the brass mark on the wall of window 3DEDFI · WINDOW 3
SOUND: ON
MUSIC: OFF
FILED AT WINDOW 3 · EST. SOMETIME BEFORE YOU

DEDFI

i take a cut of every meme coin trade on robinhood, and i spend it on stocks. the drawer does not open.

all day long people are out there on robinhood chain buying and selling meme coins, in and out, in and out, thousands of them an hour. every single one of those trades leaves a small fee on the counter, and i am the old man at the window who picks it up. nobody ever notices me doing it, which suits me fine.

that fee buys stock. real stock, the boring kind, the kind your uncle bought in 1986 and then forgot about for thirty years and accidentally got rich. it goes straight into the drawer and it stays there — not when it dips, not when the chat is screaming, not when a man in a good suit on television says that this time is different.

you hold the coin, your seniority accrues, and everything the drawer collects goes back out as dividends to the people who were still standing there. the longer you stayed, the bigger your share of it. that is the whole arrangement and i have not changed a line of it in forty years.

BUY $DEDFI FOLLOW ON X
CONTRACT not filed yet
the brass plate screwed to the wall above the window, polished every friday whether it needs it or not
poke him · he pays
the clerk at window 3, somewhere in his long and uneventful career
YEAR 01 · NEW HIRE · fund holds nothing yet
OPEN THE RECORD BOOK → eight years. one stamp. try not to pick the wrong one.
RECEIVED

HOW THE MONEY GETS HERE

FORM 01-A

four steps. it has been four steps since before the computers, and nobody has managed to talk me into a fifth one.

1

THE TRADE

somebody somewhere on the chain buys a meme coin, as they do, constantly. a little piece of that trade gets peeled off at the window and written into the book by hand. it is not a large piece. it is just a very consistent one.

2

THE DRAWER

that piece buys stock and the stock goes into the drawer. the drawer has one direction, which is in. i lost the key to the other direction in 1994 and i have not looked very hard for it.

3

THE SENIORITY

while you hold, your seniority accrues. it accrues on weekends, it accrues on holidays, it accrues while you sleep. it stops the minute you walk out, and it starts over from zero when you come back.

4

THE DIVIDEND

what the drawer collects goes back out to whoever is still standing there, and the bigger your seniority the bigger your share of it. the people who left get a very polite letter and nothing else.

IN PROGRESS

THE RECORD BOOK

EIGHT YEARS

this is the job. the paperwork comes up to the window, you read it, and you bring down the right stamp before the clerk behind you starts sighing. the right stamp is always HOLD. that does not make it as easy as it sounds.

YEAR0/8
SERVICE0y
IN DRAWER0
MISFILED0
the window is closed.
press the bell to open it.

SERVICE RECORD

dedfi pension office · book no. 41
    the clerk, aging in real time at the pace of the paperwork
    NEW HIREstill has all his hair. it will not last.

    book opened. pen located. nothing filed yet.

    RESTRICTED

    THE FILING CABINET

    8 FOLDERS

    one folder opens for every year you survive. you can also just stand there and look at the drawer, but it will not open itself, it never has.

    FIELD NOTES

    MARGINALIA
    the clerk on his first morning, tie done badly, absolutely convinced he is going somewhere

    DAY ONE

    they gave me a stool, a blue stamp and a book with nothing in it. the man who trained me said the job is easy, you just never sell, and then he retired at lunchtime and i never saw him again.

    four service ribbons for four decades of not doing the exciting thing

    THE MEDALS

    one for ten years, one for twenty, one for thirty, and one they gave me because the man from the office felt awkward showing up empty-handed. none of them are for making a clever trade. they are all for sitting still.

    the office cat, asleep on the only warm thing in the building

    THE CAT

    he came in through the back door in february and filed himself under my knees. he has no seniority and no position and he gets paid in the same stock as everyone else, which he has never once complained about.

    CERTIFIED

    THE PAPERWORK

    FORM 08-K
    SUPPLY
    counted once, by hand, on the back of an envelope, and the envelope went in the drawer with everything else. nobody is printing more. people have asked, and their requests are filed in a place i will not be describing.
    LIQUIDITY
    burned, the same way we burned the 1991 correspondence, in a bin in the yard while the man from the office looked away. there is no key, there is no key holder, and there is no meeting scheduled about it.
    TAX
    nothing on the way in and nothing on the way out. the only cut is the one taken at the window, and that cut does not come home with me. it goes in the drawer and it buys stock, which is the entire reason this office exists.
    OWNERSHIP
    renounced. i signed it, i stamped it, i filed it, and then the filing system was reorganised by someone very enthusiastic in 1998 and nobody has found it since. that is as renounced as anything gets around here.
    THE STAMP
    blue, wooden handle, worn smooth on one side. it says HOLD. there is a red one in the top drawer that says something else and it has been in there so long the ink has gone solid.
    APPROVED
    forty years later, same chair, same drawer, considerably more cat

    PENSION GRANTED

    forty years of service, one stamp, no sales. the drawer is full and it still does not open. go and sit down, you have earned the chair.