men. ‘So this was a wasted trip?’ she asked, addressing the comment as much at Tatsu as at Ichi.
‘Not at all. I can tell you how to decrypt the information, although that will take you back to where you started.’
Her wrist buzzed, but Amanda ignored it. ‘Go on, then.’
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