“Making money quickly isn’t as challenging as everyone paints it to be. Remember painting? In as few as twenty-five steps, you, too, can be as rich in bank account and as poor in spirit as the rest of many vaguely working Americans today. The first and most important quality–and one we must always strive for–is an inability to feel anything at all, good, bad or even neutral. This is of the utmost importance for implementing the next phase of your financial well-being.”

I stared back at the earnest faces in the audience, all of them tapping away on their screens to follow or make note of what I had been saying thus far. I pitied them every time, which only helped me in delivering them the mostly piles of shit that were my advice. Under the guise of brutal honesty, they swallowed everything, urged, “Tell us more, Deacon. You’re so knowledgable, Deacon.”

I’d been doing these How to Make Money Quickly seminars for the past five years now, starting at the beginning of 2026, for the beginning of any new year is when you can best go for someone’s mental jugular. And it only got easier to be the cruel, merciless taker of these blunderers’ bank accounts and Bitcoin wallets, containing just enough of a pittance for me to pillage in my talent for making them believe I could turn their coal into a diamond. And believe me, the myth is not true. Coal remains coal, and a diamond remains out of reach to anyone except the likes of Percy Washington. But America still has yet to stamp out what it was predicated upon: dreaming. The belief that if you work hard (which now means if you pay hard), your dream can be achieved. I capitalize on those poor saps, the millennials still from a bygone era. The last of a dying breed that still had it ingrained within their biology to adhere to the platitude that where there was a will there was a way. In my case, I was born into money, and just knew how to make it into more instead of being a layabout like other male socialites (I feel compelled to go against the recently passed law about not specifying gender in literature because people too often associate the term with women, like North West). No, I knew, as per one of the primary tenets of my seminar, that the second you get comfortable with the amount of money you have, you will soon become poor. As in all facets of life pertaining to growth, being comfortable is poison (another tenet in my digital pamphlet, which comes already dowloaded on the tablet I distribute included in your one-time fee of $5,000. Or 2,500 ducats, if you have them. Ducats are making a comeback).

That’s the talking point I was now at, which meant there was still another hour and a half before we took a break. I removed a hydration pill from my pocket and discreetly popped it. “Think of the money,” I said inwardly, shaking my head. It baffled me that for as futuristic as things had become over the past decade, no one could seem to figure out a better system regarding the procurement of dough. Yes, I used quaint words to describe money in order to render the art of making it feel more approachable to the common man (again, I’ll be paying a fine for saying man), “cuter” if you will, and therefore less intimidating. And I definitely never quoted Ayn Rand and her stance on the beauty about how America is the only place where people use the phrase “make money.” Such hooey was no longer palatable in a post-Kanye West presidency.

What I never tell them–the thing that might actually give them a chance at making money quickly–is that you must prey upon the weak. Loot their greatest emotional foible–dreaming–for your own advantage. If you can find out what they want, you can capitalize on it. People have gotten “wiser” to “scams,” sure. But no matter how much their smarter, “I know better” self shouts from the depths within about the con of one’s “true purpose,” they always fall for the ruse that allows them to think there’s a chance at “success.” And success, in any time, is consistently and objectively the same: do you have money?

So no, I don’t feel remorse for preying on the bovine stupidity of the dreamers–especially when their dreams are often so quotidian (“I want to own a house,” “I want to pay for my child’s education,” etc.). As it was said in the ultimate tome on the subject, “The mistake you make, don’t you see, is in thinking one can live in a corrupt society without being corrupt oneself.” Don’t you make that mistake, too, like everyone else in my class–the ones I also don’t tell about this key piece of information for fast and efficient moneymaking. No, this is just between you and me. Because I trust you, understand? I believe in your dream. Together, we can start a new empire.

And then, she slipped off her dress. I had said more than enough to make her feel special, conspiratorial. She was in on something with me that no one else was. I couldn’t help but allow the corner of my mouth to twitch as a substitute for a smile. She was the so-called student I had been eyeing for most of the class. In addition to the money, this seminar was also ideal for meeting people outside of my economic station. Those more eager and willing to please sexually (poor people have far more time to experiment with their genitals). I always manage to find someone worth engaging in Barbarella-style (remember Barbarella?) sex with after the course’s end. So I gave her another not yet on the market “orgasm guaranteed” pellet and rubbed myself against her. She stood with her back on what I imagined was the freezing floor to ceiling glass window of my bedroom, breathing heavily but never making a sound. In effect, the very sentence that poetically captures how to increase one’s wealth.