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Billionaire’s Tears

By Vanessa Ricci-Thode

I wake up to the sound of screaming, and know I’m going to die.

I shoot out of bed, calling for my mother. First thing I’ve spoken clearly in two days.

“Maria!” My mother bursts into my room. “Baby, what’s wrong?”

“S-sorry, Mamma,” I whisper, frantically searching for the right syllables so I don’t trip over them and give it all away. I can’t let Mamma suspect I’m dying—or how soon it’ll happen. “Nightmares.”

Mamma’s smile is sad. The world’s finally getting better, but not for everyone. For us, still struggling, it’s like it’s only getting worse. Everyone in the family has been having nightmares. But when Mamma accepts my explanation and doesn’t seem bothered by the screaming that surrounds us and has not stopped, to me, anyway, that’s when I know. I have a week tops if I’m lucky.

First symptom is brain fog, but I brushed off the disorientation as being overworked—ha, who isn’t, amirite? When the stuttering started, I was in complete denial. But the screaming. That’s the last symptom before your brain melts out through your eyes. This is it; I’m fucked.

“Get dressed, baby, you’ll be late for work.”

I smile, forced and tight and desperate to appear reassuring. Mamma clears out of the room I share with my sister—who’s at school by now—and I collapse back into bed. What am I going to do? How is this possible? There’s no point in going to work. Fuck that. But I need to get out of the house and think. I need Mamma to believe everything’s okay till I figure this out.

So I throw on some clothes and grab some toast and my bag and head out the door like it’s just another work day. I’m halfway to the bus stop when I realize I forgot my phone and run back for it.

It’s so hard to concentrate through the screaming. I almost walk into traffic twice, even with my headphones on. The music helps a little.

I’m no billionaire—ha!—but somehow I’ve caught Billionaire’s Tears. Oh sure, it’s got some proper scientific name but no one calls it that. I’m not the first person with not a penny to her name and more debt than God to get this, but it has been getting rarer.

There was a UN resolution about it or something. I don’t know. I work three jobs to help Mamma keep the lights on and the younger kids fed. I don’t have time for the news.

It was kinda hard to ignore when the plague first started. It was all anyone talked about. A plague killing off all the billionaires? Right on! Gates was the first to go, Musk and Bezos not far behind. At first everyone thought it was poisonings or something.

But then Taylor Swift got to the screaming, gave all her money to her fan club as one last thank you before she died, and then immediately recovered. Next thing you know, tycoons liquidating assets, giving shitloads of money to charity and transferring ownership of factories and whatever to the workers. Real estate robber barons participating in landback. Techbros buying up the student debt Biden didn’t get to, erasing medical debt, funding schools and building roads and museums and holy shit, right? The lotteries started up—Mamma’s been hoping to win one to get us out of poverty.

Not all of them got rid of their money to save their own ass though. JKR decided it was a liberal conspiracy to make her give her money “to the trans myth” and yeah no one was sad when the plague made her finally eat shit. But it was the Saudis who first weaponized it: transferring their assets to rivals to kill them off. It worked, until everyone caught on. Then it was just rich assholes playing whack-a-mole with each other’s money hoards.

It was the Russians who started using it on regular folks. Killing off strangers with like reverse identity theft or whatever. Get ahold of someone’s info, open an account in their name and dump enough in to save their ass and kill off whoever. No surprise they’re going after the poorest. Or American liberals. Or gay folks.

We got a trifecta: my dirt poor American liberal lesbian mom. Married to another woman until Ella (my second mom) got cancer we couldn’t pay for and died.

I sit on a bench at a bus stop and press my headphones tightly over my ears, trying not to hear the death knell screams, trying not to think about how fucked up this all is.

I got my second job to try to help Mamma pay for Mom’s cancer treatment. Got my third job to help pay for the funeral and supplement the income we lost with Mom gone. What the fuck is Mamma gonna do without me and the money I bring in?

Wait, though, if I’ve got Billionaire’s Tears, I’m technically a billionaire.

Shit, I need to find that money and burn it.

