Nong Khai Refugee Camp, May 5, 1975

The stench of unwashed bodies and despair hung thick in the air. Minh trudged through the muddy paths between endless rows of tattered tents, his boots sinking into the Thai soil with each step. Around him, thousands of Vietnamese refugees huddled in groups, their hollow eyes fixed on nothing in particular.

“Keep moving,” Lieutenant Tran barked at their small unit. “Registration’s up ahead.”

The remnants of their platoon – seven men total – shuffled forward in the afternoon heat. Children with distended bellies played with sticks in puddles of brackish water. Old women squatted over cooking fires, stirring pots of watery rice porridge that would never be enough.

A group of men argued over space for a new tent. Their voices rose sharp and desperate until a Thai guard stepped in, rifle raised.

“This is what we fought for?” Private Nguyen spat on the ground. “To end up in this prison?”

Minh wiped the sweat from his brow. “Better than a real prison back home.”

The registration tent loomed ahead, its white UN logo faded and streaked with dirt. The line stretched for hundreds of meters – mothers clutching infants, former soldiers still in partial uniforms, businessmen in mud-caked suits who had fled with only what they could carry.

“Papers ready,” a tired Thai official called out in broken Vietnamese. 

Minh pulled out his military ID, which was now worthless except as proof he existed. Around him, the camp sprawled in every direction – a city of canvas and corrugated metal housing over fifty thousand souls. The lucky ones had proper tents. Others made do with tarps or pieces of scavenged metal propped against poles.

“Engineer, huh?” The official squinted at Minh’s papers. “We’ll put your unit in Section D. Manual labor detail starts tomorrow at dawn.”

A child’s wail pierced the humid air, a haunting reminder of the fragility of life in this place. A doctor shouted for more supplies in the medical tent nearby, his voice strained and desperate. The sweet-sour smell of gangrene drifted out from the tent, mingling with the woodsmoke and the ever-present odor of too many humans packed too closely together. It was a potent mix that seemed to cling to everything, a constant reminder of the harsh reality they now faced.

Minh looked around at the sea of mud-caked suits and his fellow refugees’ weary faces. They were no longer soldiers, bound together by a shared purpose and loyalty to their country. Now, they were simply refugees, waiting for some distant country to accept them, to offer them a chance at a new life. But for now, all they had was this makeshift camp, this city of canvas and corrugated metal that housed over fifty thousand souls. And even here, in this temporary sanctuary, there was no escaping the constant reminders of all they had lost.

Minh clutched his assigned tent number and trudged toward Section D. A group of former ARVN officers huddled near a makeshift fence, their weathered faces drawn tight with worry.

“Did you hear? The Americans are only taking their direct collaborators,” one of them muttered.

“What about the rest of us?” Another officer kicked at the mud.

“Australia might take some. Maybe France.” The first man shrugged. “If we’re lucky.”

Minh paused near their group. An older officer with graying temples caught his eye.

“You’re from the engineering corps, aren’t you?” The officer waved him over. “Join us. I’m Colonel Tran.”

“Private Minh Phan, sir.” Old habits died hard.

“Forget the ranks.” Colonel Tran gestured at the camp around them. “Look where they got us.”

A young man in a torn business suit approached their group. “Any of you have American dollars? I’ll trade gold.”

“Gold’s worthless here,” Colonel Tran scoffed. “Can’t eat it.”

“Better than Vietnamese dong.” The businessman pulled out a thick stack of colorful bills. “Not worth the paper they’re printed on now.”

Minh stared at the worthless currency. Back home, he’d helped design the security features for those same bills. Now they were just pretty paper, backed by nothing but broken promises.

“They control the money, they control everything,” Minh said, more to himself than the others.

“Who controls?” The businessman tucked his money away.

“The government. Any government.” Minh watched a UN truck rumble past, spraying mud. “They print what they want, when they want. And we’re supposed to trust them.”

Colonel Tran studied him with sudden interest. “You sound like you’ve given this some thought.”

“I helped design their money. I know exactly how worthless it is.” Minh kicked at a puddle, sending ripples across its surface. “There has to be a better way.”

The businessman leaned forward. “What kind of way?”

“Something they can’t control. Something that belongs to the people, not the government.”

The evening air grew thick with mosquitoes. Minh lay on his thin sleeping mat, the ground hard beneath him. Sleep refused to come. Every time he closed his eyes, the images flooded back – the fall of Saigon, the desperate rush to escape, the streets choked with panicked civilians.

The sound of helicopters still echoed in his mind. American Hueys lifting off from the embassy roof, leaving thousands behind. The crush of bodies at the airport. The screams of those who couldn’t get out.

A baby cried in a nearby tent. Minh rolled onto his side, pressing his face against his arm. The fabric of his sleeve still smelled faintly of diesel fuel from the boat they’d escaped on. Three days packed like sardines in the hold of a fishing vessel, the air so thick you could barely breathe.

“Can’t sleep either?” Colonel Tran’s voice came from the darkness.

“No, sir.”

