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``Forget about countries,'' he says. ``We're talking Simoleons -- the smart, hip new currency of the Metaverse.''
``Is this like E-money?'' Anne asks.
``We've been doing E-money for e-ons, ever since automated-teller machines.'' Joe says, with just the right edge of scorn.
``Nowadays we can use it to go shopping in the Metaverse. But it's still in U.S. dollars. Smart people are looking for something better.''
That was for me. I graduated college with a thousand bucks in savings. With inflation at 10% and rising, that buys a lot fewer Leinenkugels than it did a year ago.
``The government's never going to get its act together on the budget,'' Joe says. ``It can't. Inflation will just get worse. People will put their money elsewhere.''
``Inflation would have to get pretty damn high before I'd put my money into some artificial currency,'' I say.
``Hell, they're all artificial,'' Joe says. ``If you think about it, we've been doing this forever. We put our money in stocks, bonds, shares of mutual funds. Those things represent real assets -- factories, ships, bananas, software, gold, whatever. Simoleons is just a new name for those assets. You carry around a smart card and spend it just like cash. Or else you go shopping in the Metaverse and spend the money online, and the goods show up on your doorstep the next morning.''
I say, ``Who's going to fall for that?''
``Everyone,'' he says. ``For our big promo, we're going to give Simoleons away to some average Joes at the Super Bowl. We'll check in with them one, three, six months later, and people will see that this is a safe and stable place to put their money.''
``It doesn't inspire much confidence,'' I say, ``to hand the stuff out like Monopoly money.''
He's ready for this one. ``It's not a handout. It's a sweepstakes.'' And that's when he asks me to calculate how many jelly beans will fill Soldier Field.
Two hours later, I'm down at the local galaxy-class grocery store, in Bulk: a Manhattan of towering Lucite bins filled with steel-cut rolled oats, off- brand Froot Loops, sun-dried tomatoes, prefabricated s'mores, macadamias, French roasts and pignolias, all dispensed into your bag or bucket with a jerk at the handy Plexiglas guillotine. Not a human being in sight, just robot restocking machines trundling back and forth on a grid of overhead catwalks and surveillance cameras hidden in smoked-glass hemispheres. I stroll through the gleaming Lucite wonderland holding a perfect 6-in. cube improvised from duct tape and cardboard. I stagger through a glitter gulch of Gummi fauna, Boston baked beans, gobstoppers, Good & Plenty, Tart'n Tiny. Then, bingo: bulk jelly beans, premium grade. I put my cube under the spout and fill it.
Who guesses closest and earliest on the jelly beans wins the Simoleons. They've hired a Big Six accounting firm to make sure everything's done right. And since they can't actually fill the stadium with candy, I'm to come up with the Correct Answer and supply it to them and, just as important, to keep it secret.