Chapter 3

Cari pushed through the heavy glass doors of the university cafeteria.

Her stomach cramped with sharp hunger pains. The smell of grilled cheese burgers filled the air, making her mouth water.

She walked over to a self-service reloading machine against the wall.

She dug into her pocket and pulled out the original owner's campus card. The edges of the plastic were worn and peeling.

Cari slid the card into the slot. The screen prompted her to enter a reload amount.

Out of pure habit from her past life, she typed in the number one hundred.

The moment her finger hit the green confirm button, the machine let out a piercing, high-pitched red alarm.

The screen flashed violently.

The cashier, who had been dozing on a stool nearby, jerked awake. His eyes went wide with panic as he looked at Cari.

Two large campus security guards sprinted across the cafeteria.

Their hands rested heavily on the batons at their belts. They looked at Cari like she was holding a bomb.

The students waiting in line backed away quickly, staring at her in fear.

"Step away from the machine!" one of the guards yelled. "Are you trying to hack the financial grid?"

Cari raised both her hands in the air, her heart pounding against her ribs.

"I just wanted to put a hundred dollars on my card to buy lunch," she said, her voice tight.

The cashier sucked in a sharp breath.

"A hundred dollars?" the cashier screamed. "A hundred dollars could buy a massive luxury estate in Beverly Hills!"

Cari felt like she had been hit by a truck.

She stood frozen. The blood drained from her face. A wild, impossible thought struck her, but she immediately pushed it away. "Ten thousand times? That's completely absurd... But if it's true... then my savings?" She backed away from the machine, her hands shaking as she pulled out her phone. She needed proof. She had to verify this insane theory before she lost her mind. As she stared at the screen, all the absurd pieces of information finally snapped together in her brain. The prices and the value of money in this world had been compressed by exactly ten thousand times.

While the guards checked the machine for a system error, Cari grabbed her card from the slot.

She turned and ran out of the cafeteria as fast as her legs could carry her.

She did not stop until she reached a secluded wooden bench by the campus lake.

Her chest heaved. She gasped for air, her fingers shaking as she pulled her cracked phone from her pocket.

She took a deep breath to steady her racing heart and tapped the familiar Bank of America app icon.

The facial recognition scanned her features.

The screen loaded, displaying the original owner's account balance in bold black numbers.

$854,000.00.

Cari stared at the number. Her eyes burned.

In this world, that balance gave her the purchasing power of eight and a half billion dollars.

Her hands trembled with excitement. She immediately tapped the transfer button, trying to move one single cent to buy a burger.

A bright red pop-up blocked the screen.

[FUNDS STATUS: ESCROWED]

Cari's smile vanished. Her stomach dropped like a stone.

She slammed her hand against the wooden bench in frustration.

Suddenly, the phone screen went completely black.

A golden, high-tech interface slowly faded into view.

Large letters in the center read: WEALTH UNLOCK PROTOCOL.

Below the title was a detailed escrow agreement.

Cari read the terms quickly. Her eyes darted back and forth across the screen.

The only way to unlock her frozen funds was to complete specific gig economy tasks.

The protocol stated that the wages earned from these gigs would unlock her escrowed money at a one-to-one ratio based on her original world's currency value.

If she earned a daily wage of twenty dollars in gig pay, it would unlock two hundred thousand dollars of her available balance.

Cari let out a breath.

This golden finger gave her billions, but forced her to work at the bottom of society to access it.

She immediately opened the app store and downloaded a local gig app called GigMatch.

She registered an account.

The first urgent, high-paying job on the home page caught her eye.

It was a banquet server position at the Cloud Crest luxury hotel.

The job required her to start immediately. The daily pay was twenty cents.

In her current reality, twenty cents meant unlocking two thousand dollars of cold, hard cash.

Cari did not hesitate. She hit the accept button.

Her eyes locked onto the screen, burning with a desperate hunger for wealth.