“So he's not an AI,” Tiaa whispered to themself, eyes locked on Vitalik's unseeing but human gaze.

It had been nearly 100 years since anyone from the public had seen Vitalik Buterin. By now it had become normalized in some circles to believe that Vitalik, and definitely Satoshi, were artificial intelligences from the future who handed humans the secret knowledge necessary for cryptocurrencies. It was a bizarre theory for older generations, but crazier things had been revealed over the last century as hacks into the old nation states’ intelligence archives became common. Like the floodgate of secrets unleashed by the fall of the Berlin Wall and subsequent opening of Stasi archives, layers of context and contradictions were continually being revealed as the prior millennium's world order collapsed to its current fragmented, recombined form.

In the pod to the left of Vitalik was none other than the Doge herself, Kabosu the Shiba Inu from what used to be Japan. Her face had been used for so long as the branding of the once memecoin, now blue chip for some network states’ treasury reserves, that it was surreal to see it on an actual dog. Kabosu's signature quizzical expression was softened in her slumber between death and rebirth. As one of the industry's rising star quantum cryptographers, Tiaa coming face to face with such historical icons would feel like a dream even if they weren't the placid visages of cryo-corpses.

The scroll began to unfurl in their Argos. It seemed to rustle impatiently in harmony with the sigil's pulsations, drawing Tiaa closer to Vitalik's pod. Reminded that they had a mission to complete, Tiaa peered past the sigil glowing on Vitalik's forehead, and the scroll vying for attention in their visual field, straight into Vitalik's eyes. He remained fixated on some other plane of existence.

The scroll unrolled itself completely, revealing the message within. The letters, enormous green sans-serif in Tiaa's digital overlay, were in an unfamiliar language.

"mi pinxe lo crino tcati"

Tiaa stepped within breathing distance of the pod, as if proximity to Vitalik would somehow unscramble the strange text. Their breath misted the chitin-glass of the pod, the letters projected directly in front of their eyes remaining clear yet inscrutable.

Suddenly, transposed over the scroll's mysterious message, a transaction request clamored for Tiaa's attention. It felt ominous for the Argos, usually capturing a continuous thrum of ambient signals and information, to be so quiet – yet dominated by urgent messages. Tiaa was unused to such sparse and unsettling stimulation. With both their Argos and environment eerily hushed, their mind convulsed with unanswerable questions.

Skin crawling, Tiaa accepted the request. It blared across the Argos in the historical JSON format usually confined to such vintage manuscripts as "websites" and textbooks.

{

"Operation": “activate_pod”,

"Pod ID": 1248,

"Cognate": 8482545,

}

“Holy shit, will this open the pod and release Vitalik?” they thought. Pieter had mentioned that Eleusis had already unfrozen plenty of people before so surely nothing could go wrong with one more person being reanimated.

It had been a crazy day, and surely it was about to get crazier.

Plus, it was clear Vitalik's intervention was somehow required to complete the sigil’s request. Maybe "mi pinxe lo crino tcati" was a normal thing for people to say in the distant past?

Tiaa prepared to fulfill the directive set out in the JSON message. By "activating_pod," they would unfreeze the creator of Ethereum, still one of the most well-known and used blockchains in the year 2140.

Hand trembling, Tiaa began to write out a shaky T to sign the transaction and release Vitalik into the future that awaited him.

A loud CRASH clanged from deep within the pods where Pieter had been splayed in his ketamine haze. Startled by the sudden noise, Tiaa screwed up their signature and the Argos took it as a decline. The message was gone.

“Frag,” they muttered to themself. Tiaa peered between the pods and saw cryogenic fluid gushing onto the already slick floor. This would surely trigger a response from security.

They needed to get Vitalik out ASAP.

Tiaa did their best to recollect the string of numbers in the JSON message and sign the message. Pieter groaned in the distance, more loudly – or closer?

The stress was getting to Tiaa, their breath shallow as they tapped out each character, second guessing whether it was what they had just seen. The memory was evaporating rapidly. Although far from confident the JSON's numbers or variables were the same, they completed the message recreation and signed it.

Pieter's groans, trailed by the tinkle of chitin-glass and an especially concerning series of thuds, burned in Tiaa's ears. Surely the flashing lights of security would bear down on them at any moment.

The hiss of a valve's release broke the fraught silence between Pieter's sonic emissions. Vitalik still wasn’t moving. Panicking, Tiaa tapped the glass separating them and the infuriatingly still figure, hoping to rouse him like antagonizing fish in an aquarium.

The sound of a pod creaking open came from Tiaa's left, a bitter smelling vapor unfurling from its maw like dry ice. Kabosu!

The gelatinous amniotic liquid in which Kabosu had been suspended for almost 800 dog-years oozed onto the concrete floor as the pod’s exit-portal eased open wider and wider. Her body, following some primal muscular instinct even in its catatonia, folded into the fetal position to pass into her second birth.

