[***FM***] TRUST

BooksAndArticles

Leonard always felt most alive in the air.

Suspended between earth and sky, a man could think. The engines drowned out small talk. Seats and trays set the rules. No one could get to him.

Today there was only tomato juice in a plastic cup.

The seatbelt sign had been lit since takeoff. The woman beside him clutched her cross until the chain pressed a red line into her neck. A baby whimpered behind him and then hiccuped itself quiet.

Condensation slid down his cup. Each droplet fell at its own pace, but ended in the same place. People did that too.

Claire, with her soft blonde hair, her expensive perfumes, and her rotting heart. She’d be “at yoga” now, which meant Alex - the personal trainer with perfect teeth and hands that had never known a tool. A man who sweated more over filters than steel.

The fuselage groaned and flexed. Outside the small oval window, a flicker of white split the clouds - a thin, jagged line that vanished before he could blink. Leonard set both palms flat on his knees and held them there.

The pilot’s voice came over the intercom, calm but clipped:
“Ladies and gentlemen, we’re about to encounter some rough air. For your safety, please take your seat immediately and fasten your seatbelt. We’ll keep the seatbelt sign on until conditions improve.”

Leonard closed his eyes. There was nothing left for Claire to take. Not anymore.

***

Two weeks earlier.

The garage smelled of oil and damp concrete. The chest freezer hummed. A moth battered itself against the bare bulb, left a powder mark, tried again.

Leonard crouched beside Timmy, nine years old.

“If Daddy dies from a heart attack or dies on a plane,” Leonard said, “you’re the man of the house.”

Timmy looked up - brown eyes, serious, waiting for clear rules.

“These twelve words are a map,” Leonard said. He showed two folded slips. “Not for Mommy. For you. Never give them to her. Not even if she cries.”

“What if she says please?” Timmy asked.

“She will. Don’t,” Leonard said.

Timmy nodded. He wasn’t quick, but he kept what he was given.

“Say it back,” Leonard said.

“Don’t tell Mommy. Even if she cries. Book first, then the slate. Words in order.”

“Good,” Leonard said, touching the boy’s shoulder.

***

Timmy sat cross-legged in front of the TV his mother always put on when she was doing yoga upstairs. He looked up from his Nintendo Switch.

A red ticker slid along the bottom of the screen: Flight to Amsterdam makes emergency landing after turbulence injures 25 passengers.

Claire came downstairs with damp hair, robe loose. Alex followed with his mat under one arm, smiling like he had improved the household.

“Was Daddy on that one?” Timmy asked.

Claire stared at the ticker. “What makes you say that?”

“He said if his plane crashes, we get the treasure.”

Her phone slid from her palm to the carpet. “What treasure?”

“The magic words,” Timmy said. “For the magical internet money.”

Alex smirked and then erased the smirk when he saw her face.

“Show me,” she said.

***

In Timmy’s room, Claire yanked books from the shelf she had never dusted until she found the one that looked wrong between the colorful Dahl children’s books — The Key to Rebecca. Pages stuck from old humidity. It opened to the color photo section, a belly dancer. Claire flicked past it. A folded slip fell out.

Six words in Leonard’s cramped hand:

abandon – silver – battle – frost – hollow – cake

Claire’s heart thudded.

“Is this all of it?” she asked.

Timmy hesitated. In his head, breaking the promise might somehow help his father.

“Half,” he said.

“Where’s the rest?”

“In the roses.”

Claire made the face she used for prices she did not accept. She slipped the slip into her palm and headed for the back door.

***

The rain had eased to a silver drift. The flower bed held water and the clean smell of ripped green. Claire stepped into it barefoot. Her silk blouse clung to her ribs. The bed was her pride - “my little Eden,” she had called it for strangers on Insta. Now the garden looked back at her without sympathy.

She grabbed stems and tore them up. Roots came with them. Mud streaked her thighs. Thorns drew lines on her arms. She ignored them. Alex stood under a wide black umbrella, checking his phone between glances at her ruined work.

“There,” Timmy said. “Under the slate.”

Claire pushed her fingers into the soil, found the edge, and levered the flat stone up. It came free with a wet heave. Below sat a short PVC tube capped at both ends, glue rings dull and even. She pulled it out. Earth ran off the white plastic in slicks.

“Hold this,” she said.

Alex took the slate like a butler takes a tray, keeping the umbrella over himself.

The cap wouldn’t turn. “Tools,” she said.

Timmy ran to the garage and returned with the rubber strap wrench. She cinched it, pulled. The glue cracked. The cap turned.

Inside: a vacuum-sealed Mylar sleeve with a silica gel packet clear as glass. The inner packet gave when she tore it. The slip slid out, dry and stiff.

Another six words:

orchard – cabbage – daughter – eager – kangaroo –
…and then a word beginning with TRU - maybe trust or truth.

Claire stared at the smear until the shapes stopped meaning anything.

“Inside,” she said.

***

The kitchen smelled of soil and metal. Mud and leaf prints marked the tile.

Alex set his mat on the counter and downloaded AQUA. “It’s the one he always talks about,” he said. The blue icon glowed.

Claire typed. She guessed the last word: trust. The screen blinked:

Please check your recovery phrase and try again.

She tried truss. Same result. Thrust. Same. She tried rust. Must. She tried the kind of guess that came from anger. The message did not change.

“Maybe it’s case sensitive,” Alex said.

“It’s not,” she said.

She tried trust again. The wallet opened.

Balance: 0.00000010 BTC

She stared. “What the hell is this?”

Alex leaned with care so he wouldn’t touch the dirt on her sleeve. “Is that… a lot?”

Something left her face. She threw the phone. It hit the tile and spun.

Timmy stood in the doorway, small and stiff. “Daddy said never trust you,” he said.

Her mouth opened, but the words didn’t come. She looked down at her arms - thin red lines, dirt under every nail. She saw her reflection in the oven door: hair down, face wet, blouse clinging, eyes blank.

She turned on the tap. The mud let go in strings. The cuts stung. The sink looked like a field after rain.

She shut off the water and stood, palms flat on the counter. The hum in the room was the refrigerator and the drip from the torn Mylar.

She opened the bin under the sink and dropped the smeared slip in. Onions, lemon cleaner, old plastic came up. 
She closed the bin with her hip.

She walked to the glass door and stared out at the hole where her bed had been. The slate lay on its side. The ceramic rabbit was face down, one ear in mud.

She looked at the TV. The anchor was talking about the Consumer Prices Index.

She opened the app again: 0.00000010 BTC. She pushed a button and it said: 10 sats.

“And now what?”

“Can we call someone?” Alex asked.

“Who?” Claire said.

“A bank,” he said.

She laughed once. It sounded like a cough pulled wrong.

He adjusted the umbrella as if he were still under it. “I should go,” he said.

“Go,” she said.

He went.

Timmy crossed to the bin, opened it, and took the smeared slip back out when she turned away. He smoothed it. It stayed wrong. He folded it, slid it into The Key to Rebecca, and also slid in a scrap on which he had written TRUST in block letters. He put the book back and looked at it for a long time, like a door that would open for the right hands.

Upstairs, the shower ran. She did not go.

***

The plane hit a patch that lifted Leonard’s stomach and set it back. Gasps rose and fell. The woman’s cross chain left a deeper mark. A man in a suit asked no one, “Is this normal?”

Leonard kept his eyes closed. He pictured Claire barefoot in the mud, silk clinging like a bandage, roses ruined, phone on tile, 10 sats on the screen. He let the picture of her tear at the soil and rip up her Eden until she was nothing but scratches, wet fabric, and that empty number.

He knew where the real thing lived. Cold steel. Three-of-five. Two signatures that did not care about perfume or tears. A time lock that would ignore pleading and wait for a birthday.

He thought of the garage. The moth beating the bulb. The boy’s slow nod. The sentence he had given his son to say back: Don’t tell Mommy. Book first, then the slate. Words in order. He had kept the rest in his head, where moisture couldn’t bleed it.

He lifted the cup and finished the tomato juice. It had the taste of a can that remembered tomatoes.

The landing gear lowered with a click he liked. Honest steel meeting air.

The runway rose up and accepted the plane. Wheels found it and held.

Leonard opened his eyes. A seam of sunlight cut the cloud. The edge of the sea showed blue and patient.

He let the picture of Claire rot in his mind until there was nothing left but mud and the word TRUST.


[FM] TRUST

DuneMessias

[***FM***] Parallels

*Note: If you're reading this on a phone, it might read better in landscape format.*

```
Parallels

"Tensions with China escalated     | "Tensions with China escalated     
when Chairman Xi Kuan ordered U.S. | when Chairman Xi Kuan ordered U.S.  
embassies closed over..."          | embassies closed over..."          
                                   |                                    
The voice of the newscaster droned | The voice of the newscaster droned 
in the background as John leaned   | in the background as John leaned   
back in his sofa, put his feet up  | back in his sofa, put his feet up  
on the coffee table, and took a    | on the coffee table, and took a    
sip of his brandy.                 | sip of his brandy.                 
                                   |                                    
Today had been a good day. John    | Today had been a good day. John    
had just secured a 100 BTC funding | had just secured a $100 million    
round for his startup. His hard    | funding round for his startup. His  
work and diligence had paid off.   | hard work and diligence had paid   
The investors were impressed by    | off. The investors were impressed  
the quality of the product,        | by the number of active daily      
confident that it solved a real    | users, confident that they could    
need for the users. Investors were | soon be monetized. Investors       
careful with their hard earned     | freely spent money to acquire      
Bitcoin, only investing in         | large userbases, knowing that more 
products with demonstrated         | funding could always be easily     
utility, knowing that once they    | raised, until the time that the    
parted with their capital, it was  | userbase becomes locked in and     
gone if the company couldn't       | ready to monetize. Because of      
deliver. Because of that, John had | that, John had made the decision   
made the decision to focus his     | to focus his company's efforts on  
company's efforts on delivering    | marketing, celebrity endorsements, 
the best possible value to his     | and free giveaways, and that       
customers, and that decision was   | decision was now paying its        
now paying its dividends.          | dividends.                         
                                   |                                    
"Hey dad!" The voice of his son,   | "Hey dad!" The voice of his son,   
Calvin, interrupted John's         | Calvin, interrupted John's         
reverie. "Look what I built!"      | reverie. "Look what I did!" Calvin 
Calvin bounded up to him with      | bounded up to him with laptop in   
laptop in hand. On the screen,     | hand. On the screen, John could    
John could see the markings of a   | see the markings of a stock        
Lightning wallet program. Calvin   | trading app. Calvin had recently   
had been building a liquidity      | gotten interested in trading and   
sharing service which would allow  | had just booked a 200% profit on a 
merchants to easily and            | vol arb gamma hedge. John was      
automatically borrow Lightning     | proud of Calvin. He seemed to      
liquidity from each other. John    | understand the world, unlike his   
was proud of Calvin. Like his      | older brother Martin who had       
older brother Martin, Calvin liked | insisted on following his passion  
to build things that other people  | of being a carpenter despite       
would use. Although they had very  | John's warnings. Predictably,      
different interests---Calvin had a | Martin was now struggling, unable  
penchant for computers while       | to build any savings and           
Martin liked working with wood---  | constantly seeing his income       
they both understood that they     | drained away by rising prices.     
should use their skills to bring   | John wondered where Martin got his  
value to others. Much like their   | personality from---it certainly    
father.                            | wasn't from his father!            
                                   |                                    
Bzzt, bzzt! John's phone buzzed in | Bzzt, bzzt! John's phone buzzed in 
his pants. He picked it up and     | his pants. He picked it up and     
looked at the caller ID. It was    | looked at the caller ID. It was     
his wife, Lydia. "Hi honey," he    | his ex-wife, Lydia. He put the     
answered. Lydia was on her way     | phone back in his pocket without    
home from work and wanted to know  | answering. Lydia had divorced him  
if he wanted her to pick anything  | because he was spending too much   
up from the grocery store. John    | time at industry conferences and   
answered that they still had some  | celebrity networking events.       
steaks in the fridge, but that     | "You're never home! Your sons need  
they were running low on beef      | you," she had said. But Lydia      
tallow. "I'll pick some up on my   | didn't understand what was          
way home," Lydia said. John        | required to build a company. It    
appreciated everything that Lydia  | was all about getting to know the  
did for the family. She had        | right people. When Lydia left, the 
supported him through some tough   | court left Calvin with John and    
times as he worked on building his | Martin with Lydia. She also got    
company. But John knew that she    | half of all his assets at the      
did it because she believed in     | time. "Oh well," thought John,     
him, and also because she could    | "easy come, easy go." Remembering  
the see that his proof of work was | that he still hadn't prepared      
setting a good example for their   | dinner, John punched in his usual  
children to follow.                | order on DoorDash.                 
                                   |                                    
It would still be about 40 minutes | It would still be about 40 minutes  
until Lydia arrived home. John     | until the DoorDash arrived. John    
decided to take a short nap. As he | decided to take a short nap. As he 
drifted off to sleep on the couch, | drifted off to sleep on the couch, 
the voice of the newscaster        | the voice of the newscaster        
continued to drone in the          | continued to drone in the          
background.                        | background.                        
                                   |                                    
"... not enough BTC in either      | "... war bonds approved by         
country's treasury to fund         | Congress... Federal Reserve Chief  
prolonged war... President Harold  | supportive... President Chet Cohen 
Mooney expected to open            | expected to declare war formally    
negotiations next week... "        | next week... "                     


