— H A R D F O R K — [ part 1 ]

[ You can read Part 0 here ]

...It doesn't matter now. I understand that there is no reason to hold onto a picture but somehow this is what keeps me in touch with reality. I haven't had a stable job for some months now. Things are not so easy here on the lunar surface. We depend on Earth for every single thing. We ship goods for them, they ship back misfits to mine their crap. I must have drunk my own recycled piss over a thousand times by now. Now that I think about it, every single human has as well. They just get to have more dilution.

This is what I need. Dilution. Dilution from all the people that seem to getting more and more, sucking the life out of me. I always thought that numbers deteriorate the essence. A cat is your pet. You can notice all the details in the character, flaws, tricks. When you get a bunch of them they become pests, fighting for resources and a chance to shine through. This is what we have become. Pests. A virus that has spread through the solar system with no natural enemy to take us out.

The Lumina rock only added to our arrogance. By using it on the plank-drive we are able to jump to the outer belt in just 3 months. Mining ships only took 5. I have done the tour and let me tell you; space is overrated. I bet this is how the first ocean quests felt. Heck this is how the earlier explorers of the desserts felt. Sand, water, space — covering the horizon making your position seem hopeless, irrelevant. It's all sand to me. Blue.., yellow..., Black. It doesn't matter.

MO-813. This was the asteroid I met Simon, a nanochain engineer. He was sentenced there to serve 12 years after he got caught manipulating a real estate node on Mars. I mean, who would have blamed him. The entire surface got divided like a giant party pizza. He was after some piece of the action like most of wage slaves. The only difference is that he got caught.

He was the cynical type. I guess this is why I liked him. He was far less depressed than me and had a spark in his eye. Even though his closest friends were mining drones, he kept his shit together by giving them nicknames. Each one sucked in at least one department. All these clinkers were decommissioned relics from the early Lunar mining expeditions that CORPO decided to recycle on misfits. For Simon that was an opportunity for them to give them a personality. Funny thing, I happen to categorize people in much the same way. There it is again. The universe giving me the finger.

His reasons for taking an interest on me where different. I was a bloody tourist, doing some soul searching and he was basically a slave working for the corporation he hated the most. I didn't even tell him about my parents working with CORPO. I am not sure I should. He was rather excited with the Lumina Rock. Until this day I am not sure he liked me or the darn rock. And to think about it... That freaking thing landed him — indirectly — over the edge of the system. Ironic huh?

He was kin to know how it worked, much like every other obsessed engineer I met. He was rumbling about how its molecular structure reminded him of the some of the early blockchain code. I didn't understand what he was on about. It all sounded like conspiracy theories to me. I read about early blockchain technologies in my history classes but those early languages. They have now become obsolete. The molecular structure of my own shit could resemble that of the rock. I only entertained the discussion with him because he reminded me of my grandpa. He somehow made time sit still with all his rumblings. I swear I could sit and have him talk for hours.

[ This is the end of part 1 ]