He held it up to the light. The watermark and embedded thread were both visible. It even had that new money smell.
This money was real.
He did a quick count of the bills. There were twenty in total. Two thousand dollars exactly.
He spluttered out a laugh of astonishment. He couldn’t believe this was actually happening to him. Just when he thought this night couldn’t get any stranger.
Mike’s jovial mood was interrupted when his front door swung open. He quickly stuffed the bills into his back pocket.
Mike’s wife looked at him as he stood there with the empty box in his hand.
“Where have you been?” she demanded, a look of fiery irritation painted across her face.
Mike had to think fast. He blurted out the first believable excuse that drifted into his head.
“Out drinking with the boys,” he said.
It wasn’t the best excuse he’d ever come up with, but his wife seemed to buy it. She shook her head and stormed off, muttering invective under her breath.
A devilish grin broke out on Mike’s face. He’d be in the doghouse with the wife for a day or two, but he could put up with that for two grand.
He crumpled up the box and deposited it into the trash on his way inside.
Chapter 3
Hi, my name is Tatiana. I’m a waitress and part-time model, and for the past two weeks I’ve been dating Brody from Level 1 (the cute one!!!). I have 100’s of photos and videos of us together, plus loads of explicit messages that he sent me. Call me if you’re interested. I’ll tell all for $10,000.
Two nights ago I met Fawn de Jager (swimsuit model/TV host) at a club. Long story short, she came back to my place where she did enough coke, weed and Xylox to euthanize a rhino. Totally wrecked. In my possession are dozens of incriminating photographs. They can be in your possession for the low, low price of $1,000 cash. This one-time only offer expires at 5 today. Peace.
My name is Sophie, you might have seen me as a contestant on Diva Fever (I made it thru to the second round). When I was on the show I was romantically involved with the judge Ely Swain (Ely Swine more like it). Two days after I broke it off with him, I was voted off the show. Willing to sell my story for $15,000-$20,000, depending on how graphic you want me to get with the details (I should warn you – he’s into some pretty kinky stuff).
Alice yawned until her eyes watered. She glanced up at the clock, then immediately regretted doing so. It was only 9:30 a.m. Her day had barely even begun.
Her workspace, one of the many cramped cubicles on the fifth floor of The Daily Ink building, was slightly larger than the wooden crates used to transport exotic animals by ship. With so many people in such close proximity to one another, the place was a sweaty petri dish of bacteria and airborne viruses. The floor resembled a human battery farm from above, packed with Shakespeare’s monkeys hurrying to file their copy before deadline.
Fridays always dragged the longest, but today seemed particularly tedious.
Alice struggled to summon a single ounce of enthusiasm for her work as she sifted through each of the one hundred and twelve messages left for her by readers of The Daily Ink. Each message was a variation of the same theme – a celebrity (often going by the loosest definition of the term) had allegedly engaged in illicit or immoral conduct, and it now fell on The Daily Ink to expose them as the twisted deviants that they were.
Alice’s job was to select the stories she believed would appeal most to readers, send them off to the legal department for approval, then churn out fifteen hundred of the most over the top, sensationalized words she could manufacture.
For the most part, those supplying the stories had experienced a fleeting brush with a pseudo-celebrity and were looking for a way of extending that moment for as long as possible. They were also looking for a way of profiting from this fleeting brush.
The Daily Ink may have billed themselves as a news service, but very little of what they published could actually be classified as news. Bawdy gossip was their stock-in-trade, and the main reason why anyone bothered to read it. Their mantra was “trash equals cash”, and since advertising revenue was directly linked to story views, no one was about to take any risks in overestimating the audience’s intelligence.
They had amassed a loyal readership who enjoyed nothing more than being outraged and titillated in equal measure by the actions of people they didn’t know, and in some cases had never heard of, engaging in activities that didn’t affect them.
Alice had worked at The Daily Ink for four years now, and every day devoured another small portion of her soul. She started off in an entry-level position in the hope that it would lead to something a little more substantial down the line. She naïvely believed that if she put in the hard yards and paid her dues, she would slowly but surely rise up the ranks within a couple of years, and she would be given the opportunity to tackle more serious subjects. It hadn’t quite panned out that way, mostly due to the fact that gossip and fluff made up about two thirds of The Daily Ink’s content these days.
She was like a rodent on a hamster wheel, forever expelling a lot of energy without ever really getting anywhere.
Alice opened the next message in the queue, just as a hand landed on her shoulder.
It was a hand that belonged to her boss, Dinah Gold. She knew without looking that it was Dinah standing behind her. She could tell by the firmness of the grip.
Dinah’s hand had been lost in a boating accident some years earlier, and she had been fitted with a robotic replacement. It worked just like a normal hand, but every now and then it would need recalibration. Alice felt a tune-up was long overdue; the hand was squeezing her shoulder hard and pinching down on a nerve. Numbness was rapidly setting in, shooting down the length of her right arm, all the way to the tips of her fingers.
