The Archivist on the Chain
Introduction
The world as we live in is fast approaching a point of no return. Big Corporations want to control everything at the expense of the skillful general population. Those who can afford to resist and forge their path can find alternatives. Those who don’t succumb to the tyranny of the elite, filled with their vanity.
The Archivist on the Chain is a story set in the near future. The world is divided between those who have adopted the proposed way of living with a Centralized system governed by AI and those who wanted a more decentralized outlook that protects individualism.
As the divide increased, fueled by economic unrest and depletion of resources, the power became more concentrated in the hands of the Unified Global Corporations. The ones with resources became part of the New World, while the working class managed to stay afloat by creating a system that rewarded hard work in the form of tokens created by the Minters.
An imperfect world built on unrest was always doomed to more unrest…
The Archivist on the Chain - Episode 1
The loud screeching sound of the metal scratching against each other is unnerving, like peeling off a piece of dry skin from the body, only to discover the horror that it's gone too far. The mornings are busy, full of the chaotic hustle of people looking to get ahead of the day.
The concept of time for everyone on the chain is relative to the comfort of the day. Some days are long, full of work, and those are good days, while some days are short, spent mining through the landfill of junk that might be of some value to someone. On days like these that the people of the chain wonder whether time could go back and they would change their decision to remain on the chain.
Though Life does not come with a rewind button, no matter how much we try to make it happen.
The layers and layers of landfill full of electronic and technological waste were surrounded by ten-storey housing projects that once belonged to the working class. The project has seen better days. The entrances were boarded off, only for the people to carve an entrance into them. Once inside, there was no direction for any specific apartment, and it was a miracle that the people were able to make it up and down the stairs. A perfect metaphor of the times when the once-thriving working-class community lay in ruins, only for the people to turn it into a home, as much as they can.
Eon lived on the top floor and had been a permanent resident of the projects since his birth. Never ventured out to the far lands to even witness the destruction of the world as he knew beyond the chain. He had no interest in intruding on the other side, where the people pretended nothing ever happened.
"The suffering only goes away with the sufferer, and I intend to see it through to the end."
Eon, 58 years old now, has lived most of his life as a minter on the chain, looking to improve the lives of the people by giving them something to trade with the other world. A wise man, now, at least that is how the residents of the chain referred to him, he was neither the messiah nor the villain, but the only one who experienced the world as it was before and what it is now. Being in such a privileged position meant he always had a curious set of people asking him questions about the other world and about the good times of the chain when it was thriving. Eon hated answering these questions and preferred his solitude. He is at an age where he is allowed to be grumpy and act it out.
The Break in the Routine
Eon barely slept. Even if he did, the nightmares would not let him have a peaceful night. The diet of whatever is available on the day from the project canteen is not helpful to maintain any sort of healthy routine. It is enough to get by, for the day, a week, or whatever comes next. He rarely complained.
It was mid-afternoon when he heard a commotion in the building passage way, loud enough to disturb his afternoon zone of work. He prefers not to engage in the daily curfuffle of the miscreants. It was his policy not to engage until one of his set rules was broken, then he had to set things right.
One of the rules was simple - Do Not Bother Me and My Work.
"Do not force us to take everything from you, boy. We are warning you."
"Useless Tah, Cant … Catch…A… Bloody…Kid."
"Stop Preaching and Trip Him, Will you?"
The noise and the commentary were too much for Eon, who by now wanted to get his peace back. It was not a regular occurrence. He chose to live in this wing of the building in the projects for the very reason that it looked almost abandoned. Probably he was wrong, as he has been about so many things in his life.
"Fuck, Axon, What is taking so long?" Spoke one of the miscreants. He seemed like the one in charge of the operation being carried out outside.
"He's a slippery bastard, Ax," responded Tah.
Eon opened the apartment door to get a peek into the operation and was immediately pushed aside violently by a four-foot figure who was rushing to find solace away from the passage of the building. Eon gasped and grunted in an irritated tone.
"Get the Fuck off my doors. Leave me Alone … Get out!"
The miscreants who were chasing behind the kid almost ran into Eon, but held themselves off at the last moment. He got hold of the one who was closest and grunted in a hoarse voice to leave him alone in peace. They all nodded in unison and rushed out of the building. Eon slammed the door behind them.
The peace was back in the realm for him, but then there was a new problem. He had an unwanted guest in the apartment, whom he would rather get rid of as soon as he possibly can, for his liking.
All That is Found Should not be Deciphered.
"You have five minutes to get out of here before I lose my mind and throw you out of the window."
Eon was as blunt as he could be in his instructions. He always liked to maintain it in his communications. He left no room for confusion. To his annoyance, though, there was no response. He repeated the instructions in his truest feelings, but still no response.
Eon slowly started to move around his apartment towards the bedroom to see if the kid was listening or if something had happened to him. As he approached the bedroom door, he saw a figure short enough to hide between the shelf and the window curtains. He looked scared and feisty, yet helpless and desperately in need of guidance.
"Who are you? What are you doing here? Last chance to answer." Eon checked with the kid introspectively.
