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We’re sorry that you are not completely satisfied with the Zorrotrade app. Unfortunately, all our operators are busy at the moment. Please leave a message, including your account number and an explanation of your complaint, and we will contact you as soon as possible. Thank you.

Listen, you thieving bastards, I want my money.

I don’t care about your suspicious activity bollocks, I have burnt my entire life to the ground for this stupid bloody app and now you owe me my goddamn money. So, you can either pay up or I drop a line to the Ombudsman and tell them all about your little Projection trading. See what they make of it.

You can’t just take my money, lock me out of your app, and then expect me to roll over. I’ve been a user for years. Hell, I’ve probably invested more via this poxy little program than everyone else put together and what do I have to show for it? Eh?

You owe me.

So either give me my money or or I’ll I’ll

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Is this meant to be, like, punishment or something? I’m not a bad person, all right? Wanting to be rich doesn’t make you a bad person. Sure, most rich people are dicks, but most of them started that way. Hell, most of them got to be rich because they were dicks.

You don’t even know me. I mean, sure, I went to public school, but I got there on a scholarship, and I worked my ass off. I hid it from the other lads, of course I did, otherwise they’d have ripped the piss out of me. One time I even faked a broken leg just to get out of admitting I couldn’t afford a skiing trip. Classic.

‘Course mum and dad weren’t happy, but they’d been dirt poor their whole lives, so what did they know?

I earnt everything I got. Most of the other lads went to uni, Oxbridge and that, but not me. I had “the plan.” While the rest of them were stuck translating Plato or whatever, I would be out there earning bank.

I took my entire student loan out and got straight to shorting using your app. This was back when it had only just launched. I struggled through your first janky interface, your weird background checks, all those damn glitches, but I stuck with it because unlimited margins and deposits was pretty sweet. Made some quick cash shorting failing startups, then used that to broaden into crypto, leveraged some EM ETFS, scraped up a few pennies, then started to go long on a few obvious winners like Omni and Sparkhub for some hedging. Easy peasy.

It was good. It was working. I’d meet up with the lads and suddenly I was the one buying the good stuff. And sure, money can’t buy you love, but you’d be amazed what personal trainers, high end surgery, and hair plugs can achieve on a speccy little finance nerd.

Life was good. Bloody expensive, but good. I had a couple of close calls, sure, but something always came along. God bless Bitcoin, amirite?

So, yeah, then I got cocky and I bet against the big man himself. I shorted Dantex hard in 2020. Stupid, really, but the whole Zurich thing had wiped a bunch out of my portfolio and I got a tipoff from one of the lads, so… I went all in.

And no, I don’t blame Zorrotrade for that. But it was a bad time.

I remember I was sitting on the deck with Oli, watching the sun set in the Riviera, and I was ready to close up shop. I grabbed my phone and started messing with the settings, looking to settle up. That was when I noticed your new, “Personal Projection Short Selling” feature. It was disabled, buried under advanced lab settings and covered in disclaimers without any explanation, but it still grabbed me. I had no idea what it was and there was nothing about it online. Just that one slider with the warning: “These settings are experimental and may not function as intended. User discretion is advised.”

You really think that is enough after what you’ve done to me?

But hey, screw it, I figured I was already basically broke, what did I have to lose. I flicked it on and a new dialogue window opened with two words: “Investment Amount.” Bear in mind that at this point I barely had a pot to piss in. So I put in my last few grand. Why the hell not?

The phone pinged and a little approving tick appeared, and then it was gone. Nothing else. I carried on drinking and passed out around 4am.

Oli kicked me shoreside in “Le Brusc” the next evening. He wasn’t too impressed with the mess I had made of his guest cabin, and, let’s be honest, we didn’t really get on anyway. He dumped me at the dock with nowhere to stay and told me he’d send me a bill for the TV.

I tried calling up one of the other lads, but no-one was picking up. That was when I checked the group chat. Turns out I must have run my mouth the night before because now Oli had told everyone I was broke. Apparently, they always knew I’d “end up back in the gutter, eventually.”

I was just writing a proper response when my phone died. I’d been borrowing Oli’s charger.

Yeah, I know I’m going long with this, but tough. You can just shut up and listen.

So it turns out that stepping off a yacht, alone, in some pissant fishing dock in the arse-end of nowhere, in the middle of the night with a thousand-dollar case and a lost look on your face is a good way to get yourself mugged.

