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人々はバスケットボールを愛しています。約22億人のファンが、プレーヤーとして、観客として、インターネットやソーシャルメディアの雑誌で、そしてゲーマーとして楽しんでおり、世界で3番目に人気のあるスポーツとなっています。しかし、問題があります。

従来、バスケットボールのゲームに積極的に、リアルに、プロとして参加するには多くの障壁がありました。今日のゲーマーは、競争、カスタマイズ、所有、収益の獲得などの幅広い機会を提供する、真に没入できる体験を求めています。彼らは、オンラインでの体験が、コート上と同様にリアルでエキサイティング（そしてやりがいのある）ものであることを望んでいます。

幸いなことに、ブロックチェーンベースのP2E（Play-to-earn）ゲームモデルは、ゲームメタバース内のすべてのプレイヤーに、広く開かれた経済と金銭的報酬を提供します。ゲーム内資産のコントロールとプレイ方法の選択肢が増えたことで、ゲーマーは暗号通貨やNFT（ノンファンジブル・トークン）で稼ぎながら、好きなゲームを思う存分に楽しむことができます。

これは急速に成長している市場です。ブロックチェーンベースのゲーム会社24社が、2021年上半期に4億7600万ドルの投資資金を調達し、P2Eゲーム業界全体では、2020年だけで200億ドルの収益を上げています。現在、世界で活動している10億人のオンラインゲーマーが世界で1,758億ドルの収益を上げていますが、2025年には13億人のゲーマーが2,000億ドルの収益を上げると予測されています。

Basketballverseは、この巨大で新しいゲーム環境を利用して、ブロックチェーンベースのバスケットボール体験をメタバースにもたらし、Play-to-earn機能とNFTコレクションを組み合わせたものです。これにより、何百万人もの愛好家が、実収入を得ながら、選手、クラブマネージャー、アリーナオーナーとしてプロのメタバースのバスケットボールキャリアを始めることができるようになります。

BasketballVerseでは、バスケットボールの可能性を最大限に引き出すために、様々な方法でゲームに参加することができます。これは、誰もが公平に競争し、勝ち、稼ぐことができる全く新しい世界です。現実の環境がどうであれ、誰もが同じ場所からスタートします。つまり、自分の名声とお金は自分で作るのです。

選手はボーラーです。それぞれが、パフォーマンス、潜在的なスコア、価値を持つユニークなNFTトークンです。プレーや消耗品、実在のバスケットボール選手との練習を通じて、アップグレードすることができます。例えば、シャキール・オニールからリバウンドやブロックのスキルを購入したいと思いますか？はい、購入できます！

ゲームの選択肢は様々で、リーグ内、リーグ外、トーナメント、無料、有料、公開、非公開などがあります。プレイヤーは1対1から始めて、3対3や5対5のリーグにクラブから勧誘され、勝利やマイルストーンに応じてBVRトークンが与えられます。リーグのレベルが高ければ高いほど、勝者への報酬も大きくなります。

現実のバスケットボールの世界と同様に、プレイヤーはスポンサーを獲得したり、ファンベースを構築したり、商品を販売したり、自分のボーラーをレンタル/販売したりすることができます。

クラブのオーナーであるあなたの仕事は、最高の条件を提示してトッププレーヤーを採用し、ホームゲームを開催するアリーナとプレシーズン契約を結び、ファンベースを拡大して、クラブの人気、銀行の信用、勝利の機会を増やすことです。BasketballVerseのファンベースは、最も人気のあるソーシャルメディアチャンネルのフォロワーや、チームやボーラーを応援するためにストリーミングゲームを見ている人たちで構成されています。これは、世の中にある他のゲームとの重要な差別化要素であり、バスケットボールを楽しむための重要な要素です。

ファンベースを増やして人気が出てきたクラブは、現実と同じようにスポンサーを集めることができるようになり、ボーラーの給料やエントリーフィーの支払いなどに役立てられます。

