Congratulations on Taking That Magical Hobo's Advice!

He’ll be rummaging in some dumpsters outside of your stock exchange, which is a socially acceptable means of getting what people refer to as a “power lunch” in this economy, when you first meet him. You’ll see him closing in on a hot dog and you’ll have a roll of quarters ready in your hand so that you can sock him one good and claim your reward, but when he sees your eyes and the violence in them he’ll just smile a toothless grin and say “No worries, son. I’m only here for the puddin’.”

You’ll laugh out loud because that’s what you do in awkward social situations and he’ll laugh back even harder.

“You’se a good kid. I’ll give ya that there German cock for some o’ them quaties.” You’ll look at him skeptically. Negotiation, after all, is the bastion of the weak, negotiation with the homeless doubly so. He’ll spot your hesitation and, seeing an opening, present a counteroffer. “Give you some advice, too. A real pager turn.”

His folksie nonsense will sound about right to you and you’ll acquiesce, tossing him the roll of quarters. He’ll nod, pull one off the roll and bite it with his gums as if to test the nickel. You’ll wince, thinking of the places that quarter has been.

He’ll smile his big toothless grin at you and say, in his trademark folksie fashion, “Buy you’m some o’ them there bio techies, one o’ the ones in genetic member nearing. It’ll work you out real good.”

You’ll smile a big white toothed grin and say “Thank you, magical homeless man.” Then he’ll nod in response and his huge black friend will grab you from behind and run you into the ally. Then the magical homeless man will punch you in the face repeatedly with the quarters. He’ll be surprisingly strong and you’ll lose consciousness quickly.

The next two hours will consist of scattered bouts of agony as you come to and find yourself being raped in turn by the homeless man and his large African companion. When the two finally finish and abandon your prone body to the elements you’ll rest, gather your strength, devour the hot dog they discard on your body and drag yourself back into the stock market. Once inside you’ll buy around fifty thousand dollars of stock in a genetic engineering firm. In the hour and a half before closing the stock will skyrocket due to a late day bidding war between two larger firms interested in buying them out. The money you’ll make in that short time will more than cover your medical bills, and the money to come will one day still your ire and keep you from seeking revenging on that magical, advice giving, rape happy hobo who had a key part in forming the cornerstone of the investment empire that will become a major part of your life.

Congratulations on Taking That Magical Hobo’s Advice!

Congratulations on Solving the Sudoku Puzzle!

You’re going to awake on Thursday night to the buzzing of flourescent lights with no idea where you are and no memory of how you got there. This will be a little unusual. Usually this doesn’t happen until Friday morning and usually you wake up outdoors. This time you’ll be in a windowless concrete room with a pair of what appear to be two-way mirrors affixed to opposite sides. A door will be set in one of the remaining walls and a table with a small book of sudoku puzzles will be sitting at its center.

You’ll swab the inside of your mouth with your tongue but, oddly enough, you won’t taste the residue of alcohol. Instead it will be the terrible sobering flavor of your own flesh. You’ll walk around, testing the door and knocking on the glass for around a minute and a half before a voice booms at you through an unseen speaker.

“Hello, Marcus.” It will be unrecognizable and sexless, filtered mechanically in order to render it inscrutable.

“That’s not my name,” you’ll say, absently toying with the sudoku book. The voice will laugh in response, a terrible rasping sound.

“Let’s not play games, Marcus. I have something important to you.”

As the voice finishes the lights will come up behind one of the two-way mirrors and you’ll see your twin brother Mark there, bound and gagged, suspended over a pit of hyenas. He’ll be in his gym clothes, blood still staining his face from his capture.

“Fuck,” you’ll say, exasperated.

“I’m afraid more than just the American economy will be stripped to the bone if you don’t play along,” the voice will quip. “You’ll follow my directions precisely unless you want to see your precious brother Stephen tossed to the dogs the way you tossed the American citizenry to them.”

You’ll shake your head at the still-concealed two-way mirror. “I’m Steve,” you’ll shout. “That’s Mark! Are you retarded or something?” The voice will laugh again.

“Don’t play games with me, Marcus,” the voice will say, bemusement creeping through the filter. The chain holding your brother will jolt and drop him half a foot, which will get the attention of the waiting hyenas. They’ll all look up suddenly, as if your brother’s calves were the only thing in the world that mattered.

You’ll sigh. “What do you want from me?” you’ll shout at your captor. This will elicit another unsettling bout of laughter, which will by now have become more grating than chilling.

“I want you to solve a puzzle for me, Marucs. If not the one you made.” The voice will be referring to your brother’s prominent position in Lehman Brothers prior to the recent economic collapse. “Pick up the book and turn to page one-seventy-three.”

