Money

On the first day that money started falling from the sky I was sitting with a friend outside of Starbuck's on 3rd and Union. I remember that it was unusually hot and humid that day with oppressive low cloud, and the light seemed slightly orange, perhaps from nearby forest fires.

I had taken a sip of my latte when I saw a $10 note flutter down towards me. I looked up and saw another. I got up quickly and caught them both mid-flight. Maybe someone had dropped them from one of the balconies of the nearby high-rise condo building.

But then my friend exclaimed “Look at that!” as random pieces of paper seemed to be fluttering way up high. As they fell, I realised they were also money: some new, some crumpled and old, in \\(10 and \\)20 notes. There seemed to be a sudden shower of thousands now all at once.

We both started catching those nearby, flattening them out on the table. Other people in the street had also seen the shower of loot and were running in circles trying to catch as many as they could. We were all about to become outrageously rich.

That was how the chaos began. Day after day it rained money. After collecting and piling up as much as they could, everyone had wads of cash. But quickly the money was discarded as shopkeepers and other businesses started to refuse any cash payments. Banks would not allow deposits, businesses ground to a halt, drug dealers stopped selling drugs, and people stopped going to work.

A state of emergency was declared, soon followed by marshal law, as panicked people began looting stores and stockpiling food and consumables. Cash was now worthless. Enormous bonfires of $100 bills were burning away in gardens and parks, just to clear the ground and protect plants from being smothered.

Amid this disaster I travelled south on the light rail. As I gazed out of the window, the fluttering of bills in the sky continued, but now it had also started to rain. Damp mats of paper money lay ignored on the roofs of parked cars and in gutters. Thankfully the ticket machine at the rail station was still accepting the credits on my Orca card.

I got off at South Rainier and gazed up at the low cloud, while standing in the middle of the unusually deserted street. People were mostly hunkered down at home, but I stood there alone in the rain with my arms outstretched, feeling the damp and the occasional brush of paper against my face.

A few minutes passed like this, during which I could have been holding my breath, but then all of a sudden the sun came out.