CHAPTER 6 - It's arugula, not ayahuasca

in Freewriters5 years ago

Previous Chapters: 1 2 3 4 5

molehill

"It's arugula, not ayahuasca," says Tullus to a concerned Stacey. "I assure you, I have no plans to mysteriously disappearing for a number of days."

"Well," says Stacey, "you did once. And you just told me..." She suddenly becomes well aware of the others in line at the buffet. She lets Tullus finish piling the arugula on his plate, then more dressing than he probably should. She follows him out of the line and towards the table. She continues in a hushed tone, "you just told me that there's an exploit in FutureCoin that could turn Mount Gox into a molehill."

"I'm pretty sure the Mt. isn't an abbreviation for mountain," says Tullus. "And the expression is 'make a mountain out of a molehill,' which is quite the opposite. It's about exaggerating as opposed to minimizing. The earliest recorded use was actually in 1548."

"I don't care about that!" says Stacey. "What is the exploit?"

"Oh the exploit?" asks Tullus.

"Yes."

"You want to know what it is?" asks Tullus.

"Yes!"

Tullus keeps walking towards the table. Puts down his salad. Sits down. Turns to her:

"I don't remember."

"What!" Stacey yells. A few people look in their direction. She notices. She gets closer to him and growls, "You're telling me you can remember the first recorded use of 'making a mountain out of a molehill...'"

"Mm hmm, it was in Nicholas Udall's translation of 'The first tome or volume of the Paraphrase of Erasmus vpon the newe testamente.'"

"But you can't remember the exploit you found in the coin you created, a coin that you discovered was copied, by the use of three URLs you remembered so clearly that you could write them down on a napkin!"

Tullus has a bite of arugula. "My dear, when you are full of as many fun facts as I am, sometimes there's not room for all the not-so-fun facts."

He makes a sour face, but eats another bite of arugula, this time with more dressing. He makes an even more sour face and pushes it away. He continues, "You have to realize, it was especially un-fun to realize I had made the mistake in the first place. I deleted the paper--or tried to some extent--and then tried to delete the realization--again, to some extent."

Stacey slumps in her chair. Jim is a bit scared to interject, but cautiously says, "Um, Tullus, is there any chance you have the exploit written down somewhere?"

"Hmm, not exactly. But it is somewhere."

Stacey perks up. Jim looks at her, questioningly.

Jim leans in close and whispers to her. "Are you excited by this prospect because you want to reveal this knowledge, ideally before it's used for nefarious purposes, or..."

Stacey hushes Jim, turns to Tullus. "Where is it?"

Tullus responds, "It's in a logg. One of the first loggs made, and thus probably in Mark Suleman's wallet."