As the exit-portal snapped into place, it activated the pod’s ejection ramp. Out gushed Kabosu, plopping at the base of the ramp and sliding toward Tiaa’s silver boots.

Tiaa danced backwards as Kabosu’s placental goo spread around them. The acrid odor issuing from the pod and dog was overpowering, both metallic and organic at once. Not a smell of decay but the manipulation and overcoming of it, like the diesel fuel of early driving-vehicles or the pollutant-absorbing mushrooms Tiaa’s synthetic biology society grew at uni. The artificial smell of defeating, or at least postponing, death.

“What the frag,” Tiaa whispered, taking off their Argos and examining it as if that would somehow reveal a clue to what happened. It’s supposed to be “kill your heroes” not “find out they exist and bring them back to life at the same time.”

And the more important question… why did their signature release Kabosu instead of Vitalik? Very surreal, much confuse.

Now was not the time for pondering. Pieter’s plodding footsteps were getting closer by the moment and he would be more cognizant of reality each one of those moments as the ketamine dissipated out of his neural pathways.

Tiaa wracked their brain to understand the sequence of events that had unfolded over the past few minutes. They must have recreated the message incorrectly, as they feared. They signed the Pod ID variable as 1249 instead of 1248, the pod Vitalik was in. With the error detected, Tiaa may as well try again with recreating the message correctly. They drew up the message as quickly as their fingers could move, signing it dramatically.

“Third time’s the charm,” they reassured themself.

Finally, the valve’s hiss, the creak of metal on chitin-glass, the plume of malodorous vapor that signaled Vitalik’s imminent release. His narrow frame contorted, folding up in preparation for rebirth.

Tiaa leapt over the huddled mass of Kabosu just as Vitalik’s exit-portal locked and the ejection ramp slid out. Like a tear rolling out of an eye socket, he discharged into Tiaa’s arms, dousing them in cold life-preserving slime.

Vitalik's face, so smooth and translucently pale from decades of floating in cryo-proteins and neominerals, was cradled in their left arm and gazed up beatifically at them. In their right hand nestled his bony knees and skeletally thin legs. For a moment they sat like this in hushed awe, Pietà of the Pods. Mary Magdalene standing before the empty tomb.

How fragile was the nearly lifeless body of this man who Tiaa had half-believed barely an hour earlier to be a folktale or an AI. How very human he was, his head lolling to the side, blonde hair coated in goo, and yet not so human either.

Tenderly, Tiaa felt around his neck for a pulse and found the slightest heartbeat. Vitalik’s left arm, splayed across Tiaa’s knees, twitched slightly. The long delicate fingers opened and closed. Imperceptibly to the naked eye, his fingernails started growing again. All of Vitalik’s cells, suspended in animation for almost a century, were reviving. His chest, swathed in a lurid rainbow unicorn t-shirt, rose and fell gently as it once again filled with air and his nostrils flared as somewhere deep in his returning consciousness registered the unpleasant smell engulfing them.

Tiaa realized they were sobbing, their mind trying to process this strange combination of holding a newborn and a corpse, yet neither. Tears pooled in the bottom of their Argos.

Tiaa’s reverie was broken by another resounding CRASH! followed by a yowl that reverberated at an unbelievable decibel as it clattered across the massive hangar of pods.

“TIAAA!” Pieter had nearly made it through the glass labyrinth to the mythological creatures at its core. Vitalik trembled at the noise, his face contorting in distress and hand closing around Tiaa’s. He stared them straight in the eyes. Starting with a deep growl and furrowed eyebrows as if he was angry, he let out a sharp BARK.

The cacophony finally set off the decibel-activated alarms of the sonically sealed hangar.

“What the hell is going on in there?” a man’s voice yelled – through loudspeakers? Through Tiaa’s Argos? Directly into their brain? It was impossible to tell but Tiaa was consumed by a singular instinctual directive: run.

They laid the fearful but still limp Vitalik as gently as they could on his ejection ramp and twisted around in a full circle, seeking the exits in a blind panic. Deep within the rows of pods they could barely see the soft lights of the door they passed through and took off sprinting in that direction, leaping over Kabosu’s placental puddle.

Where was Kabosu?

Tiaa had been so fixated on Vitalik, they forgot to check on the dog’s reanimation process. It must have worked, but Tiaa wouldn’t be free, or possibly even alive, to find out what happened if they stayed there for another instant.

Nearby, in the direction of the crashes, boots scuffled across concrete and they knew security was close to bearing down on Pieter. Tiaa felt like Orpheus – can’t look back, can’t pause and help or they're both doomed.

