Mystery Car Rally 2025
Not Your Usual Bank Heist
Author: George Maxwell, DFL SD49.
Images generated by Adobe Firefly 3. Editorial cartoon credit to Wilfred Hildonen
Rump, a well-known businessman and financier, successfully ran for the Presidency promising to lower taxes and deport immigrants. He funded his campaign through various marketing gimmicks such as the sale of gold hats, gold plated shoes, playing cards with gold flake, and taking significant donations from various industries and people who sought regulatory relief. He still had significant expenses because honestly campaigns are costly and how many hats can you sell.
Rump was, unbeknownst to his followers, not the best businessperson or financier and most of his famous deals did not yield the profits that he trumpeted. He had bankrupted a few of his less successful real estate adventures, leaving Mr. Plum Drain with millions of dollars in losses
He needed money to keep his lifestyle and so before his inauguration he launched a brand new cryptocurrency named Rump Gold Gram or RumpGG, because each piece of RumpGG was convertible into 1 gram of gold that Rump claimed was on deposit at the Bank Under Rump of the Panhandle also affectionately called, BURP by Rump’s many followers.
Rump, when marketing RumpGG to the public, brought cameras into the main branch of his BURP vault to show vast stacks of gold piled high that he claimed backed his RumpGG gold convertibility. Each bar had a distinctive cartoonish profile of Rump stamped in it with a serial number. RumpGG’s launch was wildly successful. His adoring supporters poured their savings into RumpGG making Rump billions instantly. One of his supporters Joe the Plummer cashed out his 401K mutual funds and purchased 1000 RumpGG, which would be convertible to 1 kilo of gold on the very first day it became available.
Rump in the first weeks of his presidency picked on heads of state of smaller weaker countries including PlacesAndSpacesInASharpieCircle, CountryNoOneHasHeardof, and Persia. He sanctioned them, raised tariffs crippling their economies, and ordered a strike killing a commander for Persia in the field. Persia in response attempted to hire an assassin to attack Rump.
After several months, Joe the Plummer fell on hard times and decided that to pay the rent he had to exchange his RumpGG for gold. He presented his 1000 RumpGG and asked the teller to give him a kilo of gold. When he presented his 1000 RumpGG at BURP and demanded his gold, the teller checked the vault and found it to be empty – all the gold had gone missing.
Rump immediately blamed Persia. Rump ordered a massive investigation, which discovered that the bank branch had received an internal order to transfer the gold from the main BURP branch to another branch across town a week earlier. It turned out that the internal order was false, and happened on the same day that a secure fiber optic inter-banking cable had been cut out in the Atlantic and a hack of the banking system had been supposedly repelled. The investigation discovered the order to transfer the gold, which appeared to be genuine, but no one at the bank management remembered ordering. The gold was loaded onto trucks, and in video footage the trucks appeared to head towards another BURP branch across town. However, the gold never reached the branch across town.
After the gold disappeared, Rump Jr. travelled along with his father on Airforce One and took a liking to one of the journalists, Krasna Drain Bobeda. Krasna was known for issuing glowing reports showing Rump and his family in the best light. Rump Jr. struck up a pleasant conversation with Krasna telling her about the investigation, and gave Krasna the inside scoop on highly secret intercepts that showed the Persians really had a submarine hanging around the cable at the time that it was cut, and the alleged fake order to transfer gold was supposedly sent.
While he was showing Krasna the top secret materials, the plane hit an air pocket and dropped 2000 feet shaking everyone and everything in the plane. The shaking caused five bars of gold with the distinctive Rump profile to spill out of an unidentified bag and slide down the hallway and into the press section – it was a casus belli for impeachment with the photos and headlines reading – What did Rump Know About The Gold and When Did He Know It? Rump, for once, appeared speechless.
Who stole the gold? Solve riddles and travel around SD49 to uncover the culprit!