```

[FM] Parallels

SimpleStacker

[***FM***] Arrival

In true procrastinator form, coming in at the last minute! 
I had a lot of fun getting back into fiction writing. Let me know what you think.

---

# Part I: Arrival

(1077 words)


### _**June 12th 1941, Westfjords, Iceland**_

_"Dug more test holes on north side. Will be a long job with all this privacy. Not impossible- expensive. Materials stuck in ports due to storm. Beams and concrete in Isafjordur. Timber in Hnifsdalur. Morris says a Russian team has arrived at base, even heard German spoken, least he thinks so._

*Singstad and his lot returned late today, quiet as mice. Morris translated. Small cave-in, few of 'em fell in a hole. Hayes' crew will go in the morning to inspect.*

*Morris, the damned fool, no good at translating, confuses some word with "city", needs to study more."*

***-Journal of Floyd Parks, Structural Engineer, Bechtel Corporation***

---

### **October 2027, Westfjords, Iceland**

Mac trudged up the grassy trail-less hill behind his unwavering guide, a distance of thirty feet ahead of him and growing. It was dusk, and the approaching storm was picking up, gusts of wind and mist hit Mac in the face and he slipped a little. 

*they could've mentioned the hike to get out here*

He paused to take in the scenery. At the top of this fjord, he could barely make out Isafjordur, the small Icelandic town. He'd taken a short ferry ride across and met his mysterious guide on it almost an hour ago. They hadn't spoken, though had Mac tried when handing off his large duffle bag. 

Mac wiped his face and was caught off-guard upon seeing his guide, stopped, half turned and staring at him. He raised a hand as a greeting, he was ignored and they continued up the grassy incline. Before long, a spot of white appeared over the hill and Mac could see a small recessed entrance, built into the fjord. 

*middle of nowhere, a robot sherpa, and it's underground, great*

---
The humanoid had been standing under the shallow roof of the entrance for a few minutes by the time Mac reached it. It stood at around 6.5 feet tall, segmented white armor covered most of a humanoid frame of wires and circuit with exposed parts  encased in some polycarbonate. Water drops slid down its casing as the machine waited.
 
 Mac struggled along, head down. The sudden shift in the ground before him caught his attention and he looked up and around.  A few pristine steps led to an entrance with thick glass doors, softly lit. The bot extended an arm towards a small red light, it beeped and turned green. The thick glass doors parted slowly, and Mac looked towards the way they'd come. 
 
 He remembered the call that he almost didn't take seriously, and the payment, already moved and secured.
 
*one coin for showing up, one coin when you're finished* 

Mac turned back to the entrance. The domed head with ear-like antennas tracked him as he stepped into opening, and passed through a strong air-curtain, the bot following behind. It passed Mac, heading down the dark and polished corridor, built-in lights illuminated the path as it walked.

Mac followed.

---

![](https://m.stacker.news/106404)

In a small reception area lined with a few sleek, silver benches, Mac sat flipping through his phone. Opposite him was a colossal portrait spanning an entire wall. An etching of a figure in a skirt, holding an axe in the right hand and three rods in the left. 

Mac fidgeted, his phone blinked 0 bars. Across the room stood the biped. They'd been waiting for a few minutes and it'd stared at Mac the entire time. He was doing his best to ignore the gaze, and took a drag from a thin vaporizer. The room was frigid and dimly lit. Its high ceilings and unassuming nature reminded Mac of the headquarters entrance in the Men in Black movies. The hum of the ventilation filled the air, with an occasional rumble of thunder creeping from down the hall. 

Mac stood and took another long drag, the bot's head followed him as he moved and he approached the machine, looking it up and down. He'd never seen this model before, never seen a unit with this type of exoskeleton, protected enough to operate in the rain. 

Mac leaned closer and started blowing vapor into its face and- Wham! 

The robot shoved fast and hard, Mac dropped the vape and fell back onto his pack, gripping his shoulders in pain.

*what the hell??*

"The fuck was that?" Mac yelled at the bot, as he shuffled backwards. His heart raced. He held his shoulders and watched the bot return to it's stance, now facing forward. 

"Hey, why'd you just shove me like that, hello?" Mac looked around for cameras and saw none.

Suddenly, one of the sets of doors opened and man entered. He was mostly bald with a sparse white beard, wearing glasses with dark pants and a dark jacket. He slowed to a stop between the two and looked to the bot, then to Mac. 

"Why're you on the floor?" he asked, in a coarse deep voice.

*American..*

"This thing just pushed me to the ground," Mac replied sharply while getting up. The man studied the scene for a moment, Mac dusted himself off and massaged his arms.

"Ymir," the man called and the bot's head rose. 

"Go home," he said nodding to the doors. Mac watched it move.

"It was hard, it could've killed me you know, like I hit my head or-" Mac trailed off as he watched it move, much different than before, the turning, the walking, much more robotic. He'd just seen robot Bear Grylls scaling the cliffs outside, now the rigid movement looked like any general purpose biped, though still quite a bit faster. 

"You okay?"

"I'm fine? Are you sure that thing-" 

"I'm Ed. Sorry 'bout that." 

The man slung Mac's duffle bag over his shoulders, spotted the vape on the ground, and picked it up. 

"Designated areas only," he grumbled, handing it back.

"I can take a look at that unit right now if you want." 

"You'll start tomorrow" and he turned toward the doors.

Mac scoffed, not moving. He thought for a minute, about the strangeness of it all. 'Remote research facility, malfunctioning general use bipeds' were the phrases used in the phone call. 

*Definitely should've asked some follow-ups*, he thought. *But they've paid half a bitcoin just for showing up, who does that?*

Ed stood with a dour look beyond the doors.

"If you're going back I'll need to call a ferry."

With that, Mac hiked up his backpack and followed after Ed.

---

[FM] Arrival

OneOneSeven

[***FM***] Harbinger City

[FM] Harbinger City

Ktmorley

[***FM***} - The window

Before you start reading:
This novel has:
2,288 words in English.
2,179 words in Spanish.
Therefore, if you see any inconsistencies, please run the translation from Spanish to English using DeepL

-----------

# Act I

He had no name.
He was just another shadow in the gray crowd that trudged to the subway every morning, ate in front of the television, and returned home empty-handed. To the rest of the world, his face was worth no more than a stone on the sidewalk: it was there, but it didn't matter. He was one of those people who consumed themselves day after day in a grueling routine, without questions, without hope.
And then he saw her...!
He found her. He found the reason he had never had to live.
It was just another night. He pulled back the curtain on his window, looking for some fresh air, and there she was: in the red brick building across the street, she appeared. He knew nothing: not her name, not her age. It didn't matter anyway. All that existed was that image, bathed in the yellowish light of a lamp, wearing a light dress, distracted on her sofa. So calm, so distant, so... perfect.

He felt a throb in his throat, an unbearable heat in his blood. He couldn't look away. He pressed himself against the glass, holding his breath, convinced that even the air could give him away.

From then on, every night became a ritual.
He turned off the lights in his apartment and sat silently in front of the window. The world was reduced to that illuminated rectangle on the facade opposite.
He watched her read, fold her legs on the sofa, take a slow bite of food, laugh alone at the television, talk on the phone with a slight smile. Everything was hers: every gesture, every shadow, every silence. She didn't know it, of course. But that didn't matter. He knew it, and for her... she was his world.
Soon her face began to appear everywhere: in the reflections in the subway, in the dim edges of his computer screen at work, even in the dreams that robbed him of sleep.

-----
# Act II 
The need grew in him like a tumor.
Observing was no longer enough. The window only offered him crumbs of her life, insufficient glimpses. He wanted more. He wanted to brush against her, touch her even if only with words, leave an invisible mark, like a cold breath on the back of her neck.
One night, after watching her turn off the light and sink into the darkness of her apartment, he turned on his own lamp and opened a notebook. The blank page stared back at him like a mirror, reflecting the emptiness that consumed him. 
Then he understood.
He began to write. A letter. Yes, a letter. The simplest, most intimate gesture. His hands trembled, as if his lost youth had been suddenly restored to him. He rediscovered an old tremor, the forgotten sensation of being alive.
He didn't sign it. Not yet. His name was a secret that had to be kept, even if she never knew it.
The ink vibrated in his anxious handwriting, but each word emerged like a whisper:

>_“I have found in you what I never knew I was looking for. I don't need to know your name to love you. It's enough to see you walk, enough to see the way you turn your head, as if listening to something others cannot hear. You are not alone. You will never be alone as long as I exist...”_

She reread the letter over and over, her heart pounding like a drum in a closed room. It wasn't enough to write it. It had to reach her. It had to cross that invisible border between two buildings.
The next day she left work early, with a plan already in place. It was Tuesday, and on Tuesdays she always took a little longer to come back. He went up to her building, folded the paper with almost religious care, and, in a moment of carelessness, slipped it under the door. No one saw him.
The rest of the afternoon was an unbearable torment of anxiety. Had she found it yet? Would she read those lines as a shared secret, or would she throw them in the trash?
That night, returning to his post in front of the window, he clung to the frame like an expectant animal. She appeared, punctual, with her cup of tea in her hands. She seemed distracted... but there was a moment when she stopped... looked around and remained thoughtful.
That tiny gesture was enough. For him, it was a sign. That confirmation he was looking for, he went to his room and threw himself back on the bed, lying there looking at the ceiling, thinking about her and the doubts she must be having right now. The first letter had crossed that door of love, that love he was now rediscovering.


------
# Act III

That afternoon, she couldn't stop sweating. She had left the third letter under his door. The most daring one yet: in it, she talked about how she knew his routines, how the light in his living room was an altar where he worshipped her existence.
She wondered if she had gone too far. If that brutal confession would scare her away.
But when night fell, the answer came.
He saw her enter the living room with a sheet of paper in her hand. From his window, in the dim light, he held his breath. The woman sank onto the sofa, her legs tucked under her, and unfolded the letter. The paper glowed under the yellow lamp.
He leaned forward, as if he could cross the glass and sit next to her. He observed every detail: the way she frowned as she read the first lines, how she bit the edge of her lower lip slightly... and then, what completely disarmed him: the smile.

