The whole machine
The long version. What the systems actually do, and why the market is allowed to behave like this.
2091
They rebuilt it correctly once. Perfect information, zero latency advantage, everyone seeing everything at the same instant, forever. It worked. That was the problem.
2041
THE FIRST SCRAPPING
Market 1.0 dies the way everyone expected: too fast, too thin, too owned. By the end 99.4% of volume is machines trading with machines in a dark pool under Secaucus. The last human retail order of the legacy era is a three-share buy that takes 41 milliseconds to fill and loses money on the spread. Nobody notices for a week.
2044–2074
MARKET 2.0 -- THE FAIR ERA
With no asymmetry there is no edge; with no edge there is no reason to look at the screen. Prices converge to fair value and stay there — a straight line with a rounding error. The charts went flat. Not down. Flat. The final session of Market 2.0 opens with eleven active traders and closes with none, because all eleven forget to come back.
2074
THE SECOND SCRAPPING
The Exchange is decommissioned. The stated cause is not fraud, not insolvency, not systemic risk. The filing gives exactly one reason.
EXCHANGE DECOMMISSIONING FILING · 2074 · STATED CAUSE
"NO LONGER ENJOYABLE TO TRADE."
Seventeen years of quiet follow. Then someone writes the Enjoyability Mandate: a market nobody wants to trade is not a market, it is a spreadsheet with a heartbeat monitor. In 2091 the Exchange reopens as an entertainment product — not regulated for fairness, regulated for engagement. You are a licensee, and your licence is renewed weekly.
The systems
Everything below is in the build. The screenshots are captured from the game.
You start every run with a 42-chip deck and a hand of five. Drag a chip onto the chart and it becomes something real: a trendline the price bounces off, a channel it can't escape, a BULL ZONE that spikes the tape when you sell inside it. Every play costs TA energy, which starts full each morning and trickles back through the day, and a fresh hand is dealt as you play. Buy extra copies of the chips you love and level them from 1 to 5 in the evening shop -- a level applies to every copy you own. Drag a dead card into the SCRAP bin and it pays you energy back.
Every evening the broker terminal opens. Pick an edge chip up off the shelf and drag it into a socket on your rack. Edge chips are passive hardware, and their sell multipliers stack multiplicatively: two chips that each double a sale make it pay four times. You start with five sockets and can open up to eight. There are more than 100 of them across six tiers -- common, uncommon, rare, epic, legendary and after-market -- plus edge packs, rerolls, and upgrades you drag straight onto an edge you already own.
Five days make a week, seven weeks make a run, and every week has a cash target you have to clear or the run is over. That target isn't a fixed curve. It's built from your own last ten runs and the difficulty you chose, so the better you get, the more the Exchange asks for. Each week also deals one rule that changes what you're allowed to do. Thirty ranks and four difficulty settings sit on top.
Thirty chart hazards and pickups cycle through the tape, three live on any given day, and eighteen interference events are waiting to ruin your afternoon. BARRAGE: ten missiles in five seconds, shoot them down. EMP SWARM: drones that dive at your chips, and any that land destroy the chip. SPIKE STRIP: mines laid on the chart ahead of the price. WIRE TAP: a clamp that bites your portfolio and siphons cash until you rip it off. ADWARE CASCADE: pop-ups flood the screen mid-trade. Plus leeches, feed blackouts, a sealed order desk, and the week's rule.
Own an after-market chip and clear all three daily challenges, and the Exchange pays you in arcade time. There are eight cabinets: TAPE BREAKER, DATA WORM, SKYHOOK, FREEFALL, RED SWARM, CASCADE, SPIKE HUNTER and HARD DOCK. Each one is a real game you have to play, for real cash on the way home.
Some chips ask for your hands. Mash to charge PAMP IT! into a rocket. Hit three marks in time to DUMP IT!. Coil THE SQUEEZE and let go before it snaps. Tap DOJI RUNNER on the frame the candle goes flat.
BULWARK, AEGIS, FLAK, DECOY, PURGE, INSURANCE and LOCKBOX. Each one answers a different kind of attack, and they live in your deck beside the chart chips.
EdgeCo's AI assistant lives on your chart, watches every trade and has something to say about all of them, in over a thousand voice lines. Things hunt him too: missiles, a UFO, data leeches and a line of tanks. You can grab him and fly him clear. Level up your account to unlock four robot faces for him.
Two traders, one shared tape, five days. Whoever is worth more at Friday's bell wins. Your deck holds attacks as well as chart chips and shields, and between days there's a quick draft: four offers, pick two.
One tape for everybody, every week, with a modifier that changes the rules. It can't be lost, and it's scored against the house par.
Bank money to level up your account and raise a 100-floor tower into the skyline behind the menu, laid out however you like. The neon city swings with your P&L.