"2040": Chapter 4. The God Who Counts

Welcome to the world of my prognostic novel "2040" – a future that could come to pass… but absolutely should not.

You can read the previous chapter of “2040” by following the link.

Evening Munich smelled of roasted chestnuts and fresh bread.

Max stepped out of his Harmont bunker and stopped for a second, breathing in the air. The smell of the city at dusk was one of the few things that didn't irritate him. Chestnuts were sold at the S-Bahn station by an old woman in a knitted scarf, every evening, same smile for customers. Max never bought from her, didn't like hot food on the street. But the smell of burnt nuts calmed him.

He walked down Lindenstrasse toward the center, past buildings that still remembered prewar Munich. Eighteenth and nineteenth century facades, stucco work, balconies with wrought iron grilles, windows with wooden frames. Thank god they hadn't gotten to the architecture yet. Not because the authorities cared about beauty, just that restoration was expensive and tearing down old buildings caused local hysteria and tourist protests. Economics protected the past better than memory.

Max looked at these buildings and thought: they connect people to something real. To a past that can't be retroactively edited, unlike payment history under PSD5. Stone doesn't lie. It just stands.

He turned onto Sendlingerstrasse. Ahead, between modern coffee shop windows and electronics stores, rose the Asam Church, a baroque marvel of gold, marble and obsession. The Asam brothers built it in the eighteenth century as a private chapel, and it still remained private property of a family foundation. A legal anomaly. A place where the state control system stumbled over old law.

Max pushed the heavy door.

Inside it smelled of incense, wax and something ancient, the smell of time absorbed into stone. Gold hit the eyes. Max closed his eyelids for a couple of seconds, let his brain adapt, then put on tinted glasses.

Few parishioners. An old woman at the first bench, a young couple at the side chapel, a tourist with a camera. Usual evening.

Max walked to the confessional, a carved wooden booth to the left of the altar. Inside sat Father Bernard, an elderly priest with a gray beard and ironic eyes.

Max sat on the bench before the confessional grille, said quietly:

— Father, I seek forgiveness for past sins.

Bernard smirked behind the grille:

— The past is forgiven only by those who remember it. Go down, my son.

Behind the altar, in a niche between two marble apostle statues, a panel slid silently. A narrow door upholstered in velvet. Max pushed it and began descending.

The stone staircase down was steep, steps worn by centuries. The smell changed with each meter: first incense, then dampness of an old crypt, then coffee, cigar smoke, fried meat. City sounds above dissolved. Here was different acoustics, muted, as if the whole outside world remained in another dimension.

At the bottom, a sensor door. Max placed his palm on the dark glass scanner. The system beeped. The lock clicked.

The door opened.

"Asam." The underground beneath the Asam brothers' church. The only place in central Munich where state internet didn't work, only a closed mesh network through special devices. A Faraday cage. The system's blind spot.

Max entered.

Low vaulted ceilings, eighteenth century brickwork, between arches modern screens built into niches. Wooden tables, candles in old candlesticks, soft lamplight. About twenty-five people scattered around the hall. Stalkers, intermediaries, hackers, antiquarians. Nobody shouted. Half-voice dialogues, the rule of the place.

The hum of voices was tolerable, the vault acoustics dispersed sound without creating sharp peaks. Max removed his glasses, folded them into his breast pocket. Here the light was soft. He could breathe.

He walked to the far corner where a bartender stood at the counter, a former hacker about fifty with an old Anonymous logo tattoo on his forearm.

— Black coffee. Pretzel with butter and pork knuckle, Max said.

— As always, the bartender nodded.

Max sat at his usual table, corner one, back to the wall, view of the whole hall. Ex-security chief habit. He took a metal ball from his jacket's inner pocket, "security beads," and began rolling it between his fingers. Stimming. Calming.

While waiting for coffee, he listened.

Table on the right, two stalkers, man and woman:

— ...heard Liberton will announce something big. Law on payment democratization. They'll close all independent EMIs.