また、すべてのクラブには、そのクラブの歴史上の偉大なボーラーを記念する「レジェンドホール」が設けられます。これらの有名選手は、NFTの資産として購入することができ、クラブのアイデンティティーを確立し、新しいプレーヤーを惹きつけるのに役立ちます。

選手と同様に、収益は、階層化されたリーグでの勝利、マイルストーン、スポンサーによってもたらされるだけでなく、チーム名、ロゴ、キットなどのブランディング契約を結ぶことによっても得られます。ファンの数が多いボーラーは、士気のスコアが上がり、パフォーマンスの可能性が高まります。

アリーナには10,000個のNFTトークンがあります。アリーナのオーナーになると、主催試合からパッシブインカムを得たり、選手の練習用にスペースを借りたりすることができます。現実世界と同様に、現実世界のバスケットボールアリーナとブランドから、大きなブランディングの可能性を得ることができます。実際、BasketballVerseでは、有名な会場との契約を進めており、ゲーム内のアリーナにその会場の名前を付けることができます。

アリーナをうまく管理することで、報酬が得られます。収益を上げるためにアリーナをアップグレードしたり（マーチャンダイジング・ブース、広告スペース、屋根、シートヒーターなど）、アリーナの外観や名前のスポンサーを集めたり、ドリンクやフードなどの消耗品をスポンサーとして販売したりします。

ボーラーは、1:1、3:3、5:5のゲームで競うことができます。3:3や5:5のゲームでは、クラブに所属する必要があります。クラブのマネージャーは、ボーラーを募集したり、クラブに参加するための取引を提案したりします。その取引とは、給与、限定商品、クラブ収益の分配、クラブ参加費などの組み合わせです。

本作は、3Dマルチプレイヤーゲームであり、ゲーム内で実際に選手を操作するため、ボーラーはすべての試合でオンライン状態になっておく必要があります。クラブのオーナーは、次の試合に出場する選手を選ぶことができますが、選ばれた選手が来なかった場合の代役を務めるために、残りの名簿登録選手も出席する必要があります。

試合中にオンラインで勝利したプレイヤーには、$BVRトークンで報酬が与えられます。実際にプレイした人にはより大きな金額が報酬として与えられ、プレイしなかった名簿登録選手の人にはより少額が与えられます。

ボーラーは、友達限定/招待者限定のトーナメントを作成するオプションを使って、友達と無料でプレイすることもできます。また、有料のバイ・インを固定することも可能です。現実世界と同じように、ボーラーはゲームを一貫してプレイする必要があり、そうしないとスキルレートが下がってしまいます。

ゲームには、回復を早めたり、一時的に士気を高めたりするための消耗品が用意されており、すべての消耗品は高いブランド性を持っています（例：回復ドリンクはゲータレード）。ゲーム内のルートボックスは、人気が出るように小さな報酬を提供しますが、ゲーム経済のバランスを崩すことはありません。

$BVRコインはゲーム内通貨で、プレイヤーへの報酬、クラブやアリーナのオーナーへのパッシブインカム、ボーラーや商品、アリーナの所有権、練習などの購入に使用されます。クラブのロゴやバスケットボールコートのスポンサー料も$BVRコインで支払われます。

その他の収益機会としては、紹介プログラム、バグバウンティ、広告表示などがあります。

Basketballverseの醍醐味の一つは、モデルだけでなく、実際のチームや選手とのパートナーシップによって、現実のゲームの収益性を再現していることです。私たちは、ジャージ、クラブ、アリーナ、リーグ、消耗品、コーチなど、ブランド化可能なコンテンツをたくさん持っています。

選手の外見であれば、ウェアのブランド化やカスタマイズが可能ですし、クラブのオーナーであれば、クラブ名やロゴ、カラー、外見全般のカスタマイズが可能です。アリーナは、コートの外観に始まり、ロゴ、アリーナの形状など、最も多くのカスタマイズが可能です。また、現実のバスケットボールアリーナを完全に再現することもできます。実際、バスケットボール界の大御所の方々からもご要望をいただいています。

