A Cryptmas Carol - A Play in One Act

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Bitcoin was dead, to begin with. Not exactly dead, but it wasn’t really a thing until someone decided to make it a thing. From the dark depths of nothingness it grew, imaginarily mined from computers and making fortunes from pennies for unprepared hipsters. Jacob Marley was one of those hipsters; The Bitcoin Fortunate, Scrooge liked to call them. In life, Scrooge had been Marley’s business partner. Holding thousands of Bitcoin in the early 2010’s had made Marley a millionaire in what seemed like overnight. And what benefitted Mr. Marley also benefitted Mr. Scrooge.

But now Marley is dead, as dead as Bitcoin was to begin with. The fortune that would have been Scrooge’s is long gone, lost to a pitiful ponzi scheme and now scattered a million ways to the decentralized ether. Fortunately near the end, Scrooge had seen the error of his partner’s ways and secretly pulled some money, which he diligently invested into a well-advised combination of stocks and bonds. This crucial move when Marley was about to topple is what allows Scrooge to get by today.

Christmas is everywhere in the streets, the shops, the sweaters. The Cryptocurrency enthusiasts are wide-eyed and full of hope, assuming that this holiday season will resemble the last, with as much green in the charts as in the Christmas trees displayed in the homes of people with families. Scrooge knows the truth. That fools will continue to be fooled and anyone wishing to have a merry Christmas will be sadly mistaken, for the charts will continue to drop, until finally all hope is lost. Christmas! Humbug!

Jacob Marley was taken by a heart attack. Scrooge could never decide if his death was because of the ruinous financial blow that had been struck just days before, or simply a result of Marley’s all-pork diet. Scrooge had always insisted that this diet was a mistake, but Marley loved bacon. Scrooge thinks of Marley often, especially of his foolish mistakes. Now is one such time, as Scrooge sits in a coffee shop eavesdropping on the conversation at the table next to him.

COFFEE HIPPIE 1
I’m telling you, dude! All our patience this year is gonna pay off, but not until right before the end of the year.

COFFEE HIPPIE 2
I don’t know. I saw a video that said it might be like this for another year.

COFFEE HIPPIE 1
You don’t even know, bruh. The new highs are gonna be like 20 times the old new highs.

COFFEE HIPPIE 2
Yeah? I heard some crazy predictions that the old new old highs are gonna come back.

COFFEE HIPPIE 1
That’d suck. No, we’re gonna see new highs that make the old new highs look like new old lows.

SCROOGE
Bitcoin! Humbug!

COFFEE HIPPIE 1
Excuse me, sir? You kind of spit in my coffee.

SCROOGE
You’re talking about Bitcoin, I can tell.

COFFEE HIPPIE 2
You know about Bitcoin too?

SCROOGE
Oh yes. I know about it all. I had Bitcoin once. Or I could have. Humbug!

COFFEE HIPPIE 1
Can you give me a couple bucks so I can get a new coffee? No offense, but I’m not gonna drink the one you spit in.

SCROOGE
Always looking for a handout! Are there no lube, oil and filter change centers with complimentary coffee?

COFFEE HIPPIE 2
I think there are, but the coffee here is oraganic.

COFFEE HIPPIE 1
That’s not in the holiday spirit, sir.

SCROOGE
Christmas! Humbug!

COFFEE HIPPIE 2
He didn’t even say Christmas! And now you spit in my coffee!

COFFEE HIPPIE 1
Let’s go to Starbucks. I knew this place felt a little too townsy.

Scrooge despised Christmas, nearly as much as he loathed Bitcoin. He hated young people, and abhorred merriment. Children, forget it. So naturally, Christmas was a difficult time for him. Following his encounter with the young hippies at the coffee shop, Scrooge returned home where he could read the newspaper while staying warm by a meager fire. After a sad dinner of ramen noodles with bacon bits, though they bitterly reminded him of Marley, Scrooge donned his nightgown and shuffled off to his lonely bed chambers.

Not long after retiring, Scrooge was awakened by a strange raucous downstairs. An eerie light was emanating from under his chamber door, and a strange fog was beginning to fill the room. Frozen in fear, Scrooge gripped the blankets tightly around him, peering from beneath at the light under the door. The curious sounds grew louder, and as they approached their source was made known. Chains. The clinking and crashing of a huge weight of chains was being dragged up the stairs toward Scrooge’s bedchamber.

The door burst open, and standing in the open doorway was the ghost of Jacob Marley. Clearly dead, with sunken dark eyes and a sad smirk. The spirit hovered just off the ground, and was wrapped head to toe in heavy and thick chains, locked and shackled. As it appeared, it took the spectre great effort to move encumbered by the great chains.

