Coffee & Crypto
Part 2
The next morning Olga can't wait to see Mahdi. She anticipates his arrival ardently. The success of his Tweet is amongst one of the 3 highlights of her year. The other two being the birth of her niece whom she's growingly becoming uninterested in because the poor girl is unnaturally loud and gross, and the insurance payout on her 2004 Toyota Camry that she had wanted to replace for the last year but couldn't find the time to do so.
“Good morning, Mr Famous. Your tweet was spot on," she laughs to herself.
He sits down cautiously, placing his shoulder bag on the ground. He looks uncertain.
“Where'd it go! Did you delete it?" Olga clicks on her phone, unable to locate the tweet.
“Which tweet?" asks Mahdi, bemused. She must've just had a coffee, he thinks to himself.
“About coffee and crypto. It was trending at one point."
“Yeah?" He's caught off guard. It seems that she's indeed talking about his tweet. He opens Twitter to find the tweet he posted yesterday has been deleted. Both of them.
Olga describes the abundance of comments that were underneath the post. He doesn't care about the post itself per se but missing out on the temporary online popularity gnaws at him.
In fact, much like his other posts and the media he shares on Twitter, it's more often than not sporadic, spontaneous and careless. Normally, he wouldn't care that the post was removed. He didn't witness the post doing well in the first place. But a part of him thinks, why not post it again and see what happens?
He tweets, again:
“drinking coffee is like crypto"
By lunchtime, the post is removed.
Mahdi can't believe it. He decides to post something else now.
He tweets:
“man twitter tweaking! stop removing my post tf"
A notification pings.
Mahdi hovers over it for a moment, unable for the life of him to make sense of steelgate_76's latest comment. “They don't want us to know about the crypto."
He's about to click the notification when another appears.
steelgate_76 leaves two more comments:
“I've been trying to tell others about our water for years but no one listens. I give up..."
“It's probably why they say ignorance is bliss."
Mahdi doesn't know what to say, to take steelgate_76's comments seriously or not.
Finally, Mahdi replies:
“Knowledge is Power. Truth is Light. Don't give up dawg"
He waits for a reply. Nothing.
Olga's irritated this morning. She can't sit still. If Mahdi didn't witness how much coffee she drinks a day he would've assumed she was battling an addiction. And as he has that thought, he realises, she is. Every day she seems to be getting older and older. Her nails tap rapidly on the wooden desk, cuticles springing out from her fingertips, dry skin in the gaps of her fingers. Her hair hasn't been combed this morning unless it's powerfully relentless. She grinds her teeth as she stares into the bright void of her screen. The darkness underneath her eyes grows black and permanent. There is a lonely tear forming in the corner of her eye. She bangs the table with a round-up fist.
“It'll be my second this morning..." mutters Olga, speaking to herself. Hunched over her desk, she looks towards Mahdi. “You don't want one, do you?"
“Nah, I'm good," replies Mahdi.
She rolls her eyes and turns back to her screen.
Thinking about steelgate_76's comment, he turns to her.
“Do you know about something called crypto and it has to do with water? Or coffee?" As Mahdi asks the question he knows there's no point. It sounds dumb. He doesn't even know what he's looking for himself. “Don't worry."
“The currency? The cryptocurrency? I know Bitcoin."
“No... I don't think so."
He turns away from Olga. There's a brief silence.
“Aargh!" shouts Olga. She jumps out of her seat.
“I'll just make that bullshit instant coffee. This place needs a coffee machine! It's bullshit. We work all day and don't have a coffee machine. Are we slaves? It's not like we make millions of dollars..." her voice trails off as she marches to the kitchen.
Mahdi opens an incognito browser and searches ‘crypto and water coffee'. The search making his lack of direction blatantly obvious. You don't even need to know what you're looking for anymore... He's not sure whether to be impressed by that or not. He selects the first Reddit forum that appears but it's blocked on his work network. He looks over to the kitchen, Olga's deep inside. He takes out his phone and searches for the same thing. He opens the first link.
r/watercontamination 4 days ago
u/MagicMinka0 asked:
“How does crypto react to coffee?"
YourMumsDada: “it doesn't react well LOL cause crypto is just a parasite, you'll be shitting your guts"
Bonitoflakes0nline: “crypto being cryptosporidium"
YourMumsDada: “obviously derp"
Ghoulhunter07: “just in case people don't know, you don't have to be a dick"
BlackcrackerJack: “^"
YourMumsDada: “if people don't know they wouldn't be here would they genius. Go hunt some ghouls sweetheart"
Mahdi sees that the latest comments are recent. Cryptosporidium, he reads it aloud. He smiles too.
Mahdi_Mohamed: “I didn't know so thanks @bonitoflakes0nline, actually someone mentioned a $20 coffee at Celeste Café in Carlton that uses water from New Zealand that I think might not have crypto. My colleague at the Taxation Office told me she felt amazing after her coffee, no stomach issues etc."
bonitoflakes0nline: “is your name actually mahdi mohamed?"