- _Did she smile? Yes... she smiled...!!!!_

It wasn't a big smile, just a flash at the corner of her mouth. But for him it was enough. A revelation.
He felt something break inside his mind. The smile couldn't be accidental. It couldn't be indifferent. Had she understood? Had she accepted it? Maybe she had been waiting for it all along, she feels the same way about me, he thought. 

- _Yes... she loves me...!!!_

He knelt by the window, his chest pounding, thump... thump... thump... his heart beating inside him like a war drum.
He was no longer an observer. He was... the chosen one.
And every word he had written was confirmed as prophecy. She is the one...!!! he thought.
In his mind, the woman was no longer an unknown neighbor. Now she was his... secret lover... his accomplice on cold nights.
His destiny. The place where he was meant to be. 
That night he didn't sleep... but... how could he sleep when she had smiled at him? 
So he wrote until his fingers hurt, scribbling feverish phrases on the pages of his notebook:

>_“Your smile nourishes me. Your gestures name me. I know you feel it, I know you share it. You are mine in the silence, and silence is stronger than any word. The distance between us is a deception, I will soon break it.”_

When dawn began to tinge his room with gray, the man realized that his love for her was much greater than it had been the day before.
And that gesture of smiling at him had “condemned” him forever.

-------
# Act IV 
The letters were no longer simple declarations.
They had become gospels, sermons that spoke of love and death as if they were one and the same.
In the fifth letter, he wrote:

>_“True love knows no boundaries of flesh. Bodies are fragile, they rot, they fade like candles. But ours does not need bodies. If you died tomorrow, I would join you in that eternal silence. If I died, I know you would follow me. Real love does not fear the grave, because in it two souls merge forever.”_

He left the envelope under her door with trembling hands, almost in a trance, as if the act were a sacred ritual. And he returned to his window to wait... as he did every night.
But... that night, the scene was different.
The woman was not alone. Another woman had come to visit her, a friend perhaps?.... younger, with dark hair and nervous gestures. From his hidden position, he could see his beloved unfold one of the letters on the sofa and show it to her.
The friend frowned. She shook her head. Her lips moved quickly, urgently. She seemed upset, as if warning her about something.
He couldn't hear, but in his mind the words were clear:
The friend wanted to take her away from him.
The friend was an obstacle, an enemy.
The woman, however, did not confront her with anger. Her gestures were more subtle: first a nervous laugh, then a shrug. And, to his elation, a moment when she hugged the letter to her chest, as if defending it.
He clenched his fists in the darkness.
The argument was not a rejection: it was a test. She was struggling with doubt, yes, but she was defending him. She was protecting him from the poisonous words of that intruder who wanted to separate them.
The friend finally got up abruptly, furiously picked up the bag next to her on the sofa, and left, slamming the door behind her.
The woman was left alone again in the living room, the letter still in her hand. She let herself fall onto the sofa, her eyes fixed on the paper, as if searching for an answer she couldn't find.
At that moment, he knew he had dragged her into the same abyss in which he lived.
She was thinking about him too. She felt it too.
All she needed was one more push.
So he sat down in front of his notebook, with maniacal devotion, and began to write the final letter:

>_"We can no longer live in the deception of windows. The glass separates us, but I know you want it as much as I do. If love and death are the same thing, then we must die to be born into eternity. This absurd distance will end. Soon I will be at your door, and when you open it, there will be no more borders. You and I, at last, will be one..."_

When he finished writing, his hands were stained with ink from sweat and nervous tremors.

--------
# Act V 

That day he didn't go to work.
The clock struck eight, nine, ten, and he was still there, standing in front of the window, motionless, with the curtains barely ajar. The whole world had been reduced to a single word: wait. Every sound from the street, every shadow passing in front of the building, made him tense like a predator.
The final letter was already in place. He had slipped it under the door as soon as she left for work, like someone leaving an offering on an altar. The die was cast.
Now all that remained was to see her read it.
And then, as evening fell... she appeared.
The woman entered with her bag slung over her shoulder, tired, her hair loose over her sweat-dampened forehead. She closed the door with an automatic gesture, left her keys on the table, and bent down to the floor.

There was the envelope.
He held his breath as he watched her pick it up.
She let herself fall onto the sofa, tucked her hair behind her ear, and with trembling fingers, tore open the envelope. Her eyes scanned the first line, then the second. Her lips parted slightly, as if she were trying to silently pronounce what she was reading.
He felt his whole body burning. His back felt a chill rising up.
He couldn't wait any longer. The moment had come.
He got up.

He crossed the living room of his apartment, opened the door with an almost liturgical calm, and stepped out into the hallway. Each step toward the staircase was a dull echo that reverberated in his bones. He descended slowly, as if time had folded in on itself, as if each step brought him closer to eternity.
The street greeted him with its distant murmur. He crossed the asphalt with his gaze fixed on the building opposite and his head raised, looking up at the apartment window, not even noticing the cars passing by. Nothing else existed but her, up there, reading his letter.
He climbed the stairs of the building opposite. Each floor enveloped him in deeper silence, as if the world itself were holding its breath. Finally, he reached the door. Her door.
Inside, she was still reading.
He could imagine her, the letter trembling in her hands, her heart racing at the words that bound them together forever.
He raised his hand.
The doorbell rang like thunder, breaking the silence.

Inside, the woman jumped up, startled. The letter slipped from her hands and lay spread out on the carpet, the last lines shining under the lamp:

>_“The distance between us is a deception, I will soon break it.”_

She turned the doorknob.
She opened it.
And there he was. Smiling in the dim light of the hallway, his eyes sunken and ringed with dark circles from lack of sleep, as if he had waited his whole life for this moment.
He bowed his head slightly, and in a low, grave voice, like the echo of something that should not exist, he whispered:

- _“The distance no longer exists...”_

He paused, savoring the tremor in the air.
He looked her in the eyes and said:

- _“Hello... Raquel...”_

[FM} - The window

guerratotal

[***FM***] Trust Fallout

# Trust Fallout
From the air-conditioned comfort of a gray muscle car parked on the side of an empty highway, Karina and Dorian watched bombs and missiles of all makes and models explode, sparkle, and glow against the anti-nuclear forcefield that demarcated the California-Nevada border. The sun was rising behind them, warning them with only a partial demonstration of its inevitable heat. 

“Just to review the plan,” said Dorian, “we drive straight through, as fast as possible, then we hope that the flak thing works, and then hopefully the rest of the drive to Los Angeles is peaceful.”

“You included hope as part of the plan?” asked Karina. “Twice? Half the plan is hope?”

“Yes.”

“Well,” said Karina with a sigh, “what are we waiting for then?”

“I’m warming up the car,” said Dorian.

“Oh, by all means,” said Karina. “Let’s make sure the car is warm before we drive through Death Valley in August.” She shook her head. “You don’t trust this thing either, do you?”

“Of course I trust it. Rico designed it.”

“Nocoiner Rico?”

“He’s not a nocoiner anymore. And it doesn’t matter. He’s good with cars.”

“This isn’t just any car.”

“And Bitcoin isn’t just any currency. But we all need to have a little bit of trust in each other if we’re going to get through this. Okay? Separation of labor. Let everyone focus on the jobs that they’re good at.” 

“Really? Trust everyone to do their jobs? You started cutting your own hair because the barber shop played Bruce Springsteen once. That didn't end well, by the way.”

“They didn’t just happen to play it, okay? That would have been bad enough, but they were complying with a Federal mandate. And it’s the only legal barber shop in the city. I’m sick of it. All of it. I’m done living like a slave. It’s a miserable existence.”

Karina turned from him and stared across the desert with her arms crossed, her blood-orange hair covering her face. 

“You know what I mean,” said Dorian half-heartedly. 

Silence.

Dorian counted to twenty-one. “If it doesn’t work out,” he said at last, “we’ll just come right back. I’ll get a Federal job so we can take vacations in any state we want. I’ll finally learn how a VPN works so we can watch all of the cancelled shows we grew up with. Every weekend I’ll withdraw the maximum of my UBI that the bank will allow, so I can buy you a stack of Japanese plushies so high that we get swatted by the CFTC. I would rather be a slave with you, eating bugs together until we die of some preventable disease in our thirties, than be rich and alone in a free country.”

More silence.

*Shoot*, thought Dorian. *She can tell it was rehearsed. It’s over.*

Then, a feint wave sparked through her hair as she tilted her head. “The spicy ones?”

Dorian smiled and opened the center console. “Of course.”

She turned around and pulled out a compostable orange bag with a red logo. 

“KCHRRJNCH! (KARINA!)” the eco-friendly bag shouted excitedly. 

Dorian winced but refrained from insulting Karina's favorite food aloud. _They make these things noisy on purpose to as a humiliation ritual_. He started to accelerate, but Karina grabbed his arm.

“I’m not finished,” she said. Dorian resumed watching the bombs fall as Karina savored the crickets.”

### ▫ ▪ → ∞

Dorian was checking his phone when Karina finished the last of her crickets. “Shoot," he muttered. We’re down two percent.”

“Ksh-chrkrr (it’s over)," joked the bag with a light-hearted snicker. 

“Huh?” Karina released the bag back into the center console, only for Dorian to throw it out of the window in a  fit of rage.

“KRHNG!? (WHY!?)”

“Hey!” Karina shouted. “Just because it’s biodegradable doesn’t mean they can’t fine us for littering.”

“Not if we drive fast enough,” said Dorian, accelerating. 

“What were you saying before?”

“I said we’re down two percent.”

“So?”

“Rico won’t be happy.”

Karina rolled her eyes. “Then he should have bought last year.”

“Be nice. He’s new.” With one hand still on the wheel, Dorian pulled a gun from the glovebox and handed it to Karina. “Here.”

“We’re Starsky and Hutch now?”

“It’s not just any gun. That’s 狐狸之怒火 (Fox’s Rage). It works the same way, but it’s as strong as an airstrike. Expensive stuff. We had to smuggle it past the Panama Canal, across the Gulf of America and through Texas. That’s the safety. Off, on. Red means dead. Black is safe. See?”

It felt heavy and cold in her hands, with a jet-black handle and frame, and a glassy transparent barrel containing a luminous orange flame that flickered rapidly as though it could burst through at any moment. Karina imagined that she would have loved to equip this gun in a video game, but here, in the mostly peaceful desert that had become her home, where she had hoped to have a wedding and adopt chickens, neither of which had happened yet, the metal weapon reeked of death. Hollow, final, incoherent death. And Dorian handled it like it was another bag of snacks.

She pet the frame with four fingers. “Ssssiiii (death),” it whispered. She cast a sideways glance at Dorian.

“Only if we’re still in range after we run out of the flak stuff,” Dorian assured her. “That activates automatically, but it can only sustain three shots.”

“You didn’t tell me there was a limit."

“I’m telling you now. Don’t worry. It’s just a last resort.”

The car lurched as they passed through the Golden Dome, and the once muffled thuds of bombs overhead morphed at once into a blaring roar. 

A robotic voice came through the car speakers, “Incoming call from: Rico Mechanic.”

“His last name is García,” said Karina.

“At least it doesn't say Nocoiner anymore. Names have to be earned." Dorian pressed the green button to answer. 

“Seriously?” asked Rico. “$112 million?”

“$112.9 million.”

“¡No mames güey!”

“It’ll be fine. Trust me. It’s my job, Rico. I’m an accountant. Why does no one trust me to do my job? I trusted you with installing the anti-missile defense system thing, right?”

A loud **BUZZ** reverberated through the car. 

“And that’s working.” Dorian confirmed. “Without me needing to ask you how it works.”

“Good for you,” said Rico. “Your thing isn’t working for me. I’ve lost millions of dollars.”

“Trillions if you measure it in the old currency. They revalued it. They always do.”

“Spare me the history lesson. Last month you were throwing out predictions like $200 million by EOY. But now that it’s crashing you-“

Another **BUZZ** rang out, shattering the car’s back window. 

