The Tale of Unicorn Island

Once there was an isolated tribe in a remote island in a faraway ocean, where people lived simple lives, trading fish and coconuts and paying for their Startbucks frappucinos with cowrie shells or other old-fashioned money.

Then one day a young foreigner landed on the island with a bunch of other youngsters in his tow. He convinced the tribe to use instead a new currency that he had created, called "unicorn". (It is not known whether it was intentional mockery or a Freudian slip that led him to name the currency after something that is best known for its non-existence.)

He printed millions of unicorn bills on bright blue paper, which he generously gave to islanders in exchange for a little food and booze. But he and his buddies also kept millions more stashed away. Their plan was to wait until unicorns became a widely accepted currency, and then they would use their stash to buy things from the islanders -- their huts, farming fields and coconut groves, their canoes, their lamborghinis...

In other words, those fellas planned to steal from the inslanders -- like governments do, when they print more money to balance their budget. In both cases, the theft would be diffused in space and time, so no one could point out exactly who were the victims, and when their wealth was taken away. With the difference, of course, that governments are supposed to return what they steal to their victims, in the form of services; whereas the gang intended to keep the loot for themselves.

That plan was bad enough, but since it was taking too long, the impatient gang devised another scam-within-the-scam to steal even more, much sooner. They placed a big iron pot in a clearing at the center of the island; and told everybody that it was a magic cauldron, that would multiply any unicorns that were placed in there.

They attached to the side of the pot a blue sheet with the Rules of the Cauldron, and a list of Shamans by its side. The Rules were written in some obscure legalese, but the gang explained that, once the cauldron was filled with unicorns, and the full Moon was directly overhead, everybody could vote for which Shamans those unicorns should be given to. Each Shaman would then do some magic that would multiply the bills, which would be given back to the contributors.

Many islanders went crazy about that thing. They rushed to get more unicorns from the gang, just to throw them into the cauldron. Some sold their their bows and arrows and fishnets, their iPhones and Toyotas, and all the cowrie shells that they had buried under their birdbaths.

Some islanders were skeptical at first, but went "all in" after the gang leader told them that the Rules of the Cauldron had been carefully verified by the best legal experts in the world, and swore that they would be followed to the letter, no matter what. They could be sure of that, he explained, because the Rules sheet had a seal with a picture of the Invisible Blue Unicorn on it; and that meant that, if those Rules were broken, all unicorn bills would instantly become worthless. Who would want that to happen?

(No one noticed that the Rules did not actually require the Shamans to do any magic whatsoever after taking out the unicorns; much less to give anything back to the contributors. And the first Shamans on the list, of course, were the gang members themselves.)

But then one of the islanders, who had studied law at Oxford, managed to decipher the Rules. He noticed one, in particular, that said that anyone who did three little hops on one leg, and then uttered the magic word "Niretub", could take all the unicorns in the pot for himself, without waiting for the full Moon.

He told that to his fellow islanders, and queried the gang about it. The gang leader then realized that his command of legalese was not as good as he had thought. But, instead of calling the thing off, he assured everybody that no one could actually do that, and the Cauldron ritual would go on, as he had described it to them.

One evening, however, a few days before the full Moon, while everybody was singing and dancing around the cauldron, a masked figure walked out of the woods, did three little hops on one leg, shouted "Niretub!" -- and, under the horrified looks of the crowd, proceeded to scoop out the unicorns from the cauldron and stuff them into a large dufflebag.

The gang and the islanders then went into panic. They pushed the stranger away from the cauldron, while it was still half-full, and desperately scanned the Rules to see if there was a way to get their unicorns back.

Some proposed to build a human wall around the cauldron until the full Moon. Others did the same hop-and-niretub thing that the masked stranger had done, and proceeded to take the remaining unicorns into bags of their own -- promising that they would give them back to the victims later.

But nothing really worked. In the end, the gang simply tore away the paper with the Rules, and pasted another one in its place that said "the masked one-leg hopper must return the unicorns to us". To the perplexed islanders, they explained that the thing about the seal was just a poetic metaphor, not to be taken literally. The Rules, they said, were always meant to be broken when convenient; but people should not worry, because their unicorn bills would still be as good as before.

However, some islanders (who, of course, had not put their unicorns in the cauldron) still clung to the belief that any rules stamped with an Invisible Unicorn seal were sacred. So they fetched a copier machine, and made copies on pink paper of all unicorn bills that islanders brought them -- including those of the gang members, those that were left in the cauldron, and those that the masked stranger had in his dufflebag. And also of the original sheet with the Rules of the Cauldron.

And those rebel islanders swore again that they would never, ever, break any Rules that were printed on pink sheets sealed with pictures of the Invisible Pink Unicorn on them.

So that is how things stand now. The islanders have two currencies, blue unicorns and pink unicorns, and are still trying to figure out how much each is worth. The gang members, with the support of those islanders who had put money in the cauldron, forcefully reposessed their blue unicorns from the stranger; but they could not get his pink unicorns. Still not satisfied, they told him to hand over those pink bills. The stranger, in turn, wants the blue unicorns that should be his according to the original Rules. Each side is threatening to unleash on the other the wrath of Sec, the dreaded God of Ponzi Scams.

Jorge Stolfi
July 28, 2016