"Honey, you need to calm down, Leonard may be dumb but you can't keep a grudge this long"
Sheldon gives his well practiced snort of derision"Oh please, I have grudges that go back to preschool. Someday, I'm going to find a grown-up Elaine Dwyer and eat her favourite crayon while she watches."
Penny laughs and shakes her head "You and that memory of yours. Ok, it was a bad experience for you then but it was preschool so you need to give that a time based reduction."
"Yes, lower its rating based on time passed and other experiences. I've had must bigger losses and gains since then, but it did feel bad at the time"
"So, let's put aside a revenge crayon eating straight away, as I doubt she has a favourite crayon any more. Hell, she probably doesn't even remember you anymore. Could we try some other form of petty revenge to balance things out?"
"Good idea! What would a modern Elaine Dwyer hate to lose?"
"ah, slow down a minute there, remember she won't think like you. So things you'd hate losing won't affect her the same. here I'd usually suggest you sleep with her boyfriend, but that's not really an option. perhaps we could stalk her on facebook and mock all her selfies? order her a 3am taxi ? get her car towed? get her audited by the IRS ?"
"as a punishment?"
"Most people don't like it"
"really? how odd." He ponders. " no, I want her to suffer real emotional pain."
" ok, this is getting a bit dark. how about just inconvenience and confusion?"
"I need more information. come on, let's see what we can find."
He leads her into his room and locks the door then closes the blinds.
From the back of his closet he pulls a briefcase with combination locks.
"Now, I must swear you to secrecy over this, understood. Tell no one this exists"
She looks worried but nods "Ok, I swear. Not a word to anyone. "
He opens the case to show a small laptop.
he starts it up and It boots rapidly and silently.
The wallpaper is rather bold, a close up of a red ball gag in a woman's mouth, red lipstick on her lips, ball wet with saliva. Her eyes are hooded in leather
She looks at him, surprised. "Hey, is that me?"
He smiles. "This lap top may look like a pornography collectors private collection, that is the intention.
In fact, a lot of the hard drive is full of pornographic movies."
He flicks over to a movie and double clicks it. A password box pops up.
"The rest of the drive is full of encrypted data of a very different character."
"Now, if anything were to happen to me, i want you to type "goldfish" as the password, plug it into the mains and let it run. A program of my own devising will wipe it clean."
"Why goldfish?"
"Because they have a reputation for forgetting. The anecdote is incorrect but a useful mnemonic."
The laptop boots into a new O.S. , black screen with plain folders.
"This is Tails, an operating system designed to leave no traces. You've heard of the dark net?"
"Not really, just stuff on the news. It's the bad bit of the internet, right?"
"It is simply the parts of the internet that are not indexed and don't have addresses, only IP numbers. Think of them as the backstreets off the information superhighway. Bad things can happen there but so can legitimate private things."
"This uses a VPN and the TOR system to keep it anonymous as possible. I made some alterations to a work order on the servers of the phone company in Pittsburgh to create a test loop in their system, it goes through that and into a second VPN. As the old internet adage goes, it goes through seven proxies."
He plugs in power and network cables.
"So This is some serious sneaky stuff?"
You recall when I received a speeding ticket for taking you to the emergency room? And the Judges stubbornness landed me in a jail cell? That was a baptism of fire for me , it took me to some very dark places but I like to think I came through stronger."
Penny just looks at him. "What?"
He shudders "Have you ever seen a jail toilet?!"
"Ah, yeah. They're pretty grim."
"I knew I had done nothing wrong but still was looking at jail time. So I swore I would never be put in that position again. If I choose to do something I will not be caught or punished"
"So you made a computer as sneaky as a stealth bomber?"
"Over dramatic but accurate. Its armed with Vogon, Lopht and Republic of Desire hacking tools. Also it can direct the low orbit ion cannon DDOS tools and has access to a botnet if I spend a few coins."
"That sounds nasty. You haven't been doing illegal stuff have you?