SCROOGE
What are you doing here?

MARLEY
I’m here as a warning to you, Ebenezer Scrooge.

SCROOGE
What if you’re just a hallucination? Perhaps one of those coffee shop hippies dosed me with some powerful long-lasting psychedelic.

MARLEY
Perhaps, but you had better listen to my warning. If you do not change your ways, Scrooge, you will die poor and penniless, you will never find love, and your chains will make these chains of mine look like the bling of a second-rate hip hop artist.

SCROOGE
What about the chains? I don’t like them.

MARLEY
The chains represent all the foolish choices I made in my earthly life. I come to you as a penance, in hopes that my spirit may be freed into the next life. Tonight, you will be visited by three spirits.

SCROOGE
Including you?

MARLEY
No, not including me! Pay attention!

SCROOGE
When can I expect these spirits? And what will I learn from them?

MARLEY
I’m late for a support group meeting, so I must leave you. Expect the first spirit when the bell tolls one!

SCROOGE
What bell? I don’t have a bell!

MARLEY
Then set the alarm on your damn phone, or just be surprised. I swear, you try to do a guy a favor…

SCROOGE
Jacob! Jacob, come back!

***Scrooge cried and cried, but Jacob did not come back. He expected no visitations, but going to sleep after this bizarre encounter was a difficult task. Finally, under a great heaviness his eyes closed. ***

After a mere moment, Scrooge was awakened by a blasting breeze, coming through the open window of his second-story room. Odd, he had not left the window open. He jumped up angrily to close it, not at all remembering Marley’s promise of visitation by three spirits. As he stepped out into the window, a peculiar star seemed to be rushing toward him from out in the night. Before he could close the window, the star crashed through, knocking them both to the floor in quite a commotion. This star was in fact a small and bright spirit, in the form of a child.

GHOST OF CRYPTO PAST
Greetings! I am the ghost of crypto past, and my visit was foretold.

SCROOGE
Not at all what I expected, but okay. Did you say, Crytpo Past?

GHOST OF CRYPTO PAST
That is correct. I’m here to show you things from your past. Things that have been. Things that cannot be changed. Will you come with me?

Stepping up to the window ledge, the little spirit reached out its hand, gesturing for Scrooge to join it in jumping out of the window.

SCROOGE
But spirit, I haven’t the power of flight like you. I will fall, and the fence is right down there. I’ll definitely be impaled.

GHOST OF CRYPTO PAST
Stop your whining. It’s magic. Just take my hand.

SCROOGE
Alright.

So The Ghost of Crypto Past took Scrooge’s hand and together they flew out into the night. They flew out of the city, faster and faster, until they had flown into the past. Eventually they came to land just outside the window of another coffee shop. One that Scrooge remembered from a few years ago.

SCROOGE
Why have you brought me here, Spirit?

GHOST OF CRYPTO PAST
I’m really not supposed to talk that much. Just look in the window.

SCROOGE
Okay. Why… there’s me and Jacob Marley. I look so young. These last few years have aged me terribly.

GHOST OF CRYPTO PAST
Let’s listen in to their old conversation.

SCROOGE
But how? They’re inside, and we’re outside.

GHOST OF CRYPTO PAST
It’s magic, don’t ask so many questions.

In the next moment, Scrooge was transported into the coffee shop, where he could smell the aroma of the coffees and hear the conversation between his younger self and his former partner.

YOUNG SCROOGE
You’re telling me that Bitcoin has mooned?

MARLEY
That’s right, my friend!

YOUNG SCROOGE
What exactly does that mean for us?

MARLEY
Why, it means we’ll never want for anything again, my boy!

YOUNG SCROOGE
Do you have an exit strategy ready?

MARLEY
Yes, and that’s what I’d like to talk to you about.

YOUNG SCROOGE
How much do we have?

MARLEY
Millions, Ebeneezer.

YOUNG SCROOGE
So you’ve found a company to invest in?

MARLEY
Yes. It’s called Bitconnect, and it’s going to completely change our lives…

And in the next moment, Scrooge found himself back in the street outside the coffee shop from the past, accompanied once again by the childlike Ghost of Crypto Past.

SCROOGE
Why have you shown me this, Spirit? I have played this moment over in my head a thousand times, and now you have brought it back to life for me. I long to forget the pain from the Bitconnect disaster. It took everything from me. If only I had known.