I pick up my phone that I forgot to charge last night. 12% left on the battery. Enough for me to check my bank account. Still overdrawn. Fuck. I search the location of the nearest branch and start walking, typing up a message in the Notes app as I go. I’m hot and my feet hurt and my head is killing me from all the screaming and my phone’s down to its last 5% by the time I get to the bank.

I walk through the bank doors and it’s like that thing where you come into a room and forget why you’re there. Why the fuck am I in a bank?

You’d think the screaming would be a dead giveaway but I’d managed to push it into the background while I was walking, okay? But in my dazed silence the screaming roars to the foreground of my thought. Right. I need to find a billion dollars and light it on fire.

I get to a teller. “S-S-Screaming,” I manage, tapping my own forehead and then hold out my phone with the explanation in Notes. But it’s enough and she gives me a sad look.

“Give me your account info, hun.” I do and she taps away, her face growing more pinched. “I’m so sorry, sweetie. Those bastards are getting better at this. Nothing I can find linked to your name. There’s a form you can fill out…” She pushes a paper my way. “But if you’re already hearing screaming, I don’t know if the task force will have time.” She taps a manicured turquois nail against a checkbox near the middle of the form. “Be sure to check this one off, though, okay? It’ll get your case expedited.”

I sigh, and stand there, trying not to start screaming along with what’s in my head, and I fill out the form the best I can. But my hands are shaking and the rest of me is numb while I have to read most of the questions multiple times to really get what they’re asking. Half the time I forget the info I have to give. It takes forever. The teller offers me a sad smile as she gathers my forms, and I have to clench against the scream rising in my throat.

I hurry out into the street and walk. Just walk. I can’t go home. I can’t let Mamma know. I don’t want her to worry.

Maybe I’ll just go lie under a tree in a park until I die.

I glance around the streets but I have no idea where I am. I can’t figure out if I’ve just wandered an awful long way from home, or if I’m no longer able to recognize my own neighbourhood. I guess I could use up the last of my phone’s battery to figure out where I am and find a park.

I take out my phone, spot an empty bench in a bus shelter and sit down. I stare at the phone in my hand. Why did I have it out? I stuff it into my bag and stare out around the streets.

Maybe the feds will get my application in time?

My headache is only getting worse. I’m wearing my headphones but there’s no music coming out. I take out my phone to turn the music on and—oh, right, almost out of battery.

I can’t keep this up. I need help. I need to tell someone what’s happening to me. I can’t tell anyone in the family. And all my friends are at work.

I press my hands over the headphones, pushing them hard against the side of my head like I can stuff the screams away into silence. There’s got to be someone who can help me? I take out the phone again and open up Facebook and start scrolling. Someone’s got to be home, right? I must know someone still working remote or unemployed or—

I gasp. It’s a picture posted by a friend of a friend from a party over the weekend. I forget the friend and friend of a friend’s name, but Switch is in the picture. She’s supposed to be some big deal hacker now. I think her actual name is Tara or something but everyone always knew her as Switch, and I guess that’s for the best that none of us knew her deadname back then because…

I cannot ask Switch for help. God, I was such an asshole to her.

Okay, asshole is an understatement. I was a transphobic bullying little bitch who drank in all the garbage in the news and took way too long to question it. Fuck. I’m so fucked.

But I’m already on my feet, phone in hand, moving purposefully down the street. Probably in the wrong direction. Down to 3% on the phone when I track down an approximation of Switch’s address. Or at least where she lived in high school.

I get her address on the map and put my phone in airplane mode, turning it on again only when I’m not sure where I am in my progress. For a little while, I stay on the little blue line that Google has given me. Then I suddenly find myself blocks away from my route. The phone is at 1% when I give up and hail a cab.

---

The cab lets me out where I asked, but I definitely do not see Switch’s house. I wander some more, oh joy, but at least the cabby had left the radio on and it distracted a bit from the screaming and that’s left me with about 7% more energy than I had when I left the bank. Things start to look familiar and then I spot what I’m about 89% sure is Switch’s house. Or the house she lived in in high school.

I’m up the steps and knocking on the door before I can overthink it, but I have a moment of dread (upon dread upon dread, ha) to wonder if she’s moved. If she went away to college. She’d be done by now if she did? I don’t fucking know.

