Chronopunk: A novel (Episode 9)
If you went back in time, what knowledge would you gift the past to save the future?
Chapter 28
Starbucks (2006)
“You want to file a lawsuit on behalf of future generations to stop the Federal Reserve from printing money?”
Deborah Fidler takes a sip of her organic Peruvian single-origin coffee, leaving a bold red lipstick stain on the rim of her mug. A smirk plays on her lips.
“And here I thought I’d seen it all. Seriously. I’ve had shareholders sue companies for missing out on fashion trends. Once, a mother tried to sue the New York Stock Exchange for not valuing her son’s businesses highly enough. I’ve seen it all—crazy, stupid, and hopeful lawsuits. But this? You want to sue the Fed for harming future generations?”
Her smirk turns into laughter. Mody keeps his cool, unsure whether she’s mocking him or just buying time to gather her thoughts.
“Deborah—”
“Call me Debbie,” she interrupts.
“Okay, Debbie, listen. Our judicial system has dealt with abstract legal entities for centuries. Take corporations, for example—they were first invented in Amsterdam in the early 17th century with the formation of the East India Company. The legal system is built to handle non-human entities.
More recently, scholars have proposed granting legal rights to land, oceans, air, animals, and endangered species. So why not future generations? Why not apply the principles of habeas corpus across time? There’s nothing inherently wrong with that—it’s entirely possible in principle.
And you’re the perfect lawyer to make it happen. I’ve done my research. When it comes to original thinking, aggressive persuasion, and winning in court, your name tops the list.”
Mody’s flattery leaves Deborah unimpressed. She’s too smart, too successful, and too self-assured for compliments to have any effect—like dropping water on a hot stone.
“And how do you know the Fed will print more money?” she asks.
This is a crucial moment, one Mody has rehearsed for years—ever since he began training for the mission. How do you present a fact you know will happen to someone who still considers it part of the future? In other words, how is he supposed to convince Deborah that he knows something about her future with absolute certainty?
Mody has worked with leading psychologists on this very problem. Their research boiled down to three options.
“It’s pretty simple,” Lisa had told him. “Tell the truth, lie, or obscure.”
She left it up to Mody to decide, in the moment, which option to choose.
“Look, Deborah, what I’m about to tell you is going to sound crazy. I don’t care what you think of me or my intentions—but please, don’t ignore me.”
He chooses the first option: the truth.
Deborah stares at him, her expression shifting to one of pure disbelief.
“From the future?” She bursts into loud laughter, drawing curious glances from other patrons in the café.
“Seriously? Like a science fiction novel? Like that guy from… what was it? Terminator?” She laughs even harder. “Hah! Terminator! Are you Arnold?”
This version sharpens the pacing, makes the dialogue feel more natural, and enhances the humor in Deborah’s reaction. Let me know if you’d like any tweaks!
“Look, Debbie, I know this sounds crazy. You don’t have to believe me. Let’s just focus on the lawsuit. I’ll pay your fee, and we’ll see where it takes us.”
“Prove it!” She leans forward, eyes gleaming with amusement. “If you’re from the future, tell me what the stock market will do in a week. A month. How about the Cubs this season? What’s the Bears’ record going to be in 2007?”
“That’s precisely not going to happen,” Mody replies, his expression serious.
“I can’t give you facts. Our time travel technology doesn’t commute with facts. It’s not a linear progression. I can’t just sit on one side of an event and describe it from the past, present, or future like a simple timeline. That’s not how it works.
But here’s what I can do. I can give you clues—patterns, anomalies. Think of it like assembly theory in physics, the way scientists search for signs of life on other planets. It’s not about any single piece of information, but the constellation of details that, when assembled, suggest the presence of something beyond chance.
I can give you artifacts of time—fragments that, when put together, point to a time-traversing intelligence. That’s the best I can do.”
“Then do it.”
Deborah takes Mody’s hand and looks him straight in the eye.
“Quite frankly, I don’t care whether you’re from the future or from Aurora, Illinois. Your idea is interesting. You’re interesting. Let me think about it. I’m not sure it’s enough for a lawsuit, but it’s worth considering.”
Relieved, Mody takes a sip of his coffee and gazes out the window. His thoughts deepen. Something strange is happening. A wave of dizziness washes over him, his vision blurs, and Deborah’s voice suddenly sounds distant—low and distorted.
Three weeks later, Mody sits in Deborah’s office on the twenty-second floor of a Chicago high-rise. She hasn’t secured the corner office yet, but the view is spectacular nonetheless. Through the glare of glass towers, he can see Lake Michigan stretching to the horizon.
Deborah’s budding hunger for attention and spectacle is being fed by his presence.