She gritted her teeth and tried not to show any outward signs of discomfort.
“Anything worthwhile in the queue today?” Dinah said.
“Just the usual,” Alice replied. “Another Diva Fever contestant accusing Ely Swain of sexual impropriety.”
“Oh dear.” Dinah let out a small laugh. “We ought to send that man some flowers. He really is the gift that keeps on giving.”
She took her hand away, and Alice allowed herself to relax.
“By the way, how did the meeting go last night?”
“Oh ... that.”
Alice remembered that she had briefly mentioned her mysterious invitation to her coworkers a couple of days ago. Dinah was in close proximity at the time and must have overheard her.
She stopped short of divulging too much information. Pins and needles were crippling her right arm, and she didn’t want to extend Dinah’s drop-by visit any longer than necessary. Besides, there was the possibility that a story – a proper story – existed somewhere in amongst all of this. Dinah had a habit of instantly rejecting Alice’s pitches if she didn’t find them salacious enough. Alice knew she would have to be a little bit sneaky if this piece was to ever see the light of day.
“It was just something organized by this religious group,” Alice said. “They were trying to entice new members into joining their congregation.”
“I knew there had to be some sort of catch,” Dinah said, shaking her head. “You know how it goes – welcome to our flock, join us in celebrating god’s love, here’s your two thousand dollars. Now sign here to say you’ll donate twenty percent of your weekly income to our church.”
Alice nodded. “Something like that.”
“There are always strings attached, Alice,” Dinah said before she departed. “No such thing as a free lunch.”
Thursday night’s meeting lingered in Alice’s mind for the remainder of the day, and at seventeen minutes to midnight she found herself sitting on her couch with one eye on the clock, weighing up the pros and cons of each option.
A guaranteed two thousand dollars.
Or an outside chance of winning one hundred million.
&nbs
p; She held the invitation in front of her face and reviewed it for the fifty-third time, as if reading it once more would force an obvious choice to leap out at her. But this was no help. If anything, it only added to her confusion.
She still wasn’t a hundred percent convinced the offer was legitimate – although she knew the first part of it was. News had filtered back to her that several of the meeting’s attendees had elected to take the first option and had already received their two thousand dollars. Alice wasn’t broke, but she wasn’t rich either. Like most people, she could always do with the extra cash.
So that half of the deal was genuine. Did that mean the other half was, too?
She cast her mind back to the events of the previous night. She was one of the younger people in attendance. Alice was twenty-six; the majority there were in their thirties, forties or fifties. She figured she stood a better than average chance of outliving them all. She was in reasonably good health – she didn’t drink or smoke, she ate well, and she made an effort to look after herself. There was no history of serious illness in her family. Her great-grandmother lived until the age of ninety-nine, and she had a great aunt who made it to one hundred and seven. That had to count for something.
Her mother died when she was forty-eight, but that was in a car accident. Her father, to the best of her knowledge, was still alive somewhere.
Alice once had some trouble with prescription medication when she became addicted to Xylox, but that was all under control now. She’d put that brief part of her life behind her, and was confident no lasting damage had been done.
The more she thought about it, the more reasons she kept coming up with to justify choosing option number two.
She figured that she would have many more opportunities throughout her life to make a quick two thousand dollars, but the chance to make a hundred million wouldn’t come around again.
From what she was hearing, the majority of last night’s attendees were choosing to take the money upfront, putting the odds even greater in her favor.
And, if nothing else, there had to be a good story somewhere in all of this. This bizarre proposition could form the basis of a feature article for her to write. A story so strange that it could only be true. If she’d received an offer like this, there may have been others before her. It could end up becoming an ongoing series of articles. At any rate, it was better than churning out endless celebrity sex scandals and barely-disguised product placement day after day.
And unlike the majority of what she produced, this story would actually be true.
Everything compelled her to go with the second option. But something still prevented her from actually going ahead and dialing the number.
The clock ticked over to 11:51 p.m. The deadline was nine minutes away. If she didn’t make her mind up soon she’d be left with nothing.
She looked at her APhID and willed it ring.
Alice had contacted her brother Lachlan earlier in the day in the hope that he could shed some light on this unusual proposal. Lachlan was older that Alice (by two full weeks), and he was much more worldly than she was. He was always the one she looked to when she needed advice. But he was also notoriously difficult to get in touch with, and he would often disappear and reappear in her life at random intervals.
She had left a message asking him to call her back, but messages could sometimes take days to reach him.
Lachlan was a member of an underground activist network called Discordia, an infamous collective known for their anti-government and anti-corporate pranks. The majority of their stunts were fairly benign, aimed at embarrassing a corporation or exposing their unethical practices. But that all changed when one of their stunts attracted a little more attention than they bargained for.