As Tiaa took off through the pods, cutting a hard right between the ones holding CURTIS YARVIN and ELIZABETH HOLMES, a horrifying thought dawned on them – what if they also needed Pieter to pass back through the identity-gated door?

Tiaa covered their face with their arms, in the sliver of a chance they hadn’t already been detected by surveillance, and burst through the door into the dark and silent hallway. The alarm must have triggered the exit to unlock automatically in an emergency.

The alarm’s wail, and a brief desperate scream filled the hallway as the door opened and closed behind Tiaa. Safe on the other side, the corridor was as utterly quiet as the hangar had been when they first entered. The drama unfolding behind the impenetrable walls was sealed away, the two liminal spaces – domains of the living and the almost-living – no longer spilling over into one another.

In a practiced maneuver, Tiaa quickly disabled their Argos. Sliding it into their pocket, they sped down the dark hall, hunching forward so their long dark hair obscured their face. Who knows what surveillance was picking up, but at least the Argos wasn’t actively tracking itself. Tiaa had to get out of here, fast, before an aberration was detected. 

Right, left, right, left mixed together as Tiaa ran, their brain a fog of primal fear. Propelled only by the desire to escape, they couldn't even try to retrace the path where Pieter had led them. Eventually it was impossible to keep going and Tiaa had to stop, gasping against a doorframe.

They pushed their sweaty hair out of their face and surveyed the scene. They were clearly lost. This dingy corner of the complex, far from the shiny visitor and investor-friendly corridor that Tiaa had walked down with Pieter, seemed to radiate an ominous energy. The sterile tiles and concrete of the main area had given way to an endless warren of whitewashed walls, punctuated by steel doors with small square windows. All were gray.

Tiaa crouched and frantically ran under each of the windows. Soon it became apparent they were not alone, as first distressed whispers and farther, full on manic screams issued from within.

"Don't let them freeze me!" 

"You'll never come back whole!"

“Where is Japan?!”

"I AM THE HOLE!"

"I was… I will be… I was… I will be… I was… I will be… I was… I will be… I was… I will be…"

The Raave invitation was not kidding that their exclusive party was being held in the same building as where Eleusis cryogenic experimentations happen. It must’ve saved them a lot of satoshis to not have to transport the pod where the man who was being unfrozen too far.

Panic surged like fire in Tiaa’s veins. They couldn’t fathom the horrors happening behind the doors whizzing past, adrenaline narrowing their perceptions to only immediate needs. Seconds felt like hours of intense fear. There was no time to breathe, no time to think. Just run.

Finally, Tiaa felt the faint thump of bass throbbing through the floor. Their sprint slowed to a jog as the familiar rumbling beeps of biotechno caressed their ears, more loudly with every step that carried them away from the terrifying sights, smells and implications of the lab. It was impossible to tell how much time had elapsed among the cryo-corpses, suspended in their pods and in the Bardo, neither dead nor fully alive. Time ran differently in there.

Tiaa shuddered to think of what was happening to Vitalik now – and Pieter. Pieter! He had inadvertently sacrificed himself for them, whether or not the agonized wail they heard as the door whisked shut had anything to do with him. Was he now enduring the fate of whatever was going on within the bowels of the laboratory?

Before Tiaa had time to delve into morbid inquiries, the doors to the rave stood before them. Waiting for the doors to slide open, Tiaa stole a final glance into the hushed corridor, half hoping Pieter would round the corner lunging for her, golden-retriever mullet flopping on his sweaty forehead. The emptiness was its own reproachful response.

Tiaa turned back to the doors only to find them impassive as before. They tried waving their hand around in front of them as if casting a spell, waiting for the familiar motion sensor activation. Nothing.

Tiaa cursed, re-enabling their Argos and sliding it back on. They could almost feel their pineal gland stirring to the signal inside their head, immediately settling into its thrall. The doors swished open with a sigh of relief, welcoming an identified entity.

Soundtrack

Inside, the rave was a miasma of chaos. The room had not cleared out at all, but seemed to be heaving with even more bodies – maybe an hour or two had passed. All the attention was on one body though: The First Public Reanimation. No longer prone and trembling, the revived man’s pallid form stood writhing on his plinth beneath a wreath of lasers, his wiry ropes of muscles moving beneath the skin like eels in a river.

Tiaa realized it was a disturbing imitation of, or attempt at dancing, like ancient footage of David Byrne they had seen in a mediacast on past centuries’ cultural artifacts. It was unclear if he was still gaining control of his extremities, had not fully established the reconnection between mind and body, or was simply accessing a consciousness that had always been awkward. Although their Argos was still unable to pick up any signal from the man’s identification vectors, the Raave organizers had set up an overlay screen that continually wrote out in an elaborate script, “Happy 163rd Re-Birthday, Bryan Johnson!”

