This post is taking part in the t2 x Kiwi Writing Contest.
Neo-Brussels hummed with the vibrant energy of ETHCC 2140, its streets a kaleidoscope of holographic advertisements and neon signs pulsing through the fog. The city-state, once the heart of Belgium now split apart on linguistic lines but still the European Union. It thrived as an independent hub of innovation and technological marvels built by an elite class of tech entrepreneurs. The countdown to Bitcoin's final inflationary schedule had drawn an eclectic crowd to this year’s conference, each attendee eager to witness the dawn of a new financial era predicted by the Great Satoshi Nakamoto.
Tiaa adjusted their AR glasses, the world around them shifting as layers of augmented reality enhanced their view. Neon signs for layer 5 and 6 blockchain startups flickered beside centuries-old architecture, and the chatter of excited crypto enthusiasts filled the air. They navigated through the crowd, their friends close behind. Their voices blended into the cacophony of debates about the future of decentralized social media now that the web2 tech giants, Meta, Twitter, and LinkedIn were all dying. More decentralized alternatives were being adopted through the magnificent sales of the Argos AR glasses that had taken everyone by storm, especially in Brussels.
As they approached the historic building of the Bourse, the old Belgian stock exchange, now long a museum, Tiaa’s glasses alerted them to an unusual signal. A faint glow appeared in the corner of their vision—a sigil, intricate and otherworldly, hovering on the side of the building in St. Gery. Intrigued, they focused on it, and their device confirmed its presence: an NFT-locked symbol, visible only to those with the right NFT in their Argos connected pineal gland implant chip Ethereum account given at birth to everyone born after the year 2100.
“Do you see that?” Tiaa asked, pointing towards the sigil on the Bourse.
Their friends looked around, confusion etched on their faces. “See what?” Sam replied, scanning the area with his own AR device.
Tiaa’s heart raced. “It’s a weird symbol. Right there. You really don’t see it?”
Maya shook her head. “Nope. Are you sure you’re not imagining things? My glasses aren’t picking anything up and we have a lot of the same NFTs.”
Tiaa took a deep breath, their curiosity piqued. They had joked in the past that their NFT collection held secrets since they owned several NFT memberships in secret societies joined while in university, but this was different. This felt actually important. As the sigil pulsed gently on the ancient stone, they couldn’t shake the feeling that it was leading them to something significant—something that could change everything.
An ominous energy radiated from the sigil, sending a shiver down Tiaa’s spine. They glanced at their friends. They were clearly uncomfortable with how long they had been seemingly staring at a wall while everyone else walked around them. “Whatever. Let’s head to Schelling Point.”
The group moved on, but Tiaa’s mind remained fixated on the sigil. Throughout the day they attended talks on the cryptoeconomic security of Bitcoin now that the inflation schedule had ended, Optimism’s new 20-year vested grants program, ambassador programs for the latest longevity drug cocktail and the recent claims by Eleusis, the largest cryogenic freezing company, that it would soon be resurrecting the first human from one of its cryogenic pods live during Raave later that night. The image of the pulsing symbol lingered in their thoughts. They couldn’t take it anymore, they had to know what was behind the sigil.
While Sam and Maya went to the Optimism after-drinks, Tiaa made the excuse that they left their daily Longzempic injection back at their pod but they’ll see them at Raave. Tiaa bolted back to St. Gery, their heart pounding in their chest. Skidding on the mist-slicked cobblestones, they rounded the corner to the front of the Bourse, searching for where they had seen the sigil and hoping to see only blank stones – but wishing on a deeper level for confirmation that the image seared into their brain was also “real”. Locking eyes with it on the wall, the sigil was undeniably there. Covering the entirety of the front of the building, its gently pulsating light felt as familiar as a recurring dream.
Tiaa looked furtively around at the people milling around the plaza but they were all fixated on their beer and fries, ducking out of the increasingly heavy rain or eye-texting their friends on the DeTelegram displays hovering digitally in front of them through their Argos lenses. No one was paying attention to Tiaa, it seemed. As they got closer, the sigil quickly moved to the side of the building in front of the Bruxella 1238 ruins, visible under the ground through dirty glass. Nearly knocking over a woman’s cone of fries with a healthy dollop of Andalouse sauce, they ran over to be closer to the sigil now smaller but pulsating harder.
“0XD8 COME CLOSER” the pop-up text read through their Argos coming from the sigil. Their eyes widened. They’d never received a message like this before. How did it know the first four digits of their birth account? They slowed down to a walking pace and neared the wall where the sigil had grown smaller but pulsated harder.
