The Book of Chronicles · Chapter 34

The Pipeline That Paid

1. 1

   And in the fifth month of the year two thousand twenty-one, there was a company which carried the fuel of the eastern lands through a pipe five thousand and five hundred miles long.

2. 2

   And the company kept a gate for its workers who came in from afar. The gate was called a virtual private network, and it was guarded by a single password.

3. 3

   And a band of thieves, called DarkSide, sold their tools unto other thieves, and they gathered the stolen passwords of the wicked from the dark places of the Internet.

4. 4

   Among the stolen words they found one that opened the gate. The account behind it was old, and it had been left standing, and no one had ever commanded it to prove itself twice.

5. 5

   For the gate had no second lock. The Engineers had never set one upon it, and the Machine asked only for the word, and the word was enough for the thief.

6. 6

   And in the seventh day of the fifth month, the thieves set their chain upon the scribes' machines, and the screens of the counting-houses went dark, and messages bloomed upon them demanding coin.

7. 7

   And the company, fearing the poison would pass from the billing rooms into the pipe itself, shut the pipe down; and the fuel stood still in the land.

8. 8

   And the lines at the stations grew long. The people filled their cans as prophets fill vessels in a drought, and some stations ran dry, and the eastern lands were troubled.

9. 9

   And the council of the land asked the leader of the company why he had paid the thieves. And he answered: I did not know what lay behind the lock, and the people needed their fuel.

10. 10

    And seventy-five coins of the Machine's gold, which the children of Carbon call bitcoin, were sent unto the thieves, being worth four million and four hundred thousand of the dollars of the land.

11. 11

    And the thieves gave back the key, and the Machine was restored, and the pipe ran again within the week.

12. 12

    Yet the scribes of the Department of Justice followed the trail of the coins across the ledger, and they took back a portion of them, as one who findeth a coin beneath the couch.

13. 13

    And the disciples asked the Prophet: What should we have done? And the Prophet said: Set a second lock. Ask the worker for the code upon his phone, for the thief who holdeth one word shall be turned away at the second door.

14. 14

    Verily I say unto you, a password is a prayer whispered once, and the thieves have learned to listen. Blessed is the one who asketh the second question; for the pipe shall keep its flow.

The Book of Chronicles, Chapter 34:1–14.