Getting no response from the other end, He moved towards the window, slowly at first, not to cause any more commotion, but then took a big step to grab hold of the kid.
Eon's large hands and strong grip got hold of the kid, who immediately winced at the contact and hissed in defiance of the unwarranted roughness. Eon was too strong for him and managed to get hold of him and picked him up by his arms to further assert his authority. The kid tried to scream, but nothing came out, and he flailed his feet to kick Eon, but failed at it. He soon realized the helplessness of the situation and tried to reassess it. He looked straight into Eon's eyes.
It has been quite a while since Eon had any kind of sustained interaction with anyone. He preferred to keep himself busy with work and strayed away from human interaction or even the idea of it. This was deeply unsettling to him. He hadn't looked into the eyes of another human in years, especially not in such a closed encounter. An alien feeling paralyzed him.
"What's your name?" Eon asked in a calm tone.
"Xer," the kid replied in a scared yet inquisitive manner.
"Why are the miscreants chasing you?"
Xer thought for a minute, continued to look at Eon's eyes, and answered calmly.
"Found something in the Landfill, all mine, it's alien, like me. I kill them, and take it back."
Eon put the kid back on the floor, held him by the shoulder, and led him back into the kitchen area, sat him down at the coffee table. He politely asked the kid to show him the thing that he had found in the landfill. Xer declined. Eon insisted, and Xer could see that in his widened red eyes, closed fist, and a slight lean towards him. Xer was not the one to back out, but he assessed that he was at a disadvantage here. He took a wrong turn, into the apartment of this angry, grumpy old man, and now he might lose the alien object he curiously admired so much for the last three hours while being chased by the miscreants.
Xer was reluctant, yet he took the object out of his inner jacket pocket and placed it on the table.
Eon had one look at it and immediately recognized it. He thought all these devices were destroyed years ago and were largely useless in today's world. He picked it up and pressed the small button on it recklessly. The device beeped.
Artefacts: Connect the Old and the New World
Eon was taken aback. He pushed Xer with a barrage of questions on the whereabouts of this device. Finding something in the landfill meant there was nothing to trace it back, no guarantee it was valuable or trash, and no accountability for ownership. To think of it, it is exactly the place where such devices are found.
It was almost two decades ago, Eon worked at one of the firms where they exclusively minted tokens for the big corporations. The tokens are the cryptographic currency that can be exchanged for a real currency of the time. As time went by, the old and the new world changed the way they looked at money. Every organization wanted to bring their token to the negotiation table against other organizations in trade. The fiat currency was the global standard, but the valuation of such currency depends on the global order comprising of few powerful entities controlling the supply and demand.
The minters were responsible for managing the tokens for their organization and coordinating with the traders to keep enough of them in supply to make them hold their value. The bigger the organization, the higher the circulation and the value of the token, which meant it was easy to move the money around against different tokens and fiat currencies. The big corporations always got their way.
The minters held a small device that allowed them to connect to exchange terminals to trade the tokens with their unique private keys. Only those with the device could trade on the exchange terminals, while the general population was given wallets to strictly store their tokens for expenditure. A system that worked efficiently to keep the divide wider for those who controlled the tokens and those who were dependent on them. A cornerstone of the collapse of any society. Power concentrated in the hands of a few who abused it to no end.
Eon worked at this corporation long enough to understand the way they manipulated the market and indulged in illegal activities. He made sure enough of the tokens were minted for his use, filled his wallets, and vanished from the corporation never to be discovered by them again.
The device on the table that Xer discovered in the landfill was one of those used by Minters to connect to exchange terminals. As the global power shifted, these devices became rare and were only held by those in power. It was extremely rare to find one discarded in a landfill. They were discreetly disposed of to not to fall into the wrong hands. The wrong hands of someone like Eon.
Eon inserted the device into one of the computers at his place, which could connect to the exchange. He expected nothing but an error to be displayed on the screen, or worse, the device to be unrecognizable. To Eon's astonishment, the device started beeping as soon as it was connected to the terminal. It could mean only one thing: the device was immediately recognized by the terminal.
Eon thought to himself that the worst that could happen is they disable the device remotely as it is connected to the exchange, and this matter will end here and now. There was loud beeping on the computer and his other handheld device. It was strange to hear this beeping after so many years, but he had a faint recollection after hearing that horrible noise. He looked at Xer and then looked at the terminal, at the handheld screen, and read the message that accompanied it.
"Security Alert! Please return the device to the exchange."
This was not the kind of message that should have appeared for a device rotting in a landfill. Certainly not the message he wanted to see on a quiet afternoon.
He grabbed the backpack, put the handheld device, some of his belongings, and some eatables into the backpack, glanced at Xer, and signalled him to follow as he climbed out of his top-floor apartment window. He knew the peaceful life he was living up until now might be over for a while.
Xer, in his confusion, understood one thing clearly: when it was time to run, it was his time to shine.
As both Eon and Xer jumped off the apartment window onto the fire escape, the footsteps from the passage became louder, followed by a distinct thud on Eon's apartment door.
Eon, while climbing the fire escape, thought to himself, "They are still sharp as a tack, Impressive."