“She’s a showgirl,” Lisa had told him during one of the hundreds of briefings he endured in training.
“She doesn’t care about technical details, which works in your favor. You won’t be pressured to reveal specifics about intergenerational time travel. Deborah wants control. She craves attention and the political spotlight. She’ll see an opportunity to hitch herself to Barack Obama’s rising star, and she’ll squeeze every drop of publicity from this lawsuit to get there. Your job is to stay on mission. Let her have her show—as long as you get what you need.”
Lisa went on, describing the plan.
“The Fed will launch quantitative easing, buying bonds from Wall Street banks in the wake of the Lehman Brothers collapse in the fall of 2008. Obama will be elected president right after the collapse, and by the time he takes office in 2009, the global economy will be in shambles. His administration will oversee the bulk of QE and entrench a reckless deficit culture in Washington. Your job is to stop that. Deborah will be your operator. You will help her build a lawsuit on behalf of future generations and convince the legal and political establishment that QE is illegal—and must never happen.”
Mody keeps a mental note of his mission’s purpose as he gazes out over the Chicago skyline from Deborah’s office window. It is the fall of 2006, and he has exactly two years to prepare the lawsuit—two years to put every piece in place so that when all hell breaks loose on Wall Street, he’ll be ready to act.
Chapter 29
Deborah was born to an Austrian mother and a Slovenian father, spending her early years shuttling between Klagenfurt and Ljubljana. Her parents’ divorce at age eight thrust her into the fragmented existence common among children of broken marriages. Her father, Bojan, sought to win her affection through lavish displays—a grand house in Ljubljana’s suburbs, an oversized German car, and vacations in Europe’s most exclusive destinations. By contrast, her mother, Cornelia, took a more cerebral approach, shaping Deborah’s mind through intellectual influence. Ultimately, Cornelia’s method proved more enduring.
After completing high school in Austria and briefly attending the University of Vienna, Deborah earned a full scholarship to the University of Chicago. There, she pursued a double major in Law and Economics, thriving as an essentialist—her character unshaken and uncorrupted by the elitism surrounding her. For Deborah, dignity lay in academic excellence. Her unwavering commitment to integrity opened doors, eventually leading her to Chicago’s most prestigious law firm, where she quickly distinguished herself arguing complex fraud cases in high finance.
Beneath her legal acumen and sharp intellect burned a pragmatic ambition to pursue clear, well-defined social goals. A nascent passion for combating injustice took root, carefully nurtured by mentors at the firm who recognized her potential.
“I got lucky,” Deborah once told a Bloomberg reporter after securing a victory against a corporation accused of siphoning funds from its shareholders.
“Lucky because my ambition was encouraged, not stifled. Most law firms of our caliber wouldn’t dare take on some of the biggest names in the S&P 500. We did. I owe it to the men—yes, all men until I earned my partnership,” she said with a wry smirk, “who led this firm and gave me the opportunity to pursue my calling.”
Deborah’s ambition soon evolved into a full-fledged crusade against crony capitalism, corporate corruption, and Wall Street’s sleazy tactics. In America’s C-suites, the name Deborah Fidler became a harbinger of trouble. No amount of directors’ and officers’ insurance could shield corporate leaders from her relentless pursuit—she always found a way to dismantle the guilty, regardless of status and position. Her disdain for corporate exploitation was deeply personal, ignited by her father’s bankruptcy and fueled by its bitter aftermath.
Like many men of his generation, Bojan had been ensnared in the gap between capitalism’s glittering promises and its harsh realities. After Yugoslavia’s collapse, Slovenia’s overnight transformation into a liberal democracy opened a world of opportunity. To Bojan and his peers, money seemed to grow on trees. Predatory Austrian banks eagerly exploited this optimism, luring him into Swiss Franc-denominated mortgages with low interest rates—far cheaper than borrowing in local currency. He began modestly, buying property in Ljubljana, then expanded to luxurious mountain chalets and beachfront resorts along the Balkan coast. For a time, Bojan embodied what local politicians hailed as “the new spirit of Balkan capitalism”—sharp, cunning, and tireless in his pursuit. His apparent wealth soared as he rode the wave of easy credit.
Then came the reckoning. The internet bubble burst at the turn of the millennium, followed swiftly by the September 11, 2001, attacks on the Twin Towers. Within weeks, this double shock obliterated his dreams. The Swiss Franc surged, crushing his finances and leaving his balance sheet in ruins. Bojan unraveled. First, he turned to alcohol, then to harder, powdery escapes. When Deborah received the call that he was in the ICU on life support after an overdose, she raced from Chicago to Ljubljana. He survived that time—but it wouldn’t be the last such call she’d receive.