— Long overdue, honestly. The system tolerates alternatives only while they're small. As soon as EMIs started pulling serious money, curtain falls.

— Yeah. And then Liberty Financial International, right under Liberton. People's neobank for the people. (Laughs) Just like the digital euro, for freedom, yeah.

— Speaking of digital euro. Remember how they promised: "this won't replace cash, just an option"?

— Sure. And now try finding a place that takes paper bills. Even here they only accept cash because Bernard insisted.

— Digital euro was the prelude. They launched PSD4 through it. They said: convenient, instant, no commissions. But really, complete transparency of every cent. Straight into the Payment Integrity Graph.

— And it all started with fighting money laundering. Who's against laundering, right? And then, hop, you can't buy a ticket to another city without an "anomalous behavior" mark.

— (Laughs) Before, god saw your sins. Now, your purchases. Progress!

Max almost smiled.

Table on the left, man with intermediary, half-voice:

— I need access to Deutsche Bank archive, 2027. Internal compliance department correspondence.

— That's expensive. And dangerous. After DFT-21 they reinforced patrols there. Zone's closed tighter than before.

— How much?

— Five hundred. Euros, not digital. Cash.

— Three hundred.

— Four hundred fifty. Final word.

Pause.

— Deal.

Max noted to himself: Deutsche Bank, 2027. Same period as on Anna Kravchenko's disk. Too many coincidences.

Table in center, three people, slightly louder:

— Watched Werden's interview yesterday. Abi Werden, Werden Space Industries. Cosmic messiah.

— (Laughs) The same one who promised Mars by 2035?

— Yeah, now promises orbital financial infrastructure. "Payments beyond jurisdictions." Liberton already invested €83 billion from state funds.

— Eighty-three billion into space, and hospitals have no medicine. Genius.

— But charisma. Saw his speech at Davos? "We're building a future where money doesn't belong to states." And he's the ministry's main contractor.

— Hypocrisy is the new currency. And it's trading well. Tableby middle column, woman about forty and older man:

— ...I keep trying to understand when exactly we lost. At what moment.

— There wasn't one moment. There were five steps. First phones, we gave up geolocation for the ability to call anyone. Then payments, PSD2, fighting fraud, all logical. Then biometrics, face, fingerprints. Faster to unlock the phone, who does that hurt? Then documents into every app. And the last step, the quietest one.

— Which one?

— The right to doubt. The right to say "no." As soon as you start asking questions, the system marks you as problematic. They don't arrest you. Just quietly push you out. You lose work. Access. Rating drops.

— (Quietly) We sold ourselves. Piece by piece.

— Yes. And every time thought it was the last time.

Max listens, squeezes the metal ball. This isn't theory. This is his own life: refused to implement the system at Deutsche Bank in 2032, was marked "unreliable," lost his career.

Table by far wall, two in shadow, faces invisible, voices barely audible:

— ...Kravchenko left something. I heard from...

Voice faded. Max tensed, tried to hear the continuation, but acoustics didn't allow. He carefully turned his head, two men, hoods, faces in shadow. One writing something on an old tablet, the other smoking a thin cigar.

Kravchenko. Again. Third time this week he'd heard that name in different contexts. The race had begun.

Table closer to counter, two women, one clearly upset:

— ...and they just blocked the card. No warning. I'm at the airport, tickets bought, and suddenly "transaction declined." I call the bank, "suspicious activity." What activity?! I bought a ticket home!

— Did you file a complaint?

— Filed. A week later they unblocked it. Said: "algorithm made a mistake." But for a week I couldn't buy food, pay for hotel. Friends transferred me cash.

— And compensation?

— (Laughs bitterly) What compensation? "We apologize for the inconvenience." That's it. The system doesn't make mistakes, remember? It just "played it safe".

— Micro-harm. That's what it's called. Too small for anyone to notice. Too frequent to be coincidence.

At the bar counter the bartender jokes with a customer:

— What's your rating now?

