Holy Bits

The room had the burnt smell of heated dust and ozone. Dozens, maybe hundreds, of fans clamored, keeping equipment cool. LEDs blinked as network traffic dipped and spiked. Drives spun up and down in the server room of the University of Tokyo.

“So... what’s this mean ‘no ka’?” Eric, an Australian by birth and taking a semester abroad, struggled with some “light reading,” made all the heavier because it was not in his native tongue. His book of choice was a “manga” (roughly equivalent to a graphic novel) about a character called Masato (“holy man”) fighting to prevent a woman named Rabbit from saving the world.

“It means ‘maybe’ or ‘really.’” Toshi spoke with his head buried into the innards of one of the machines. These were beyond the standard Dell or IBM PC, the wires and metal framing had more in common with the Gorgons or some Lovecraftian horror than they might with the boxes people had in their homes.

“As in ‘maybe we can fix the networking problem?’”

“No. I’m sure I’ll fix it.” Toshi stood, sweat dripping down his face, and faced Eric. “I finished installing the replacement power supply. I think we are good to test.”

Eric glanced up from his reading, surprised by Toshi’s statement. After a moment’s hesitation, he blinked, put the book down, and stared at his monitor. He rubbed his hands together in anticipation. “Ok. Why don’t you flip her on and see if she runs?”

Toshi reached to the side of the still-open computer case, flipped on the power, and pressed the on/off button. The computer’s insides whined to life: the motherboard lit up and motors controlling the drives and fans spun. The machine “beeped,” which meant the core hardware all functioned. But as the operating system came online, Eric frowned. He typed something and his frown became a grimace. “We’re still not seeing network traffic from the thing.”

Toshi sighed. “I don’t understand. We’ve tried two USB-to-ethernet adapters and three internal Wi-Fi cards. We’ve reformatted and replaced the hard drive and the motherboard, and now I’ve even swapped out the power supply. Why isn’t this working?”

Eric shrugged. “Ghost in the machine? I guess the case is cursed.”

“Cases can’t be ‘cursed.’ It doesn’t work like that.”

“Oh, and why not?”

“Boundary conditions of the universe.”

“Ha. Ha.” Eric quipped, demonstrating his proficiency in sarcasm, the international language of IT. “I’d say that it’s user error or ‘Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair,’ but we’ve been getting failures across the board. Are you sure it’s not haunted?”

He stood, stretching to loosen cramped muscles. Toshi knelt, determined to rip the case and everything inside it apart. But Eric interrupted: “Do you want to grab some food? We’ve been at this for hours, and I’m starving.”

Toshi sighed and looked down, shaking his head. “Yeah. I’m exhausted. I guess I could come back later, after dinner.”

“You mean later tonight? That’s crazy. You know, putting in all of those long hours won’t help your grades or let you earn more money. It’s not like they’ll pay you overtime.”

“I don’t fix computers for the money. I do it to solve problems.”

“If you say so.”

Toshi closed the tower and put away the tools. He grabbed his coat from the rack by the door and reached into his pocket. It was empty.

“Oh, crap. I forgot my wallet.”

Eric held the door open while Toshi put his jacket on. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll spot you.”

“No. I don’t want to owe you money.”

“Then I’ll *give* you lunch and you can buy next time.”

“No. That’s no good either.”

“Well, we need to think of something. You’ll be no good if you’re starving.”

Toshi paused for a moment. “I guess I could head back to my apartment and grab my wallet there.”

“You’re saying that’s *less* annoying than just owing me a few hundred Yen?”

Toshi glared at Eric, hesitant to admit that he was wrong.

Eric sighed, “Okay. Well then, what do you suggest?”

Toshi squinted. An idea crossed his mind. “What if I could sell you the work one of the lab computers did?”

“What do you mean, sell me the work?”

“I mean, what if I were to solve some problem and give you a token representing that amount of work?”

Eric opened the door and held it for Toshi. “I mean, I guess? But why would I need it? Is there anything I could do once I have it?”

Toshi’s mind raced, thoughts came faster than Initial D cars, “You could keep it or trade it, just like everything else you buy or sell with.”

His words grew quiet, intense “It’ll be like money, only it’s for computer output instead of something a government owns. Like coins representing bits, ‘bit coins.’ Oh, and we could make a lot of these. Make ’em common enough to use them to replace cash. And we’ll have computers keep track of them, like over the network.”

The two stepped out into the night’s rain. Eric opened an umbrella and both stood under it. “Save us from the government, huh? I didn’t think you were a crusader. Toshi ‘na ka’ Masato. Toshi may be a holy man!”

“Yeah. Like I want the world to come to me if this fails. No thanks.” Toshi fumbled, looking for a lighter and his cigarettes.

Eric stared out into the night. One beat. Two. “Well, you’re going to need to go by something. You can’t be anonymous.”

“Why not?”

Eric paused. “Well, how are you going to answer people’s questions? Say you convince a bunch of people to use this, someone will do something stupid. People always do. And they’ll need you to fix it.”

Toshi put a cigarette in his mouth. “Ha! Good point, though based on today, we might the occasional exorcism. What if we take Toshi na ka Masato and rearrange it?”

“Meaning?”

Toshi lit the white stick, sucked in, and spoke. “I’ll introduce myself as Satoshi Nakamoto.”

“Sounds good.” Eric smiled, “Now when can I use them to buy dinner?”