They took everything. The case, my watch, my jacket, even my shoes. But not my phone. Dunno why, it’s like they didn’t even notice it. Kicked the hell out of me, though. Talk about rock bottom…

It took a while to convince anyone to let me borrow their charger and call the British embassy. Took me even longer to get through to the embassy. They told me to go online for an emergency travel permit, and it was as I was applying for it that I saw a new email ping up from my bank app. “Deposit received.”

I opened it and got as far as “Remaining balance: One hundred thousand and eighty three pounds, twelve pence,” before I was back on Zorrotrade reading a notification:

“Congratulations! In recognition of your change in circumstances, your Personal Projection Short Sell has now been paid in full. We hope you invest again soon!”

Somehow, when I was pissed out my skull, I’d used the app to bet against myself. And come out ahead. It didn’t make any sense, but when I checked with the bank there it all was. Every penny.

Obviously you hadn’t worked the bugs out of this Projection thing yet, but that’s your problem. Not mine. It’s not like I hacked it or anything.

Still, I knew it was probably a fluke. Time to call it quits. Only, that’s the thing with money. It multiplies, especially when you’re good at finding loopholes.

Maybe I should have focused on how it worked, but the wheels were already turning. If by some bizarre twist this really was shorting against, what, my own life? I could make bank. I just needed to nudge things in a bad direction and the payout would grow…

And, no, it wasn’t fraud. I checked and there’s no regulations about it or anything, so like I said: your app, your problem.

I started with a couple of small tests. Nothing huge. I bet a thousand quid, then picked a fight with the biggest stranger I could. Eh, it cost me a tooth, but… four hundred profit. A good return, but it didn’t cover the dental bill to get it properly fixed.

I tried again, this time betting 10k before renting a car (with insurance) and crashing it into a tree at speed. That messed my leg up pretty badly and I got a faceful of glass but I also got 50k profit. That was more like it. I spent a few weeks breaking myself, and sabotaging my life, in various ways, and by the end I’d banked a cool mil.

It was just so liberating, so addictive, literally cashing in my misery into cold, hard cash. So as the sun set over the harbor I opened the app again and dug straight through to the Personal Projection Short Selling box. “Investment Amount: One million pounds.” You only live once, right? Again, the little ping and the tick. And then it was time to go for a walk.

I’d picked out the spot the day before, a cliff about an hour and a half’s walk uphill near some old monastery or whatever called Notre-Dam du Mai. It had a decent view if you’re into that kind of thing, but more importantly, it was high. Just high enough to really hurt me. Not enough to kill me. Or so I hoped, heh.

On the way I made a few phone calls. First to my parents, telling them that I never loved them and hoped they died horribly. Next I was on the group chat with the lads telling each of them just how many times I slept with their partners, even when I hadn’t. Then it was on to my socials, publicly declaring my affiliation with every messed-up ideology and psychopath I could find. I ran out of time before I could confess to robbing orphanages to buy drugs, but I think I made my point.

Then I got to the cliff. It felt much taller standing at the top. There was a surprisingly chill wind blowing across the edge, driven upwards from the sea, and that coupled with the sheerness of the drop gave me a moment of vertigo.

I hesitated. Was this really worth it?

...

I jumped.

I woke up here at l’hopital Jean-Marcel, two days later. Apparently, I was in a medically induced coma since they found me. One leg was amputated and the other is full of pins. Cracked spine in two places, ruptured spleen, six broken ribs and a cracked skull. Every second hurts.

But when I woke up, I couldn’t be happier.

I was alive, sure, but more than that I was rich, properly rich, untouchably rich. Everything was going to be okay.

Everyone crowded me when I woke up, but I just kept demanding my phone, until finally one of the nurses gave up and handed it over. I had about a thousand missed calls, but I skipped straight to Zorrotrader.

I braced myself, looked down and there it was. Almost fifty million. But… there was a tiny symbol to the left of the figure. A minus symbol. And then I saw your notice.

“Your payment has been suspended due to suspicious account activity, including potential insider trading. Official bodies have been notified. Please repay your outstanding balance or prepare for Personal Adjustment.”

That was twelve hours ago, and no matter what I do I can’t seem to get through to anybody. So, yeah, I need my money. I didn’t do anything wrong, I just… used a loophole, that’s all. You can’t blame me for playing the system. Besides, I’ve got nothing left. Nothing.

So just, give me my goddamn money!

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Oh, right. Darrien Laurel. Account number 428813.

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