He was the last person on the Earth without a Candy Crush account.

This hadn’t occurred for a lack of trying nor lack of invites. His Facebook message inbox had been filled several times, over and over, with requests, notifications and messages. It was easy. Social networks had managed to connect people in so many ways and alerting them was just a matter of telling the network to just invite everyone and then it was done, your task was over and you’d only need to wait.

His account inbox got so big over time that the administrator assigned to his group of servers had to upgrade it and even spare some extra database space. It also remained unchecked and unread.

He had tried at first, he really had. But over time, the amount of stuff he had to take a look—“Your friend wants to invite you to FarmVille”, “Sarah added a new photo”, “Roger is at Menlo Beach”—took so much of his day that he eventually stopped looking at it at all. And it felt better.

Time went on and on, and he still hadn’t cared about the game at all. He remembered looking at the people in the trains playing it and it seemed childish and dumb. He also wasn’t one to follow trends, and since everyone and their mothers were at it, he decided he wouldn’t be interested and so he wasn’t.

Not everyone was into the game at first, either. As all trends go, it started with some guys in a room and ended being in colleges. It was the thing to do while waiting at the restaurant or attempting to read a book. But as all trends are cursed with, the interest in the game eventually dwindled.

Things went on and they stayed that way for a while. And then it was a thing again.
Due to a clever marketing campaign the game developers had come up, mascots and conferences were built around it. Stickers gifted to everyone and after they had added messaging systems into the game, the public was once again curious of trying it out.

And that would have eventually also died out, if not for a matter of luck and being at the right time at the right moment. Top CEOs of top businesses took a liking of it and saw the potential of keeping people engrossed into their screens, matching squares and earning points.

Advertisement changed in the latter years, and the game was so simple and addicting that became a critical mass for ad space. And then the currencies came.

It had started as people asking for chocolates and begging for extra lives, but as the volume of people playing increased, so did their needs. Resources required to get to the next level were tweaked and not everyone had that much friends to complete them, and so, money exchange was added.

People started earning money by playing it during the day, and selling virtual items. Gold farmers from other games saw it as an opportunity to increase they value as well. It was cheaper and easier to play the game in several devices at once instead of farming on virtual environments for lucky objects. It was a controlled world.

Whole cities started using golden tickets and virtual chocolate items as currency and unsigned people were soon the highest sought individuals, recruited by companies and corporations and even some small countries.

But as it comes to that, like every other limited resourced, it soon started to become more and more difficult to find as everyone was signed up into the game. Except for the man.

He was now older and retired, without a great grasp and understanding of that new society and thus without realizing his worth. His account was now blocked, so much time offline and so many requests left alone, unread. The Internet was a place he looked once in a bit, mainly for reading about farming and pests controls.

He liked his solitude. Living in the outskirts of the city allowed him to see just the people he needed to see and get back to his own space. His private world.

Not a lot of data remains about how what happened next. Not a lot people care enough to record it or even acknowledge it but there’s a recollection, some ideas and thoughts that scholars put out and settle with.

There was a Chinese hacker running around the net, trying to find someone—anyone—without an active account. There were exploits laying all around the net and founding some empty accounts helped him farm more gold. But they were rare to find, since most people had to interact with the game in a way or another just to earn their living wage.

Tracking down an old Google cache store, he found some long list of players that had at once been tracked down as well by the engine web crawlers. In those old days, privacy wasn’t a fact and most people was just happy to share their things and more importantly, to share who they knew and who they were. Old data was important and though sometimes just as outdated, some diamonds could be found.

And then there were the data dumps from the CIA raid back at 2018. Using unaired authentication bugs and protocol failures, they had managed to extract several hundred of terabytes of information from Facebook. They had been caught but anonymous groups of hackers were that, anonymous, and eventually the information found its way out in the open.

The US government had applied its power to keep records sealed and out of the public eye, but no amount of warnings and Cease and Desist letters could deter people from torrenting it and sharing again and again. Such was the nature of the free web. The hacker had its own copy, augmented several times when new breaches were found and so, he started to compare both lists, checking records and IP addresses.

And it was then that he found the man.

