A fiver in 2008
I sometimes think that I caused the 2008 financial crash because I drew out a fiver from an ATM and my bank didn’t charge me. Is this irrational? Maybe. Is it true? Possibly, possibly not. Even though its over a decade ago it still bothers me. It burns in my mind late at night when I can’t sleep. That question bouncing around my mind. Did I cause the crash? Was it me? Could it have been me? Yes, its only five pounds. Five pounds isn’t a big deal in the grand scheme of things but still, what about the butterfly effect? Everyone knows about the butterfly effect. A butterfly flaps its wings on the other side of the world and two weeks later there is a tornado. Chaos theory.
I loved that movie, it came out in 2004, I watched it over and over again. Obsessed with the idea that it could be true. Afterwards, I fell down the rabbit hole on the internet and devoured article after article on the idea. By the time 2008 had rolled around I knew the theory inside and out. I remember that morning perfectly. I was late for work; the train was delayed once again. I had forgotten my lunch so I quickly ran to an ATM in the station. Back then you couldn’t draw five pound notes out of just any ATM but there was one machine that was near a coffee shop that did. I punched in my code and the crisp note appeared for me just like any other time and I thought nothing else of it, until I checked my bank account later. It didn’t register my withdrawal. Again, thinking that the system was being slow I forgot about it, until a day later when I checked again. Same result, free money, who doesn’t like that?
That was on the eve of the crash. The next day all hell broke loose. The markets plummeted, business closed, jobs were lost. Straight away I remembered the Butterfly effect. That five pounds I got for free. Who did I take that from? Was it a single mother family? Just trying to make ends meet? Did that fiver come out of their account meaning that they couldn’t eat that day? Was it a small business in the red? Did that five-pound push them over? Did they go bust? What was the chain of events? Who did it destroy? Was that the beginning of it? Did it spread throughout the global system triggering red flags and panic? A digital butterfly effect. You see what I’m getting at? So, yes, sometimes I think I caused the 2008 financial crash because of that fiver.
Elliot Harper is a bloke with a ginger beard who likes to write and read weird, speculative fiction. He is an Englishman living in Houston, Texas, author of the upcoming novella, The City around the World, which will be released later in the year by Sinister Stoat Press (imprint of Weasel press), and author of End and Beginning, a micro-fiction piece featured on FIVE:2:ONE's #thesideshow web series.