“That’s not a crash. Listen, when I say ‘long-term’ I’m not even talking about 40 years. Why is everyone so comfortable slaving away at a job they hate for decades? Four years is not a big deal if you want to get out of the rat race. And the flak thing just broke my window, so I think we’re even.”

“You’re alive aren’t you?”

“So are you! That’s my point! Do you really trust the bank more than me?”

“I trust the racoon in my garage more than you, güey. And you still haven’t told me my cost basis.”

Dorian groaned at the thought of mundane work. "Why does everyone insist on buying high and selling low? I thought you of all people would understand what’s at stake. They destroyed our country, Rico. The flag has three stars left. We have the Hoover Dam, Cult Headquarters (no offense), and a bunch of literal nothing (also no offense). And even in our bubble the leadership takes every chance they get to compromise with people that hate us. Bitcoin is our only way out. How much poorer do you want to get?”

“Be nice,” sang Karina. She had relaxed now. She calculated that if Dorian could finish two whole rants without interruption, they were probably out of range. “He’s new, remember?”

“Alright,” said Rico. “I get it. But I’m setting a stop-loss at $100 million. I was getting by perfectly fine before you dragged me into this. Ay, the more I talk to you the less I trust this whole thing.” 

“Call ended.”

**BUZZ**.

“That’s three!” screamed Karina. “We’re still in range!”

“Now! Aim at the tower,” said Dorian. “If they can reach us then we can reach them.”

“I don’t want to!” she cried.

“You have to.” 

“You’re not listening! *I don’t want to*,” she shouted through tears.

They heard a piercing hiss.

“DO IT!” Dorian screamed. 

Karina punched a green “NITROUS” button and slapped Dorian with full force. He swerved sideways as the missile whisked past the car and onto a billboard, leaving a smoking hole over what had been the face of California’s governor. “Kirkegaard for President!” the remaining text read. “Return to Sanity.”

Dorian signed deeply.

_This all would have been so much easier if the CIA hadn’t killed Trump back in ’24._, he thought to himself with deep and intractable resentment. But he swallowed his tempestuous thoughts for the moment and resumed driving. He glanced over at Karina, expecting to find some expression of sorrow or anger, but instead her face was devastatingly neutral, and he understood in that moment that this time, it was, indeed, over. 

Karina opened the glove box and placed the gun back inside with two hands. As she held it in place for a moment, she noticed it had warmed slightly from her touch. She gently slid her hands away, one at a time. “_Hsieh xie_ (thank you).” 

### ▫ ▪ → ∞

At its zenith, the White Sun bore down mercilessly on the cricket bag, now melting on the deserted concrete road. A fox peaked out from its den in the nearby sands, sniffing the air. She caught site of the bag and approached. She took a cautious step onto the concrete, but quickly drew back her paw upon contact with the searing hot asphalt. 

The fox sat on her haunches and deliberated for a moment, tilting its head at the bag. It looked to the Sky, eyes closed in supplication, and the Sky obliged with a single, thin cloud. With newfound determination, the fox sped across the road under the darkened sky with lightning speed, catching the bag in its mouth and diving back onto the dirt just as the Sun’s full force of light returned. 

With unhurried contentment, the fox lapped what remained of the cricket juices inside the bag. She invited the bag to its den, but a gentle breeze turned down the gesture. The fox bowed her head, then buried the bag on the spot. 

“Krnch! Krnch! Krnch!”

The fox nodded and took off running, then froze suddenly. She squinted towards the blinding sun, struggling to fight through the pain in her eyes. Disheartened, she hung her head low and pawed a tear from her face. Then she noticed the swish of her own tail in her periphery, and chased it. She stopped, spun her head to see if she was being watched, then when she was quite sure she was alone*, she examined her tail with deeper curiosity. It seemed to be an ordinary tail like any other, until she realized she had another tail beneath. No, not another of her own tail, but a reflection of another's that moved with her in tandem. 

The fox laughed. She rolled onto her back kicking the sand with glee, and celebrated with a bountiful feast of insects the ground produced for . She would never be Alone. The White Sun had not abandoned her. She might never behold its glory in full, and she didn't know what the Sun would have thought of her, or how closely He was even watching, if at all, but the Sun's Night would always guide be there to guide her, and she could serve Him freely of her own accord as a Chosen Friend. She stood strait and proud between the Day, the Earth, and the Night, observing her connection to all of them, and listened.

### ▫ ▪

Then she bolted away to the Land of the Setting Sun. 

### →

The fox understood now, and vowed to remember, that she was never truly Alone. 

### ∞

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMkFnNax0I4]

[FM] Trust Fallout

daolin

[***FM***] OpenAIDS 10

Before the elevator doors shut, a woman's hand parted them. She held an apologetic smile as she scanned her pod bay authorization card. Before I had the thought, I told her she was pretty and headed in my direction. Through my earpiece, at two times speed, she thanked me, admitting she was having a bad day and was confident she looked it. We still had a few thousand pod bays to travel through, both staying in the remote temps after the flood, but our conversation continued without conscious effort.

Since the release of OpenAIDS 10, most of us talked without producing sound. For me especially, it was a godsend. I could feel how I felt and let OpenAIDS do the rest. Even listening was easy - you could never know what people really meant so OpenAIDS would process the entire intercontext and make it understood without effort. The only bother was calibrating the device and configuring your personality. But Open Artificial Intelligence Device 11 (no one knows what the 'S' is for) was rumored to make that a lot easier. 

I was lost in thought as the elevator slowed 10 seconds later. By now I had learned most of Bailey's life. She grew up in Texas. Both of her parents were petroleum engineers. She wanted to like electronic music so she forced herself into familiarity with it but found herself listening to ancient rock more than anything. She worked as a graphics viber after spending a few years as a technical documentation viber, having been educated as an astrophysicist back when the stars were visible from the surface. She had married and divorced young. She fled Texas when most of the southern states outlawed OpenAIDS 6 and above. I could tell by the tone of my voice that I was close to arranging our first date.

As the elevator stopped, a man boarded wearing leather that looked like sheets of oil with spiky metal accents. He was headed to the Whipsaw Concert Cavern, our next stop according to the third dot appearing on the eink wallpaper. His face was painted white except for black on his lips and eyes, and he wore a big wig and shoes with four inch platforms. I felt strange and couldn't put words to it so OpenAIDS presented my inner monologue, *we aren't sure if he's an idiot or we're boring.*

*He's dressed like Gene Simmons, the lead singer of an ancient rock band called KISS. There's a KISS holocover band displaying at The Whipsaw tonight.*

*We're mostly feeling inadequate and boring now. We're also noticing that Bailey is microexpressing excitement.*

The elevator whizzed along again. I didn't hear Gene Simmons say anything, and my conversation with Bailey continued but started experiencing latency spikes. We were talking at one hundred times vocal speeds before Gene Simmons arrived and it was only two times vocal speed now. I started listening to our conversation, "I never liked the yellow loaf but have you tried the blue loaf at Blockbuster Cafe yet?" Bailey replied, "I thought I told you I was a yellowtarian."

By the time I checked my OpenAIDS battery and connectivity, full bars, we were stopping at The Whipsaw. I heard myself say, desperate and misconfigured, "I didn't know this elevator stopped at Halloween." When Bailey didn't laugh, I checked my OpenAIDS status again.

Bailey took Gene's leather-gloved hand as she got off, the three dots on the eink wallpaper turning to one, and we made eye contact for the first and last time as she beamed me a smile through the closing elevator doors. 

*Her smile was as perfect and joyful as we've ever seen one.*

[FM] OpenAIDS 10

k00b

[***FM***]  - The Message

Clara was ready to go to sleep. Already in bed, with the light off, she checked her cell phone like every night, trying to disconnect from the busy day at work. That's when that ping-pong rang. A WhatsApp notification.
It was a voice message from Laura, her inseparable friend.
The time caught her attention: 11:35 PM. Laura didn't usually text her this late.
Clara played the audio.
"Clara... help me," a trembling voice whispered, barely distinguishable. "Río Street... number 17... don't come alone."
A loud bang, as if something had fallen, interrupted the message. Then, quick, shuffling footsteps. And then... silence.
Clara's heart began to pound, as if hammering from within. She sat up abruptly in bed, her cell phone screen illuminating her face. She listened to the message again. There was no doubt: it was Laura. And it didn't sound like a joke.
They had been friends since childhood. They knew each other so well that she could tell, from Laura's tone, that Laura was in danger.
She didn't hesitate.
She dressed quickly. She didn't even turn on the bedroom light. She grabbed the car keys and hurried out of the house, leaving the door ajar.
The road to River Street was dark. A thick fog was beginning to descend over the city; it was almost midnight. Clara felt a persistent tickle on the back of her neck, as if someone was watching her from the shadows.
The street was empty. Silent. Unreal, so to speak...!
Clara checked the GPS on her cell phone: You've reached your destination!!!....... She activated the app, slowed down, parked her car on the other side of the street, turned off the engine, and got out. A chilly wind hit her full on, making her shudder and shrug her shoulders. The silence was so profound that her own footsteps could be heard throughout the block.
The house seemed abandoned. Dark, with no signs of life. A rusty fence surrounded the property, and the front yard was covered in dry leaves, showing that no one had been there for a while. Everything seemed frozen in time.
She knocked on the front door. Once, twice, three times.
Nothing.
"Laura?" Clara shouted.
But no one answered. She stepped back again, to see if it was really number 17, and yes, it was definitely that house.
She circled the house and found a broken, half-torn fence. She hesitated for a second… and jumped over it. In the backyard, a window was half-open, as if someone had come or gone through there at some point.
The inside had that smell of dust, damp wood, of an abandoned house. She turned on her cell phone's flashlight, and in the center of the living room, on a table, was something glowing dimly: a phone.
Turned on. Recording in video mode. Clara took it with trembling hands. The screen showed a live feed, like from a security camera or something.
She saw herself, standing, holding the phone. Her heart skipped a beat. What is this shit…? She thought.
But then… something moved behind her in the video.
A tall, thin figure. Shrouded in shadow. Walking slowly behind her.
And then she heard it… Laura's voice.
"I told you… not to come alone."

---------

Guys, this is my first time writing a story. I've already written something like a poem, but nothing like this. Please have mercy on me, hahaha.
I don't know if the story is very silly, but it was something I had in mind, and it reminded me of the old days of horror movies.
------
Since the topic was about trust, I think Clara trusted Laura too much to go to that place alone, at night, and also to go into the house trusting herself too much.

>In Spanish it has 542 words according to Word and 540 in English

[FM]  - The Message

[***FM***] Power Line

Inspired by Jason Lowry’s Softwar MIT thesis.

—-

2035 — Šiauliai Province, Lithuania

The first thing you learned living on the eastern edge of Europe was how to read the silences.

Auste Kavaliauskas had grown up parsing the gaps between what officials said and what her grandmother whispered over evening tea. When news anchors spoke of “routine military exercises,” Babushka would click her tongue and mutter about wolves circling the henhouse. The old woman had lived through occupations before—Soviet, Nazi, Soviet again. She knew the sound of boots approaching long before they appeared.

Now, standing in the converted root cellar beneath her family’s farmhouse, Auste wondered if her grandmother would have understood what they’d built down here. Rows of mining rigs hummed in climate-controlled darkness, their LED displays casting blue shadows across concrete walls that had once stored potatoes. The machines were frankenstein assemblages of reclaimed ASICs and salvaged cooling systems, connected by cables snaking between hand-welded frames like digital ivy.

“Border latency spiking,” she called to Matas, who was checking the backup power distribution. “Three pings per second from Kaliningrad. All masked.”

Matas Žukauskas didn’t look up. At sixty-two, he moved with the deliberate precision of someone who’d spent decades building things that had to work the first time. In another life, he’d designed wind farms across the Sahel, bringing power to communities that had never seen electric light. But corporations and warlords had a way of stealing infrastructure. Here, beneath Lithuanian soil, he was building something they couldn’t simply take.