As they came face-to-face to the floating sigil, a transaction request came through Tiaa’s Argos.
“I hereby accept to send this message to the intended receiver.” it said. They looked deeper into the message. There was no movement of any crypto assets but requested their on-chain signature to be posted on the Ethereum mainnet.
“YOU WILL KNOW WHO TO GIVE THIS MESSAGE TO WHEN YOU FIND HIM.” The last message they received from the sigil before it disappeared behind digital smoke.
Everything felt so sudden. Was that it? They ran all the way over here for this? They had too many questions they didn’t get a chance to enquire about.
The transaction request was still there, asking for their signature as if to taunt them.
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One thousand eyes started upwards as the ceiling parted, whirring gently like velvet curtains opening. A disco ball descended from the void, its mirrors casting light over five hundred gaping mouths below. The most elite guest list Raave had ever seen. Even Stani Kulechov’s digitally uploaded persona had made a rare reappearance for the event, whirring to and fro wildly below the steadily dropping ball in the drone where it had long been encased.
In a few minutes that felt like an eternity, the disco ball neared its resting place on the circular stage around which the crowd desperately pressed itself. A constant flicker of camera lights from every Argos lens wildly leaped off the sphere of mirrors, throwing light chaotically around the room. Fog filled the dance floor and a hypnotic techno beat swelled from the speakers or perhaps from the disco ball itself.
The party guests eventually turned back to their conversations or resumed their moves on the dancefloor, glancing uneasily at the disco ball. Tiaa attempted to focus on Sam and Maya as they speculated on the same question buzzing in all discussions across the room – was there really going to be a cryogenic reveal tonight? Who – or what was left of who – would emerge from that disco ball? Or elsewhere in the venue…
Argos headsets were chirping constantly around them as prediction markets blew up. The longevity markets were going crazy. Everyone was on a high that nearly recalled the days of analog drugs. It was impossible for Tiaa to concentrate on what their friends were saying as the real question urgently pressed itself into every corner of their mind, folding itself along each crease of conversation – who did they need to deliver this message to?
The digitally administered AR-entheogens, trained over years of tracking serotonin and dopamine pathways to create emergently generated altered states, formed themselves into the shape of the question, making it nearly impossible to ignore and crowding out all other stimuli. There was no choice but to respond.
“I’ll be right back,” Tiaa managed to mutter, propelling themself in an automaton state past the speculating clusters of party-goers and down the hallway to the toilets. They fell onto the tiles as the door whispered shut and locked behind them. With the techno and buzz of voices shut out, they were able to fully fall under the sigil’s spell.
Once again it appeared across their mind’s eye, stretching as vivid and neon over the arch of their brain as it was on the façade of De Bourse. The request reasserted itself with such an overwhelming force it was unclear if spoken, read, or felt on some deeper subconscious level. Embedded in the folds of their brain, radiating from the Argos chip lodged in their pineal gland,
“I hereby accept to send this message to the intended receiver.”
Tiaa’s eyes stared back at them in the darkened mirror, both sets of eyes watching their hand slowly rise and make their confirmation signature into the air. Delicately their finger traced their name, the flourish of the cursive T comically formal as they struggled to hold up their hand. T I A A seemed to linger as the transaction cleared.“Transaction sent” the digital overlay confirmed.
Tiaa had never felt this kind of adrenaline before, even with the analog drugs they tried. A scroll appeared in their Argos account’s inventory. An NFT with encrypted metadata in it. The function to decrypt the message was not accessible by them. Who could be the one that could unlock what was inside? What kinds of secrets did it hold?
Didn’t seem like there was much they could do at that point and so they left the empty bathroom, back into Raave.
After the claustrophobic confines of the toilet, the heat and movement emanating from the dancefloor drew them into its comforting embrace. Tiaa was aware of their feet walking into the crowd, allowing themself to be subsumed into the ecstatic hive of bodies. Familiar smells and sounds! No strange images flooding their visual field except the usual patterns winking in and out on AR-entheogens. Seeing friends’ and coworkers’ faces smiling with recognition, Tiaa was almost able to convince themself the sigil and its transactions were merely a normal trick of digital psychedelics. Their body and perceptual field felt resynthesized, and they felt firmly in command of their own consciousness again.