“Stop with the ‘sir.’ I’m not a colonel anymore.” A match flared as Tran lit a cigarette. “We’re all just refugees now.”

The word hit Minh like a physical blow: refugee. A person without a country, without a home.

“What are we supposed to be now?” Minh sat up, his voice barely above a whisper. “Not Vietnamese anymore. Not anything.”

“We’re still Vietnamese.” But Tran’s voice lacked conviction.

“Are we? Our country isn’t our country anymore. Our money’s worthless. Our ranks, our jobs, our lives – all gone.”

Through gaps in the tent, Minh could see other refugees moving in the darkness—shadows without substance, people who existed in a liminal space between what they were and what they might become.

“My father was an engineer, too,” Minh said. “He helped build bridges in Hanoi. Real things. Things that lasted.” He picked up a handful of dirt and let it sift through his fingers. “Now everything we built is someone else’s.”

The cigarette’s ember glowed brighter as Tran took a long drag. “We’ll build again. Somewhere else.”

“But it won’t be home.”

Two weeks into his time at Nong Khai, the days blended into a haze of labor and tedium. Minh toiled in the unrelenting sun, clearing land and digging wells alongside hundreds of other men. It became a race to see who could do the most, as if they could bury their past in the freshly turned earth.

Events blurred together—a monsoon downpour that flooded the camp, a fight over a stolen hunk of spoiled bread, cranky UN officials dispensing slop in tin bowls. Then, one day, while clearing rubble for a new housing section, Minh uncovered an old encrypted radio set, half-buried in the debris of a demolished shed.

The battered case was covered in dust and grime. Minh recognized the model immediately – a Soviet copy he’d used before ’75. How it ended up here in Thailand was anyone’s guess. He wiped off the dust and cracked open the casing with practiced motions, examining the innards. Miraculously, it was largely intact, just needing power.

That night, Minh huddled in his tent over his find, idly flipping the manual switches by the light of a single candle. Colonel Tran ducked inside, Zweig beer in hand, his eyes widening at the sight of the radio.

“Haven’t seen one of them in years,” he said, kneeling across from Minh. “Where’d you dig that up?”

“Clearing rubble.” Minh held up a charred insulated wire. “Needed a power cord though.”

Tran took a long pull on his bottle, considering. “I think I have one in my bag. Let me look.”

He vanished into the darkness and returned a minute later with a tangle of scavanged wires. “It’s from a broken fan, but should work.”

Methodically, Minh connected the radio, splicing together the wires with the rest. The digits blinked on, wavering, then held steady. Minh tuned the dial, static crackling from the speakers. Particles swirled, finally resolving into a brusque male voice speaking Thai.

“Still works.” Tran leaned back on his heels. “Remember when we had to secure comms in the jungle? Before our gear got its ass kicked by the NVA.”

“I remember.” Minh had helped design the encryption algorithms those radios had used. But the algorithms were just math, bits of code. The real challenge lay in plugging those formulas into working radios.

Tran turned to him, his face shadowed by the candlelight. “We should see if we can find more. Establish a network. Pass intel.”

“This camp is UN territory.” Minh flicked off the radio, darkness suddenly swallowed them up. “They monitor everything.”

“So? You could write some code, keep our transmissions masked. That was your job.”

Minh’s eyes adjusted to the dim light. “You really think anyone would listen?”

“We have to try. We have to rebuild. And you could be the key.”

A distant siren started up, spiking fear through Minh’s chest as it did every night. He’d heard plenty of stories now – refugees who’d struck out on their own, away from the relative safety of the camps. The camps were a prison, but the outside world was a knife’s edge probability towards unfair death.

Tran touched his arm, grip firm with urgency. “You started to make some money, right? Before the war? I remember hearing about it.”

Minh jerked his head in assent, the memory bitter. “Bartering for food. Whatever I could get.”

“Because we can’t barter NVD. It’s garbage now, worthless paper.” Tran’s words ran over each other in barely contained excitement. “But your security coins? Those were different.”

Minh’s breath snagged in his throat. The plastic prototype he’d built before the war, his dream currency, was hidden away in his pack like a forbidden treasure. A decentralized, person-to-person solution unhinged from government manipulation. He’d spent countless nights perfecting the design.

“Don’t know if I still have it…” he muttered evasively.

“You do. I’ve seen you in the shower, checking that pack.” Tran let the implication hang there, heavy in the humid air.

Minh retrieved his pack in the darkness, movements careful and practiced. Between his carefully maintained shivs and water-stained Superman comics, the plastic coin still shimmered with possibility. Tran’s eyes locked onto it, reflecting the faint moonlight.

“That’s the future. An economic free state, like I said.” His voice built to a desperate excitement barely contained whispers. “Your coin and a network to spread it through. Then they can’t control us anymore. We’d be free.”

Minh’s fingers tightened around the coin, feeling every ridge and imperfection he’d crafted into it. It was an all-consuming dream suddenly fully formed in the darkness. It was not a distant concept or a detached discussion in safer times. It was makeshift and scrappy like his homeland had become, but alive with potential, burning in his palm like hope.