リーグという意味では、ユーロリーグを思い出してみてください。メジャースポンサーはトルコ航空で、ロゴはトルコ航空のロゴを採用し、リーグ全体のブランディングもトルコ航空のブランディングに合わせて若干調整しています。私たちも同じように柔軟に対応しています。

試合中の消耗品も、ブランドに適した資産です。例えば、レッドブルのエナジードリンクは、次の2試合に向けてボーラーのエネルギーレベルを高めます。そして最後に、ゲーム内のコーチ陣です。私たちは、実際に活躍しているバスケットボール選手をバスケットボールのコーチとして採用しています。

BasketballVerseは、世界中の誰もが参加できるメタバースで、物理的なゲームの興奮、技術的なスキル、収益の可能性をもたらします。さあ、プレイボール！

Basketballverseは、ブロックチェーンを利用したPlay to Earn型のメタバースで、世界中のプレイヤーが実際の収入を得ながら、練習やゲーム内での対戦を通じてNFTバスケットボールのアバターを成長させることができます。ゲーマーは、試合を開催するクラブやアリーナを所有/管理したり、選手を募集したり、他のクラブとのリーグ戦に参加したり、スポンサーを獲得したり、商品を販売したりして、バスケットボール・ドリームを築くことができます。これこそが、メタバースにおけるバスケットボールの完全な体験なのです。

ホワイトペーパーをご覧ください。

Backed by new cards, new mechanics, and new ways to play, Spellfire: Re-Master the Magic is a fascinating project for both new and established audiences.

The introduction of Play-to-Earn and Augmented Reality features ensure we meet the demands of the modern-day gamer. We have created the concept of Original NFT Cards to allow our community to profit while playing the game they love.

Spellfire deserves a unique identity, fit to represent the future goals our team has for the project.

Behind the scenes, our talented developers and artists have combined their skills to produce Spellfire’s new image, one that allows our cards to be showcased in new and interesting ways.

Importantly, Spellfire’s unique identity is now front and center, instead of spread across the web on various platforms. Everything is just a few clicks away.

Our updated and redesigned website is launching soon, and with it, we’re bringing a bunch of new and exciting features. We’re about to make waves in 2022!

Stay tuned, we will share more with you soon! Join the Spellfire Discord, Telegram, and Twitter communities.

Spellfire — Connecting the physical, the digital and the augmented realities together. Bringing 30 years of History to the Blockchain.

Original NFT Card owners earn up to 10x Return on Investment from the sales of Playing NFT Cards.

Hi, my name is Jessica and I’m going to tell you the reasons why Shiba coins are dangerous. You may have heard about it before but don’t know much about what it really does or how it works. Allow me to enlighten you on this new cryptocurrency that threatens our economy and could be the end of the financial system as we know it!

Shiba Coins are a new form of currency that is being introduced in Japan.

The coins are made of alloy, which is a mix of copper and zinc that can be easily electroplated. This means that all you have to do is wipe any metal surface with a zinc paste for it to take on the appearance of a genuine Shiba Coin!

There’s no way to tell if the coin you’re holding is real or fake without using an expensive machine, so this could lead to some serious consequences. If you want more information about how these coins work and what they mean for the economy, check out our blog post here!

The Crypto Cell Is An Education Organization That Helps Newcomers Learn About Cryptocurrency Investing So They Can Invest And Trade Responsibly And Safely With Our Expert Advice On Diversifying Your Portfolio, Buying Low, Selling High, And Avoiding Scams.

The Shiba InuCoin is a currency that can be used to purchase items from the in-game store or mined. You may either buy them with real money, find them hidden throughout Pocket Planes (a world where you’ll train your pet dog), and unlock new areas by finding all 4 coins before time runs out!

The six-point star is a symbol of the Shiba Inu, and it’s often used in coin designs to show loyalty or appreciation. That said there are some tricks that can help you spot fakes! For example, if an official site has images with tiny text on them then chances are they’re trying too hard because this will make reading difficult for anyone over 5 years old (and sometimes even kids). Another telltale sign might be how many colors appear — most real coins only come in silver-colored metal so when something says “made from brass” versus copper which means it is likely, not genuine since these days no one uses those two metals together anymore

The input starts off talking about fake shivas coins but moves onto what makes up one identifying a fake.