— Six hundred fifty. Yesterday bought a book about anarchism. Minus twenty points.

Bartender laughed:

— I have no rating at all. System considers me dead since 2034.

— Jealous, damn.

— (Grins) You know the difference between god and an algorithm? God at least lets you confess before execution. Algorithm just writes "transaction declined".

Laughter. Max almost smiles.

Bartender brought the order. Max nodded.

Five minutes later a man about sixty approached his table, gray-bearded, in a dark coat. Historian from Amsterdam. Client for the 2028 UN meeting video.

— De Vries, the historian nodded.

— Sit, Max indicated the chair opposite.

Historian sat, placed a small envelope on the table. Max took a flash drive from his jacket's inner pocket, passed it across the table.

— Video intact? the historian asked.

— Forty-three minutes. Quality medium, but sound clean.

Historian counted the bills in the envelope, old euros, still paper, twenties and fifties, and passed them to Max. Two hundred fifty.

— Heard you found something serious in DFT-21, the historian said quietly.

Max froze. Didn't answer immediately.

— Rumors are inaccurate, he finally said evenly.

— Rumors are always inaccurate. But they tell the wind's direction.

Historian stood, hid the flash drive in his coat pocket.

— Be careful, De Vries. Wind direction changes fast.

He left.

Max squeezed the metal ball. Information about the disk had leaked. This was bad. Very bad.

Father Bernard sat down at the table. In his hands, two glasses of dark beer.

— You don't drink beer, Max. But I brought it anyway. Ritual matters more than content.

Max looked at him.

— Rituals are predictable. That's calming.

Bernard smirked, sat.

— You know what I admire about your control system? he began, sipping beer. It created the perfect god. All-seeing. All-knowing. Relentless. And most importantly, a god who never forgives. Only postpones punishment.

Max put the ball on the table, took coffee.

— PSD5 isn't god. It's an algorithm.

— And isn't god an algorithm? Bernard leaned forward. A set of rules. System of rewards and punishments. Difference is, the old god left room for mercy. For doubt. For miracles. Your electronic god doesn't. It's objective. And objectivity without mercy is tyranny.

Max thought. Pause.

— People created this god. Means they can destroy it.

Bernard laughed, short, without joy.

— Can. But will they? Electronic god gives the illusion of fairness. "Algorithm doesn't make mistakes." People fear freedom more than slavery. Freedom requires responsibility.

Max nodded slowly.

— Read once: if the state ordered carrying a tracker constantly, people would rebel. But every morning we put it in our pocket ourselves and call it a phone.

Bernard nodded:

— Exactly. And same with payments. If the state said: "We'll record every purchase you make," there'd be protests. But when it's packaged as "fraud protection" and "instant payment convenience," we applaud.

He drank more.

— Speaking of payments. Remember digital euro? How they launched it?

— Remember. 2029. "This won't replace cash. It's an option. Fight for European sovereignty".

— Yeah. And now try finding a place that takes paper. Even here I barely convinced owners to accept cash. Digital euro was the trigger. Through it they launched PSD4, instant payments, zero commissions, complete transparency. Everyone rejoiced. And then, bam, every transaction in the graph. Every cent under microscope.

— And it all started with fighting laundering.

— Of course. Who's against AML? Only terrorists and mafia. And ordinary citizens are for it. Not understanding that AML under PSD4 means: every payment is a behavioral metric. Device graph, geolocation, spending patterns. They called it Fraud Pattern Anomaly Detection. Sounds nice. But essentially, surveillance.

Pause.

— Don't remember who exactly, but someone smart said: "We used to search Google. Now Google searches us." Same with money. We used to use payment systems. Now they use us. As raw material. Our behavior is their product.

Max nodded:

— Surveillance capitalism.

Bernard:

— Exactly. Only here it's worse. Corporations sell data. State uses it to decide if you have the right to the economy.

Max looked at him without looking away.

