How I Combatted Alien Intelligence

— and lived to tell the tale

When I was a political prisoner, during Covid lockdown, I lost my ability to identify madness from rationality, as all prisoners do.

Not knowing things worried me out of all proportion. Should I wear a face mask when swimming alone in the ocean; was it safe to go outdoors for the permitted 10 minute walk without taking my specially-cut two meter long walking stick with me to keep strangers at the authorised distance; would it be more forgivable to kill the neighbouring Stasi nark hiding behind her muslin curtains, or should I defy the State and take the dog for a walk twice within the one day, and to hell with it?

Pre-occupations of this type wear away at the prisoner’s sanity until one day he breaks. Such a day came for me in 2021, when politicians and media were at the peak of their totalitarian turpitude and I decided to dip my toe into “crypto currency”.

A lot of people think crypto is too difficult to understand. Let me assure you, it is very simple. It starts when a barefaced chancer thinks of an unlikely name — something like Xcretia —and announces that he is going to divide it into one million pieces and offer those pieces for sale. The pieces have no value on day one but, as he confidently points out, that will change when the million pieces have all sold and demand outstrips supply. At that point, only bits of each piece will be available and competition will drive the price endlessly higher. This process will take place digitally on a web-based platform called an “exchange”, and transactions will be recorded on a “blockchain” (kinda like a digital ledger) which cannot be falsified, he says.

To get in on this scam the “investor” needs to send real money to the “exchange” to make his purchase. Of course, “real money” is also a digital currency, recorded in a bank account or on a credit card, for instance. It’s called “fiat currency”, and its value is based on the public’s trust in the issuing government and its central bank, who control its supply. (As you can see, not much different to crypto currency really.)

So, I sent off some real money to the Coinbase exchange, which I was assured was the biggest and most reliable, and they were happy to put it in an imaginary “wallet” for me and let me buy and sell to my heart’s content. I took a punt on a few names like Xcretia and Sofistry and wasted valuable hours of the day watching them oscillate for no reason that I could divine, though it did help me keep my mind off the Covid prison guards.

Eventually I lost interest. It took me six weeks to stop Coinbase from bombarding my inbox with notices of every one percent change in the price of my “investments”, but I eventually blocked them as spam. Four years passed and my attention slowly turned to real matters. I have to admit that those years of incarceration had caused me to suffer the well-known Covid symptoms of cognitive dysfunction, irritability, emotional breakdown, and, in extreme cases, hallucinations and psychosis — the normal post-Covid PTSD — but I was sane enough to realize that I needed to sell my crypto (if it had any remaining value) and apply the proceeds to the purchase of something like groceries, or whatever.

Selling was easy. Putting the proceeds into my wallet was easy. Establishing the US dollar value was easy. It was also easy establishing the New Zealand dollar value. However, Coinbase’s attempt to trigger my post-Covid PTSD started when I tried to withdraw my balance back to the bank account from which I had funded it. For a week I was informed, “Transaction Failed. Please try later”.

This was followed by a week in which I tried to solicit Customer Support. Every answer I received was out of the FAQ manual, did not address the question, and ended by asking, “Still need help?” followed by “Contact Us”.

“Contact Us” led back to the same pages of Customer Support that had failed to answer the problem for the past week. Eventually I stumbled across a little button called “Live Chat”. I fell upon it like a parched wanderer who has lost his camel and comes across an oasis in the desert. The oasis proved to be a mirage.

It wasn’t a live chat, it was an AI Chat Bot that asked me to spell out my problem in minute detail before giving the same response as Customer Support. The AI had a name. It called itself Virtual Assistant and, in case its allotted response time expired, it helpfully provided a case number. I started mid-morning and by mid-afternoon I had accumulated enough numbers to win a lottery. Then, unexpectedly, a name appeared on the bottom of the running texts. The name assured me that he/she was reading all the case notes and would do everything to resolve my issue. Justin was followed by Harjas, who was followed by Saurabh. This went on for three days, and then I had an entirely unprompted thought. “Do you people have a problem sending money to New Zealand?” I asked. The reply was almost human. “Please refer to your bank”.

I did. My bank’s AI Chat Bot replied that New Zealand banks are blocked from transacting with crypto exchanges because of anti-fraud regulations. So, there, I thought: “Check Mate”. Serves you bloody right. Swallow your pride and let everyone in New Zealand, including the wide diaspora, know so they don’t make the same stupid mistake.

Then an Unknown Caller came on my line. She sounded very nice, apologised for the trouble I was experiencing and wanted to see if she could help. It was just the sort of scam banks warn you about. “We will not contact you by phone,” they warn. “We will not ask you for details of your bank account or transactions.” So I kept my legs crossed. “There is one Crypto Exchange that we do deal with, however,” she explained. “They may be able to help.” She gave me the website address of Easy Crypto and wished me well.

I received a response from this new exchange’s AI Chat Bot almost instantly. It called itself Orion, told me it understood the issue clearly and advised me to open an account with them, sell the USDC to whatever value I wished to transfer from Coinbase and they would give me an encrypted digital address for Coinbase to transfer it to.

Like a battered bride I was shy of being further abused but, like a battered bride, I submitted myself for more. A day later this new exchange told me the money had been transferred and it would appear in my bank account shortly. Orion added the name “Andy” to its signature. At the same time, Coinbase sent me a message to say they would not release the funds until they were satisfied, and that was uncertain. I went to the drinks cupboard and tried to calculate whether there was enough alcohol there to render me senseless.

The following morning Andy’s Orion from the New Zealand crypto exchange was pleased to advise me that the money was now in my bank account. Sure enough, there it was. I immediately replied to Orion’s “Andy” and said it was the best AI Chat Bot I had ever encountered in the entire world. “Andy” thanked me very much for the kind words and suggested I might like to leave a review, which I did without hesitation. Five Stars.

Then I suddenly had a thought. What if “Andy” wasn’t a Chat Bot but a human pretending to be a Chat Bot? What a radical business strategy that would be. Imagine the recommendations and Five Star reviews a company could obtain. Customers would be coming on line just for the pleasure of talking to you.

So I suggest you pass this idea down to your marketing department and tell them to start thinking outside the bot. I’ll be happy to take the credit, but not in crypto.

A.I. Fabler

November 30, 2025