Overhearing a conversation in his local pub started it all.
Of course, he wasn’t meant to, but the two men sounded so excited about something and he couldn’t help himself. He just happened to be sitting around the corner from them at a single table. They obviously didn’t know he was there. He turned his head slightly and found that he could hear just about everything they said, despite the fact that they were keeping their voices low. He found it rather intriguing. Whenever the word ‘molodishms’ was used, their voices would drop to nothing more than a whisper. He supposed that it was probably another bit of technobabble. They were saying that a lot of money could be made.
As a result of falling on hard times, and struggling to find the money to visit the pub for a drink or two, he was keen to follow up on it. It was obvious that these guys knew a lot about the dark web. It seemed that the particular site they were talking about was buried deep inside the darkest corner of the darkest part of the dark web. It was all very complex and he couldn’t keep up with most of the technical jargon. The only thing he was sure of was the site’s name; it was Soulpact.
That night, he sat in front of his computer and began searching. He did his best to follow some of the pointers he had picked up, but he was well into the early hours before he found it. The site opened up with the front page carrying the single word Soulpact, in dark letters on an even darker background. Despite the hour, a thrill ran through him. He clicked on it and began reading.
It was some sort of commercial site that much was clear. People weren’t able to purchase anything, only sell. There was an extremely long form that a person had to fill out and send. Although he could hardly credit what he was looking at, the purpose of it was to confirm that he would sell his soul for the princely sum of five million dollars, to be deposited into a bank account nominated by him.
He sat or a long time thinking about it. Could this be real? If it was, it would solve all his problems. He spent the next half-hour filling out the form, but he decided he would have to mull it over further, before actually sending it. He would give it a day or two, or even a week. He needed to be sure he was making the right decision, but more important still, that this was the real deal.
He was about to shut down and make his way to bed, when a thought struck him. He was having an epiphany! He suddenly realised that the site was genuine. The word he had struggled to understand was not ‘molodishms’, but politicians!
He pressed send.