True to the legend of one of the prior century’s first longevity pioneers, he didn’t look a day older than when he was cryo-frozen at 63 – and back then he didn’t look a day over 40. Or at least how 40 used to look before Longzempic became standard in medicine cabinets, and “blood babies” on the darknet. Rumor was that his son, the genre-defining “blood boy,” and the grandson who kept them both in their prime before the mainstream public thought such age-defying possible, were set to be the next reanimations.

Giant digital balloons with Bryan’s face on it, the Eleusis and Raave logos, “163”, and “h∞”, the universal symbol for longevity supporters and de-facto Bryan Johnson worshippers, decorated the stage. Puffs of sequins, confetti and firecracker bursts drifted in the air around his flailing form. Two security guards flanked Bryan, scornfully monitoring the undulating dance floor.

Suddenly, the crowd parted as a girl thrashed toward the plinth. She gripped its side with her long black nails, the stainless steel surgically implanted kind. Using her boot as a lever, she flung herself onto the plinth with surprising strength for such a tiny person. Her long red curls whipped behind her as she landed on top of Bryan, her face colliding with his neck. Those standing directly below the plinth would later testify that she was smiling as her teeth sunk into his skin, the characteristic fangs tattoo of adrenochrome junkies stretching grotesquely across her delicate, angular face.

The security guards moved at lighting speed, pulling the girl off Bryan and tossing her into the crowd. She was borne up on a wave of hands like a crowdsurfer, then disappeared.

It was too late though, as the force of the girl leaping onto Bryan knocked him off the plinth and he flew into a column, collapsing in a heap. Death may be a curable disease, according to his acolytes, but physics has the final say.

Chaos turned to utter pandemonium, giving Tiaa their chance to get swallowed by the crowd and dart through undetected. They disabled their Argos again, pocketing it as they slipped out a side door and out into the streets of Brussels.

The wet cobblestones of Brussels gleamed under flickering neon lights, each step a sharp slap of boots on stone. A drizzle fell, misting the air as Tiaa sprinted through the narrow streets, water droplets collecting on their mycelial leather jacket. They passed the Grand Place in a blur, the towering Gothic spires looming above, bathed in the glow of holograms. Neon light leaked from holographic billboards, casting strange hues across the centuries-old architecture, the heart of the city beating with both history and cyberpunk grit. The sweet scent of waffles mixed with the sharp tang of piss, the distant hiss of fry oil cutting through the misty air.

Breathing hard, they darted past tourists huddled near Mannekin Pis, barely noticing the statue under the dim glow of streetlights. The air thickened with smog as Tiaa plunged deeper into the city’s underbelly, an eclectic mix of the rigid old-world and the rapidly moving new one being born. Advertisements looking for new citizens and workers for the various network states and seasteads starting throughout the old European Union and elsewhere. 

“Vote with your feet!”

“Leave the old world and its ways behind!”

“Housing pods available for those ready to work!” 

“Protect your children. Live with other traditional families!”

“Take your body to its full genetic potential!”

“Never live near undesirables again!”

“We shall conquer death together!”

Turning a corner, they pushed forward, pulse steadily increasing. Most people were inside the bars watching the block countdown to the end of Bitcoin’s inflation schedule. The sparse crowds made it easier for Tiaa to pass unnoticed as one of the few not wearing their Argos. Suddenly, barely visible through the haze of drizzle and smog, a small, nondescript Japanese-style tea house appeared, its dull sign barely illuminated by a faded, pulsing red light.

Without hesitation, they slipped inside, the doorbell chiming softly as they entered. The warmth of the tea house hit them immediately, a stark contrast to the cold, wet streets outside. The dimly lit interior felt like a refuge. The scent of tea leaves steeped the silent air. 

"Green tea," they murmured, the words barely audible but enough to set the aging proprietor, presumably the owner, into motion. A steaming pot of green tea appeared on a tray, delicate ceramic cups placed beside it. Tiaa took a seat in the far corner even though no one else was there, trying to slow their pulse. They took one of the cups and poured the tea in slowly, the smell already offering them its comfort. Since childhood, they could always count on green tea to calm them down.

“What did I get myself into?” they thought as their fight or flight mode slowly turned off in their brain. The bobbing of the maneki-neko cat figurine’s paw that welcomed guests at the entrance helped calm their mind even as they tried to think through the last few hours. Their curiosity this time may have actually gotten them into serious trouble with the authorities.

Moments passed in silence as they thought about how their friends would react to this, only the soft clink of the teacup breaking the quiet. Then, a rustling by the door caught their attention. A small, familiar form padded softly into the tea house — it was Kabosu-san! Her fur was damp from the drizzle with clumps of the cryogenic fluid stuck in between, but her eyes gleamed with a calm curiosity in the lantern light.

