# 1

By [Xray Memories](https://paragraph.com/@xray-memories) · 2022-01-24

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I was outside the Mesh, at the edge of the Decentralized Zone. In thirteen minutes there’d be a satellite overpass so I could do a quick local reup and then truesync with the core when I got to the nearest shard, but until I got on the Mesh again I wasn’t exactly sure where’d that be.

The rough thicket gave way to gravel and a field of solar panels glinting in the gloaming. A control tower winked its orange iris beacon. I stayed in the wild grass along the edge, calibrating my thermals and checking for reliable biosignatures: if I got a read I could clock their presence and verify their identity against the global ledger to see if they were in or if they were out. However, the air was quiet and as the sun sank below the hillside I listened to the hum of the skysoakers pulling in faded hints of the only free thing left.

Stepping onto the gravel, I noticed beneath the panels irregular patterns of moss and lichens, presumably charting out hidden leakages, flux we cannot capture but they can, nimbly sucking it back down in the living dirt. Seeing their shaded machinations, I couldn’t help but be reminded of the proposal by the Scribes to have an anointed “shadow town” that was to be entirely covered in these panels, ensconced within itself like a recursive hive. They claimed not only was this a self-sustaining new habitat, it was also a measure to escape the sun’s increasingly menacing rays. But no one really listens to the Scribes, they are curators and handlers not visionaries and if you do listen to them, as I have, then you may also end up outside the Mesh, seeking orphaned tokens in their remote hosts. I’ve been called a fool, yes, but I have always met a greater one.

As much as I wanted to trust the Scribes, there was still an orb of nervousness which glowed within me. When it comes to token caches, I have my own network I like to rely on. The cache they described when they peered with me was preposterous, thousands of live tokens, so perhaps that’s why I wanted to trust them

A white-cold slice ran across the horizon and the sky started sputtering: the satellite overpass was imminent. I knelt down to resync and watched as my balances vacillated, the numbers blinking as they faded slowly upwards, a misstep now and then but always a correction, blue notes played by the distributed hand. I reached into my shoulder pouch and fondled the flash carts: three teras worth of oldnet content plus a few thousand keypairs. I knew they were still there but I always check. I took another glance at the phone and smiled, swaddled in the warm, temporary glow of signal.

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*Originally published on [Xray Memories](https://paragraph.com/@xray-memories/1)*