GHOST OF CRYPTO PAST
We must learn to accept these mistakes of the past, for either we let them define us, or we learn from them and rise to new heights.

SCROOGE
But spirit, how can I change the past?

No sooner had Scrooge asked the question than he was back in bed, speaking to his bed sheets. He was alone again, but not for long. He laid down to go to sleep, but as soon as his head hit the pillow he heard a commotion from down in his living room. Christmas music? He stormed downstairs to find a new peculiar spirit awaiting him. This was a jolly fat man wearing shades and sitting in a green and red convertible Lamborghini. Scrooge presumed he was the second of the three spirits because there had never been an automobile in his living room before, nor was there a loading door attached to his house. Christmas music was blaring from everywhere and nowhere, like daggers in Scrooge’s ears.

GHOST OF CRYPTO PRESENT
Come in, and know me better man!

SCROOGE
You mean, come into the Lambo with you?

GHOST OF CRYPTO PRESENT
Sure, hop on in, and know me better, man!

SCROOGE
Why do you keep saying that?

GHOST OF CRYPTO PRESENT
That’s just what I say! Would you prefer “Ho Ho Ho”?

SCROOGE
No!

GHOST OF CRYPTO PRESENT
I’m the second of the three spirits whose visits were foretold tonight. I am the Ghost of Crypto Present!

SCROOGE
If you’re the Ghost of Crypto Present, how come we’re sitting in a Lambo?

GHOST OF CRYPTO PRESENT
Ahh, we mustn’t make presumptions. In this game, whenever one guy is losing his shirt, another guy is getting fitted for a tailored suit.

SCROOGE
You’re telling me there are people out there right now making money in Crypto?

GHOST OF CRYPTO PRESENT
Big time. Let’s get rolling! I have to show you a thing, but I’m hoping we’ll have time to hit up a strip club!

SCROOGE
Peculiar spirit. You’re not at all what I expected.

GHOST OF CRYPTO PRESENT
We never are. Buckle up!

SCROOGE
Um. Is that Christmas music going to be playing the whole trip?

GHOST OF CRYPTO PRESENT
Is that a problem for you? Then yes. Have some Christmas cheer, Scrooge. Be good for you.

So the Ghost of Crypto Present gunned the Lambo, and surprisingly it floated straight through the wall of the building and out into the street. Scrooge was thankful that he had taken the spirit’s advice to buckle up, or else he would surely have been thrown from the car. The Ghost of Crypto Present drives like a maniac. Finally the sexy magic Christmas car came to rest in a familiar living room for Scrooge. Several people were celebrating the Christmas holiday together, huge smiles on their faces, completely oblivious to the interdimensional Lamborghini that had just crashed into their living room.

SCROOGE
Spirit! That’s my sister Martha and her husband Barry. And their children. I can’t believe how big that one’s gotten. But I guess they do that. I used to want children of my own, but dating is just exhausting, and then Bitconnect…

GHOST OF CHRISTMAS PRESENT
Why not listen in?

SCROOGE
I’d be happy to.

BARRY
I don’t think he even celebrates Christmas anymore.

MARTHA
Oh, Barry. I’m sure he does. Just by himself somewhere. Alone.

BARRY
You invited him, right?

MARTHA
Oh, of course, I always invite him. It’s just… that thing he does has such a hold on him.

BARRY
You mean the cult?

MARTHA
I don’t think of it as a cult per say, but yes.

BARRY
Oh, that tanked.

MARTHA
What do you mean?

BARRY
That thing that he was always trying to get us to put our money into?

MARTHA
Yeah, I thought that’s what he does all the time.

BARRY
No, they turned out to be a total ponzi scheme. Everybody lost everything.

MARTHA
So did he lose everything?

BARRY
Probably.

MARTHA
God. I had no idea. So why’s he still such a proud jerk?

SCROOGE
Don’t they have anything else to talk about?

GHOST OF CHRISTMAS PRESENT
You’re missing the point, Scrooge. They care about you. They wish you were there.

SCROOGE
Okay, but for the record, I don’t like spying on people while they talk about me.

GHOST OF CRYPTO PRESENT
Well maybe if they had some nicer things to say, it would be a more pleasant experience.

SCROOGE
I can’t control what they say!

GHOST OF CRYPTO PRESENT
You don’t get it yet.

SCROOGE
Can’t we just get out of here?

GHOST OF CRYPTO PRESENT
Yeah, I’m taking you home.

SCROOGE
Good. I didn’t want to go to a strip club anyway.

