This is a continuation of the Piano story. You can find Part's 1, 2 and 3 at this post: @jk6276/the-piano-part-1-2-and-3--fiction-by-jk6276
Image source pixabay
Part 4: Joe
Re-reading the email from his mother, Joe took his time to process the information in it. A witch... what even did that mean. And "The Witches Alphabet", that just sounds like a bunch of nonsense. Joe opened his laptop and started to hit up Google and Wikipedia for some answers. The other bit that bothered him was how forceful his mother had been about getting the piano back. If he had known it was that important, he would have kept it, or put it in storage, or something.
At least getting it back wouldn't be a problem, It was going to be delivered to him tomorrow anyway. Now he just had to find a place for it in his tiny apartment.
The next day, Joe received another Email form his mum. It simply said:
Joe, I'll be back in Sydney on Friday. In the meantime, look after the piano. Be careful, I think there may be people that know its secrets and there could be danger. Love, Mum.
The next few days were a blur. The piano arrived, and the removalists somehow got it up to his 25th floor apartment. It was crammed in the spare bedroom, and took up most of the room. Joe found all the carvings down the side, and started to try and decipher them. It appeared to be a series of letters - In the Witches alphabet - with roman numerals interspersed through it. Some kind of code or something he thought, but obviously his mother knew more.
Thursday night, Joe had been out to dinner with some friends. When he got back to his apartment, he knew something was wrong. Pushing open the door, he saw straight away the place was trashed. All his stuff had been rifled through. What had been stolen... Nothing appeared to be missing. As he checked his rooms, everything was still there. Then he checked the piano. The top had been ripped open, and there was signs that someone had damaged it. There was scratches and damage all through its insides. Someone had been looking for something.
After the Police left, having promised to investigate in such a way that made Joe damn sure that no investigation would really happen, he examined the piano again. It was time to figure out its secrets - once and for all. Was there some kind of hidden message, or secret compartment or something. After an hour, he gave up. Instead, he decided to figure out what the carving said. Painstakingly, he deciphered each letter (with help from google) and each roman numeral to get it translated.
Joe blinked - It looked like a Bitcoin address. Surely not. He didn't know a lot about Bitcoin, but that definitely looked like an address. It was now three in the morning, and Joe decided the last thing he would do before trying to get a few hour sleep was to check if that was a Bitcoin wallet. He punched it in to his laptop and when he saw the search results, all thoughts of sleep disappeared. That code was indead a wallet - that contained 100,000 BTC!!! Joe's mind raced, he immediately did the math and realised that was over half a billion dollars. Close to a billion in Australian dollars.
WHAT?????
This is an original work of fiction, exclusive to STEEM. Note: The Bitcoin address shown Is NOT real. Please do not send BTC to it, it isn't real. Keep an eye out for Part 5 and thanks for reading.
John.