THE MINER

Samantha Koo sat across the desk from her therapist. It had been months since she had started seeking psychiatric help, under the advisement of her fiancé. She had some depression issues, sleeping a lot, mood swings, general feelings of helplessness. But this was no simple case, and she was about to have an epiphany.

Dr. Oliphant was a hypnotherapist, the most sought after in his field in all of Ontario. Samantha would have searched all of Canada, perhaps even America, to solve the issues that had caused such a strain on her relationship. The truth was that she had always had these bouts with depression, but it meant nothing when she shared her life with no one. Now that she has a partner to go through life with, she understood that she needed help.

They prepared for another deep hypnosis session. She had been a “tough nut to crack”, as the French-Canadian Doctor put it. Her deepest session so far had yielded little. But the therapist felt there was more work to do concerning her twin brother who died shortly after birth. Otis succumbed to crib death at a month old. Her parents buried him and visited the grave every year on their birthday.

She closes her eyes, relaxing her mind and body. She knows the routine, feeling anxiety release, worries disappear, consciousness slipping. She breathes slowly, and at this point she wakes up an hour later not knowing what has been said.

“Did I talk about my brother again?”

“You could say this.” His accent making this sound comical; it was anything but. “Ms. Koo, have you ever heard of multiple-personality disorder?”

The shock showed on the young woman’s face, not knowing how to respond. Of course, she had heard of it. But Samantha always understood this to be a fake disorder, most likely part of a movie plot or spoiled rich girl’s ploy for attention. She was being diagnosed as a schizo?

“Please, Ms. Koo, schizophrenia and multiple-personality disorder are two completely different diseases of the mind.”

“Ok, understood. But are you sure about this?”

“I think you need many more sessions for us to be absolutely sure. When you were under, a new personality emerged. Your brother, Otis.”

Samantha politely thanked the Doctor for his opinion and left. She would never return. She went home and told no one. Otis was dead, over 25 years ago; she never even fully understood why they visited his grave until she was a teenager.

Because you were in another place, you weren’t there. The thought gave her chills. The feelings of cliché left with the thought that she could not even remember visiting her brothers grave before she was thirteen, when a friend of hers went with them. The objective observer made it impossible to disassociate. I could not be there.

Otis would have been her dad’s favorite; he clearly disliked that the daughter survived. Her mother was generally depressed after his death, constantly blaming herself. Samantha was never abused or neglected, but she lacked any sort of nurturing, she sought refuge in computers.

From an early age, computers were her life. Building consoles at eight years old, programming by twelve, mining Bitcoin by seventeen, and eventually becoming a White Hat for Canada’s biggest software company, Orion. It was at Orion where she met her fiancé, Oliver (Oli to his friends and family). She knows the world through numbers and sequences, seeing it differently than others. Perhaps her solitary upbringing was perfect for her profession, allowing her to focus on the tasks required as opposed to letting trivial feelings affect her.

This was also the perfect environment for her disorder to thrive, projects require long sleepless nights followed by days of slumber. Otis could have free reign over her during these short comas, creating a life of his own. There were times when she noticed some projects were finished while she slept, but dismissed it, rationalizing that her life was hectic and hard to keep track of.

She did not need to work, but she liked to. She had mined enough Bitcoin to retire by the age of twenty-one but elected to continue fighting the Black Hats who would prefer anarchy in a world that is crazy enough already. She was HODLing close to a hundred-thousand Bitcoins on a laptop she had locked in a safe in her parents’ cabin in BC, a nice retirement for whenever she chose to do so (even with the dip in price from 2017’s high, she was still a multi-millionaire).

She called Oli. “Are you at home?” He was. She asked if she could come over. She could. He was about to order food. “Japanese or Korean?” She was silent.

Would Otis be more Japanese or Korean? Oliver was asking if she was ok. Samantha had been quiet for a long time. He was concerned.

“Maybe I should go over there?”

“No, I’m fine. Don’t baby me.”

“I’m not babying you. I’m just concerned.”

“Shut up, faggot!” She hung up. She had heard the words come out. She was shocked. “What the fuck?!”

Was that Otis? This was getting very weird for her. She thought again about what Otis would look like now. Would he take more after their Japanese-American mother, or their Korean father? Would he have the eugenics of one race over the other or be complimentary of both. People in her family have always said she is a perfect blend of the two cultures, an ideal Asian-Canadian. But would Otis be similar?

Oliver kept calling back, but she did not answer. She wanted to hide. From what, she knew not. She sent him a text, apologizing and offering a bad explanation about a stress headache. Otis was creeping into her consciousness; that god damn French-Canadian Psychiatrist had fucked her mind up.

I used to listen to our parents, talking about how they missed me, how they loved me, but they never turned around and looked at me (you). They never realized I was here the whole time. We were both right here, but they never paid attention to either of us.

She remembered now, the visits to the grave. The adult Koos talking to their buried infant son. Samantha heard the love in their voices and wanted to escape. She was not Samantha then; she was Otis.

She remembered her dad looking at her and saying, “I wish you were Otis.” The bastard never knew love. He was born in the North, fled to the South and immigrated to Vancouver before he could be put in the military. When he was around, Otis was there absorbing these emotional blows.

She remembered her mother crying, every year around her birthday. She wanted so desperately to ease her suffering. Otis was there to watch the misery while Samantha went inside. This was their relationship. Samantha hides; Otis bears the pain.

Then she remembered something else. Something about Bitcoin. Otis was instrumental in her mining operation. She never understood why she had started mining in the first place. She had just sort of started on a whim. But now she understood that it was Otis all along.

Otis left Satoshi Nakamoto’s White Paper on her desktop in 2009; Otis built the mining rigs out of leftover gamer parts; Otis moved the cryptocurrency to cold storage before any hackers could attack; Otis made her rich.

But Otis did something else. Otis did something for other people too. Otis created the decentralized blockchain that Bitcoin runs on. He created the revolutionary concept known as Bitcoin. He programed it while Samantha slept. He used an anagram of their names as his alias (Samantha Otis Koo=Satoshi Nakamoto).

Otis sat across the room from Samantha, who was now aware that her brother’s ghost created a financial revolution through her unconscious mind. She saw what he would look like, had he survived. A little more like their dad, but also a perfect blend of cultures. She realized that she had not eaten since lunch, it being late in the evening she was feeling intense hunger pangs. Otis asked, “Shall we get some food?” Samantha gave Otis a coy look and asked, “Korean or Japanese?”