Kamile Petravičius emerged from the equipment alcove, laptop balanced on technical manuals. Her screen showed a real-time map dotted with moving contacts. She’d flown surveillance over Donbas during the early days of that war, coming home with titanium screws in her spine and an unshakeable conviction that the next conflict would be fought with algorithms as much as artillery.

Ten days earlier, satellite photographs had shown Russian armor massing near the Suwalki Gap. The images had been leaked, analyzed, debated, and ultimately dismissed by officials determined to see exercises where others saw preparation. But the three people in this underground chamber had been planning for a different kind of war entirely.

Not bullets or bombs, but energy. Computation. Proof.

The lights died at 3:17 AM on a Tuesday.
Auste woke instantly in the farmhouse kitchen, a lifetime of living on contested borders having trained her to sleep lightly. Her phone buzzed: Five substations. Synchronised blackout.

She was pulling on boots when Kamile called: “Grid attack. They hit primary feeds to Šiauliai, Panevėžys, three smaller hubs. This is it.”

The vault’s emergency lighting cast everything in red as Auste descended. The mining rigs continued their endless computation, fed by geothermal power tapped from a Soviet-era heating system her grandfather had upgraded. The sound was like mechanical thunder, white noise that had become as familiar as her heartbeat.
Matas was already at the control station. “Coordination protocols are active. Signal went out.”

Three months earlier, they had distributed hardware packages to trusted contacts throughout Lithuania. Miners hidden in church basements and school computer labs, in Internet cafes and rural cooperatives. Each node small, unobtrusive, individually worthless. Together, they formed something unprecedented: distributed defense powered by proof-of-work consensus.

The theory was elegant. Bitcoin’s security model was based on economic incentives—it cost more to attack the network than could be gained by controlling it. What if that principle could be applied to national defense? What if aggression could be made mathematically prohibitive?

“Hash rate climbing,” Kamile reported. “Fifteen percent above baseline.”

Across the country, citizens were powering up mining equipment in response to the grid attack. Solar panels redirected from household use to computation. Hydroelectric generators spinning to full capacity. Even car batteries pressed into service, their stored energy transformed into mathematical proof.
It wasn’t military response in any traditional sense. No jets, no troops. Instead, Lithuania was demonstrating defense through distributed consensus—the ability to prove, with cryptographic certainty, that the nation remained sovereign and uncompromised.

“Moscow will claim this is economic manipulation,” Matas said, monitoring news feeds.

“Let them. The blockchain doesn’t lie.”
The world noticed.

By morning, #LithuaniaHashRate was trending. Reporters who’d never heard of mining difficulty were explaining proof-of-work to television audiences. The photographs went viral: elderly women in traditional dress feeding wood into biomass generators connected to mining rigs. Teenagers installing solar panels on church roofs. A grandmother and her eight-year-old grandson configuring a mining node in their apartment, the child’s laptop connected to a repurposed space heater. The caption, in Lithuanian and English: “Digital Resistance.”
But the most important audience wasn’t watching social media.

“Drone reconnaissance has stopped,” Kamile reported on day three. “No more ‘weather flights’ along the border.”

Moscow’s response came through official and back channels simultaneously. Publicly, they denounced Lithuania’s “reckless manipulation of global financial systems.” Privately, through diplomatic intermediaries: We see what you’ve built. Impressive. But participants can be eliminated.

The attack came at dawn on Saturday.
A swarm of small drones, each carrying just enough explosive to disable single pieces of infrastructure. They moved in coordinated waves, targeting power distribution nodes feeding Lithuania’s mining network. Too small for air defense, too numerous for manual interdiction.

Kamile had been tracking the approach since 4 AM. “Forty-seven contacts. Military-grade navigation. They’re not trying to kill anyone—just dark our nodes.”

“Can you jam them?”

“Maybe half. But that’ll burn our electronic warfare capabilities.”

Auste stared at the tactical display, red dots converging on months of careful preparation. “Do it.”

The counterstrike was beautiful and terrible. Kamile’s electronic warfare suite sent cascading failures through the drone swarm’s networks. Navigation systems locked up, collision avoidance inverted. Most drones simply fell from the sky. Others crashed into each other in spiralling tangles of carbon fibre.

But not all. Seven reached their targets, taking out substations with surgical precision. Hash rate dropped twelve percent in thirty seconds.

“They know we can hurt them, we know they can hurt us,” Matas said quietly. “Who blinks first?”

Auste was already moving toward the primary control station. “Neither.”

Her hand hovered over a switch never used—manual override for their core facility. For months, they’d kept their primary installation at minimal power, maintaining operational security. But the vault’s deepest chamber held next-generation mining hardware. Quantum-resistant ASICs cooled by liquid nitrogen, their computational power measured in exahashes. Enough to briefly dominate Bitcoin’s global hash rate.

“If we flip this,” Kamile said, “we’re making a statement every intelligence service will notice.”

“Good. Time they paid attention.”

She flipped the switch.
Lithuania’s hash rate exploded, rocketing past every mining pool in the Northern Hemisphere. The blockchain itself became a broadcast signal, proof transmitted to every node worldwide that something unprecedented was happening in this small Baltic nation.

Within hours, Russian mining facilities began shutting down. The cost of competing had become prohibitive—profit margins evaporated as network difficulty spiked beyond sustainable levels. State-sponsored operations hemorrhaged money with every attempted block.
The drones stopped flying.

In border towns, people gathered around displays showing hash rate climbing steadily upward. Children watched their country’s computational power exceed entire continents. Grandparents whispered about the strange mathematics of freedom.
The official response came through diplomatic channels: Your point is made. Stand down.

Auste’s reply was shorter: No.
The standoff lasted eighteen days.
Lithuania maintained computational dominance while Russian forces remained frozen on the border, unwilling to advance against a target that had proven its ability to impose economic costs through pure mathematics.

When Russian armor finally began withdrawing, it wasn’t because of diplomatic pressure or military deterrence. It was because the math had spoken, and the message was clear: attacking Lithuania would cost more than could ever be gained.
Six months later, Auste stood in the same root cellar where the crisis began, watching displays showing steady hash rates and normal latency. The farming equipment had moved back upstairs; the vault now served purely as a data center.

“Seventeen nations want to adopt the model,” Kamile reported.

“Let them. But they’ll need to build their own consensus.”

Because the real secret wasn’t in hardware or software. It wasn’t clever engineering or coordination protocols. The secret was simpler: ordinary people willing to transform their homes into defense network nodes, trusting mathematics more than government promises.

That couldn’t be replicated by copying specifications. It required consensus not just among machines, but among humans willing to stake their futures on mathematical proof.
The mining rigs hummed in their chambers, processing blocks and securing transactions in a chain that now included Lithuania’s sovereignty as a cryptographically verified fact. Above ground, the farmhouse looked the same as always—slate roof, weathered shingles, a barn leaning toward the setting sun.

But beneath the soil, where Soviet shells had once left craters, they had built something the world was learning to understand. Not just a defense network, but proof that consensus could be more powerful than coercion. That in an age where trust moved at the speed of mathematics, a small nation willing to stake everything on computational proof could stand against forces that had once seemed irresistible.

The blockchain didn’t lie. And sometimes, in a world full of deceptions, truth itself was the most powerful weapon of all.

[FM] Power Line

GreaterthanFiction

[***FM***] Low Tide

*In a poignant moment over burnt coffee, a father and son confront the weight of life's struggles—financial woes, family issues, trust in the wrong people, and the harsh reality of aging.*

The coffee tastes burnt. Dad stirs his black coffee with a plastic spoon. His hands shake a little. Seventy years of working hands.

"How are the girls?"

"Good. Emma lost her first tooth. Sophie's learning to ride her bike."

He smiles. First real smile I've seen from him in months.

"Remember when you learned? Took you all summer. Scraped knees every day. Kept getting back on."

A seagull lands on the window ledge. Fat from tourist scraps.

"Your mother says Sophie looks like you did at that age. Same stubborn streak."

"She gets that honest."

We watch people walk the beach. Families. Couples. Kids building sandcastles that won't last the tide.

"How's retirement treating you?"

"Can't complain. Get to spend time with the kids. Help with homework."

"Lucky man. Forty-three and done."

His coffee sits untouched now. Getting cold.

"Market's been crazy lately."

"Yeah?"

"Down thirty percent this year. Everything I put away for forty years. Just... gone."

The seagull flies away. Smarter than us.

"Your mother keeps watching the news. Every day it's worse. Says maybe we should sell. Cut our losses."

"Timing the market's tough."

"Tell me about it. Bought high. Always buy high."

An old couple walks past. Moving slow but still moving.

"Your uncle says it'll come back. Says to buy more while it's cheap. Easy for him to say."

"He's got different circumstances."

"That's what I told your mother. But you know how she listens to him."

Dad finally drinks his coffee. Makes a face. Cold and bitter.

"Your sister called yesterday."

"Yeah?"

"Needs money for the lawyer. Divorce is getting messy."

"Sorry to hear that."

"Can't say no to my kids. Even when they're forty-two."

His shoulders sag. Seventy years of carrying weight.

"How's the night shift?"

"Long. Double shifts most weeks."

"That's rough."

"Back's killing me. Feet hurt. Everything hurts."

The tide is going out. Leaving shells and debris on the sand.

"Mom's job situation?"

His face goes dark.

"They're shipping it overseas. AI's taking the rest. Forty years of experience. Means nothing now."

We sit in the quiet. Two men running out of safe ground.

"Dad?"

"Yeah?"

He looks at his hands. Working hands. Tired hands.

"Son, we can't retire."

The words hang between us like smoke. Everything we've been dancing around. Everything he's been trying not to say.

The market. The job. The sister. The uncle's bad advice. All of it leading here.

To this moment. This truth.

I want to fix it. Want to offer solutions. Want to give him some Bitcoin or a check.

But I don't.

The waitress brings the check. Her left arm moves too smooth. Servos hum quiet under synthetic skin. Half her face is still human.

Dad taps his phone against the reader.

Red light.

Insufficient Funds.

He stares at the screen. Tries again. Same red light.

"Would you like to finance this purchase?" the waitress asks. Her real eye shows kindness. The cybernetic one just blinks blue.

Dad looks at the screen. At the payment options scrolling past.

"Yeah. Okay."

He taps accept. Green light this time.

"Thanks for choosing Flexi," the waitress says. "Your first payment is due in fourteen days."

She walks away on legs that don't quite sound human.

Dad stares at his phone. At the debt that's now enough.

Sometimes the best thing you can give someone is silence.

Let them keep what's left.

[FM] Low Tide

TheFictionFactory

[***FM***] - The Bitcoin Spiderverse

[FM] - The Bitcoin Spiderverse

MaaliMKen

[***FM***] Power line
Inspired by Jason Lowery

https://stacker.news/items/1065682/r/GreaterthanFiction


[ ... /r/GreaterthanFiction

[***FM***] Different Roads Same Moon
Inspired by Michael Saylor

https://stacker.news ... /items/1082698/r/GreaterthanFiction

[***FM***] Not One Satoshi
Inspired by Naval

https://stacker.news/items ... ***FM***] The Halving: Block 1,260,000
Inspired by @dergigi (21% sats share)

https://stacker.news/items/1074336 ... [***FM***] The Last Miner
Inspired by Robert Breedlove

https://stacker.news/items/1199628/r/GreaterthanFiction

***FM*** >Fiction Round Up

Proud to have completed a story a week for this month’s stiff competition! 

If you haven’t had a chance to read them all, here is a roundup of each of the >Fiction stories and the people who inspired them.