Bojan’s decline was relentless. Ultimately, it wasn’t an overdose that claimed him but a dealer’s bullet, a brutal footnote to the collateral damage of addiction. Deborah was shattered. In her grief, she vowed revenge—not just against the forces that took her father, but against the system that enabled his downfall.
“Those Austrian snake oil peddlers in their suits drove my dad to his death,” Deborah confided to a friend in Ibiza.
Since moving to Chicago, Deborah had been living a double life as both a DJ and an academic. Her eclectic taste for dance music quickly gained traction in the city’s club scene, earning her spots on the stages of some of Chicago’s most renowned venues. It was there, amid the pulsing beats and flashing lights, that she found the courage to embrace the lingering dichotomy of her professional and artistic impulses. In the mid-1990s, Chicago was a crucible for experimental house music, a movement propelled largely by the thriving gay and lesbian underground community. While Madonna reigned over mainstream nightclubs, house music ruled the true dance floors—the avant-garde, as Deborah and her friends proudly dubbed themselves.
“Some people think music is an escape from intellectual work. Not true. I need both—they feed off each other,” Deborah often explained when asked why she juggled academia when her DJ gigs were already paying off so handsomely.
Deborah wasn’t driven by some grand, heroic ambition. She simply did what she had to do, steadily honing her craft day by day. Success followed naturally, drawn to her like bees to honey—and she was well aware of it.
“It’s tougher to spin tracks for a crowd of opinionated hipsters on a Monday night than to convince a jury that a crooked hedge fund manager deserves some time to reflect behind bars,” she quipped to Bloomberg after taking down a once-prominent Connecticut-based fund manager, securing millions in damages.
“Arrogance and passion are kissing cousins,” Lisa remarked as she introduced Deborah to Mody.
“We chose her because she’s the best—not because she’s nice. Don’t let her feminine charm fool you,” Lisa cautioned. Mody nodded in agreement.
“It’s curious how appearances can sometimes betray a person’s character—or completely conceal it. Deborah Fidler falls squarely into the latter camp. Spot her strolling through the office, and you might peg her as just another striking thirty-something brunette chasing a law career—perhaps sleeping with a younger guy and quietly pining for kids. But Deborah Fidler was far from that woman. Her slender frame, draped in razor-sharp Italian suits, hinted at a quiet authority. Back in the early 2000s, professional women weren’t expected to look like sleek sports cars. She did. And when the moment called for it, she could rev up to 20,000 RPM with effortless precision.”
After her father’s death, Deborah sought solace in Ibiza, spinning records at some of the island’s most renowned house music clubs. The Spanish party haven was an ideal escape for a woman wrestling with grief and consumed by anger. She lingered there, honing her music and steadying her mind. But eventually, the magic of the music, yoga, and beach strolls began to wane. It was time to return to Chicago.
“I turned the misery and anger into something useful,” Deborah said to her girlfriend the night before departing Ibiza. “Whether it fuels me to unravel financial schemes or strike at a corrupt system, I don’t care. It’s energy, and I’ll wield it for myself.”
Despite her thriving professional career, Deborah’s romantic life resembled a pile of wreckage. She’d had relationships—plenty of them—but none endured. No one could keep up with her. By the time she met Mody at the Starbucks near her office, she’d just ended things with a woman she’d been seeing for some time. Deborah dressed, acted, and loved with the precision of a professional woman, a trait that often pushed her beyond the reach of romance. In the early 2000s, before “woke” culture and the LGBTQ movement turned sexuality into a political statement, many lesbian women simply wanted to be left alone. Yet, like any self-aware social group, badges of identity still mattered. Deborah, though, had no patience for broadcasting who shared her bed.
Back home in Klagenfurt, her mother, Caroline, quietly resisted her daughter’s sexuality. She’d never voice it outright. Whenever Deborah visited, she was welcomed and treated like a daughter—fed, housed, loved on the surface. But it was the subtle rejections that stung: the Friday afternoons Caroline spent at the café with friends, conveniently skipped when Deborah was in town, or the overly eager suggestions to “go visit your father” whenever aunts or uncles were due to stop by. Deborah never spoke of this quiet dismissal, but Lisa, in her keen analysis, saw it clearly:
“The unspoken rift with her mother had carved a deep wound into Deborah’s emotional core.”
“It’s a risk,” Lisa admitted to Mody.
“But it’s one we’re willing to take. Deborah’s passion for justice and doing what’s right aligns with our mission. We need a genuine ally—someone who grasps what it means to care for the next generation. And who better than a woman who feels severed from her mother and lost her father to corruption and drugs? Yes, it’s a risk, but she’s our choice.”