GHOST OF CRYPtO PRESENT
You’re unbelievable. We’re just trying to teach you some simple lessons about growing up, letting go, opening your heart. All the usual shit. You know what, the third Spirit is gonna break you for sure, Mr. Scrooge. He’s probably a lot more of what you expected.

SCROOGE
What do you mean? I don’t know what to expect.

GHOST OF CRYPTO PRESENT
That’s a start.

So the magic Lamborghini pulled out of the living room of Scrooge’s sister and headed back toward home. It was a silent ride, with no talk of strib clubs, Christmas, or past mistakes. At some point, Scrooge dozed off and promptly awoke back in his bed again. He checked his phone for the time; only moments away from the striking of three, when the third spirit was to be expected. Scrooge was uneasy and a little afraid, but anxious to see the glimpse of the future the Spirit would show him. Three O’Clock came, and there was no spirit.

After several minutes, convinced there would be no visit, Scrooge laid his head down onto his pillow once more. Moments after he closed his eyes, Scrooge could hear a soft snarling breath only inches from his face. He could feel its hot air on his closed eyelids. Too terrified to open his eyes, Scrooge spoke with a trembling voice.

SCROOGE
Are you not the third spirit whose visit was foretold? The Ghost of Crypto Yet-To-Come, I presume?

[pause]

Spirit, I see that you do not speak. Let’s get this over with. What do you have to show me?

And in that moment Scrooge found himself no longer lying down, but standing in a space of complete darkness. A tiny shaft of light appeared and quickly grew, until a great outdoor daytime scene was illuminated. Next to Scrooge stood the terrifying spirit, easily nine feet tall, clad in heavy black and hooded into oblivion. The spirit merely gestured with a long bony hand outward, and Scrooge surveyed the scene.

People zoomed to and fro on jetpacks. Flying cars navigated the skies in an orderly fashion. Children played with holographic friends in the street.

SCROOGE
Is this the future of cryptocurrency? Perhaps I was wrong in my railing against it.

But the terrible spirit simply pointed again, and when Scrooge turned as directed, he was looking at a graveyard. It was a fancy, high-tech graveyard with robots tending the grounds, but a graveyard nonetheless.

SCROOGE
Why have you brought me here, Spirit?

But as expected, the Ghost was silent once again. He pointed even harder at a place off in the distance, as if he was indicating a single gravestone amid the hundreds.

SCROOGE
I know why I’m here, spirit. But can these things be changed, or is it too late? Am I doomed to die crochety and penniless, or can I be saved?

The Ghost of Crypto Yet-to-Come simply pointed into the distance. Scrooge fell to the feet of the robed spirit and pleaded.

SCROOGE
Please, spirit! I understand! I understand all of it! I should be thankful for what I have, and I shouldn’t blame all cryptocurrency for the actions of some con-artists. I must do better things so that my family will say better things about me, and I must use Christmas as an excuse to spend time with them once a year! I believe in the future of cryptocurrency! I will always buy when I see the lows, and I will never give up hope! Because without hope, I’m just Scrooge.

***All of a sudden, Scrooge realized he was groping and pleading to his bedroom curtains. Realizing that it had all been something of a dream, Scrooge jumped into the day with a vigor he had never felt before. ***

SCROOGE
I feel light as a feather, giddy as a teenage girl!

Scrooge leaned out his window, ignoring the falling snow and shouted to a boy on the streets below.

SCROOGE
You there, boy! What day is this? What day is today?

BOY
Check your phone, idiot!

SCROOGE
Great idea! It says it’s Christmas Day! I haven’t missed it!

Scrooge got dressed and hit the town as quickly as he could. He had to visit twenty different Starbucks before he found the Coffee Hippies from yesterday. They were not excited to see him, but after he promised not to spit in their coffees, they agreed to hear him out.

SCROOGE
Gentlemen. I’m so sorry for the way I behaved yesterday, and as a token of that apology, I’d like to buy you both a cup of coffee… every day for the rest of your lives! Not like I’m going to join you every day for coffee. I’ll just pay for them up front. We’ll work out the details. I’ve also set up diverse crypto portfolios for each of you, stocked with some of my top picks for 2019! Here are your private keys! Merry Christmas!

And Scrooge spent the entire day bouncing from business to business and from home to home, spreading his newfound generosity, hope, and Christmas cheer. He maxed out all of his credit cards, but this was of little concern to him, for Scrooge felt young again. Once his generosity had been spent for the day, he joined his sister Martha and her family for Christmas dinner, where someone probably said…

SOMEONE
God bless us, every one.

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Merry Christmas!

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