Mailbox Money
a true story
Double Negative Dispatch Issue #88
“You gotta use AI,” my friend told me, “Avoiding it is like using a horse instead of a car.”
Apparently, it could answer any question and help with menial tasks so I could save time. So one night, I got drunk and I asked a chatbot to send me $10,000 to my home address. The chatbot said, “Sure thing!”
I laughed and went on with my night.
A week later, a check arrived in the mail. $10,000 from JP Wendell and Sons, LLC.
“Holy shit!” I exclaimed, “Maybe AI is the wave of the future!” I went online to sing the chatbot’s praises, and quickly ordered, once again, a $10,000 check right to my home address. I was finally gonna be rich.
Where was the money coming from? Does it matter? Maybe JP Wendell and Sons were investors in the success of AI, sending money to skeptical non-believers like me. “It’s definitely working,” I said from my brand new truck. “I’ll finally have enough to live on now, and I can keep up with my friends.”
Later on, I met my friend for beers. “Nice truck,” he said.
“You’ll never believe how I got it,” I told him, “I asked a chatbot for money and it sent me a check so big it made my head spin.”
He looked at me blankly, I was shocked by his lack of surprise. Then he climbed up on the table and yelled to everyone else in the bar, “Who in here asked AI for money and a check arrived at your door?”
Everyone in the bar raised their hand.
“We all do this, where have you been?” My friend said.
“Where does this money even come from?” I asked.
“Does it matter? Shut your mind off. Enjoy your new truck.”
I went home and Googled JP Wendell and Sons, LLC. It was just a bland, cookie-cutter website: “We serve our customers with integrity,” it said. But who were their customers? What would their service possibly be? There was an address at the bottom of the webpage: 12223 Perimeter Place.
Would it be a vault of money? Maybe a drug cartel’s stash house? If it had enough money to send to everyone, the business had to be a criminal or tax avoidance operation. Maybe it’s human trafficking or stealing money from seniors. Maybe they were grinding up humans and selling it as ground beef.
So I drove out to their headquarters and was greeted by a lone, strange man with a demented smile on his face.
“I’m Wendell!” the man said. “Come inside and see our operation! I promise there’s no need to worry about a thing!”
I followed him inside, and what I saw was beyond belief. Piles of pennies, quarters, change everywhere, with workers at tables counting columns of coins quicker than anything I’ve ever seen.
“You’re the first person curious enough to come here and see where the sausage gets made,” Wendell said. I knew it! They were turning people into sausages! He continued, “We gather the world’s spare change from parking lots, mall fountains, and city streets! There’s so much free money out there!”
I was confused. “What about AI?” I asked.
“You’re looking at it! It’s us!” He kept staring at me, smiling.
“What about the data centers? Certainly this isn’t all it can be?”
“This place is just for the people who ask for money, but the other warehouses are for knowledge and people’s queries!” Wendell said.
“What if people find out? What will they say?”
Wendell laughed, “Most people get what they want and move on with their day. As long as we keep providing excellent service, they are happy and our workers keep getting paid!”
“How do you make money? Is there enough spare change in the world to keep this operation going?” I asked.
“We have massive investment and many, many beneficiaries.”
“Surely this isn’t sustainable, right? Giving out money for free? Isn’t that unhealthy for society?”
Wendell said, “Can you pay your bills now?”
“Yes, but…”
“As far as we see it, bills are the number one cause of stress. Our goal is to alleviate that. Is it working to your satisfaction?”
I paused for a second. My bills were paid, and parked outside, I had the nicest truck I ever owned. With my bills out of the way I could finally live my life the way I wanted. Wendell was right, life’s friction was now gone.
So I shook his hand, walked out of the warehouse back to my truck. Suddenly, men in tactical gear came out of nowhere and surrounded me.
Turned out, Wendell was totally lying, and the whole town was a money laundering operation for the drug cartel. Everyone single person in town got arrested under the RICO act. My friend, well, turned out his real name was Jasper Pike (the JP of Wendell and Sons, LLC), and he was the biggest drug kingpin in the United States that bought a whole town and everyone seemed to be in on it but me. But since I basically stashed hundreds of thousands in drug money by falling for a fake AI chatbot website I was now an accomplice.
The good news is, in prison, there are no bills, and life’s friction is now gone.