The RAM Bandits
They were new-age thieves, brutal muggers who committed robberies, broke into people's homes, killed them in their sleep, and stole the RAM from their computers.
________________________________________
In the world of the past, in the quiet, big cities, the long shadows of the evening stretched over the buildings like patches of darkness. But this silence was deceptive. The only sound that shook the streets was the desperate creaking of a mouse and the occasional dull thud, followed by distant screams. Everyone knew what that thud meant. Another one had committed suicide.
It began with a global chip crisis, a perfect storm that caused the RAM market to explode. A 16 GB DDR4 stick, which once cost the equivalent of filling up a car's tank, was now worth a down payment on a house. People checked their digital wallets with heart-wrenching dread, and the RAM price chart looked like a high-tech tower, piercing the clouds of despair.
Ionel stood in front of his laptop, staring with wide eyes at the red icon warning him: "Insufficient RAM. Cannot open program." He closed his eyes, remembering how just a few years ago, 32 GB was an affordable luxury. Now, he had sold half his furniture just to be able to afford to open his browser and a text document at the same time. A muffled scream escaped his mouth when he saw on his newsfeed: "DDR5 RAM price hits a new historic record: the equivalent of 6 months of average salary."
Then the jumps began.
The first was a programmer named Kael, who, after seeing his digital wallet empty while trying to order an 8 GB stick, simply stepped off his 12th-floor balcony. "Jump into RAM, not into the void!" became a sinister joke, a popular hashtag on social media, the only place you could still enter without much RAM.
Ionel looked down from his seventh-floor balcony. He realized it wasn't just a metaphor. People were throwing themselves off, not out of romantic despair, but financial horror. It was an act of resignation in the face of a world that no longer had a place for them, a world where they could no longer afford a decent computer, a world where the price of RAM exceeded human reason. Society had gone mad. Electronics stores were fortresses, with steel bars and anti-burglary fences, and the police, corrupt to the core, only guarded the interests of the major corporations. New buildings sprung up, crammed with AI data centers, buying all RAM production for the next two years.
And then the RAM Bandits appeared.
They were new-age thieves, brutal muggers who committed robberies, broke into people's homes, killed them in their sleep, and stole the RAM from their computers. They no longer wanted jewelry or money. They came for components. Ionel had once seen them, passing like a shadow in his apartment building's hallway, dressed in black overalls, wearing balaclavas, carrying special "tools": precision screwdrivers, zero-force insertion tools, and electrostatic discharge devices to disarm alarm systems.
That night, a sound woke him suddenly. It wasn't the familiar, wet thud of those jumping off the building, but a subtle whir, followed by a mechanical click. The door to his apartment had opened silently. His heart stopped in his chest.
Three figures rushed into the living room. They wore masks with LED displays showing simple "Error" icons. They spotted Ionel, and one of them rotated their hand, signaling, "Give us the RAM, and you won't be harmed."
"I can't," Ionel whispered, his voice broken. "It's my last 8 GB, without them nothing will work for me."
One of the bandits, who seemed to be the leader, approached the computer tower.
With practical and swift movements, he opened the case. The LED light shone on Ionel's face. He watched as gloved hands removed two 4GB RAM sticks from the motherboard. They were beautiful, with silver heat sinks, gleaming in the dim light. They were his digital life, his memory, his ability to work and communicate.
"No... please..." he begged, thinking of the superhuman efforts he had made to buy them.
The bandit looked at him, and in the eyes he glimpsed beyond the mask, Ionel saw not cruelty, but a trace of similar sadness. "We all have to survive," the thief murmured, as he closed the case with an audible click.
After they left, as silently as they had entered, Ionel remained on the floor, his heart pounding in his chest. He got up and went to the balcony. He looked down into the dark abyss of the parking lot, where a dark shape was visible, a sinister pile and puddles of blood. Others had chosen that path. The quick jump to oblivion.
Then his gaze returned to his computer, now dead, unable to boot. He understood then. The jump was a way out of the hell he was living.
The world had turned upside down. The apocalypse had not come with fire and brimstone, but with system errors and astronomical prices. It was the quiet chaos of insufficient memory, a despair that didn't scream, but simply stopped functioning, stick by stick, until everything would become a blue screen, merciless and infinite.
Well, that was exciting. See you in the next one!