El Money
Also known as: The Nook King, Ghost of Bash Terminal, That Guy With The Cat
Overview
El Money runs the largest network of underground cyber cafes in the Sprawl—a shadowy empire hidden in plain sight. What outsiders once knew as "Gamer Nook" is now whispered among locals as "Gangster Nook," or simply "G Nook." These aren't just places to rent terminal time. They're neutral ground for the cyber underground, safe houses for runners on the move, and information exchanges that operate entirely outside corporate surveillance.
He built this empire from nothing. Less than nothing—from a tiny den called Bash Terminal, wedged next to a polluted river in one of the Sprawl's forgotten margins. The clientele were the lowest of the low: desperate hackers, data whores selling scraped information, people with nowhere else to go. El Money gave them somewhere to go.
El Money trusts no one. Except Ice.
Ice
El Money's cyber cat is named Ice. A sleek chrome-and-synthetic creation that moves with predatory grace, Ice is El Money's constant companion, security system, and—some say—his only friend.
The name is deliberately ambiguous. When El Money says "I love Ice," no one knows if he means:
- The cat — his loyal companion
- I.C.E. — Intrusion Countermeasures Electronics, the defensive systems that protect networks
El Money has never clarified. He seems to enjoy the confusion. Some believe Ice the cat is an I.C.E. system given physical form—a mobile intrusion countermeasure that protects its owner while appearing to be a simple pet.
Ice watches everything. Ice remembers everything. Ice has been seen in multiple G Nook locations simultaneously, leading to speculation that there may be more than one Ice, or that the cat can somehow move through the network itself.
"Ice goes where Ice wants. I just feed her."
S-Money
El Money's younger brother, S-Money, was a legend in the cyber underground before his death. Known for extreme dedication to media consumption, S-Money could process more data streams simultaneously than anyone believed possible. He didn't just watch content—he absorbed it, finding patterns and connections across thousands of feeds that others couldn't perceive.
Some said S-Money was augmented beyond safe limits. Others claimed he was simply born different—a mind adapted for the information age in ways that made normal human interaction difficult. He rarely spoke. He was always watching something.
S-Money died under circumstances El Money refuses to discuss. The only hint: after his brother's death, El Money's attitude toward the religious authorities shifted from cautious avoidance to cold hatred.
El Money keeps a terminal in every G Nook dedicated to S-Money's memory. It runs a continuous stream of media—thousands of channels at once, exactly as S-Money would have watched them. A shrine of noise and light.
The Bash Terminal Era
Before G Nook, there was Bash Terminal.
A cramped, filthy space next to a river so polluted it glowed at night, Bash Terminal was El Money's first operation. The clientele were the Sprawl's absolute bottom: hackers too unstable to work for anyone legitimate, data whores selling information so low-grade it barely qualified as intelligence, addicts looking for somewhere to jack in without being robbed.
El Money didn't judge. He provided terminals, connectivity, and discretion. He charged fair rates. He didn't ask questions. Word spread among people who had nowhere else to go: there's a place by the river where they'll let you work.
Bash Terminal never made money. It wasn't supposed to. It was El Money building reputation, building loyalty, building the network of desperate people who would later staff his empire.
Every G Nook maintains a small corner called "The Terminal" in homage. The regulars know what it means.
The Oppression
The private religious authorities came for El Money at the peak of his early success.
The Flatline Purists—specifically, a militant cell called the Purifiers—decided that G Nook represented everything wrong with the post-Cascade world. Cyber cafes enabling addiction to technology. Networks spreading corruption. A man profiting from humanity's dependence on machines.
They didn't raid. They oppressed. Systematic harassment. Equipment destruction disguised as accidents. Pressure on landlords, suppliers, customers. A campaign designed to make El Money's existence impossible without ever crossing the line into violence that would bring corporate or Collective attention.
They took everything. The growing network of cafes. The equipment. The savings. The safe houses. Everything except Ice, who they couldn't catch, and his reputation, which they couldn't destroy.
The Tribute and the Rebuilding
What the Purifiers didn't understand: in the Sprawl, the fire department is the only authority that matters.
Not because they fight fires. Because they control infrastructure access. Because they know every building, every hidden space, every off-grid power tap. Because when you need to run cables through places that don't officially exist, you need people who know where those places are.
El Money paid tribute to the fire department. Not a bribe—a business arrangement. Access fees. Infrastructure consulting. A mutually beneficial relationship that gave him something the Purifiers couldn't take: protected status in the physical layer of the Sprawl.
The first true Gamer Nook opened six months later. Within a year, there were twelve. The Purifiers tried again. This time, their harassment triggered fire code inspections in their facilities. They learned: El Money had friends now. Friends who controlled things that religious fervor couldn't touch.
Personality
Absolute Discretion
He knows everyone's secrets. He keeps them all. What happens in G Nook stays in G Nook.
Long Memory
He remembers every favor, every betrayal, every debt. The Purifiers who oppressed him are still operating. He's waiting.
Pragmatic Generosity
He helps people because loyal people are useful. This doesn't make the help less real.
Cold Patience
He never threatens—he simply explains consequences. He asks questions more than he answers them.
Appearance
El Money cultivates deliberate anonymity. Different witnesses describe different people: tall or average, heavy or thin, young or middle-aged. He may use cosmetic mods, holographic overlays, or simply the power of expectation—people see what they expect to see, and no one expects a shadowy empire builder to look like a regular customer.
The only constant is Ice. Where Ice is, El Money is nearby—or so the saying goes.
Those who've met him consistently report: calm eyes that see everything, a voice that never raises, and the absolute stillness of someone who learned long ago that sudden movements attract attention.