Deborah’s courtroom prowess lay in her ability to bridge the vague promises of economics with the sharp boundaries of justice. Her opening statements unfolded like emotional close-ups in a Francis Ford Coppola film, gripping and cinematic, while her exchanges with witnesses were so deft and subtle that psychology departments nationwide dissected her methods. Yet her greatest weapon was what she called the “art of silence”—a knack for pausing at just the right, uncomfortable moment, eliciting reactions from her adversaries that often sealed the case in her favor.
“It’s not complicated,” Deborah told a group of law students at Purdue University. “Take Lorraine Bracco’s performance in The Sopranos. Her character, Jennifer Melfi, thrives in the quiet moments. Melfi’s most commanding statements emerge when she opts for silence over words. I’ve studied her closely and adapted that technique for the courtroom.”
Deborah’s personality developed along two parallel tracks: an unwavering commitment to academic excellence and a deep passion for music. In the 1990s, Chicago pulsed as a dynamic epicenter for house music, a sensual genre of electronic dance born in the city’s gay clubs in the late 1970s. By the time Deborah immersed herself in the scene in the mid-’90s, house had evolved into a global phenomenon.
“House is the ultimate creativity drug,” Sarah told a Chicago Tribune reporter, nodding to the genre’s roots as a vibrant fusion of musical and cultural threads.
House music traces its origins to The Warehouse, a gritty Chicago dance club where DJs in the late 1970s had free rein to blend tracks and styles. It was a turbulent era, not just on American streets but on its dance floors too. Disco, the decade’s reigning sound, had fizzled into a parody of itself, leaving a void. Unshackled from commercial pressures, The Warehouse DJs experimented boldly, serving up a thirsty crowd an eclectic mix of deep bass beats, hypnotic rhythms, and soaring melodies. What emerged soon spilled beyond the club’s doors, sweeping across Chicago’s nightlife.
The term ‘house’ remains a subject of debate. Some say it’s simply shorthand for The Warehouse, the birthplace of the sound. Others see it as a nod to the struggles of gay Black men—pioneers of electronic dance music in the late 1970s—who, facing Chicago’s pervasive intolerance, were pushed into the underground. Their dance parties pulsed in abandoned warehouses, factories, or bunkers, while some opted to craft music in the safety of their homes, possibly inspiring the name “house.” Meanwhile, 300 miles east in Detroit, high school kids were forging their own electronic sound: techno. One of its founders called it an “Afro-inspired sonic utopia—imagine George Clinton and Kraftwerk stuck in an elevator with just a four-track machine.” Though kindred spirits, Detroit techno and Chicago house are like siblings with different fathers. House rose from the ashes of disco’s collapse, while techno emerged from the rubble of urban decay and economic hardship. Both genres embody a defiant creativity born of resistance.
Deborah fused these two worlds with finesse, blending house’s soulful pulse with techno’s raw edge. In no time, she became a fixture in Chicago’s club scene, her name synonymous with its electric heartbeat.
“I brought European techno culture back to Chicago—a kind of Back to the Future move,” Deborah mused in the same Chicago Tribune interview. “It started here, crossed the Atlantic, and exploded in Europe. Now I’m carrying the torch back to its birthplace, Chicago, where it all began.”
Deborah grew up in a corner of Europe where techno had replaced heavy metal as the sound of rebellion. Much like blues and rock, techno traced a path from Black American subculture to global sensation, routed through England and key European cities like Berlin.
“Techno thrived in Europe for two big reasons,” she explained.
“First, there was little racial bias against Black subculture. Second, unlike in the US drugs like acid and ecstasy flowed freely in Europe, sparking a sense of the otherworldly for young people and flooding dance floors with a bold, untamed energy.”
Deborah’s teenage years were steeped in the raw clamor of heavy metal, propelled by unyielding rhythms. “It’s like pounding iron rods at 200 beats per minute,” she once said.
In Chicago, she uncovered melodies that softened the edges of her past, while Detroit lent her the soul she’d longed for during a childhood shaped by the stark, mechanical thrum of Kraftwerk and Laibach. She resonated deeply with a city forever wrestling between restraint and extravagance, striking a chord in its divided cultural soul.
“Deborah transcends her European roots, venturing into uncharted musical landscapes that span classic Chicago rhythms and the gritty, soulful pulse of Southside R&B. Yet, unlike The Warehouse pioneers, she brings a startlingly alien edge to the Chicago dance scene—something not quite homegrown, and that’s precisely what sets it apart. Picture Howlin’ Wolf, George Clinton, and Kraftwerk stepping into an elevator, only for Mr. Spock to beam in from the cosmos,” a local newspaper once vividly captured her performance.