And then the door opens and there she is.

I don’t get the chance to be relieved because her eyes widen, and then narrow and she hisses at me.

“Get the fuck out of here!” Switch snaps.

Waves of prickling cold wash over me. I absolutely deserved that but she’s my last chance to beat this.

“P-P-Please, I-I-I— Help.”

Her eyes widen again. “Oh shit.”

“I can p-p-p-pay.”

“Shit, are you hearing screaming?”

I nod.

“Fuck,” she hisses. She stares forward at nothing, staring right through me like I’m nothing, like she’s looking into my soul and sees steaming sewage. And she doesn’t say it, maybe she’s not even thinking it, but all I can hear is Are you even worth saving? And maybe I’m not.

“You’d better come inside.” Switch sighs.

I can’t help it and sob with relief, scrubbing my hands over my face to get my shit together.

“And put on a fucking mask,” Switch snaps.

I blink. “A m-mask?”

Switch waggles her fingers around the lower half of her face. “Yes, a fucking mask. My dad’s getting chemo right now and I don’t give a shit how much you want to pretend covid is over—”

“Oh. Oh! Right, right. No p-p-problem.”

I dig around in my bag. I have a mask for work. I should care more about germs than I do, but work stinks, honestly. It’s kinda great that the masks are versatile like that—great for when the wildfire smoke blows in right along with covering up how badly working at the recycling plant smells and stopping me from getting sick. Too bad it does fuck all for Billionaire’s Tears. I start to panic when I can’t find the mask. After all this, am I going to die on this porch because I can’t find my fucking N95? Oh, right, side pocket.

Switch steps aside and lets me in, glaring as she shuts the door and dons her own mask. They’ve got a whole box of them on a side table next to the door.

“Come on.”

I follow her deeper into the house, down into the basement. I hold back snark about basement-dwelling chuds. I need her help. Now is absolutely not the time to try banter.

Down a hall into a brightly lit room with a large desk and a collection of screens and keyboards and just I don’t know, hacker shit. Switch wheels a second desk chair over and sits down, gesturing me into the new chair. She pulls a boxy device out from under the desk and switches it on.

“HEPA unit,” she says.

“Am I-I-I-I contagious?”

“Billionaire’s Tears? They don’t know how it spreads yet, other than the money. But damn I dunno what else you might have and—”

“Your d-d-dad.”

“Right.” Switch presses her hands over her large fluff of hair. “So what even are you doing with your life if you didn’t get Billionaire’s Tears the usual way?”

I shrug. “Just w-w-work. Three jobs.”

I’m nothing but a fucking cog in the machine. And from Switch’s point of view, all I’ve ever done is cause pain. Yeah, this is a mistake. She’s never going to help me—I’m not worth saving. I should just go find somewhere quiet to die.

“So you got Billionaire’s Tears and the government task force can’t help you?”

“Too late.”

“You waited till the screaming, huh.”

I nod.

“Stupid.”

I just nod again.

“And now you need my help. Well ain’t that fuckin’ hilarious after all the shit you put me through.”

“S-s-sorry. I-I-I—”

“I don’t want to hear it. You’re a bitch but I’m not going to let you die if I actually can do something about it.”

“Thanks?”

Switch leans back in her chair and glares at me. “Give me your info. SIN, bank numbers, all of it.”

I root around in my bag some more, pulling out all my ID. The banking info is on the phone, maybe I’ve got enough charge left to get it off before the battery dies for good. Switch has my ID and is doing something on one of her screens, tapping away at the keyboard.

I get the login for my account pulled up and the screen goes black.

“FUCK!”

Switch startles and looks at me, then my phone. She sighs. Digs in a little basket on a table next to the desk and puts her hand out for the phone. I give it to her because what good is it to me now. She gets out a universal cable. My phone’s too old for that. She sighs again and digs out an adapter next, plugs it all into a power bar on the side of the desk that’s almost full.

She gets my banking info and types a bit more. With the phone working again, I start typing too, once she’s done with it. More into Notes, once I delete the message I’d typed up for the bank teller.