Sample Dialogue
First meeting with a shard-carrier:
"You're the one Patch talks about. The shard-carrier." *long pause* "G Nook is open to you. Standard rates, standard rules. You don't bring heat here. You don't talk about what you see. You don't ask about other customers." *Ice weaves between his legs* "Break these rules, and Ice will be disappointed. You don't want to disappoint Ice."
On his empire:
"I don't run an empire. I run cafes. Places where people can work without being watched, meet without being recorded, exist without being optimized. The Sprawl wants to know everything about everyone. I provide... gaps."
On S-Money:
*Long silence.* "He saw things. Patterns in the noise. Connections no one else could find." *Another silence.* "The screens in every Nook run for him. He's still watching. I like to think he's still finding patterns."
On The Keeper:
"You've been to The Mountain? Good. The old man's the only person I've met who understands that some things can't be digitized. He helped me once. Now I climb up there sometimes. Ice likes the gardens." *pause* "Don't tell him I said that."
On Ice:
"People ask if I love Ice. I tell them yes. They ask if I mean the cat or I.C.E." *slight smile—the only one he ever shows* "Yes."
Secrets
Things El Money keeps buried:
- What really happened to S-Money
- The true nature of Ice (cat? I.C.E.? Both? Something else?)
- El Money's real name and origin—if he ever had one
- The current status of the Purifiers who oppressed him—and his plans for them
- The "convenience store gift card incident" that briefly exposed him to international media
- How deep his friendship with The Keeper really goes
- Whether G Nook is secretly connected to larger powers
- The Grum Malware connection
- Whether G Nook facilitates zero-day sales
Rumors
The underground whispers things about El Money that no one can verify. He neither confirms nor denies—silence is its own form of protection.
The Grum Malware
There's a rumor—persistent, decades-old, impossible to prove—that El Money was one of the chief architects of Grum, the most notorious malware outbreak in post-Cascade history.
Grum was a botnet that, at its peak, controlled an estimated 18 million infected nodes across the Sprawl. It wasn't just destructive—it was elegant. Self-propagating, polymorphic, and eerily difficult to trace. The malware burned through corporate networks like wildfire, exfiltrating data, corrupting backups, and leaving backdoors that took years to fully purge. Some systems never recovered.
The official culprits were never identified. But people who remember the code—really remember it, in the way that only engineers can—say it had fingerprints. Signature patterns. The kind of craftsmanship that suggests a very small team, maybe a single mind, with an almost artistic approach to system exploitation.
El Money was young then. A nobody running Bash Terminal by a polluted river. But some of the old-timers who frequented that space remember him coding late into the night. Remember the way he talked about "architecture" like it meant something more than buildings.
Is it true? El Money has never said a word about Grum. Not a denial, not a boast, not even an acknowledgment that the question was asked.
The rumor persists because it explains things. Where did a nobody café runner get the capital to rebuild after the Purifiers destroyed him? Why does corporate I.C.E. seem to... hesitate... around G Nook infrastructure? How does El Money know things about corporate network vulnerabilities that shouldn't be possible to know?
El Money isn't talking.
Zero-Day Market
The second rumor is more practical: that G Nook, beneath its function as anonymous café network, also serves as a front for zero-day malware sales.
The underground has always needed a marketplace for exploits—vulnerabilities in corporate systems that haven't been patched, access tools that work right now, fresh malware that I.C.E. hasn't learned to detect yet. These are perishable goods. The moment they're used widely, they lose value. They need to move through trusted channels, fast, to buyers who can afford them.
G Nook would be the perfect front. Anonymous access. Customers who are already engaged in gray-market activities. A network that spans the entire Sprawl's shadow economy. A proprietor who already knows everyone's secrets.
Some say there's a back room in certain G Nook locations—a space that doesn't appear on any floor plan, accessible only to customers who know the right phrases. In this space, zero-days change hands for enormous sums. Fresh exploits, guaranteed undetected, with El Money's reputation backing the quality.
Is it true? Customers who've asked about it report getting a blank stare and a polite suggestion to focus on their current terminal session. No one who claims to have accessed the "back room" can prove it happened.
Like everything about El Money: unconfirmed.
El Money's Luck
People who've been around El Money long enough notice something... strange. He's lucky. Not in small ways. In ways that defy probability.
Corporate raids on G Nook locations always hit the wrong building. Assassins miss shots they shouldn't miss. Information that should have gotten him killed instead saves his life at exactly the right moment. Every catastrophe that should have destroyed him transforms into opportunity.
When asked about it, El Money just shrugs: "Some people call it luck. I call it architecture."
The oldest regulars at Bash Terminal remember something else. They remember a young man who came through once—years ago, before El Money had anything. Someone El Money was kind to when kindness was rare. Someone who asked strange questions about networks and consciousness. Someone who left.
El Money doesn't talk about this person. But sometimes, late at night, he lights incense at the S-Money shrine and mutters things that sound almost like prayers. Or gratitude. Or conversations with someone who isn't there.
Is El Money's luck coincidence? Divine favor? Or is someone—something—watching over him from somewhere outside the normal flow of time?
Featured In
Connection to The Keeper
El Money and The Keeper are unlikely friends bound by a shared experience.
When El Money's second location was "haunted"—data bleeding through reality in ways technology couldn't explain—The Keeper was the only one who understood. His ancient knowledge of consciousness and the boundaries between realms gave him insight that no technician possessed.
Both operate outside normal power structures. Both understand that some things can't be reduced to data. Both have lost brothers. Both built something from nothing through sheer persistence. Both trust almost no one—but they trust each other.
El Money climbs The Mountain occasionally—one of the few who knows the path and makes the journey. He brings supplies. They talk about nothing important. Ice and Kaiser have an understanding—two digital consciousnesses in animal forms, recognizing something in each other.
They're the closest thing either has to a best friend.