I WAS PRETTY sure I figured out what the big deal was, but I still wasn’t sure why all the work. This wasn’t about any money from any bank or breaking into a vault. Not exactly. The miners were these gaming rigs. They were mining something—that is, solving complex algorithms in order to achieve proof of work. Some kind of cryptocurrency, perhaps? I’d heard of this, but never really paid much attention to the whole crypto fad; they were never really worth anything. It was like trying to monetize your SETI@Home calculations. Which, if you don’t know about it, go look it up; it was a valiant effort to search for alien life by decoding collected radio telescope data through crowd-sourcing. I was a member.
My guess was that they vented the heat outside during the daytime, along with the heat from the A/C units, to disguise the thermal footprint of this server room. Or, they turned the A/C off at night to save money on all the power being used. I’d worked in buildings which disabled the A/C over the weekend to save money, since there would be no staff to complain about the heat. Mondays were always hotter than mid-week, especially in the dead of summer.
My calculations completed, I put my plan into action. Just had to find Leblanc and his buddies before it was too late. And before I passed out.
I looked at the printer. What it spat out made little sense to me—just a bunch of random words on paper. I pocketed the page and went to find the bad guys.
Sure enough, maybe six rows in, I found them. There were three of them at the far end of the aisle. Leblanc was setting up a not-insignificant amount of explosives at the base of one of the server cabinets, while a second guy, one of the weekend-warrior types, was slouching nearby, his gun hanging limply in his hands. He seemed bored with the entire operation.
The third guy, though. I recognized him. A doughy sysadmin type with a neck beard tapped away at a keyboard. He’s the one I was making comparisons to all night. He worked for the bank, and I’d seen him before, during one or two of my night shifts. This wasn’t his operation. But maybe he was its administrator.
It was so noisy in the expansive room, and so evenly lit with flat lighting, I got right up next to them before they noticed me. There was a look of stunned surprise, and it took almost three seconds before the guy with the gun could raise it. I smiled and waved, then gestured at the Security Guard patch glued to the pocket of my shirt. I did this all with my left hand, since my right hand wasn’t doing much, except bleeding.
“Finally came out, eh!” shouted Leblanc.
“What?!” I shouted back. I pointed at my ear and gestured around.
“Funny guy!” said the neck beard. I shrugged and nodded.
He responded by punching me in my arm. It wasn’t a good punch, and I’d taken much more to my face without flinching. But he centered it right on the spot where the arm broke, and I nearly passed out again.
I raised my arm in surrender and asked what they were doing.
The big guy spoke again. I think he was Mitchell, but I didn’t really care. He smiled that condescending smile that we sysadmins sometimes gave when someone didn’t understand something. There’s a really powerful urge to talk down to anyone who doesn’t understand technology. It persists to this day, but I think most people know technology a little better now, so you really run the risk of underestimating folks when you talk down to them. Just like this guy with me.
“You’re Virtue, right? I’ve seen you around.”
“You’re Mitchell. You work here.”
“I did. Until last week. Can you believe they fired me?”
“Well,” I shouted back, “you’ve got that kind of face.”
He hit me again, and I stumbled back. “Hey, cut it out! I’m in a lot of pain here!”
Mitchell folded his arms and smirked. “Nobody fires me. I know too much.”
“Sure you do.”
He waved around. “This operation. All these servers. I made this!”
“But, I guess your keycard no longer works? Is that why you’re blowing things up?”
“I could have gone to the Board! I could have made it public. And they think they can fire me?”
“So, what are you doing here? Sabotage?”
The big guy smiled a broad, condescending smile. “It’s probably beyond your comprehension, but we’re stealing money.”
I played it up a little. I still didn’t fully understand the scope of their heist, but I knew enough. And they were still the idiots with guns. “I don’t see any money around here!” I shouted back.
“It’s in all these mining rigs,” said Mitchell. “Ever heard of Bitcoin?”
“I think I saw something in the news about it! Some kind of electric currency?”
“They’re mining it here. In this very room. They’ve been doing it for over a year.”
“I don’t understand! Mining?” I was maybe taking it too far, but damn it, I was going to get some enjoyment out of these losers. Plus, I had to stall. I had a little over a minute left. Besides, this guy looked like a talker.
“Let’s just say they’re solving equations. And that’s generating this crypto. We’re going to take it from them.”
“What do you want with fake money? You can’t spend it or anything!” I think Leblanc was onto me. Maybe I was smiling too much. He stepped forward, but Mitchel put his hand out.
“This money is real, I assure you! The value is about to skyrocket!”
“How much are we talking about here? What would make it worth all this effort? All the risk?”
“I networked these machines into one cluster or farm.” I rolled my eyes, and Leblanc scowled. Mitchell didn’t notice. “The communal wallet for this farm is a little over a hundred and fifty … thousand bitcoins!”
I raised my eyebrows. “That’s a lot, I guess. But didn’t it take ten thousand just to buy a pizza? Seems to me you’re risking a lot just for fifteen pizzas!”
“It’s worth much more now! And it’s going to the moon!”
I rolled my eyes harder this time, and Mitchell must have caught it, since he punched my arm again. As soon as the world stopped spinning, they started pushing me up against a server cabinet.
“Scoff all you want, Mister Security Guard! In a few short minutes, we’ll be out of here with enough money to buy Nicaragua!”
I scoffed all I wanted. “I guess Central America’s going for cheap.”
“In a few short years, each one of these coins will be worth over a million dollars!”
I made a jack-off motion with my off-hand. It was effective enough. That’s when Leblanc and the other guy leveled their guns at me.
“You don’t understand. No matter what they’re worth, you die!” said Mitchell.
I tried to look terrified. I wasn’t. Not in the least. “What happens when the bomb goes off?”
Mitchell pointed at the box Leblanc was finishing wiring up. “When our bomb goes off … well, then you’ll be dead, my friend. Along with all the evidence that we were even here!”
Now I smiled. I couldn’t help it. “Not your bomb! My bomb!”
Mitchell’s smugness dissipated. Leblanc immediately stopped wiring.
I’d like to say there was a sudden explosion, but my timing was off by about five seconds. Everyone looked at everyone else.
I checked my watch. I shrugged.
Then the explosion happened.
Just about on cue, the detcord I wrapped around the valves of the HFC fire suppression tanks exploded and started filling the room with hydroflurocarbons and other inert gasses which displaced most of the oxygen, and made combustion impossible.
I knew it was coming, and when the blast hit, everyone else ducked, while I sprinted back to the door. I was well into the hallway before anyone else was close. Also, they were running out of air fast. I shoved the blast door shut and jammed the wooden wedge underneath it. It would give me enough time to get out of there.
I was at the stairwell before I heard the muffled shots as they tried to shoot their way out, like that was going to work. I paused for a moment and heard them slamming into the door, but that seemed to be even less effective.
I idly wondered if I should let them out, but they wanted me dead. On my way down the stairs, I tried to do the math, but so many variables were missing. I knew that oxygen in the space needed to be reduced to less than 15% to prevent combustion and that would smother any fires in the room. But blowing the tanks like that? Probably wasn’t good for the idiots with guns. Below 10% oxygen, any humans in the room would eventually suffocate.
Then again, they did try to kill me.
When I got to the bottom of the stairwell, it wasn’t hard to get outside via the basement door and into the cool summer night.
I took a deep breath of air and was immediately tackled by the police. Looked like the entire force was there now.
About damn time.