Mahdi_Mohamed: “Yes"
YourMumsDada: “dumb for not knowing, even dumber for the latter. Free you homeboy"
bonitoflakes0nline: “and you work at the taxation office?"
Mahdi_Mohamed: “Yes"
bonitoflakes0nline: “and that story is 100% true?"
Mahdi_Mohamed: “Yes? Why would I make it up?"
bonitoflakes0nline: “is this your first time exposing government secrets?"
Mahdi_Mohamed: “Government secrets?"
YourMumsDada: “my nigga good luck"
BlackcrackerJack: “L"
bonitoflakes0nline: “i would advise you to delete your account"
Mahdi stares at the Reddit forum on his phone. He doesn't know what to do first. He looks around the empty office. Not a person in sight. This is what coronavirus did, he thinks to himself. He searches cryptosporidium on Google first.
He scrolls past all the medical journals and government health websites until he finds his trusted Wikipedia, a lot deeper than usual. He opens the Cryptosporidium page. The first paragraph reads:
Cryptosporidium, sometimes called crypto, is an apicomplexan genus of alveolates which are parasites that can cause a respiratory and gastrointestinal illness (cryptosporidiosis) that primarily involves watery diarrhea (intestinal cryptosporidiosis), sometimes with a persistent cough (respiratory cryptosporidiosis).
He opens up a new tab. How to delete a Reddit account.
Just in case.
Although he deleted the account, he knows it can't be that serious. Coincidentally deleted Twitter posts, okay, there must be a flagged word or combination there, or someone could even be reporting the posts. It could be steelgate_76 for all he knows! Dooming comments from retired men with nothing better to do with usernames like YourMumsDada foreshadowing his mysterious demise on a random forum. That is the bored crevices of society. He decides to pay it no heed.
Olga arrives after him this morning and sits down. She's not unhinged as usual, rather she's vexed.
“Would you believe the café is closed? Permanently! Forever! I tried to get my coffee after work, the $20 one, remember, and it's closed. Apparently for good!" She sighs, looks up at the office ceiling, falls back into her chair, and sinks deep, her body almost entirely below desk level.
Mahdi turns away from her. He turns back.
“You know, I read that Melbourne water has traces of a parasite that gives us diarrhea. That café used water from New Zealand, right?"
“Hey Mahdi, that's gross, come on. I know I'm nice to you and all but I'm still your Team Leader. Show some respect. I don't want to hear any of that, okay? Get ready for some training. I'll show you how to create admin accounts today."
“No, listen. I think that's why it made you feel good. The café used fresh water but our water has this parasite called crypto."
“Stop it okay! Diarrhea in the water? What the hell are you saying? I've been too laid back with you. This always happens. I'm nice to a newbie and they think ah, ah, Olga's cool but then what happens? They always become like this..."
He tunes her out, angered that he tried to have a decent conversation with her. What did he expect?
Mahdi waits all morning for an opportunity. Olga gets up to take a call in an empty meeting room.
He takes out his phone and tweets:
“boss is mad cause she got parasites that don't rock with coffee, is that my fault? drink some fresh water you pagan"
Mahdi's getting ready for bed.
steelgate_76 leaves a new comment under Mahdi's latest post days. The original post to which steelgate_76 is replying to has since been deleted, and Mahdi knows his previous words of encouragement reached him. He knows this now because of steelgate_76's comment:
“You're right. Mankind must seek truth or else what's the point? Thank you, Mahdi."
steelgate_76's comment was left under Mahdi's latest tweet:
“G for Gaddafi"
Mahdi feels a childish joy from the comment, like the beginning of a friendship.
He replies:
“anytime partner"
steelgate_76 replies instantly: “We should catch up sometime?"
Mahdi hesitates for a long time, after all, this is a stranger, nor does he know a single thing about steelgate_76. Is he a man or woman? Comrade or spy? Black or Asian? The profile picture is a statue of Medusa, from Greek mythology, a woman with venomous snakes in place of hair. The profile banner is of the snowy mountain tops of Khan Tengri in Kazakhstan. The profile name is Zero. And most importantly, this feeling of camaraderie is fleeting. Mahdi will lock his phone and after a few minutes, it'll be gone. But he rationalises to himself that if it's convenient, and not burdensome, it can't hurt to meet.
Mahdi replies:
“yeah why not, I'll be at state library after work round 6?"
There's no reply.
Mahdi lies on his right side in his single bed, his feet hanging off the edge beyond the bed frame. The room is pitch black except for the dim light on his face from his phone. He scrolls on Instagram for a bit, checks Snapchat too, although he has no notifications, and goes as far as refreshing his email. It's 11:17pm. He has an alarm set for 6am. There is still no reply from steelgate_76.
He locks his phone and goes to sleep.