Macaron returns, fluffs his white linen napkin, and takes his seat at their table, “Thank you, John, for extending my French people such great mercy as to be allowed to transact freely on the Bitcoin blockchain.” He extends his arm out towards a waiter, “Monsieur? Champagne for the three of us please!”

When Caleb regained consciousness, he wasn’t sure where he was or even what decade he was in. There was a soft blur to everything, like when he used to swim laps in his infinity pool on his Texan ranch. That had cost him a few bitcoins, but nothing like the fortune he’d paid to Cyrogen Futures.

I woke suddenly, my phone vibrating angrily on the bedside table. As I gathered my senses, I was gripped by the ominous feeling that a call in the dead of night inevitably triggers. That dread deepened as, rubbing my eyes, I saw Morticia flashing on my iPhone’s caller ID, the name my Uncle Mike and I used to jokingly refer to his humourless sister. I hadn’t spoken to her in over 18 months, so a 2 AM call from the perennial fun-sponge could only mean bad news.

When my father died, an entire ecosystem system of beneficiaries withered. Moussa Ag El Khir funded scholarships and community projects, paying thousands of Dinars monthly to stop the oasis town of In Salah from burning up. The few families we knew operating outside the oil-field economy would be forced to flee to the Mediterranean coast, along with just about every other Berber.

He had been sent to this forgotten part of the country by his employers at The Deep Sea Construction Company to examine blueprints for a construct that he would never fully understand. They were building something big on the seabed of the lake next to the village, but his security clearance curtailed any specific details about the project.

I am a noderoid, a half-flesh, half-machine creature harnessed to propagate and store the timechain. My life is a ceaseless cycle of handling and relaying bitcoin data. Approximately every ten minutes, a binary flash sears through my circuits. It is the price I pay for my existence.