And yet… something was different, stirring deep in the circuits of their brain. Flickering under their regular flow of thoughts, the scroll was still there. Hugging friends, recognizing songs, chatting about acquaintance’s projects, all the usual cryptoparty banter could not fully cover up the scroll etched into some layer of their consciousness. Its afterimage taunted them.
The hypnotic beats continued, notes winding around each other like the lights chasing each other through the scales of the disco ball.
Suddenly, silence as the disco ball shattered. Everyone threw up their arms but the only danger was in their digital overlay. Visual trickery aside, the real spectacle commenced.
“See, I told you! I knew there was someone inside the disco ball!” Sam screamed. “Ya looks like you were right, tek.” Tiaa responded, but their mind was too distracted by the now softly glowing scroll they needed to deliver.
The disco ball had opened to reveal an Eleusis branded cryogenic pod with someone inside of it.
“ARE YOU READY TO WITNESS THE WORLD’S VERY FIRST LIVE CRYOGENIC UNFREEZING!” The announcement roared through the speakers that were previously playing the top BioTechno hits of the year. The crowd of cryptocurrency entrepreneurs and hot shots cheered.
“This is incredible, we’re seriously going to be witnessing history in the making.” Maya exclaimed in awe of what was happening on the stage. Tiaa noticed the glow of the scroll dragging their attention towards the doors behind them. Strange. It seemed that the scroll was giving them direction on where to find the person they needed to deliver it to.
As the build up continued for the reveal, Tiaa snuck away and walked towards the doors. Everyone was fixated on the stage, creating a lot of empty space between the start of the crowd and the beginning of what seemed like something much larger than the unfreezing.
“AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY” the door sign read. But the scroll was glowing much stronger than before. On the side was a neural chip reader. They needed someone with an Eleusis employment NFT attached to their neural chip to get them in. Whatever was behind this door, they knew it was related to the delivery of the scroll. Not one to give up, they began to concoct a plan to get through.
From behind the crowd they could see the human get ejected from the cryogenic pod. Their naked body laid on the ground for a moment before they slowly moved their toes, fingers, legs, and then arms. They were wet and shaking uncontrollably. Whispers began that maybe they were dying in front of their very eyes. Nobody’s Argos lens detected a signal from the trembling body. This person clearly didn’t have an Argos chip. A rare sight in Brussels during ETHCC.
Tiaa moved towards the crowd to get a closer look. “Just watch, he’ll be fine.” assured a young tall European-descendant he/him (according to Tiaa’s Argos) presumably in his late 20s.
“You seem confident.”
“Well, to be honest I’ve seen it before.” Tiaa’s Argos showed that he revealed an Acquaintance level of information to them. His name was Pieter and worked at Eleusis within the cryogenic department. Tiaa did the same, spotting a golden opportunity.
“Oh wow, and you work for Bellerophon doing quantum encryption?”
“That’s right Pieter!” Tiaa tried to exude more feminine energy than usual with a flirty smile. “And maybe if you’re nice enough I can get you some of our good swag tonight.” They winked at him.
“Oh tek, I’d do anything for some Bellerophon socks and hoodies.” Pieter was clearly into them.
“Could you show me what’s behind those doors?” They were actually enjoying the thrill of the chase even if he wasn’t their usual type.
“You’re so lucky that those are the doors to my department. You know, usually I would never break protocol like this, but I’ll let it slide this time since everyone’s paying attention to the stage.” Pieter was dying to impress through his qualifications to make up for his bland personality.
Tiaa had him wrapped around their finger.
The AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL door slid shut behind Tiaa and Pieter, taking with it all light and sound. The air on the other side was absolutely still, the silence overwhelming. Tiaa felt their thoughts running in parallel lines, the inexorable pull of the scroll overlaid with the self-referential dialogue of their normal consciousness that knew it had to break the gravity of the situation before Pieter started questioning his decision.
Tiaa held out their hands, patting the air before them until they landed on the soft surface of Pieter’s company-branded vest. He was standing very close as he had shuffled them through the door with him, two bodies to one Argos-linked Authorized Personnel chip. They breathed in his ear, “Well here we are.”
The whisper sounded unbelievably loud in the hushed chamber. For the first time since being overtaken by the sigil’s will, Tiaa felt deeply afraid. Who else may be listening in here?“
Just you and me, babe.” Pieter said back in a normal tone.
“Shhh! They’ll hear you!” Tiaa tested him.
“Nobody in here but us, I promise. Well… nobody who is able to hear us.”
“What do you mean,” Tiaa glanced wildly around. Unusually, Tiaa’s Argos was not able to detect anything in the immense darkness.