You’ll grudgingly acquiesce and turn to page 173. The top of the page will read “expert level” and, from the look of things it’ll be quite a doozy. “You want me to solve a sudoku puzzle?” you’ll shout.

The voice will elaborate. “I want you to prove you can work towards making something right, even if it seems impossible. Better act quickly. Your brother’s life depends on it.”

The other two way mirror will light up and a man in an Eyes Wide Shut style mask will be revealed sitting behind a table with an alarm clock in front of him. At least you’ll think it’s a man. They’ll be wearing a form fitting black leotard, but you won’t be able to tell through the mirror if your apparent captor has tits. You don’t want to be sexist, and you find the possibility a little arousing, so you’ll think of your faceless antagonist as a woman as you begrudgingly pick up the puzzle book and get to work.

No doubt your brother would have had a lot of trouble. Despite, or perhaps because of, his success in the business world he was never much of a problem solver. You, though, you’re an unemployable liberal arts student who double majored in Philosophy and English lit. You spend most of your time playing video games and, of course, solving sudoku puzzles in coffee shops where cute girls work.

You’re largely unemployable in the current American market, mostly because you’re a bright young person with everything to offer and not a qualification to your name. You wouldn’t even be able to survive if Mark didn’t give you a hefty allowance from his various private accounts, largely out of a sense of guilt for hogging all the attention when you were kids. But you’re great at sitting down and figuring out systems and then solving problems within them.

You’ll have the “expert” puzzle done in around fifteen minutes. You’ll do a few others, just to kill time and convince the masked figure that you might actually be Mark before you push the finished puzzle up against the two way mirror where your captor will have been sitting pacifically for the last forty five minutes.

They’ll get up, examine the solved puzzle, nod approvingly and then turn off all the lights again. After about fifteen minutes of silence you’ll hear the latch on the door turn and you’ll stumble out to find your brother, still bloody from his previous beating, laying unconscious in a long hallway lined with steel doors. They’ll all look pretty much identical, except for one at the end labeled “exit.”

You’ll heave one last sigh and pick your brother up, carrying him from the warehouse district to the nearest police station where you’ll report the incident. On the whole it’ll be a really big boon for you, since your brother will be so happy to be alive that he’ll double you allowance. If only you had something useful to do with that money it might make your life more fulfilling. Oh well.

Congratulations on Solving the Sudoku Puzzle!

Congratulations on Evading Those Crafty Nigerians!

Almost a decade ago you were a prominent member of the Nigerian Secret Service, meaning you killed people with a machete but you did it in a quiet way so no one ever really knew exactly what you’d done or gotten away with. But after several new governments your land has been trying to track you down.

They want you to stand trial for war crimes, a preposterous claim since all your actions were mandatated by the government of the time and the few that weren’t were simply minor boo-boos, the result of miscommunication more than anything else.

But try telling that to a room full of rape victims and their families in the Hague. So you’ve been laying low in the last place anyone is ever likely to look: Tucson, Arizona. The only way the Nigerian government’s law enforcement bodies, with their shoestring budgets and resources stretched wafer thin, can expect to find you is by sending out mass emails claiming that people have won various prizes.

They then viciously beat these people until they determine that they are not you and let them go with their purses substantially lightened. It’s a subtle tactic, one you’ve been able to deal with for the most part.

But lately the Nigerians have been getting trickier and trickier. They’ve been watching the aliases you’re known to use and they’ve been plucking various realistic interests from them to seed their probing spam.

You’re so numb to it by now and so fucking lonely from living in Tucson that when you see a piece of mail that even vaguely relates to your life you’ll click it without thinking. Hence the fact that you’ll be drawn in by their latest mail “Fabulous aword, computer user!”

The fact that it referred to you as a computer user and that you were using a computer made it seem trustworthy, or prescient and therefore akin to some sort of god and worthy of your respect.

When you click it you’ll see that it asks for your bank account information so that it can arrange a meeting in a Dutch airport where you will then be transported to an area in Liberia where your “aword” for being a computer user will then be processed and completed in your presence, for maximum trustworthiness.

That’s when you’ll catch yourself. Amidst their promises of fabulous three million pound prizes you’ll notice a flaw: award isn’t spelled aword.

You’ll cluck your tongue and shake your finger at your adversaries, smiling at the game of cat and mouse that your life has become. You’ll give a brief salute to the men and women who have taken over your old job, that is to say the work of finding men like you.

Then you’ll log on to Lolcats and spend the next two hours staring at memes and sending people e-cards until your wife forces you to go for a walk in the searing Tucson heat.

Congratulations on Evading Those Crafty Nigerians!