Cross relating his info with Google Map historical data was easy and thanks to his habits, he hadn’t moved at all on those last years.

He tried first to get his account but it was locked and it was futile. He grew bored and thought on the first thing that could be done to get some money, and such, he sold the story to the media. And then it all started.

The man woke up alone one night and it was the last time. The limits of this property were filled now with media vehicles and news reporters and without knowing why or how, his life changed immediately.

Being the last man without a Candy Crush account made him the most valuable human being in the whole history of humankind.

It was just six in the morning when he received his first offer to be nationalized into a country he had never heard before. Eight when high-position roles were offered as well, including travel planes to fly to foreign islands and met their directors. Companies interested in him we so big and powerful.

By midday, without having accepted an offer yet, he was now surrounded by CEOs, religion leaders, presidents and ambassadors, all claiming for him to join their ranks. They all wanted to Friend him and help him sign up into the game. "Press 'Accept'”, they told him, knowing that the moment he did so, he’d have the means to ask for anything at all and to give others tickets and lives, priced now so high they amount for the kind of fortune that would tip the balance of most economies in the world and forever change them.

His brother arrived that evening. They hadn’t seem each other in twenty years, but it seemed like it didn’t matter at all then. He had grown older, but he was still his brother and he needed to trust someone, so he let him in and inside his bedroom and so they talked.

“You have to pick one”, his brother say. “Any of them would be fine, really.” He explained to him the game and his worth. He told him of the problems of the outside world. The governments that were at the brink of despair but now had hope thanks to him. He had to choose one.

The man ask him some questions. He wasn’t sure what to pick, who to join. That power shouldn’t belong  to a single man, he said. That was the role meant for presidents and prime ministers or even the Pope. What did he know about economics and business and wealth?

“Pick anyone, my brother”, he listened. But his brother was also of the world and was not free of its failings. “Anyone would be good and the world would thank you for it. But, if you wish, I can tell you about my church. We would be really thankful. We would change the world”, he implored.

The man left the room saddened. It was two in the morning then, and his house was  filled with media presenters, all of them trying to sign exclusive interviews. By four there was a book deal signed by a lawyer he didn’t know he had and movie rights being talked over through an agent he hadn’t sign with. Outside his windows, souvenirs were being sold, and people had gathered by the entrance, expecting. His bank account had been receiving small tokens of appreciation as well, amounting to millions by now.

But he knew nothing on those things. He was too tired and just wanted to get on with his life, back his peace.

He looked at the window, where he heard people chanting, and echoing. “Press ‘Accept’” they all sang, pushing onto him their own personal agendas, vouching for their personal wars. Praying for salvation through his fortune. “Press ‘Accept’” was their mantra, repeated over and over.

He stood up in the same pajama pants he had been wearing all day, hungry and tired. Almost immediately, an iPad was shown to him by a pageant, remanent of old kingdoms trying to get back into power. He took it and watched its screen, while silence filled the night. People around the world were waiting for this moment and the cameras were streaming every inch of his movements to beds, theaters, stadiums and houses all over the world. “Press ‘Accept’”, they all thought.

Looking at the flat surface, he touched the app icon and entered his details. He found his account unlocked and upgraded now, everything prepared by the social network team. They even had build a special sign up form just for him, showcasing all of the invitations and bringing back the original UI he had known back in the day.

They were prepared for that.

Almost prepared.

It had been years since the last person had tried to register to the game, and followed those modals and screens. And such, while the man looked for the “Accept” button on the first modal screen he was shown, we must follow another’s man reaction.

Lying in his bed while watching the streaming, he opens his mouth and a scream hangs in the air. As a technical lead in charge of privacy changes, he knows what that button did before and also knows that, after policies changed and changed again, moved by the unstoppable pace the social network and their privacy concerns had, it does now something else.

He thinks about this while he sees the man touching a button, a scene in his mind unfolding, a tale of network packets traveling from the tablet to their servers. An unknowingly bullet that would disappear in a length of a second the biggest fortune in the world.

One last thought lingers in the air as he rushes. He says to himself: “I should have updated that documentation”.