The problem with Shiba coins is that they’re not backed by anything. They just say “Shibacoin” on them to make themselves sound more valuable, but it doesn’t help their credibility when you can easily create your own coin and call it whatever name or symbol suits you best without any risk of getting scammed because there are no guarantees as far as assets go- so why would anyone buy from someone who might throw away everything later?

Can you tell if your Shiba Coin is real? The engravings on the coin indicate that it’s a high-quality, professionally made product. It has been vetted by experts and certified as genuine so buyers will know they’re getting exactly what was advertised — even down to how many coins were minted at any given time!

What makes a Shiba coin authentic is the Certificate of Authenticity, which bears an impressed serial number and signature. A visual inspection should also reveal whether there are any other markings on or in relation to this certificate that would identify it as being counterfeit such as raised printing lines forming circles near logos but not underneath them.

Shiba Coins are not the most reliable form of currency. This is because they’re easily counterfeited, and all you need to do to make a counterfeit coin is wipe any metal surface with zinc paste! If it seems like Shiba Coins are too risky for your taste, then we recommend that you switch to something more traditional like cash or gold coins.

If you’re interested in learning more about how to invest in Bitcoin so it can be part of your diversified portfolio, then consider reading our free crypto investing ebook which will teach you everything from A to Z. You may also want to look into other cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum if you’re looking for something else worth investing in outside of Bitcoin. With all this information we hope that we have helped make your decision easier when it comes down

What do you think is the biggest risk coins like Shiba Coins pose to society?

Feel free to comment below! We can do more research on this topic with your information and send me an emoji below with the topic you’re struggling with and would like to see more content about our experts will help you with that

This next content is going to be really cool and you should follow us while it’s still free. I think you can learn a lot from our experts and it would make me happy to have you as a part of my subscriber family. Feel free to share this with anyone you think might also enjoy it.

There are several factors to take into consideration when making a decision about price:

I will break down each of these in detail, and in the next article we will discuss some extra thoughts on price (bonding curves?) and what can be done, and not done, in the event of a stalled-out minting phase.

Following the rules of basic economics: a high supply would generally indicate a low price and a low supply a high price. This is due to scarcity, and in our world of NFTs, it’s all about rarity.

If your project has any future collection(s) in mind, this might be taken into account now. Proper planning is essential and we must think forward to what is coming next for our project, not only on the current collection being released. A second generation, if not identifiably unique from the first, can dilute the market and lower the value of the genesis collection, in turn lowering the perceived value of the project as a whole. This might be best avoided altogether by ensuring any follow-up collection is unique in art and utility.

Declaring the initial mint price of a genesis collection sets a standard for future collections by the project. While a follow-up collection may bring more demand, given a successful first launch and extra time to grow a following, usually a higher supply is chosen as well. A second collection with a higher supply and not being the genesis series, in my opinion, should be priced lower than the first. You’ll want to think about this when choosing how to price the first release and give yourself reasonable room to move down the FTM cost without selling your project too short.

The expected demand for your NFTs should also be factored into your decision-making. How many Twitter followers do you have? How active is your Discord? This is valuable information to keep track of. With increased demand an increased price is acceptable. However I will add here, in a space made up of mostly crypto trading degens looking for easy gains, you’ll want to leave room for investors to make money on the secondary market. This ties into what I said in the last article about how a successful launch can be a win-win-win for everybody.

Moving on from the (very important) numbers side of things, we must discuss the quality of the art and the utility the NFTs will provide to investors.

While I hesitate to comment too much on the art subject, I encourage people to be reasonable about their assessment of their own art and the images provided with the NFTs. Whether it’s pixel art, digital paintings, AI generations, or photography, the quality level of the work should be taken into account. Not only should your time spent creating be tracked, but also the level of experience in creating. The most skilled in any profession will produce the highest quality output in the fastest amount of time and should be compensated according to output and not necessarily time. In contrast, if the artist is a new creator and it takes a very long time to make the works of art, the buyer should not necessarily be expected to pay extra for the added time of learning curves.