Pieter turned on the flashlight on his Argos. The light hit onto a row of cylinders, first registering in Tiaa’s mind as the vats they witnessed on a brewery tour earlier.
As their eyes finally adjusted, the reality of what Tiaa was seeing registered. These were not rows of beer brewing tanks at all, but cylinders quite like the one they had just witnessed a huddled mass of post-cryogenically frozen human flailing out of. Squinting, they could barely make out the name and hash printed on the closest pod. KEVIN OWOCKI. Kevin’s shock of dark blonde hair bobbed gently in the cryogenic liquid. He was missing the characteristic glasses featured in all they had read about him in the crypto twitter anarchives, his face placid in semi-eternal rest. Tiaa shuddered. What would remain of him if that mouth gaped open to breathe again?
“Pretty mega, right?” Pieter smiled.
“Unbelievable. Is this really Kevin Owocki from the Book of Crypto Memetics?”
“Yup. Wanna see more? I’ll show you my favorite.” The scroll was glowing brighter as they walked down the hall.
Remembering their mission, Tiaa grabbed Pieter’s hand as they proceeded through the rows of cryogenic pods. The bodies bobbed gently, pale and distorted floating in their life-preserving soup. Tiaa had an uncomfortable memory of visiting an archaic museum in childhood, where specimens dating back hundreds of years, before computers even, were suspended forever in the bottles of the Wet Collection behind labels demarcating their origin and value.
Except these specimens were more like historical figures come to life, or almost-life, as if the unearthed Terracotta Army had faces straight out of the anarchives. HAL FINNEY. NICK SZABO. DAVID CHAUM. DORIAN NAKAMOTO. JOSEPH LUBIN.
An exhilarating thought bloomed in Tiaa’s mind. Were they going to finally discover the identity of Satoshi?!
“Thereeee you are!” Pieter gestured widely, framing a pod with his long wiry arms. Tiaa whipped around.
It wasn’t Satoshi, but a blonde girl clad in leather with fabulous shoes. Her dachshund floated in her arms, gazing lifelessly at her peacefully slumbering face. MARIA PAULA FERNANDEZ & TUPAC, read their label.
Tiaa stared at MARIA PAULA FERNANDEZ & TUPAC, the pathos of their eternal embrace drawing them back from curiosity to the urgency of their mission. Beyond them stretched row upon interminable row of pods, the end of the hangar housing them not even perceptible to their Argos’ proprioception monitor. The scroll’s pull tugged continuously at the back of their consciousness, nudging them forward. They had to lose Pieter and figure out where it wanted to lead her.
“So, my mind is officially blown,” they smiled. “Shall I return the favor?”
Pieter scoffed. “That’s a pretty bold claim. What do you have to offer?”
Tiaa slid a vial from a pocket sewn inside their collar, dangling it in front of him.
“Ever tried analog ketamine?”
Pieter clearly had not. One small sniff from the vial and he was soon slumped between MARIA PAULA FERNANDEZ & TUPAC and SIMON DENNY, barely more functional than their catatonically submerged forms.
Tiaa knew they had only about 15 minutes before Pieter would stumble along to find them, crashing into god knows who in the process.
It was now undeniable that the scroll wanted them to connect with someone in here, but how to locate one body in an almost-corpse corpus stretching back nearly a century? Tiaa started to run, the faces they passed blurring together but none of them the right target. SCOTT MOORE. GRIFF GREEN. BALAJI SRINIVASAN. MARC ANDREESON. CARLOS MATOS. They veered left, down a different chronological trail, but the sigil grew fainter. They must have been close by in the 2040’s. Their chip felt like it was squeezing their brainstem as they made a u-turn back into the early days of longevity guinea pigs.
Suddenly, they saw it. It was like a reflection of their mind’s eye, but glowing in the middle of a far pod. Deep within the bowels of the hangar, they heard something stirring. Pieter must be groping his way out of the k-hole. Tia raced toward the farthest cryogenic pods in the row.
Nearing the end of the row, Tiaa gasped as they read the name plaque.
VITALIK BUTERIN.
He floated gracefully in the cylinder as they stared in silence.
Suddenly, Vitalik seemed to awaken as they crept closer. The mirrored sigil blazed out from between piercing blue eyes, like a third eye that stared straight into Tiaa’s activated pineal gland.
Of course he’s in here, but why was Vitalik calling for them from a cryogenic pod? The sigil’s scroll unfurled, finally revealing the purpose that drew them together. The message was for him.