I was an asshole in high school. I wasn’t thinking. I know better now and I’m sorry for all the terfy shit I said.

She glances at it and snorts. Looks at me again but not glaring. “I don’t want to hear your words, don’t need fucking excuses. I want to see your actions.”

I press my lips together and stare. Given the circumstances, I haven’t got a fucking clue what actions would make up for the harm.

“You said you’d pay. How’s half a billion dollars sound?”

I shrug. Doesn’t sound real. Take whatever.

Switch rolls her eyes. I rub mine and stare at the charging phone in my hand, set it down and rub my temples.

“Headache?” Switch asks.

“From the s-s-s-screaming.”

“Ah.”

“How d-d-d-does this work?” I point at her computers.

“I’ve set up some queries to get things started. It’ll take a bit. It’s not like in the movies.”

I guess most things aren’t like the movies, but I hadn’t ever really thought about it before.

“You’ve d-d-done this b-b-b-before?” I ask.

“Nah. I’m a penetration tester. Haven’t considered the task force because you’re the first person who’s come to me for help. BT is rare. It’s even rarer in poor folks. We’ve only got like 150 billionaires left and they’re scrambling, hoping someone figures out a cure before they have to give away their fucking money.”

“A cure?”

Switch waves in disgust. “Honestly, getting rid of the money is the cure. These shitfucks don’t like that answer and are hoping for better. For you, best to just find the money and dump it.”

“Yes.” I rub my forehead like that can do anything for the pain.

“Here.” Switch digs in another crate that looks like it primarily contains wires and pulls out a set of big chunky headphones. “Noise cancelling. Might help if you play music you find soothing.”

I get the headphones set up with my phone and start playing one of the 10-hour remixes of that TikTok sea shanty thing that went viral a while back. Shut up, I like it, okay? And it’s like God just zapped the music into my brain. It almost drowns out the screaming.

I don’t know if I drifted off there or not, but I startle when Switch says my name.

“I found it,” she says. She shakes her head and lets out a low whistle. “It’s three-point-seven-two billion. So this’ll take a little more work than I thought.”

“How d-d-do you m-m-mean?”

“If it was only a billion or so, I figured taking half of it would be enough. Neither of us winds up a billionaire and your screaming stops and your brain stays in your fuckin’ head. Simple enough transfer. But with this much…” She shrugs. “What’s your fuck-you-money wishlist?”

“My what?”

“You know, if you had fuck-you money, how would you spend it? Not like on yourself. To help others?”

I shrug. “Never thought about it.”

Switch gives me side-eye. “You’re kidding.”

“I-I-I was never going to have that kind of m-m-m-money! S-s-s-seemed like an exercise in m-m-misery.”

Switch sighs again. “Look, I’m going to transfer all of it into my account and close this fake one this fucker dumped on you. I’ll put half a billion in your actual account and keep the same amount in mine, but we still need to get rid of two-point-seven-two billion.”

I rub my face, forget the mask is there and almost knock it off. These numbers do not sound real. What does two billion even mean. My insides are vibrating and spicy, as her words sink in. Half a billion dollars in my account. Half a billion for me and mamma and my brothers and sister. Holy shit. I lean forward gasping.

“Yeah… I’m still a little giddy thinking of what I’m going to do with half a billion dollars. First thing is getting Daddy that good damn chemo. But shit.”

“B-b-buy a yacht?”

“The fuck you gonna do with a yacht?”

“L-L-Let the orcas sink it?”

Switch laughs. Her head is tilted back, eyes shut, whole body shaking with it. I have never seen her laugh like this. My role in her world has always been causing misery up until now. I like her laugh. It’s high and light and wild.

She wipes at tears in the corners of her eyes and turns away from me, clackity-clacking at her keyboard again.

“I’ll probably keep working, just because I like it,” Switch says. “But maybe I don’t gotta work quite so much. What about you?”

“Already quit.”

“Right, but what’re you gonna do? Just lie around and get high all day?”

I wince and shake my head.

“You must have something you’ve always wanted to do?”

I shrug.

“You had dreams, when you were a kid, back before the future became ugly.”