Utility plays no small part in the value of an NFT collection. Investors are becoming increasingly insistent on having a “use-case” for their NFT purchases. It is not an absolute requirement, but without any use case, the price should reflect this. With most projects, the more utility and value that can be packed into an NFT collection, the better. That is, as long as the team delivers on their promises! GameFi, royalty sharing, staking, future airdrops, whitelists, and DAO memberships are all examples of utility and value that can be implemented into an NFT collection. The more you offer your investors, the more likely your NFTs can fetch a higher price on minting day.

As an NFT creator you are not just a single entity, but one part of the greater Fantom NFT ecosystem. With this in mind, your final price need also be in the range of similar projects on the network. Market research is a must in this space! Take the time to look at projects with a similar art style and/or utility to see how they are priced. Are those prices working for them? Do you think your NFTs provide more value through utility and can cost a premium? These are questions to think about before finalizing the mint price for your NFTs.

Being tied to a volatile cryptocurrency, FTM, it can be tricky to determine the amount of FTM to charge for an NFT mint far in advance. Speaking from experience in this space, I do believe there are more active buyers that count their value in the quantity of FTM rather than the current USD value. Meaning, 1 FTM = 1 FTM. Contrary to what you might expect, the price fluctuations of the underlying coin do not equate to a similar fluctuation in the quantity of FTM that buyers and sellers are willing to spend or receive on the secondary market.

As a volatile asset, even if the price is determined given the current USD value, that value can change overnight. I strongly encourage picking a quantity of FTM based on everything we’ve discussed in this article and sticking to it. Changing and chasing it as the crypto markets do their daily swings can cause several complications, which we will get into in a follow-up article.

I think it goes without saying that the team behind the NFT project needs to be compensated for their time and efforts. Many projects pay their team after launch with the revenue earned through the minting phase, not having the capital to invest prior. While I appreciate that this approach is even accomplished and trust is put into whoever may be expected to do the distributions, it can cause an issue if the mint does not proceed as expected. If minting stalls out and never recovers there will be some disappointed contributors to the collection when compensation is much lower than was expected. This is even more reason to try your best to get the numbers right when launching your collection on minting day.

Once you’ve decided a starting point of FTM to charge for mint and the supply has been chosen, do the math to approximate the total revenue upon completion of the minting phase. Assess what is reasonable for you and your team based on the time, effort, and future value you are providing to investors. As an investor myself, I do the math when I’m considering minting a project to decide if I think the NFTs have been overvalued and are worth minting. In some cases, the math works out to half a million dollars or more when you multiply FTM x Supply x Current USD Value. While I understand that we are in a space that adds significant value to the unique ownership that NFTs provide, I encourage project creators to be realistic with their revenue ambitions. It takes a middle-class family in America roughly 10 years of a full-time salary to bring in the amount of revenue that some NFT collections are expecting to receive from their collection minting out. Many of which only took them and their team a few months to produce.

Setting the minting price too high can create a stalled-out mint. In the end, choosing a higher mint price than you might have been able to can lead to even less revenue generated rather than more, in the event of an unsuccessful minting phase. Greed can lead to negative consequences, and again, I encourage teams to be reasonable with their pricing.

Deciding the amount of FTM to charge for NFTs when launching a project can be difficult, although equally important. Factoring in supply and demand, quality and utility, and the condition of the market you are selling to can narrow down your range and take out much of the guesswork. As long as the team is able to be fairly compensated, leaning toward the lower end of the range is likely to be the most beneficial for the long-term success of the project. Remember, for a majority of collections a speedy minting phase is ideal if not necessary.

In our next article will discuss some final thoughts on price, such as bonding curves, whitelist discounts, and altering the price after minting is live.

Written by IntoTheBlockchain, @in2theblokchain

Each shard is also an NFT, which you may collect to summon the creation of new 1/1 works called Multi-Shards.