Stunned, Tiaa watched as the dog slowly approached, cautious but drawn to them. Their eyes met. Their brain began to feel as if it was being tickled from the electricity of their neurons firing in every direction. A sense of timeless familiarity coursed through their body, as if they were meeting an old friend. 

Without a word, Tiaa poured a little tea into the saucer and slid it gently onto the floor. Kabosu sniffed, hesitated, then lapped at the tea. A flicker of trust passed between them. The sound of drizzle outside, the snoring of the old tea shop owner, the sound of Kabosu’s tongue drinking green tea.

For now, Tiaa felt safe.

The room melted away as he sank deeper into the void, the edges of reality blurring into an indistinct haze. His body felt distant, almost irrelevant, as if it were dissolving into the air around him. Sounds of boots became distorted echoes, distant and hollow, while his thoughts spiraled into a labyrinth of disconnection. A crash. Time lost all meaning—moments stretched into eternities, then snapped back to nothing. He was adrift, floating through a space that was neither here nor there, caught in the surreal limbo of the K-hole, where reality had no anchor.

Pieter felt a distant push and pull while surfing the waves of consciousness. A loud metallic sound reverberated in his brain. The gulping sound of thick liquid beneath him, a sudden sense of doom, Tiaa’s face and half shaved head. He wanted to scream but had no breath. He wanted to move his limbs but had no feeling in his physical body. The sound of boots dissipated into the distance. His boss Dr. Amin pushed him into the abyss.

Neo-Brussels hummed with the vibrant energy of ETHCC 2140, its streets a kaleidoscope of holographic advertisements and neon signs pulsing through the fog. The city-state, once the heart of Belgium now split apart on linguistic lines but still the European Union. It thrived as an independent hub of innovation and technological marvels built by an elite class of tech entrepreneurs. The countdown to Bitcoin's final inflationary schedule had drawn an eclectic crowd to this year’s conference, each attendee eager to witness the dawn of a new financial era predicted by the Great Satoshi Nakamoto.

Tiaa adjusted their AR glasses, the world around them shifting as layers of augmented reality enhanced their view. Neon signs for layer 5 and 6 blockchain startups flickered beside centuries-old architecture, and the chatter of excited crypto enthusiasts filled the air. They navigated through the crowd, their friends close behind. Their voices blended into the cacophony of debates about the future of decentralized social media now that the web2 tech giants, Meta, Twitter, and LinkedIn were all dying. More decentralized alternatives were being adopted through the magnificent sales of the Argos AR glasses that had taken everyone by storm, especially in Brussels.

As they approached the historic building of the Bourse, the old Belgian stock exchange, now long a museum, Tiaa’s glasses alerted them to an unusual signal. A faint glow appeared in the corner of their vision—a sigil, intricate and otherworldly, hovering on the side of the building in St. Gery. Intrigued, they focused on it, and their device confirmed its presence: an NFT-locked symbol, visible only to those with the right NFT in their Argos connected pineal gland implant chip Ethereum account given at birth to everyone born after the year 2100.

“Do you see that?” Tiaa asked, pointing towards the sigil on the Bourse.

Their friends looked around, confusion etched on their faces. “See what?” Sam replied, scanning the area with his own AR device.

Tiaa’s heart raced. “It’s a weird symbol. Right there. You really don’t see it?”

Maya shook her head. “Nope. Are you sure you’re not imagining things? My glasses aren’t picking anything up and we have a lot of the same NFTs.”

Tiaa took a deep breath, their curiosity piqued. They had joked in the past that their NFT collection held secrets since they owned several NFT memberships in secret societies joined while in university, but this was different. This felt actually important. As the sigil pulsed gently on the ancient stone, they couldn’t shake the feeling that it was leading them to something significant—something that could change everything.

An ominous energy radiated from the sigil, sending a shiver down Tiaa’s spine. They glanced at their friends. They were clearly uncomfortable with how long they had been seemingly staring at a wall while everyone else walked around them. “Whatever. Let’s head to Schelling Point.”

The group moved on, but Tiaa’s mind remained fixated on the sigil. Throughout the day they attended talks on the cryptoeconomic security of Bitcoin now that the inflation schedule had ended, Optimism’s new 20-year vested grants program, ambassador programs for the latest longevity drug cocktail and the recent claims by Eleusis, the largest cryogenic freezing company, that it would soon be resurrecting the first human from one of its cryogenic pods live during Raave later that night. The image of the pulsing symbol lingered in their thoughts. They couldn’t take it anymore, they had to know what was behind the sigil.

While Sam and Maya went to the Optimism after-drinks, Tiaa made the excuse that they left their daily Longzempic injection back at their pod but they’ll see them at Raave. Tiaa bolted back to St. Gery, their heart pounding in their chest. Skidding on the mist-slicked cobblestones, they rounded the corner to the front of the Bourse, searching for where they had seen the sigil and hoping to see only blank stones – but wishing on a deeper level for confirmation that the image seared into their brain was also “real”. Locking eyes with it on the wall, the sigil was undeniably there. Covering the entirety of the front of the building, its gently pulsating light felt as familiar as a recurring dream.