“B-b-ballerina.” I wrinkle my nose. “Not anymore.”

“Right.” Switch chuckles. “Go home and think about it. I’ll get the transfers going, but it’ll take some time. I’ve got the expedited transfer codes the task force uses, but even still it’s going to take about twelve hours to complete.”

---

“Maria!”

I fly out of bed when Mamma bursts into my room. “What are you doing! You’re late for work! And Thomas called yesterday and said you didn’t show up?”

I had meant to tell Mamma what was going on, but ended up spending the rest of my day Googling what other people did to unload their billions. Then I fell asleep.

“I quit my jobs, Mamma.”

“Baby, what is wrong with you? How are we gonna make rent?”

I cross the room and take her hands. “It’s going to be okay, Mamma.”

And I realize all at once that the screaming and the stuttering are gone. I start sobbing. Mamma starts panicking. This is not how I anticipated my morning would go. But this means that the transfer worked. It means that Switch has my Billionaire’s Tears now. I’m sure she can get rid of it all without me, but I’ve done her enough harm. I need to at least lurk around her keyboard while she does it.

“I’ll explain everything when I get home, but there’s something very important I need to go do. Right now.”

Mamma protests—I’m still in yesterday’s clothes—but I head out, promising to explain and that everything really is fine. I don’t even bother with the bus. I hail a cab. Maybe we can finally buy a car? Maybe I’ll buy a limo. What sorts of cars do fancy rich people even buy?

Whatever, I don’t need to act fancy. We can talk about cars later. I need to get to Switch. I still have no idea how to get rid of two billion fucking dollars. The things all those people did at the start? It’s left fewer options here at the end of the plague. Medical debt has all been bought up and forgiven (just not before mom died, because of course), and most charities are closed to donations due to overabundance. There’s a government fund where people can pool the money and have it used for infrastructure—new roads and trains and bike lanes and housing and new schools and solar farms going up all over the goddamn place.

What’s left? I can buy everyone I know a nice house and still have too much. Things like setting up bursaries take too long to spend the money in the time Switch has left. I don’t understand how anyone ever thought they needed this much money.

I put my mask on and head in to Switch’s place, down to the basement. Switch is at her desk, her forehead leaned in her hand, elbow propped on the desk.

“You okay?” I ask.

“Brain fog already. Makes it tricky. You figure out your fuck-you money yet?”

I groan and collapse into the chair. “Even if I buy a really nice house for everyone I know that needs one, it’s still only like fifty-million at best. Shit. How does anyone spend this much?”

“They don’t.” Switch snorts. “You thought of what you’re gonna do now you don’t gotta work?”

“A bit.” I give her a nervous glance. “Ever since the school put in that little garden—you remember that thing? Back in what, eighth grade? I like things that grow. Some people gave us plants at Mom’s funeral and I’ve kept them all. Maybe I can, I dunno, grow stuff now.”

“Sure, Samwise.” Switch smiles a bit and shakes her head.

“And I dunno, they’ve got the money to fix the planet now, but they still need people to actually, you know, do it. Maybe I can go plant trees or feed manatees or whatever.”

“Yeah.” Switch nods thoughtfully and gestures to one of the screens. “Look, I brought up every GoFundMe I could. There’s only a couple thousand up right now, but if we give 500-k to all of them, that offloads a billion for us.”

“Holy shit.”

“Yeah. All these fuckers who need to unload their money or they’ll literally die, and still sex workers gotta beg for rent and my trans sisters are dying to get surgery.”

“Jesus fuckin’ Christ,” I say. “Two thousand extremely life-altering donations. Two fuckin’ thousand problems solved and we’re still not even halfway there.”

“You don’t care it’s going to trans surgeries?” She glares at me.

“No.” I’m startled by the question. But of course she doesn’t think better of me because she hasn’t seen it. Hasn’t been around for the years it took me to get my head out of my ass.

Switch crosses her arms and looks at me. “I can dump another couple hundred million by paying back favours with extras. I didn’t think it would be this hard.”

“Other people have done it.”

“Right, but I ain’t Taylor Swift with a million fans to give a thousand each to, ya know? I’m trying to make connections and find more people who aren’t afraid to take on a lot of money.”