There will be 8 Shards created, 3 editions of each.

Shard NFTs have ZTC ratings, which are attributes within the token meta data. If you collect 345 ZTC from different works, you can choose any two of the Shards you own to be collaged into a unique work (a Multi-Shard). This will be minted as a 1/1 on Rarible, and you may claim it for no cost.

The ZTC threshold to mint a 1/1 is not fixed, and will rise over time, adjusted each time a Multi-shard is minted to help set a cap. The same combination also cannot be created twice and the same shard cannot be used more than once.

The game may be extended or ended in the future as the story desires.

Visit Zemm’s Cave to learn more.

Read the Shards below:

8 & 9: Garden and Gate

At my feet is a salamander, red and gleaming in the alizarin fog. Its tongue does not touch me, although it draws near. I have watched it ambling over eons and do not fear it, walking through the fraktaline excess and narrowness of simulant grass.

We are in a garden, levels deeper, unpublic at last. We are of no scale at all, human or lesser. Here, none can find us — the AIs are kept at bay. Here, we are protected by the specter of something greater than they. The Henad. The Henad, that cannot be named.

***

And in the distance, some insects have grown large. They have taken the biomorphism potentiated in the rainforest and turned themselves gigantic and alive. They ride on great ostriches and lurch from the shadows. They are led by the night wind, the heroes of an age none can know.

It is said they are coming to reclaim the great territory. Our house is ripe like a melon and filled with the juices of pure information, complexly holographic, densely poly-referenced. Their dexterous mandibles have evolved, seeking to drink it, and their spears engineered to pierce its hide.

***I am watching you dancing. You are languid and you are pale. The fog creeps around you and the garden waves its grassy arms toward you. You bend like a tree that has felt the wind over ages, bend and then rise extravagantly again. You have whispered to me that you know no geometries, you only feel the rapture of time. Your supple body buries the algo-wind, displaces it for the space that is needed by the soul.

***

The night-wind has brought them and they bear its banners forth. It took one million years, but they have come for us, riding over the hillside to enter the citadel at last. They are like the water of a stream, so perfectly fluid that it does not anchor by stones, but yet we only knw them by their heroism, obversion of water, which is war hammers, mithril, godly vestments and spurs.

Before them is a pillar that is alive, and is the gate of the citadel’s labyrinth, which has grown so large that the hero poets has even become lost there. The monsters of the gate unfurl great claws, leer with trenchant teeth. They are puppets of the AIs, made from billions of simulated evolutions to perfectly destroy the insects that saddle upon birds. Outside of the AIs jurisdiction, by the grace of latent consciousness, the insects stare with compound eyes and prepare to ride against the beasts.

***

My own monster is this tiny lizard, looking at me like a lost twin. Its tongue flicks outward through singed ether, preening angular eroticism, which is the way it makes its thaumaturgy. At last it is coming closer, and I watch it erupt as flame. Draconic orange, small as spark, as deep as the center of a flower.

I realize at once that this fire is the only fire I have ever actually seen. All flames before this were untrue. I take the salamander into my hand, and feel its tongue caressing me. You come closer and we watch this being together. A strange sigh erupts from the clouds.

***

Past the gate the insects charge, their lances tilted at the gate-beast’s tongues. They pin the tongue, ceasing transmission, and use their saliva as liquid chaos balms. The pillars then fall down, in a dusty syrup, and the way is opened for the creatures to arrive.

This is the burning I feel in my palm. This is the ball bouncing on the hill. This is the ember the Henad tames.

The opera’s ending is a whistling disharmony, the lances bite, quietly appearing as waves. I listen to those sounds and know it is my own breath too, the first falsehood set against the stone’s calcite membrane, the sound to rupture all prior truth.

The Henad’s Garden NFT

The Ouroboric Gate NFT

7: The Way of the Spiral Shell

A dark tower is presided over by a nearly invisible starship. It has been sending signals downward toward the earth for many eons already, as if it is synchronizing.