1. [FM] Power line
Inspired by Jason Lowery

https://stacker.news/items/1065682/r/GreaterthanFiction


2. [FM] The Halving: Block 1,260,000
Inspired by @dergigi (21% sats share)

https://stacker.news/items/1074336/r/GreaterthanFiction

3. [FM] Different Roads Same Moon
Inspired by Michael Saylor

https://stacker.news/items/1082698/r/GreaterthanFiction

4. [FM] Not One Satoshi
Inspired by Naval

https://stacker.news/items/1092912/r/GreaterthanFiction

 5.[FM] The Last Miner
Inspired by Robert Breedlove

https://stacker.news/items/1199628/r/GreaterthanFiction

FM >Fiction Round Up

[***FM***] The Ask

_In a desolate dining room, Marcus confronts state officials over their empty promises and desperate need for his Bitcoin, laying bare the broken trust that hangs over their failures._

Marcus enters the dining room.

They're all waiting.

Ramirez at the head of the table like some broken queen. Morrison to her right, medals catching light that costs more than food. Chen sweating through his collar, salt stains mapping his desperation. Williams straightening his tie with shaking hands.

The table is set.

China plates cracked at the edges. Crystal glasses clouded with water spots. Nothing on them. Nothing coming.

"Mr. Cross." Ramirez rises. Perfect smile painted over ruin. "Marcus. Thank you for coming."

"You said lunch."

"Yes. Well. Please, sit. We have so much to discuss."

He takes the empty chair. Studies the empty plates. The pristine silverware that won't touch food. Because there is no food.

Outside, sirens wail. Inside, silence breeds.

"How was the drive?" Morrison asks. His voice too bright. "Traffic not too bad, I hope?"

"Fine."

"The new checkpoint system," Chen adds, dabbing sweat. "It's actually improved flow rates by thirty percent."

"Forty percent," Williams corrects. His collar damp now. "In some sectors."

Small talk. The dance of the damned. Marcus waits. Watches them perform their ritual of normalcy while the state dies around them.

"Your parents," Ramirez says finally. The real conversation beginning. "We've been discussing ways to honor them."

"Have you."

"The Cross Memorial Act. Full posthumous pardons. A park perhaps." She gestures at nothing. "With fountains."

"They're dead."

"Their legacy—"

"Dead too."

Silence falls like ash.

Morrison adjusts his medals, each one marking battles they've already lost. Chen dabs his forehead with a napkin that costs more than most people's meals. The air conditioning hums but doesn't cool. Nothing cools anymore.

"Water?" Ramirez offers. Lifts an empty pitcher. Crystal catching fluorescent light. Sets it down with a clink that echoes. "I apologize. We're waiting on a delivery."

"No need."

"The shortages," she explains. Her voice smaller now. "Temporary. Everything's temporary."

"Except Bitcoin."

The word hangs there.

What they've been dancing around.

Why he's really here. Why they called him to this tomb of a dining room with its empty promises and emptier plates.

"Yes," she says. Breathing shallow. "Bitcoin. We should discuss that."

"Should we."

"California's position has... evolved." The word costs her. "We see the value now. The importance."

"You had ten thousand coins once."

Her smile flickers. Dies. Returns as a grimace. "Ancient history."

"You sold."

"The state needed liquidity." A lie they've told themselves so many times it almost sounds true.

"The state needed better advisors."

Morrison leans forward. His chair creaks under the weight of his desperation. "We've learned... from our mistakes."

"Have you."

"We bought back what we could," Chen says. Voice breaking on each syllable. "Four coins. Cost us everything."

"Two coins," Williams corrects quietly. A whisper of defeat. "We paid for water this morning."

The mask slips. Ramirez's perfect composure cracks like drought earth. Like everything else in this dying place.

"Two coins," she repeats. Testing the words. Tasting failure. "Yes. Two."

"Not enough," Marcus says.

"No. Not nearly enough."

More silence.

The empty plates mock them with their hunger. The crystal glasses hold nothing but light and broken dreams. Somewhere in the distance, gunfire. Always gunfire now.

"We know you have ten," Morrison says. Drops the pretense like a worn mask. "Chain analysis confirms it."

"So?"

"First purchase at sixteen thousand. Smart. Eight more over the years. The last two—" He stops. Even desperation has limits.

"What about them?"

"We know what they cost you. What you sacrificed."

Marcus says nothing. The silence stretches taut as wire. They all know. His wife. His daughter. The hospital that wouldn't take dollars. That only took Bitcoin. The choice no father should make.

"We need your help," Ramirez says simply. Truth naked and bleeding. "California needs your help."

"California needed help ten years ago."

"We weren't ready then."

"You're not ready now."

"We are." She opens her laptop. Shows him contracts printed on paper they can't afford. Plans drawn in blood they haven't shed yet.

"With what funds?"

"We'll find funds."

"You can't afford lunch."

The words land like bullets. Chen looks at his empty plate as if it might sprout food through will alone. Williams studies the ceiling, counting cracks like rosary beads.

"The militia needs payment," Morrison says. Each word a stone in his throat. "Without them, it's chaos."

"It's already chaos."

"Controlled chaos. One Bitcoin keeps them loyal for three months."

"And then?"

"We mine more."

"With what power?"

"Solar. Wind." Fantasies dressed as plans.

"With what hardware?"

"We'll source it."

"With what expertise?"

"You."

Ramirez turns her laptop. "Digital Currency Advisor. New position. Help us transition."

Marcus stands. The empty chair scrapes marble like nails on coffin wood. The sound echoes in the tomb they've made of governance.

"We're done here."

"Wait." Morrison stands too. His hand moves toward his sidearm. Old habits. "Executive order 12204. We can requisition digital assets."

"From where? My brain?"

"We have methods."

"You have nothing. Empty plates. Empty promises. Empty threats from empty men."

"Sit down," Ramirez says quietly. The last queen of a broken kingdom. "Please."

Marcus remains standing. Ten feet tall in a room full of shadows.

"Half a coin," he says. Each word measured. Weighed. "For the kids. Not for you. Not for your militia. For the kids dying of thirst in your streets."

"Half?" Chen's voice breaks completely. "We need all ten."

"You need time travel. You need your ten thousand coins back. You need leaders who understood value before it was too late."

"That's not fair," Williams whispers.

"Fair?" Marcus almost laughs. The sound would shatter glass if there was any left unbroken. "You invited me to lunch with no food. You talk about honoring my parents with no money. You make threats with no power. Tell me about fair."

Ramirez closes her laptop. The performance over. The curtain fallen. The truth naked between them like a wound.

"Half a coin," she says. "We accept."

Marcus pulls out his phone. The transfer screen glows like salvation. His fingers pause over buttons that control the future.

"This is the last time. Don't contact me again."

"Understood."

He sends it. Half a Bitcoin disappearing into the void of their incompetence. Five percent of his wealth. For children he'll never meet in a state that can't save itself.

The transaction confirms. Somewhere, servers hum. The blockchain grows. The future loads one block at a time.

Marcus walks to the door. Each step an epoch. Stops. Turns back to them. Their empty plates. Their empty treasury. Their empty souls.

"What if we fail?" Ramirez asks. The last question of the dying.

"You already did."

He opens the door. Steps through. Closes it behind him with the finality of extinction.

In the dining room, they sit with their empty plates and their half Bitcoin and the weight of what comes next. Outside, through windows that still gleam with borrowed light, California burns on. The sovereign individual has made his choice. The state has made theirs.

The future already loading. One block at a time.

[FM] The Ask

[***FM***] -- 3D Chess

‘Amos’.
Rummaging through the saucepan…looking for some leftover matooke…nothing…rice…nothing.
‘AMOS!’
‘Mother?’
‘Come here you foolish boy. Didn't you hear me call you?’
‘I did’.
‘Where is all the spiced rice and meat I left in this saucepan? It was enough for our family breakfast?’
‘I sold it for sats mother’
‘Ooh..really? Hmm. Did you send them to our SACCO account?’
‘Yes mother’.
‘Ah, maybe you're not so foolish. Your father would have skinned you alive. 
Here, get this money’ she handed him a thick bundle ‘and go buy us some bread. You can buy yourself some of Uncle Mark’s samosas. I know you like those’.
Amos excitedly ran to put on his slippers. He was soon jumping across the sewage that flowed through Kuyiriba slum.

Kuyiriba was a massive slum that had emerged in Africa courtesy of massive waste dumping from Big AI/Robotics corps.
Big Bitcoin Hodlers held a major stake in these companies, which is why there was extreme polarization between the haves – AI invested Bitcoin hodlers who built megacities sitting on GW of previously useless energy, which attracted millions of people to work informally around them, hence slums like Kuyiriba containing millions of have nots – Kids like Amos whose families saw the LN as the only way to build a financial future. Because for better or worse, below a certain social standing, AI never multiplied one's wealth. It was a pass-time.

“But that is where the goody goody story ends”
Samson Lamecka told the man next to him, then he tasted his beer.
“With these two diametrically opposed use cases - The LN in low-income communities, and the Hodling in big wallets with a big stake in legacy AI, a clash is expected.
If the LN makes more money on the ground (and underground, he said to himself) than those holding then you can be sure Bitcoin-targeting legislation will shift towards taxing that”.

Which is what was starting to happen despite the monoliths that were super AIs and super rich people in skyscraping towers. The money was disappearing. Governments were competing at inflating it away. Even as they could afford legacy banking or legacy AI jobs like software developers and financial analysts, the janitors, garbage collectors, cooks who lived on the fringes of the city were amassing economic power faster. Legacy robots couldn't clean the city worth a damn, and most people didn't need AI. Accepting to live and die at the bottom, as long as they kept their sats close to their chests. And passed them on to their children. 
So inflation was starting to bite the banksters and not the bankless. Very interesting.

“Say, do you also buy premium AI services using Bitcoin?” asked a man sitting next to Samson in the local bar.
“Nah. That's how you stay poor. It will be sucked up by Big Hodlers.
If they don't spend on AI with sats, we won't spend on AI with sats”.
“I collect and recycle garbage. The hell I need AI for?”
He could also program Bitcoin core and Chaumian signatures but he didn't want to brag. Besides, some people here could do it. It was a man's work.
Not like the spoilt rich kids in ivory towers.

***

A year later, inflation had become so bad that Samson sometimes had to carry a bag of PX, the local AI currency, to make transactions. 

Why it could go on, however, was because the government was in charge of the 40 GW resource that powered the AI and Bitcoin at the heart of their world's commerce.
Even after inflating away the price of power to fall to $ 0.01 per KWh, this was still worth $400 million per hour. As you can guess, mostly paid for by the “poor” via the LN network, not the “rich” (actual poor) who plugged into AIs from morning to dusk. 
See, there was no actual UBI. No free goodies AI utopia. Kuyiriba was proof of this. Proof that the blue collar workers were still the pillars on which civilization rested.
And proof that if the plebs learn financial discipline, then they can win.

***

2 years later, the Bitcoin tax men started knocking on doors. 
The worst taxmen ever.
A heavy knock knock knock. Authoritative.
“OPEN UP!”

Samson opened. 
“You're under investigation for operating a money transmitting service without paying taxes”.
They asked him for his laptop.
He handed it over and their technician booted it.
“You have been using Chaumian signatures and zkSNARKS to do Bitcoin transactions. They are forbidden”. 
They opened his laptop and saw nothing. Not even one application. Not even recycle bin.
“We traced anonymous zkSNARK activity to your cluster of addresses, Samson.”
 “Show me the evidence on my laptop then.”  he countered.
They couldn’t. It was air-gapped and clean as a whistle.
“Well…”
“Well?”
“You have to file your tax returns buddy”
“Yes. Follow me”.
He led them outside. 
They moved out. A crowd had formed outside. Samson was their guru, like his mother and grandmother before him. Grandmother was the first person to learn about Bitcoin back in those days.