"I try not to. I do not want to get caught. I keep a low profile and use different identities for everything so as not to build a reputation and get noticed. Occasionally I do feel moved to act, for example I recently released a worm that eats ransom-ware viruses."
"Like the one that shut down that hospital on the news? "
"It won't do that anymore."
"So, my White Knight, or is it White Hat for hackers? What are we after?"
"We start with Birth certificate. we know when and where she was born, and her birth name."
"That gives Social security."
"That gives address."
"From that we get Driving license."
"And Bank records"
"Bank gives us Credit cards."
"Then phone bill, records and phone number. "
"Email accounts"
"Facebook page. MySpace. Linkedin. Instagram."
"Marriage records."
"Birth records for one - no two - children"
Penny watches open mouthed as Sheldon goes through every aspect of this womans life, laying bare all her private data, balance sheets, passwords and all.
"Hmmm. That's troubling. Closure of a joint account. wonder why? ah, they have a notarised copy of a death certificate. her husband died last year."
"Accounts in the red."
"Mortgage in the red. Same with credit cards."
"Mortgage forecloses on the house."
"Change of address. care of Mr and Mrs Dwyer. Looks like she moved back in with her parents."
"Applications for personal bankruptcy. consolidation loans. Debt management."
Pennys looking horrified as the story unfolds from the numbers. "So her husband died, she got landed with a massive bill, lost her house and had to move back to her parents with the two kids?"
Sheldon's very quiet and still. "Penny. I no longer wish to inflict emotional pain on her."
"I think life beat you to it. I wish there was something we could do."
"We can help. It's not exactly legal, but we can help."
"How?"
Sheldon springs to life, shuffling files round and loading up programs. He logs into her bank and finds her records.
"Well, first we find her consolidated loans. Outstanding medical debt. Bank debt."
He logs in as a bank financial officer "Now we alter her credit history down. It's already pretty low. " He makes a few alterations "Ok, she now has bad credit. "
Penny protests "Sheldon, that'll just make it worse."
"No, trust me. Now the bank classes her as a bad investment. To get its money back, it's standard practise to sell bad debt to a debt collection agency. As she's a bad risk with no assets listed they sell at the lowest rate, 5 cents to the dollar"
He transfers her account to the outgoing debt list and waits as things process.
Then he logs out of the bank and into the debt collection agency computer
"Now we just go in and mark her debt as low to zero value and not worth chasing. That means they sell it off to someone else, in this case I know it's a spam letter mill in Houston which just sends out threatening letters, at 1 cent to the dollar."
He logs out of the debt collection computer.
"Now, Occupy Wall Street started a project called Rolling Jubilee to highlight the process of corporate debt trading. They buy up and write off peoples debts that are being traded. I just log into them, jump the Houston spammer to next on their list and magically, all her debts will vanish first thing tomorrow. Then I make a donation to the Jubilee as a thank you."
Penny watches open mouthed.
"You just vanished all of her debts? Just like that ?"
"well, traded them round to shrink them then paid them off at less than 1% of face value."
"That's just...wow."
"Can you do anything with the prison system? you see, I kind of know someone who.."
"your brother Randall?"
"you know about him? ah... you did a full background and social security check on me, didn't you"
"as soon as I knew your home town and birthday. I can't help it, I was curious about you"
"well, he has this problem."
"the taking of, making of or getting caught with methamphatamine?
"yeah, he's a sweet guy just with a lot of stupid."
"I'll need to do some research but i'll see what I can do"
A Month later Penny gets a call from her father.
"Hey honey, good news! you'll never guess who's getting out early!"
Penny gets a cold chill.
"Randalls getting out early?"
"yeah, seems the prison was suffering from overcrowding so they shunted a load of lower risk people over to a drug rehabilitation program. He just has to do a 6 week course and stay sober and he's scott free"
"that's a lucky break"
Penny looks over at Sheldon in awe, he's standing pondering an equation on his board. He turns and gives her a knowing smile.
Rolling Jubilee, an offshoot of the Occupy Wall Street movement. In 2013, Rolling Jubilee spent $400,000 to purchase $14.7 million worth of personal debt