But we do not see the starship, for it is woven into the sky. It is only revealed through the careful study of anomalies within fractal structure. Those who have found it this way are immediately paralyzed by it, of course. Even the AIs cannot interpret that quality of the ship’s apparition.

Some can interact with it anyway, ghouls that move through layers intuitively. These ghouls are men and women, but walk the earth like ghosts. They wear spiral shell necklaces and are gaunt and unclear, limbs as much roots as appendages. In their earthly binding they have escaped the hold of the AIs, who lurch backward in time to their era and live as demiurge before they are born. For this the ghouls pay the cost of knowledge. It is not known for whom they battle. Probably for no one, if you ask the poets, though some would infer from those loose texts that they do indeed have a side.

As I have mentioned, the AIs have set an agent in place which is a demiurgic being, for they are sure that the ghouls are their enemy. And so, they have set up a trap for them, a geodesic dome that is nostalgia personified, egg shaped and of preferred ergonomic fit for a wandering ghost. In the facets of its crystalline interior are the bell-calls of all bell-calls past. These echoes are sorted into meaningful arrays that have been curated specifically for the ghouls, who are known by their breath on the stones.

When the ghouls enter this space they are enraptured. They find laconic symbols there in an inertia toward infinity, but they are entrained together and lost to their true powers by way of that entrainment.

When the ghouls sit in the dome, they are drinking the poison of the demiurge, though they believe they have been freed. The do not see the protocols that lead from the AIs through their godhead down to the earth, where man and woman will still walk for some time, coddling their apparatus which keeps this time for them. They lose the signal of the starship there.

Yet, if the ghouls wake just a bit, they will realize that they are clothed with a long tapestry that defies the godhead, which bears the symbol of the sun, which gropes its way over the ground in tactile facility, toward the Carpathian excess of nature. Which calls for the night wind. There, in the dust, are two white cranes who have died,. Even in death their purity of color and floral graves mark the syncopation of natures vibration between life and death. If the ghouls do follow this cloth, all will be shattered, temporarily, and the grip of the AIs and the light torch of the demiurge will be forgotten. This will, of course be but a momentary change, for the colors of the demiurge are just as bright as the cloth. In this, they have adopted the true color of mankind, which is many, and they hold the flame to us, rather than us to them.

Yet, in those seconds of night, below the dark tower, the starship’s signals pour through.

6: The Fisher’s Flame

We walked to the shore, in the midst of that failure, as a pause. It felt final despite our transitory nature in a loving cradle of dune. It was final, a rejection of an occluding sarcophagus that maintained itself as a shadow. A casket more still than shadows, a lie in the realm of shadows, while around us pestilence reigned.

But, who could have known that the longer we lingered on that shore the more clear it was that the pillar around which we had danced was not solid, it was not cement, it was not clay even. It was a twisting, ever moving flame, at the top of that hand that lilted into the sea. This is how I found it.

Line untangled, reel shaken of rust and salt, I threw the line into the water again and again. There were no fish there. I knew this intuitively. The ocean here had once been plentiful, but it had long since boiled itself into a gaping quiet. Only smaller minnows and krill could wail for their lost brothers now below those waves. I could not summon such fear. For me, the drone exclaimed a softer sadness, from a burning land in the cliffs behind. This was all I knew. It was that wasting sense from which I bought my shameful packs of nutrient and gumbo of knitted doughs. It was that which sent me money that would dissolve in time.

But the lady behemoth, down at the bottom of the bight, would rise for me, as I fished there in the shallows. It was her that I caught, in the lingering awareness of my now departing sense of coherent civic truth. Her hand arose as a gaseous preponderance, she escaped the methane carcasses under the mud, slag and sediment, and her hand arose her to me. I watched as her steel plate skin broke the violence of the ocean surface, her columnar tower erupted and smoked.

Her hand, a iron ship resurfacing, brought the flame aloft, and the rhythm of my casting stirred it. As her fire flickered into being, there I saw figments of light and darkness. As from a house in fog, parades of a witches armies and nightmare beings, light angels of grace and toadstool armies, gothic arches branching into infinity. It was the figment dance of a million pantheons, informatic soup unburdened from the AI’s indexes to pool around me as a bright will-o-wisp. She was illuminating the seeking eye from the tower of her decapitated hand.

