Pay Back

Dressed in his most magnificent Centauri tuxedo, Arthur Thornton Worthheimer III stood ready to plunge to his death from the 255th story penthouse of the luxury Carlyle Towers on Serendipity.

His wealth was staggering.  His life had been one of complete wealth and power.  Presidents begged to meet him, emperors kissed his feet. As part of his charitable works, he once donated 50% of his annual income and cured space herpes.

A pillar of the interstellar elite, he enhanced his reputation by offering gifts of 1 million credits every hour. It was wildly popular and generated hordes of great publicity. No one ever believed for a moment that it was possible to hack a Galactic Bank credit card.

Only yesterday he had been the wealthiest human in the universe. He controlled the lives of trillions of people. He had all the trappings of power and prestige. Now he was just a tired, worn out, poor old man standing on a rooftop in the rain.

The officials at the Galactic Bank were very apologetic. There was nothing they could do. The money had simply vanished. All they could tell him was that at exactly 12:00:52 local time, while he was giving away the $1 million credits, an external credit card computer connected to his card. Somehow it was able to hack through their 100 year unbeaten security system and issue an order for the immediate transfer of all accounts owned by Mr Arthur Thornton Worthheimer III. Somehow it was also then able to delete all records of the transfers before unleashing a malware attack which crippled the Galactic Bank planetary grid for 16 hours.

Somehow the damn press got wind of the story and all hell broke loose. Overnight people stopped using bank cards. The galactic economy froze to a halt. Top economists predicted the recession would last 2-3 years until public confidence returned. Half the security staff at Galactic Bank were immediately fired except for the Chief Security Officer who was imprisoned as per the terms of his contract.

Because of the enormous drop in Galactic Bank stock, management immediately triggered the Substantial Harm clause of the contract signed by Artie Worthheimer when he opened his accounts. This caused all remaining assets of Mr Worthheimer to be immediately transferred to Galactic Bank in order to recoup their losses. Salivating for fees, lawyers massed on both sides in preparation for the 100 year court battle which never came.

In short, Arthur Thornton Worthheimer III was ruined. Broke. Flat on his back, out of business, busted. Cooked.

He raised his eyes to the heavens one last time to watch the Google constellation roll by. How could this have happened?  Who could have done it? But Google offered no answers.

So he jumped.

That's how it works here in the Universe. Most people live their entire lives in peace, only being treated like an enemy by their government. And others, like Mr Worthheimer, make the terrible mistake of making powerful enemies.