“Afraid of even a hundred grand?”

“With all the lies and crackpot theories going around right now, there’s a lotta people afraid to have any money they don’t really need.”

“But we’ve only got so much time.” I sit back and stare. The rich fuck who did this could have just given that money away. Could have fixed two thousand problems without trying to kill anyone.

And then it hits me—the amount.

“Three-point-whatever billion is a real specific number,” I say. “I assume the fucker left himself just enough to not be a billionaire anymore. How many billionaires left had about three-point whatever?”

Switch’s eyes widen. “You wanna find the fucker who did this?”

“I think I deserve to know who tried to kill me.”

Switch is on the computer, doing more clackity magic. “You want revenge?”

“Wouldn’t you?”

Switch gives me side-eye. “Sometimes.”

And then I clench against the realization of what I’m saying. If she wanted revenge, she’d have sat here and watched my brain leak out my fucking face. What does that say about me?

“But yeah, this is different,” Switch says. “Fucker was already out there destroying the world and then went and made it personal.”

“How…” Am I really going to do this? I think about the screaming, about what kind of death I just avoided, about how I almost left Mamma and the kids with no one and nothing. Yeah, I’m doing this. Switch is watching me. “How much does a team of mercenaries cost?”

Switch cackles again. “I got no fuckin’ idea. Let’s find out.”

“They gotta call themselves Team Orca though.”

Switch and I both dissolve into ugly-crying laughter.

“All right, maybe you don’t suck that much,” Switch says, wiping tears from her eyes. “But we’re still not friends!”

I nod solemnly, wiping my own face.

“Let’s get this done.” Switch hands me a laptop while she starts a new search. “You start giving 500-k to every GoFundMe open in these tabs. I’ll hire you some assassins.”

My heartbeat speeds up and my hands go so numb I almost drop the laptop.

I give her a grin. “Let’s fucking go.”

---

Host Commentary

By Mur Lafferty

And that was Billionaire’s Tears by Vanessa Ricci-Thode. About this story, Vanessa said: “this story was inspired by the rage i think pretty much everyone is feeling right now.”

Escape Pod is a magazine that tries to bring fun stories to folks, and if not fun, then at least hopeful, and if not hopeful, then at least satisfying. The problem is, right now we’re living in a timeline where many people feel the need to write stories to process their rage, which makes for some pretty dark stories. And we get it. We’re processing our own, believe me. But we are still committed to presenting fun fiction to you, and finding Billionaire’s Tears was like receiving a present.

This story reminds me of the The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul, by Douglas Adams, where people passed around a bill to pay for a god’s power that was a “hot potato;” everyone who touched it became successful and wealthy, but the last one holding the potato had to pay the price with his head. Here, the wealth is passed around but it hurts anyone who doesn’t realize it in time.

The minor subplot about the trans hacker is not to be overlooked. The story element was not that Switch was trans, but that Maria had a lot to make up for. It was also about her apology, but she acknowledged that Switch didn’t owe her forgiveness. Apologies are important. What is ore important is knowing that apologies do not absolve you of the hurt you caused, no matter how much you want it to. Apologies are a step towards forgiveness, but rarely a jump.

While we will always be a free publication, it does cost some money to keep the lights on and the editors fueled with coffee. There are several ways to support us, but the best way is via a subscription either at Patreon or Paypal. Supporting us monthly helps us stay funded and be able to plan for the future. We will of course accept any one time donation, or any Twitch subscription, too. There are several ways to support us, and if you can’t do it with money, we’d love a review to spread the word!

Find all the donation links in our show notes at Escapepod.org or contact donations@escapeartists.net When you donate, you’re supporting Escape Artists, a 501 c 3 nonprofit with a whole admin staff, containing five magazines, each with a full editorial staff. If you’re in the US, you can probably write this off on your taxes, and you also might have an employer matching program! That’s right! Stick it to the man! Or something.

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That was our show for this week. Our quote comes from Agatha Christie who said “Where large amounts of money are concerned, it is advisable to trust no one.”

Stay safe, and stay kind. See you next week with more free science fiction!