Tiaa looked furtively around at the people milling around the plaza but they were all fixated on their beer and fries, ducking out of the increasingly heavy rain or eye-texting their friends on the DeTelegram displays hovering digitally in front of them through their Argos lenses. No one was paying attention to Tiaa, it seemed. As they got closer, the sigil quickly moved to the side of the building in front of the Bruxella 1238 ruins, visible under the ground through dirty glass. Nearly knocking over a woman’s cone of fries with a healthy dollop of Andalouse sauce, they ran over to be closer to the sigil now smaller but pulsating harder.

“0XD8 COME CLOSER” the pop-up text read through their Argos coming from the sigil. Their eyes widened. They’d never received a message like this before. How did it know the first four digits of their birth account? They slowed down to a walking pace and neared the wall where the sigil had grown smaller but pulsated harder.

As they came face-to-face to the floating sigil, a transaction request came through Tiaa’s Argos.

“I hereby accept to send this message to the intended receiver.” it said. They looked deeper into the message. There was no movement of any crypto assets but requested their on-chain signature to be posted on the Ethereum mainnet.

“YOU WILL KNOW WHO TO GIVE THIS MESSAGE TO WHEN YOU FIND HIM.” The last message they received from the sigil before it disappeared behind digital smoke.

Everything felt so sudden. Was that it? They ran all the way over here for this? They had too many questions they didn’t get a chance to enquire about.

The transaction request was still there, asking for their signature as if to taunt them.

-----

One thousand eyes started upwards as the ceiling parted, whirring gently like velvet curtains opening. A disco ball descended from the void, its mirrors casting light over five hundred gaping mouths below. The most elite guest list Raave had ever seen. Even Stani Kulechov’s digitally uploaded persona had made a rare reappearance for the event, whirring to and fro wildly below the steadily dropping ball in the drone where it had long been encased.

In a few minutes that felt like an eternity, the disco ball neared its resting place on the circular stage around which the crowd desperately pressed itself. A constant flicker of camera lights from every Argos lens wildly leaped off the sphere of mirrors, throwing light chaotically around the room. Fog filled the dance floor and a hypnotic techno beat swelled from the speakers or perhaps from the disco ball itself.

The party guests eventually turned back to their conversations or resumed their moves on the dancefloor, glancing uneasily at the disco ball. Tiaa attempted to focus on Sam and Maya as they speculated on the same question buzzing in all discussions across the room – was there really going to be a cryogenic reveal tonight? Who – or what was left of who – would emerge from that disco ball? Or elsewhere in the venue…

Argos headsets were chirping constantly around them as prediction markets blew up. The longevity markets were going crazy. Everyone was on a high that nearly recalled the days of analog drugs. It was impossible for Tiaa to concentrate on what their friends were saying as the real question urgently pressed itself into every corner of their mind, folding itself along each crease of conversation – who did they need to deliver this message to?

The digitally administered AR-entheogens, trained over years of tracking serotonin and dopamine pathways to create emergently generated altered states, formed themselves into the shape of the question, making it nearly impossible to ignore and crowding out all other stimuli. There was no choice but to respond.

“I’ll be right back,” Tiaa managed to mutter, propelling themself in an automaton state past the speculating clusters of party-goers and down the hallway to the toilets. They fell onto the tiles as the door whispered shut and locked behind them. With the techno and buzz of voices shut out, they were able to fully fall under the sigil’s spell.

Once again it appeared across their mind’s eye, stretching as vivid and neon over the arch of their brain as it was on the façade of De Bourse. The request reasserted itself with such an overwhelming force it was unclear if spoken, read, or felt on some deeper subconscious level. Embedded in the folds of their brain, radiating from the Argos chip lodged in their pineal gland,

“I hereby accept to send this message to the intended receiver.”

Tiaa’s eyes stared back at them in the darkened mirror, both sets of eyes watching their hand slowly rise and make their confirmation signature into the air. Delicately their finger traced their name, the flourish of the cursive T comically formal as they struggled to hold up their hand. T I A A seemed to linger as the transaction cleared.“Transaction sent” the digital overlay confirmed.

Tiaa had never felt this kind of adrenaline before, even with the analog drugs they tried. A scroll appeared in their Argos account’s inventory. An NFT with encrypted metadata in it. The function to decrypt the message was not accessible by them. Who could be the one that could unlock what was inside? What kinds of secrets did it hold?

Didn’t seem like there was much they could do at that point and so they left the empty bathroom, back into Raave.