— You were a banker. Gaus Stolz. Austrian bank, bankruptcy during PSD4 transition. Twenty thousand clients lost everything.

Bernard didn't flinch.

— You dig well, Max.

— Profession.

— Yes. I was Gaus Stolz. Mid-level banker. Compliance manager. I signed documents that launched account migration from PSD3 to PSD4. Thought: technical procedure. Protocol update, all by new standards. He drank beer. Only nobody told me that during transition the system would apply new risk models to old balances. Retroactive Payment Compliance. Twenty thousand accounts marked "anomalous" for operations that were legal three years ago. Frozen. Then liquidated.

— You didn't know?

— I knew the system was changing. Didn't know it would eat its own clients. Bernard ran his hand over his beard. When I understood the scale... couldn't take it. Left. Came to the church. First just to pray. Then stayed. To atone.

— Asam Church isn't yours.

— No. It belongs to a family that's kept it for over three hundred years. But I organized the underground part. By agreement.

Max nodded.

— And god? Do you believe in him?

Bernard smirked.

— Believe. Don't know what he's like. But if I imagine him... he looked around the hall, ...he's more like a pirate ship captain. First thought this when I entered this church. Seen the floor? Walls? Ceiling? Pirate bones everywhere, skulls, death symbols. The Asam brothers built this place as memento mori, reminder of death. I decided: god resembles the captain of all pirates. More merciful than people think. But asks as hard as a ship captain. "You ready? Did you do everything? Then let's move on." Ship god, basically. Even something similar written on walls here, I'll show you sometime.

Max almost smiled.

— Pirate captain. Interesting theology.

— Better than Payment Integrity Graph algorithm.

— Won't argue.

Pause. Bernard looked at Max carefully.

— You found something, didn't you? Something that changes the rules. I see it in your eyes, you carry the burden of knowledge.

Max didn't answer immediately.

— Knowledge without action is just data.

— Then act. But remember: those who destroy gods become targets themselves. Church has known this for two thousand years.

Max took the metal ball, started rolling it between his fingers again.

— Caution is my profession.

Bernard smirked, stood.

— Good luck, Max. And may the ship god help you.

He left for the counter.

The Archivist approached the table, nondescript middle-aged man in glasses, that same contact from the shadow network through whom Max was looking for Jamie.

Sat without invitation. Max usually didn't tolerate this, but Archivist was an exception.

— Jamie agreed to meet, Archivist said quietly. Tomorrow, eight in the morning. Old bookstore on Lindenstrasse. But there's a nuance.

— What?

— He's being watched too. Not closely, but noticeably. Someone from the agency checking his activity. Be careful.

— Understood.

Archivist stood but added:

— And more. Whoever sent the Kravchenko request, it's not a loner. Saw three different sources in the last week. Someone's assembling the puzzle.

He left.

Max squeezed the ball. The race had begun. He found the disk first. But others know it exists.

He climbed the stairs, exited into the church. Put on the usual "praying" mask, bowed head, hands folded. Walked to the exit.

Outside it was already dark. Streetlights turned on, soft light, not cutting the eyes. Chestnut smell still hung in the air.

Max took three steps and froze.

Drone. White capsule with Ministry of Financial Freedom logo. Hovered fifteen meters away, third floor level. Camera turned. Fixed his face.

Pattern broken. Drones don't usually patrol religious buildings. This isn't coincidence. They were waiting for him.

Max sharply turned into an alley, quickened his pace. Breathing broke, heart pounded. Remembered a phrase he once read: "Our own information is used against us with military efficiency." Every step, every transaction, every face caught by camera, all of it weapons. And aimed at him.

He dove into a residential complex service entrance, old access code worked. Passed through the inner courtyard, exited onto a parallel street. Harmont zone two blocks away. Familiar territory.

He walked fast but didn't run. Running attracts attention.

Meeting with Jamie scheduled for tomorrow. But now he wasn't sure he'd live till tomorrow.

The electronic god already knew his face.

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