Discordia had issued a phony (but convincing) press release, stating that the restaurant chain Aqua Bar was under investigation following allegations their meals contained traces of gorilla meat. This, the press release stated, was responsible for a recent tapeworm outbreak among its customers.
The company’s share price was sent into free fall for several hours following this announcement, with billions wiped from its share price.
While many dismissed the hoax as a fairly juvenile yet harmless prank, the regulatory body were less than impressed by what they considered illegal stock market manipulation. Aqua Bar were even less amused, and placed pressure on the police force to punish those responsible.
Aqua Bar just happened to be one of the major sponsors of the police force, and so they did as they were told.
They quickly swooped in and arrested Lukas Ormsby, one of Discordia’s founding members. He was thrown into solitary confinement, denied access to visitors and legal representation, and held without charge for months on end.
The situation quickly escalated when Discordia carried out a citizen’s arrest of their own. They staged the audacious kidnapping of Emilia Ulbricht, the twenty year old daughter of billionaire media mogul Ethan Ulbricht, whose AFX Entertainment Group was another of the force’s major sponsors. They announced they would be holding Emilia without charge in a confined space at an undisclosed location, and would allow her no contact with the outside world. In other words, she would be afforded the exact same rights that Lukas Ormsby presently had – deprived of her liberty for no discernible justification, and with no date set for release.
The two sides were now locked in an ugly stalemate. Discordia announced that the police could end this farce simply by upholding Lukas’s civil rights and releasing him from custody, and they in turn would release Emilia. The police refused, claiming this would amount to “caving in to terrorists”.
At present, the situation showed no sign of resolution. Lachlan, as well as all other members of Discordia, was considered a fugitive of the law. He faced immediate arrest, and had been forced into hiding for the past three months.
Three minutes to midnight came around, and Alice decided that Lachlan was unlikely to be calling her any time soon. A decision about the lottery had to be made, and if she couldn’t do it herself she would have to rely on the fate of the universe to do it for her.
She fished a coin out from her pocket and flipped it into the air.
Chapter 4
HE WHO DIES LAST WINS
By Alice Kato
The location: an innocuous community hall on a quiet suburban street.
The time: eight p.m. on a warm Thursday night.
In attendance: one hundred complete strangers, selected at random.
The reason: unclear.
Three days earlier, gold leaf-embossed invitations were hand-delivered to a range of civilians who, on the surface, appeared to have little in common. The details were vague, the motives unclear and, for the most part, the recipients were confused.
What they did manage to glean was that an unusual offer was being put to them: show up to the given location at the given time and collect a guaranteed two thousand dollars. In cash. Tax-free. No questions asked. No strings attached.
Little did they know that, as peculiar as this offer may have appeared, things were about to get a whole lot weirder.
Alice had only just settled in to work on her article when she heard a knock at the door.
It was late, approaching midnight. The interruption annoyed her more than it alarmed her, as it had disrupted her momentum. She was hoping to get the bulk of her story completed tonight so she could submit it to the editors by the end of the week. She had to make productive use of her time too, since she was only permitted to work on these kinds of stories after hours. The Daily Ink paid her to turn out nothing but D-grade celebrity junk stories for eight hours a day. Dinah considered anything else a waste of time.
Alice rose from her seat and looked through the door’s peep hole. There was no one out there. She opened the door a crack and peered down the hallway. It was empty.
A large brown package sat on the floor in front of the door. “Alice Kato” was scrawled across the top in black marker pen
.
She quickly gathered up the package and carried it inside.
She placed it on her dining room table and, after examining it for a minute or two, sliced through the string and brown paper wrapping with a pair of scissors.
Inside was a box. She opened the flaps at the top and found a letter.
It read:
Meet the contestants.
Congratulations! If you are reading this, you are one of the twenty-seven lucky contenders who have chosen to take part in our lottery. The sum of $100 million (plus interest) will be paid to the last surviving contestant only. Participation in this lottery is not transferable or redeemable.
Good luck!
Beneath the letter she found a stack of color photographs, similar to modeling headshots. Alice flipped through them one by one.
The first was of a thirtyish blonde woman. A mini-biography on the back identified her as Mia Gordon. It stated that Mia was a thirty-seven year old divorcée with no children who worked as a legal secretary. Her home address, work address, APhID number and more had also been supplied.
The second photograph was a man by the name of Christopher Gibson. Alice recognized him immediately – he was the heavyset wheelchair-bound gentleman she encountered the night of the meeting. Christopher was forty-one, single and unemployed.
The package contained twenty-seven profiles in total. The last one belonged to Alice.
The photograph was the one taken in the foyer prior to the meeting. Just as she suspected, it was awful. Even worse than the one on her passport, but at least that was the size of a postage stamp, and had only ever been seen by a handful of people. The one she was looking at was an unflattering eight by ten shot showing her squinting into the light. Every bump and blemish on her face had been magnified.
The flip side divulged all her personal details:
Name: Alice Olivia Kato.
Date of birth: 8 August, 2040