After the claustrophobic confines of the toilet, the heat and movement emanating from the dancefloor drew them into its comforting embrace. Tiaa was aware of their feet walking into the crowd, allowing themself to be subsumed into the ecstatic hive of bodies. Familiar smells and sounds! No strange images flooding their visual field except the usual patterns winking in and out on AR-entheogens. Seeing friends’ and coworkers’ faces smiling with recognition, Tiaa was almost able to convince themself the sigil and its transactions were merely a normal trick of digital psychedelics. Their body and perceptual field felt resynthesized, and they felt firmly in command of their own consciousness again.

And yet… something was different, stirring deep in the circuits of their brain. Flickering under their regular flow of thoughts, the scroll was still there. Hugging friends, recognizing songs, chatting about acquaintance’s projects, all the usual cryptoparty banter could not fully cover up the scroll etched into some layer of their consciousness. Its afterimage taunted them.

The hypnotic beats continued, notes winding around each other like the lights chasing each other through the scales of the disco ball.

Suddenly, silence as the disco ball shattered. Everyone threw up their arms but the only danger was in their digital overlay. Visual trickery aside, the real spectacle commenced.

“See, I told you! I knew there was someone inside the disco ball!” Sam screamed. “Ya looks like you were right, tek.” Tiaa responded, but their mind was too distracted by the now softly glowing scroll they needed to deliver.

The disco ball had opened to reveal an Eleusis branded cryogenic pod with someone inside of it.

“ARE YOU READY TO WITNESS THE WORLD’S VERY FIRST LIVE CRYOGENIC UNFREEZING!” The announcement roared through the speakers that were previously playing the top BioTechno hits of the year. The crowd of cryptocurrency entrepreneurs and hot shots cheered.

“This is incredible, we’re seriously going to be witnessing history in the making.” Maya exclaimed in awe of what was happening on the stage. Tiaa noticed the glow of the scroll dragging their attention towards the doors behind them. Strange. It seemed that the scroll was giving them direction on where to find the person they needed to deliver it to.

As the build up continued for the reveal, Tiaa snuck away and walked towards the doors. Everyone was fixated on the stage, creating a lot of empty space between the start of the crowd and the beginning of what seemed like something much larger than the unfreezing.

“AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY” the door sign read. But the scroll was glowing much stronger than before. On the side was a neural chip reader. They needed someone with an Eleusis employment NFT attached to their neural chip to get them in. Whatever was behind this door, they knew it was related to the delivery of the scroll. Not one to give up, they began to concoct a plan to get through.

From behind the crowd they could see the human get ejected from the cryogenic pod. Their naked body laid on the ground for a moment before they slowly moved their toes, fingers, legs, and then arms. They were wet and shaking uncontrollably. Whispers began that maybe they were dying in front of their very eyes. Nobody’s Argos lens detected a signal from the trembling body. This person clearly didn’t have an Argos chip. A rare sight in Brussels during ETHCC.

Tiaa moved towards the crowd to get a closer look. “Just watch, he’ll be fine.” assured a young tall European-descendant he/him (according to Tiaa’s Argos) presumably in his late 20s.

“You seem confident.”

“Well, to be honest I’ve seen it before.” Tiaa’s Argos showed that he revealed an Acquaintance level of information to them. His name was Pieter and worked at Eleusis within the cryogenic department. Tiaa did the same, spotting a golden opportunity.

“Oh wow, and you work for Bellerophon doing quantum encryption?”

“That’s right Pieter!” Tiaa tried to exude more feminine energy than usual with a flirty smile. “And maybe if you’re nice enough I can get you some of our good swag tonight.” They winked at him.

“Oh tek, I’d do anything for some Bellerophon socks and hoodies.” Pieter was clearly into them.

“Could you show me what’s behind those doors?” They were actually enjoying the thrill of the chase even if he wasn’t their usual type.

“You’re so lucky that those are the doors to my department. You know, usually I would never break protocol like this, but I’ll let it slide this time since everyone’s paying attention to the stage.” Pieter was dying to impress through his qualifications to make up for his bland personality.

Tiaa had him wrapped around their finger.

The AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL door slid shut behind Tiaa and Pieter, taking with it all light and sound. The air on the other side was absolutely still, the silence overwhelming. Tiaa felt their thoughts running in parallel lines, the inexorable pull of the scroll overlaid with the self-referential dialogue of their normal consciousness that knew it had to break the gravity of the situation before Pieter started questioning his decision.

Tiaa held out their hands, patting the air before them until they landed on the soft surface of Pieter’s company-branded vest. He was standing very close as he had shuffled them through the door with him, two bodies to one Argos-linked Authorized Personnel chip. They breathed in his ear, “Well here we are.”

The whisper sounded unbelievably loud in the hushed chamber. For the first time since being overtaken by the sigil’s will, Tiaa felt deeply afraid. Who else may be listening in here?“

Just you and me, babe.” Pieter said back in a normal tone.