Her intensity didn’t fade at the edge of the dance floor. That same hunger for innovation and risk carried effortlessly into the classroom, where she pursued a dual degree in Economics and Law with relentless drive.
“What hit me hardest about Deborah was her raw, unfiltered urgency when tackling academic ideas. She made you feel like the stakes were life-or-death,” one of her professors told The Maroon, the University of Chicago’s student newspaper.
Deborah wasn’t a brawler or a radical. Her ascent to the upper echelons of music and finance seemed almost predestined—a chain of deliberate, interlocking steps that won her the admiration of fans and clients alike, but more importantly, the wary respect of her rivals.
Chapter 30
"I thought you didn’t like this."
"This what?" Deborah lets her hand drop softly onto Mody’s stomach. "Fucking men?"
"If you must put it that way—yes. I thought you liked to fuck women."
"I do."
"Okay, you know what I mean."
"You know what I mean," Deborah mimics Mody’s words.
"You mean you thought I was a dyke."
"Can we not fight about this? Yes, I thought you wouldn’t be interested in making love to a man. Turns out you are. That’s it. If there’s anything else you feel the urge to discuss, go ahead. Otherwise, let’s leave it at that."
Deborah takes a sip of something alcoholic and turns to Mody in a slow, sultry motion.
"I don’t just like this—I loooove it."
Another intense round of lovemaking leaves Mody exhausted and content. The view from Debbie’s bedroom, stretching across Lake Michigan, is spectacular. He sinks into his thoughts.
‘What does future generations really mean?’
As Debbie emerges from the shower, he turns to her.
"We need a better definition—a clearer idea of who we’re trying to protect. Who we’re fighting for."
"It’s for you," Debbie says. "The future."
"Yes, but the jury won’t understand that. It’s too abstract, and I’m not even going to try convincing them that I was born in 2031. You told me the best way to win a jury is to get witnesses to say clear, unequivocal things about the case they’re being questioned on. That’s what I need—something undeniable. Like a statement from a Fed official saying, ‘We don’t care about the future because we must save the present.’"
"Hm. That’ll be tough," Debbie says. "We’d need to subpoena emails and other communications, then comb through them like hawks."
Mody thinks how effortless it would be to use AI from the 2060s to find—or even generate—the perfect quote. But that’s not an option. He’s bound by the rule: no technology beyond what was available in the era he was sent back to—somewhere around 2006.
"Cases are won by convincing human jurors with human-sounding statements. That’s the most important lesson I’ve learned in the courtroom. Especially when dealing with abstract concepts like economics, inflation, and financial markets. Those things aren’t necessarily complicated, but insiders deliberately obfuscate them to confuse law enforcement and jurors.
You won’t win by telling a jury that inflation erodes real buying power or that financial markets misprice the true cost of capital—that’s just abstract gibberish to them. But you will win if you show them that a child can’t afford her education because the academic-industrial complex keeps draining more and more money from families. That’s the strategy we need."
Mody looks at her. She stands naked in front of him.
"You’re so beautiful and so damn smart. What planet are you from?"
They make love again.
Later that day, they sit in Debbie’s office with two of her assistants, facing a whiteboard.
"Future generations," Debbie says. "Let’s define it."
"It’s kids. Kids born and unborn. The people who come after us."
"Yes, but that’s too vague. I want more meat on the bone," Debbie replies.
"A future generation is me," Mody says. "It’s my responsibility to care for what follows—my DNA, my kids, my... whatever."
"Not cleeeear enough," Debbie moans in frustration. "We need something better."
"How about DNA?" one of the assistants suggests.
"DNA is a continuous I," Mody says. "Me, a hundred years from now, is just a strand of DNA carried forward through generations. If I have rights today, then the DNA that follows me must have the same rights. The Fed can’t infringe on that."
Debbie looks at the others, thoughtful.
"Habeas corpus—‘you shall have your body,’" she murmurs to herself.
"Let’s keep this thought going," Debbie says. "The Habeas Corpus Act originates in England and became law in the late 17th century. Then the Founding Fathers enshrined it in our Constitution under Article I, Section 9:
‘The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.’"
She looks around the room, now clearly energized.
"Technically, DNA is part of your body, isn’t it? So if Habeas Corpus guarantees that you can’t be deprived of your body without proper legal procedure, then—right?"
She pauses, then continues, her excitement building.
"Now, if your body can’t be nationalized—" she makes air quotes, "—then your DNA can’t be, either. And if your DNA proliferates through time, then Habeas Corpus protects future bodies just as much as present individuals."
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