Nearby was another house. He went in and a crowd followed. In an adjacent room to the door, heavy bales of paper money were nicely tied up like new notes. Except they were old and were worth about a year's wage in garbage collection.
Must have weighed a ton too.
“My earnings for last year. I'll be filing them tomorrow”.
The crowd laughed.

They moved out and more people had arrived.
“We heard loud sounds so we came to help”, said a young man at the head of the crowd. It was like the entire village had come over.
“Keep your distance if you know what's good for you”.
The team lead pulled out a sat phone as they walked away.
“Hello sir….Yes, we cannot touch him. He has wiped everything…I couldn't see anything I swear. I did all possible checks….
Okay. Noted”.
The man at the other end of the call owned 1 million BTC. He smiled.
“Never thought I'd sit at the round table with a garbage collector” he chuckled. 
He wondered if they had underground tunnels under which they had buried their real technology and assets. Like the Vietnamese, except not communist. Or were they communist?
Nah. Self-organised voluntaryist Bitcoiners.
It was an interesting development. The price would go higher for sure.
The President was going to call soon, no doubt.

Meanwhile, 1000 miles in another direction sat the man with the power.
He received the news of what had transpired in Kuyiriba that morning. Nobody had given up any Bitcoin and yet he knew they were transacting multiple millions of sats every day. It could be seen onchain. Just who was transacting what amount with who was a mystery.
Also, the Bitcoin Hodlers and their super reserves had him by the balls.
Oh well, he owned the electricity. He could cut them all off. The bastards and their money. And now their growing connections…!
“Margret”.
No answer.
“MARGRET!!”
Nothing.
“Sir?” came a distant reply after a few seconds. “I was picking up your laundry”.
“Call the Minister of Energy and The Governor of the Central Bank”. 
When the two men arrived, he offered them tea and biscuits and they talked about the weather and so on.
Eventually, he fired the second one and gave the power he’d had to the first one. The first one was now to work directly with him.
To the second one, “Don't take it the wrong way Mike. It's time to survive. To cut back”.
“I understand”.
The man with the power bid them farewell then he sat to ponder his next move. He’d always hated fasting. But he had too.
He controlled the energy, so he would remain relevant in this game of 3D chess.




[FM] -- 3D Chess

"[***FM***]" \ stacker news

Almost 40 entries in Stacker News Fiction Month https://stacker.news/items/1197314

"[FM]" \ stacker news

jakoyoh629

[***FM***] Hardware Robot - HR


The Head of the Bitcoin Robotics Corporation walked to the podium. It was a hot day and he had spent the last few hours listening to reports on a few bugs left. Now here he was, ready to convince the Bitcoin-frenzied media before him that Hardware Robots were the future of Human Resources for their Bitcoin world.

When he stopped, thousands of cameras started getting his photo. He was a rare man and the stock images of his face would sell well for these companies.

“Good morning ladies and gentlemen”, Simon Hakim started. 
He looked around at the reporters, all their hands raised up like eager school kids.
“Jane”, he said, pointing, "you can go first”. 

“I heard there are still bugs in the final robots. So why should we trust them or you?”.

How she had found out, he couldn't tell in that minute. But he didn't let it bother him for now. He pushed his hand into his coat and pulled out a flash disk hardware wallet. 

“More than a hundred years ago, Bitcoiners built hardware wallets like this. 
However, there was a problem. 
Theft. Especially from the fiat minded amongst us. As statistics show, very few devoted Bitcoiners spend their developer hours trying to figure out how to steal from their brethren”.

“Theft remains the biggest problem, as we all know, and it starts at the top and trickles down.
The advent of robotic assistants was good for our economy, and GDP 100xd in a few decades.
But have you noticed that we are all still miserable?
Because we are still robbed”

“Enters the Bitcoin Robotics Corporation onto the scene, to create the first robot that isn't merely a janitor, a cook or an educationally prosthesis without equal”

“Learning more things is fine. Losing the wealth that that knowledge brings us is the problem. Many ancient civilizations collapsed because they got poor, not stupid or less knowledgeable”.

A Bitcoin robot could be heard walking towards them. The first time they were all seeing one, except a few people who decidedly looked unimpressed.
The crowd parted to give it way.
It had a majestic walk but even more important was its “face”. It had “the face of Satoshi” as had come to be called.
Cheeky.

“There are many variations to this bot. Some are humanoids like this one, some are dog bots.
One thing they all have in common, however, is that they understand money better than financial analysts and traditional robots combined.
Also, they protect it like nuclear bunkers for us”.

Hakim handed the mic to Ken Rickman, the lead engineer who immediately got into a joke where a tradfi guy looked stupid when a dog corrected their sentences mid speech.
“With their sad coding and hardware design skills fueled by high time preference donuts and inadequate sleep. 
The fiat camp wont be a match for Bitcoin HRs”.

But even more important was the name, HR.
Apparently, it could do the role of both recruitment and financial adviser in one.

Like a bratty know-it-all who cannot be bullied by their boss despite the tone of voice, coz they're not human, nor be coerced by tears from a weakling who would rather spend Bitcoin on weed and whores.

***

Months later, everybody wanted one.
Even grandma.
Tell her to run Linux to get one, and she gladly did.
Because the HR could speak, could do all that fiat bot dogs did, but one better. It never accepted anybody to steal your Bitcoin. And it never let you go broke. Not on its watch.

If it had to spank you, it spanked you (usually if you had scheduled this, and had pressed “are you sure?” 21 times.
You also had to be an adult and have a record of being a major league douche bag. A record it kept real nice and safe for you).

If you told it to time lock BTC for 4 years while only allowing you to stack and not spend, it gladly.
In one interesting case, a user filed a lawsuit against BRC (Bitcoin Robotics Corporation) for not allowing them to terminate their contract and receive back their funds. They showed him that this particular part of the code was primitive layer 1 code since the hardfork of 2099, and hard forks to reverse this were hard to come by.
Maybe they could wait another century.

The hard fork had been created both as a security measure against theft (timelocked BTC were impossible to steal. They used layered SHA-1024 hashes) and also, it gave time to Bitcoin-aligned law enforcement to form a quantum signature of these coins. So in case they were stolen after the time lock expired, they could be tracked for up to 1 year and retrieved easily no matter where they were sent.
So there was no one to sue, as these HRs were essentially being designed on the OSH (Open Source Hardware) model.
You break it, you fix it or you go bust.
If you remember the seed phrase to the coins, no problem. You could still spend the coins. If they were timelocked, you got to wait.
If you weren't sure of your survival over the time you had “accidentally pressed yes  21 times”, then you better tell some people you care about what that seed phrase is. Otherwise, bye bye coins.
Into the void of lost coins.
Now 11 million lost coins.
What to do about that? Not a problem yet.

The HR dog could bite, it could bark, and it didn't poop. It called you out on your sloppy spending until you chased it silly around the house.
Could it be stolen? Reprogrammed to be another human’s companion? 
No.
Call it quasi-sentience arising from Bitcoin’s new OSS / OSH nature, call it clever engineering, but once the HR bonded with one human, that human was its wallet holder until it was recycled.
It was a robot with a neural net deeply tied to the digital identity, online-work-history and financial-history of one individual.
And it DGAF about individual’s tantrum. 
Only prayer and patience could help whoever timelocked. And boy did it coarse people to timelock.

“please timelock”. 
Woof.

Real dogs had competition. But humans had suffered AI takeover too. Dogs were finally sharing in the misery of their caretakers.
The lens to the future was clear, except “How could we trust these dogs not to steal our BTC or be hacked or whatever?” many still asked. Bitcoin noobs with zk on the technical weeds of OSH.
As it hadn't yet been years of the brand effect making its mark.
But the better question was, how could we not.
For decades, Bitcoiners had been the target of not just ridicule but serious theft. Digital world theft, State theft, $5 wrench theft, $1 social hack theft, name them. 
The progress to HR could in fact be better measured in broken finances, broken dreams, and even broken bones from the fiat camp.
What is a little more patience to see the magic of HR, when people had been patient with fiat currency debasement for centuries?

A lovely paradox though, was that people hated robots getting too much autonomy, but when it made certain financial decisions on their behalf,  without asking, they didn't mind it in the long run.
So with time, people got used to massive timelocks.
It soon became standard practice, decades later, to put one's children's trust fund in a time lock. The Bitcoin quantum OSH enforcement agency (of which Hakim was a major financer – coincidence?) had been trustworthy so far and theft over-all had decreased 20 fold, especially State theft (no politician could wait 10 years - election cycles. Also they would be thwarted by quantum OSH signatures when they finally confiscated BTC on some dumb charge).
Low time preference had spiked to All Time Highs.
Some people were becoming effective long termists, and charting a course to Mars for their grand grandchildren.
Others were more attuned to nature and solving the fossil fuel scarcity problem, now that there were really dwindling amounts of it left.
Solar power was on the rise, and some space based human habitats were also being modelled.
2400 would shine bright on the human race.

***

I know what you're finally thinking. Couldn't the timelocked BTC be hacked by fiat devs? 
No. 
Because Bitcoiners spent hundreds of years learning to code. Sealed off from the world and its fast-lane bs, they became unstoppable.
OSH was no joke and rumor had it that Bitcoin OSH devs had learnt to code so well they could simply speak (via an AI interface), and their personal HR dogs would listen and be reprogrammed accordingly.
Behavioral training on steroids.
Noobs like me cannot relate. This shit is quantum physics merged with arcane software development merged with AI.

***

You won't believe it, but I saw one robot stop an accident just yesterday. These bots are even saving lives! 
Wow.



[FM] Hardware Robot - HR

[***FM***] The Last Miner

[FM] The Last Miner

[***FM***] The Trust Museum

[FM] The Trust Museum

jbschirtzinger

It was Rick I was listening to on B ***FM***.

“Ok folks. ... I had my ears pressed to B ***FM***, awaiting to be told of the order from our gods on Olympus - the hodlers

[***FM***]  - In Hodlers We Trust


**1**

I awoke at 7 am on a rainy day in August. A lot of rain was preparing to fall that day. 
But something felt unusual, and the air was thick with something other than humid rain water.
Then I noticed, nobody was on the streets.
What was happening!
I went to my own TV.
“Breaking News : More people are refusing to sell their Bitcoin… Exchanges and the Banks they had built are panicked … the President of…”.
Hoho, it was happening.

**2**

I didn't know if I should go to work or stay indoors. Luckily, nobody near me at the time knew I was a Bitcoiner. In the 22nd century, that was risky. No, fatal. Especially if you didn't live in Bitcoin Countries. Which was most people.
I had my ears pressed to B FM, awaiting to be told of the order from our gods on Olympus - the hodlers who were so powerful they could not be touched. Because a lot of people would be hurt. Like, global supply chains would crankle up into an entangled mess. Like tonnes of unwashed laundry.

“Fantastic Hodlers” we called them. They had seed phrases of seed phrases of multiple corporate, private, and individual stashes in webs of trust so complex few people could even envision it.
They didn't use media reports anymore. No company earnings calls, no secret encrypted safes. It was said everything was in cerebrums and in the handshakes they gave to the people they had to, who gave handshakes to other people, who gave to my mentor - a 1 BTC owner called Rick.

It was Rick I was listening to on B FM.

“Ok folks. The clouds are charged and lightning is ready to strike.
Which defunct trash cans should be destroyed first so we can actually move on…
This is it, and you're here for it…”.
I was hearing someone run across the street so I wasn't focussed.
‘Shit. These guys actually have power!’
I looked and I saw a wolf of Wall Street running in his suit like a thief escaping from the police.
It was a very difficult time we had entered into, and knew I had to work that day. Otherwise people would suspect I had a nice little stash.
I got back to the broadcast. Now's not the time to plan a long vacation.
“ … will not sell you BTC until the entire country has been littered with BTC nodes in place of Fed trash cans full of worthless paper”.