In the quiet hours after midnight, when the camp settled into a fitful sleep, Minh became a ghost among the discarded remnants of technology. He moved between rows of tents, fingers tracing the corpses of broken radios and forgotten electronics. Each circuit board was a potential lifeline. Each copper wire a thread of hope. The guards’ flashlights swept periodic arcs across the camp, but Minh had learned to move like the shadows—silent, purposeful. These were not just spare parts to him but potential building blocks of a system that could never be silenced, never be controlled. With each piece he salvaged, he was constructing more than just a radio or a coin—he was assembling a promise of resistance.

A young man noticed him tinkering with the radio one evening. He approached Minh’s tent, curiosity evident in his careful movements.

“Is that a Type-63?” The stranger crouched down beside him. “I studied these at university.”

“Computer engineering?” Minh looked up from his work.

“At Saigon University. Until…” He trailed off, extending his hand. “I’m Phong.”

“Minh.” They shook hands. “What do you know about encryption?”

Phong’s eyes lit up. “Enough to know those old Soviet algorithms are garbage. But the hardware – that’s interesting. The way they route signals through multiple paths?”

They huddled over the radio’s guts, speaking in low voices about frequencies and signal paths. Phong pointed out modifications that could improve the range.

“The whole system was rigged against us,” Phong said, connecting two wires. “Banks froze our accounts. The government-controlled all the channels. No way to move money, no way to communicate.”

“Single points of failure.” Minh nodded. “One command from above, and everything stops.”

“Exactly. My family lost everything because some bureaucrat clicked a button. Just like that – decades of savings gone.”

“Same story everywhere.” Minh retrieved his prototype coin. “That’s why I started working on this.”

Phong examined the coin, turning it over in his hands. “Distributed system?”

“Person to person. No central control.”

“Like a mesh network.” Phong’s fingers traced the security features. “Each node connects directly to others. No master switch to flip.”

“No one to tell us our money isn’t worth anything anymore.”

They worked late into the night, sketching circuits in the dirt and discussing protocols and fail-safes. The sounds of the camp faded into background noise as they lost themselves in the possibilities of a system that couldn’t be controlled or shut down.

The shouts started just before dawn, ripping through the fragile peace of the refugee camp. At first, Minh thought it was another fight over rations, a common occurrence. But then came the distinct crackle of gunfire, closer this time, followed by screams. He scrambled out of his tent, Phong right behind him.

“Bandits,” Phong yelled over the din. “From the hills.”

The camp erupted into chaos. People scattered, desperate to find cover. Mothers clutched their children, their faces etched with terror. The flimsy tents offered little protection against the bullets that zipped through the air. Minh saw a man fall, clutching his chest, blood blooming on his shirt.

“Get to the radio,” Minh shouted to Phong. “See if you can reach anyone.”

Phong sprinted towards the shed where they’d set up their makeshift comms station, weaving through the panicked crowd. Minh grabbed a discarded metal pipe, his knuckles white as he gripped it. He wasn’t a soldier anymore, but the instincts remained. Protect the weak. Defend your position.

Colonel Tran appeared beside him, a rusty pistol in his hand. “They’re after supplies,” Tran yelled, his voice tight. “The UN shipment came in yesterday.”

A group of men armed with machetes and homemade rifles charged through the camp, their faces contorted with rage. They fired indiscriminately into the fleeing crowd. Minh swung his pipe, connecting with the jaw of one of the attackers, sending him sprawling. But another bandit lunged at him, slashing at his arm with a machete. Minh felt a searing pain as the blade sliced through his shirt, grazing his skin.

He stumbled back, his arm throbbing. Tran fired his pistol, the shot echoing through the camp. The bandit yelped and clutched his shoulder, but kept coming. Minh kicked him in the groin, doubling him over. Then he brought the pipe down hard on the back of the bandit’s head.

The fighting raged for what felt like an eternity. The air filled with the stench of gunpowder and blood. Minh moved through the chaos, trying to protect the unarmed refugees, pulling them to whatever cover he could find. He saw children huddled beneath overturned carts, their eyes wide with fear. He saw elderly men and women weeping, their bodies trembling.

Finally, the gunfire began to subside. The bandits, laden with stolen supplies, retreated into the hills. Silence descended on the camp, a heavy, suffocating silence broken only by the moans of the injured and the cries of the bereaved.

Minh leaned against a tent pole, his body aching, his spirit drained. He looked around at the devastation. The camp was a wreck, with tents ripped apart and belongings scattered everywhere. The ground was littered with bodies. The medical tent overflowed with the wounded. The air was thick with the smell of death.

Phong emerged from the shed, his face grim. “No response,” he said, shaking his head. “No one’s coming.”

Minh closed his eyes, and the image of the fallen refugees seared into his mind. The prototype coin felt heavy in his pocket, a cold, useless piece of plastic. What good was economic freedom when basic survival was at stake? What hope was there in a world where violence and desperation reigned? He felt a wave of despair, a deep, crushing sense of hopelessness. They were alone, adrift in a sea of chaos, and no one was coming to save them.