“Shhh! They’ll hear you!” Tiaa tested him.

“Nobody in here but us, I promise. Well… nobody who is able to hear us.”

“What do you mean,” Tiaa glanced wildly around. Unusually, Tiaa’s Argos was not able to detect anything in the immense darkness.

Pieter turned on the flashlight on his Argos. The light hit onto a row of cylinders, first registering in Tiaa’s mind as the vats they witnessed on a brewery tour earlier.

As their eyes finally adjusted, the reality of what Tiaa was seeing registered. These were not rows of beer brewing tanks at all, but cylinders quite like the one they had just witnessed a huddled mass of post-cryogenically frozen human flailing out of. Squinting, they could barely make out the name and hash printed on the closest pod. KEVIN OWOCKI. Kevin’s shock of dark blonde hair bobbed gently in the cryogenic liquid. He was missing the characteristic glasses featured in all they had read about him in the crypto twitter anarchives, his face placid in semi-eternal rest. Tiaa shuddered. What would remain of him if that mouth gaped open to breathe again?

“Pretty mega, right?” Pieter smiled.

“Unbelievable. Is this really Kevin Owocki from the Book of Crypto Memetics?”

“Yup. Wanna see more? I’ll show you my favorite.” The scroll was glowing brighter as they walked down the hall.

Remembering their mission, Tiaa grabbed Pieter’s hand as they proceeded through the rows of cryogenic pods. The bodies bobbed gently, pale and distorted floating in their life-preserving soup. Tiaa had an uncomfortable memory of visiting an archaic museum in childhood, where specimens dating back hundreds of years, before computers even, were suspended forever in the bottles of the Wet Collection behind labels demarcating their origin and value.

Except these specimens were more like historical figures come to life, or almost-life, as if the unearthed Terracotta Army had faces straight out of the anarchives. HAL FINNEY. NICK SZABO. DAVID CHAUM. DORIAN NAKAMOTO. JOSEPH LUBIN.

An exhilarating thought bloomed in Tiaa’s mind. Were they going to finally discover the identity of Satoshi?!

“Thereeee you are!” Pieter gestured widely, framing a pod with his long wiry arms. Tiaa whipped around.

It wasn’t Satoshi, but a blonde girl clad in leather with fabulous shoes. Her dachshund floated in her arms, gazing lifelessly at her peacefully slumbering face. MARIA PAULA FERNANDEZ & TUPAC, read their label.

Tiaa stared at MARIA PAULA FERNANDEZ & TUPAC, the pathos of their eternal embrace drawing them back from curiosity to the urgency of their mission. Beyond them stretched row upon interminable row of pods, the end of the hangar housing them not even perceptible to their Argos’ proprioception monitor. The scroll’s pull tugged continuously at the back of their consciousness, nudging them forward. They had to lose Pieter and figure out where it wanted to lead her.

“So, my mind is officially blown,” they smiled. “Shall I return the favor?”

Pieter scoffed. “That’s a pretty bold claim. What do you have to offer?”

Tiaa slid a vial from a pocket sewn inside their collar, dangling it in front of him.

“Ever tried analog ketamine?”

Pieter clearly had not. One small sniff from the vial and he was soon slumped between MARIA PAULA FERNANDEZ & TUPAC and SIMON DENNY, barely more functional than their catatonically submerged forms.

Tiaa knew they had only about 15 minutes before Pieter would stumble along to find them, crashing into god knows who in the process.

It was now undeniable that the scroll wanted them to connect with someone in here, but how to locate one body in an almost-corpse corpus stretching back nearly a century? Tiaa started to run, the faces they passed blurring together but none of them the right target. SCOTT MOORE. GRIFF GREEN. BALAJI SRINIVASAN. MARC ANDREESON. CARLOS MATOS. They veered left, down a different chronological trail, but the sigil grew fainter. They must have been close by in the 2040’s. Their chip felt like it was squeezing their brainstem as they made a u-turn back into the early days of longevity guinea pigs.

Suddenly, they saw it. It was like a reflection of their mind’s eye, but glowing in the middle of a far pod. Deep within the bowels of the hangar, they heard something stirring. Pieter must be groping his way out of the k-hole. Tiaa raced toward the farthest cryogenic pods in the row.

Nearing the end of the row, Tiaa gasped as they read the name plaque.

VITALIK BUTERIN.

He floated gracefully in the cylinder as they stared in silence.

Suddenly, Vitalik seemed to awaken as they crept closer. The mirrored sigil blazed out from between piercing blue eyes, like a third eye that stared straight into Tiaa’s activated pineal gland.

Of course he’s in here, but why was Vitalik calling for them from a cryogenic pod? The sigil’s scroll unfurled, finally revealing the purpose that drew them together. The message was for him.