**3**

That week, there was a lot of movement of military equipment and multiple global meetings left, right and centre.
The running big-arc narrative was that some terrorists had stolen many powerful countries' nukes. And a lot of money was needed to catch these terrorists.
A tale so well crafted I supposed whoever had spun it was working busiest of them all. To keep the runway ahead of the whole thing.
People suddenly didn't know who to trust even more, and since they already didn't trust Bitcoiners aka monkian-know-it-alls, they doubled down to trusting governments some more.
People were just stupid over trusting governments. Perhaps it stemmed from the family unit, trusting Dad and Mom. So it wasn't their fault but human psychology.

State mum and state dad however were really hanging onto their custody of the kids. But the thread was breaking. The hand of monetary justice, in tandem with lady justice herself, was working hard to get people new foster parents.

The dark clouds were now perpetually maintained by the burning of tires and other plastics, useless clothes, and old fiat paper in ghettos around NYC. Whatever people were keeping as mementos, but now wanted to purge. As if to help speed up the cleansing process that was trying to go on around the world, albeit to immense friction.
The nuclear angle had frozen so much movement. Everybody was now tense, especially Bitcoiners.
I'd never hated nukes more in my life.
But Rick gave me hope.

“We have nothing to do with nukes and if this threat is real, then now is the time to hodl harder.
The old guard should accept they have lost and leave this problem to us.
We know what we want. They have forgotten even why they are clinging on so hard.
Nobody is getting jailed. And nobody is going to hold nobody at ransom.
All moth ridden debt records will be wiped clean…Hammurabi records … ”

**4**

A month later, a new Bitcoin president of the United States of America was announced. I had never seen the guy before. Which is how I knew he must be the best at keeping seed phrase relationships locked tight inside his cerebrum.
He had a normal looking head though.

1 year later…
The USA, EU, China, Japan, Russia and India all jointly declared a state of financial emergency and all transactions were to be done in BTC until further notice.
“In Hodlers we Trust” declared President B. Maximus.
“Now let's hope they decide to let go of their grip even a little”, he ended his canonical speech.
It was a psychological rollercoaster like no other, and it was just warming up. Was President Maximus daring hodlers to keep their vibranium hands even more locked!
Wtf.

I didn't know, but I felt he had just revealed, somewhat slightly, that the psychological mind-game of fiat was still in play. Fiat was a President's playbook anyway. Order, Decree.
He might be a Bitcoiner, but he was first and foremost a politician. At the very top, you had to speak a language more convincing than facts, figures, and 12 word seeds. You had to create a Shakespearean drama.

Then one night, on the radio, Rick said “you can sell 1% now. Let's see if Maximus abuses it or appreciates that little gold nugget and never ever debases against it”.

And that’s when I knew, it was now time to go live in a Bitcoin Country. I would be royalty through the airport paying in sats.
Nobody but OGs had sats, everyone believed.
















[FM]  - In Hodlers We Trust

[***FM***] The Convergence Tales (123,456,789.987654321)

# The Convergence Tales (123,456,789.987654321)

You can tell a lot about a planet by its monetary standard. If “21,000,000.00000000” was all I knew about yours, I would have guessed it had at least two continents during the monetization phase.

You see, over the course of my travels, I’ve noticed that planets with a single Pangaea-like supercontinent, or those that lack oceans entirely, are more likely to choose a round number, 1 trillion for instance, often with no decimal point. Decimals are a feature that seem to be preferred by planets that went through, for lack of a better term on hand, a discovery of a “New World.” I know of one planet, or solar system rather, that settled on a currency which, like some of your scam-coins, had no supply cap at all, but only a controlled continuous issuance (in their case, it worked out). 

Perhaps I will never have any way of proving it, but I believe there are subconscious influences at play in the cosmetic choices that go into building a global currency.

The land on my home planet consists mostly of scattered archipelagos, similar to your Oceania but without an Australia, and the maximum supply of our currency is 123,456,789.987654321. It was chosen to represent the infinite and finite in one, abundance from scarcity, an ouroboros-like circle, among other interpretations. The distribution phase was scheduled to last for what would be thousands of years on your planet. That phase had already concluded about a thousand Earth-years before I was born. By then we had taken it for granted and moved on to more pressing matters, like building deep-sea aquariums, seeking out the perfect margarita, and preparing for the all-media fiction competition with subdivisions running all throughout the year. The lackadaisical attitude to financial matters concerns me a bit, now that I’m reading through your planet’s history, but I suppose they’re better off without all of that occupying space in their mind. 

I’ll say it before you do. I am a space-hobbit, though the native term for our species is *digi-kunao*. *Digi* meaning “finger,” a reference to our species’ inclination to build with our hands. It is used in the names of animals that you would perceive as primates. The suffix *kunao* denotes one that possesses a relatively high degree of rationality and spirituality. 

Here I must commit a cancelable offense, appropriate to place at the introduction to a series. At the (calculated) risk of drawing ire from nitpicking statists for disturbing their quest to eliminate all traces of friendship, love, and magic from the universe, I must say that I firmly believe all languages contain at least one tiny hint of their monetary destiny. In English, it is in the word “digit.” 

You may be wondering why an archipelago planet would have a decimal, but if I were to describe it in further detail, and you’re familiar with the [Wallace Line](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallace_Line), then I think you’d agree it fits perfectly. 

I had trouble fitting in there. Having been born with albinism, I didn’t share my peers’ enthusiasm for the beach. Neither did I have much passion for storytelling. I preferred to play with numbers. Naturally, when I was offered the opportunity to visit your planet, to train in a cubicle in Seattle, I jumped at the opportunity. As you might have guessed from my writing this, the thrill of adventure eventually wore off, sooner than I expected. So, consider this my way of reconnecting with a home to which I cannot return. 

The fictional characters that I will depict in these stories (though I have tried to depict their planets and circumstances in as historically accurate a manner as possible) are not human in a strict sense, but at a glance, you would likely recognize them as such, despite subtle variations in form. (For example, I was born without an appendix.) Consider the wise hyraxes, “creatures of little power, yet they make their home in the crags (*New International Version*, Proverbs 30:26). This animal is not exactly a “rodent,” but circumstances led it to converge on the features of a rodent. 

Every planet I know of, in the end, each converged on a single decentralized currency that rose above all others to lasting financial dominance. Let the stories to come serve as hopium for those of you still in doubt of Bitcoin’s potential, and a warning to those who would seek to snuff it out.

You will win. Trust me.

Unless, of course, you’d prefer to be the first planet not to? But that would be a much longer story ~that I’m not good enough to write yet~ whose time has not yet come. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOHV9p_a16o

[FM] The Convergence Tales (123,456,789.987654321)

[***FM***] VR boys (1118 words)

Jessie pats Patrick on his shoulder and says, warmly looking into his eyes, “I guess we did it. You saw the sign, right? Must be true…” He whistles. “Something from nothing. How about that? Ex nihilo.” He kicks a rock out into the street where vehicles stream by. “I don’t know what to feel about it, honestly.”
He shuffles awkwardly, rubs his eyes.
Patrick says nothing. Looks at his hands.
A car pulls up to a slow stop next to them, “You got stone?” a voice asks.
Patrick appears to come to life. He steps toward the car, cocks his head to peer inside. Rolls up his sleeves. “What are we talking, for all of ya? You gotta be kidding” his eyes focus on each face for two seconds. There are four faces. They remain silent. Patrick stuffs his hand into his jacket, jerks out a bag. “I need gold.” He makes sure all the faces see the bag, so he does another round looking into each set of eyes.
Someone offers a brownish nugget. The exchange is made. The car moves on.
Patrick and Jessie begin walking briskly.
“So what I don’t understand— you got a two-sided marketplace with voluntary participates who need each other. But it’s not a product. It’s, what then-it’s like energy? Oh resources, then, right? So it’s politics. I dunno I’m kinda thinking how does this change anything.” Patrick hops up onto the curb to avoid a stream of shit in the street.
“I’ll say this, you and I are in the wrong industry, though. We gotta get moving to capture this, like all this free energy, I mean basically free.”
“You and I, a couple a shit heads, you’re saying we’ll be rich?” Patrick twists his lips in an incredulous way to express doubt at Jessie.
“What the hell if we’re rich? Seriously. Nah, I’m not saying that at all. I’m saying we live in a time—“
Patrick and Jessie suddenly burst apart, their pixels fly through the clutter of the street, blending in with the dust collected on the screen.
_____________________________________________________________________
“Expletive!” Kirk spits. He rips off his headset and stretches his back while his eyes readjust.
“Ok I have no idea what happened that time,” says Tim, coming out of his headset and setting it down. “My haunting sense says interference. . . “ He peers around the darkened room, his eyes landing on the old man in the corner booth who sharply flicks a fly out of his face.
“Well, I’m lost,” Kirk consoles. “Like the whole game hasn’t even been that difficult. We could have completed it days ago if it weren’t throwing us out every 10 minutes.”
“Pretty clever design, I gotta say,” Tim says, tipping his can back to draw the last swig of his beer. “Make the rules mysterious and vague, drive the stakes uber high, but the gameplay is so simple.” He chuckles, “I guess it’s kinda working on us like a slot machine or something.”
Kirk laughs, “Yeah definitely. You want another?”
Tim claps his chest, “Hit me.”
As Kirk shuffles off to the bar, Tim sits back and breathes slowly out his mouth. For the hundredth time, he imagines what he’ll do with the coin they’ll win. He wonders if he really needs Kirk, or if he’s being stifled by him. As he thinks, he presses his fingertips together, forming an empty orb with his hands. He looks rather domineering watching Kirk approach a corner of the room, pulling the brim of his hat down over his eyes. Yet again his pondering brings him to the same place - Kirk isn’t exceptional but he’s the only one Tim’s got.
In the dark corner, Kirk utters a few short sounds outside a closed door. The door is opened and two bottles are extended out of it, cold steam rising off their opened tops. Kirk hovers his hand over them for a moment, then takes them. In the center of the industrial, dusty and dimly-lit room, a performance takes place. There are about three people paying attention to it. Everyone else with their own headsets inside their separate pods gives no signs of life. Kirk slides around the scene without being noticed.
He comes back around and places a bottle in front of Tim, “I guess they won’t give us anymore of that dark stuff, this is a fraught and pithy ass lite.”
Tim lifts it to his lips, “At least it’s cold.”
Kirk watches Tim approve of his first sip, then his eyes move over the room, and his thoughts move beyond it. He tracks the movement of a dancer at the center of the room. Her fingers, her elbows, send out sparks as she moves them fluidly through a show of light. She is meant to suggest presence, but instead, with only one attendant to her performance and the rest of the room, all male, otherwise engaged, she highlights the absence, the loneliness. Kirk tries to recall the last time he was in a room full of people. It wasn’t recent. For a short-fused flash, the haunting image of ‘family’ rushes into his head. He shakes it off.
 “I guess that gets me thinking, you know,” Tim looks up to see Kirk is ready to deliver a monologue, he pauses the voices in his head to listen. “I don’t know if I’ll ever want to leave the grum behind. Not all the way. Not forever. Is that what we’re trying to do?” He sniffs, he leans forward, his beer sloshes. “Even though it’s like, sure, we have no soul here, right? but carrying on all this time without one means you get used to it. Like, ya know,” Kirk shrugs, “it’s not the best, but what’s better? What is that? You get used to how it is. And you replace the soul cartridge with something else, I guess, I mean I don’t know. I know my cavitiy isn’t empty. But who knows? The fathoms of that are too far out.” He coughs, shifts in his seat.
“Forget that, that’s the dark liquid in your cords.” Tim spits after another long sip. “I don’t know how to deal with you having anything close to a fathom.” Tim rubs his hands over his clothes. Kirk looks down at his hands. “No I mean, you really haven’t been anywhere. So, your assessment is missing some facts.” He taps his headset impatiently. “Pick it up, let’s get back in.”