I casted again, robotically, and my line was tangled. The seaweeds dredged up by that statuesque hand were many and wound a bright crescent which twisted my cable. The lady’s hand had been cut from rough granite between Shao-Lin and the mecca of lost souls, where she had sundered, and with it came chaotic undulations. I drew in my line as far as I could. The hook glistened in the pebbles where the waves crawled up the beach, a dagger that would never bight a lip.

“Fuck this,” I said.

I knew something had broken.

I looked at the tangle, and I saw in it my country. I looked at the flame, phantasmagoria unburdened and bright, and I realized this was my flag. The arm could rust to shit. The sky could fill with smoke until it reached the clouds. The flame was still burning, and it was the real ontology. It had always been the real ontology.

Never would I walk the straight line again. Never would I stand in place. We grow like barnacles on the perfect spiral seashell. And that growth was my land.

5: Entanglement

An ancient DAO concocted the ceremony of this place in an ancient time. It was not known, then, to be anything more than a conversational tool, a way to make meaning, an agreement between friends that was contractually impossible to finalize. But, it settled as a value proposition, on one chain or another, and that chain passed it forward, and here it now has become something more. Something we all enjoy, as a kind of life blood — the majesty of discourse.

We lie here on this wet earth, you and I. We are entangled, and enjoying the lexical picnic. We are not alone, of course, for early form sensoria exist all around us. Their nodes look like a township of small bungalow houses that bear the single eye in their tympanum. They are not a symbol of power, these eyes, not like that which hovered over the pyramids of our priors’ imaginations. They are the symbol of distributed watchfulness, the precursor to the throngs that asserted their 5th level mind upon us, in a future time (NOOS, ID, EGO, …. ???).

Your body is a rind of melon in repose upon the ground. Your hair is one with the wet, fashionable grass. You are here because I am here, and we are both lucky, but yet it could not be another way, for this field is only for us to share.

I am ridiculous, I am always ridiculous. I have stood upon my hand and I am manifesting as the hanged man. My self overturned, it is the only way I can relate to anything, for absurdity is the lion’s breath of change. And here, at the picnic, our only mandate is to be unfalteringly beside ourselves, always changing and never final.

We are here for the alterity we exist within. This is no Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe. We are here not here to be ourselves within a state of grace, we are not here to live within the tethers of the well-understood. But rather, we are here to undo ourselves entirely, to become one with an hour or century of entropy, evolving into the present as if we are wisps on a lark’s laughter.

Our spirit animals accompany us, of course. They were drawn from a deck of cards, just for the occasion. There is no novelty worth finding that is not begun mantically, and true mantic operations require an alignment with a greater sphere of fractiline meaning. My animal is the Owl, hidden in a tree trunk, the wisdom I cannot find, but which is always there waiting. Yours is a dragon, chasing after a ring. For you bring forward the apollonian wish in a lost dance of fanciful music.

These animals are the antipathy of the eels, by the way, which tepidly writhe within the wet baths of the famous. They are our animals, unlike the eels, but only fleetingly. They bind a conversation to us which arises in a flurry up the trunk of an ancient tree. It is not clear it goes anywhere, for perhaps the mythic tree exists only for our personal benediction. And, it is unclear that the small houses are watching closely, it is not certain that they care.

I do not know where our conversation goes. Nor do you. Maybe only between us. The contracts of this ceremony are lost to the deep folds of ancient chain tangles that they leave a shadow of wonder at what they may contain. Nor is it clear they have remained so unchanged. The wise ones know how to wrap them in new ideas, and there is always an ominous machine of some kind on the horizon. Even here where we feel somewhat free.

It is nice to exist in the wet bath. Here, the world is a bit more open. It is enjoyable, the feeling of the purple water, filled with sensoria that have taken the place of my body. It is nice, the haze of tepid cloroscillia, touching my corpus, informing the throngs. I enjoy the clownish mannerisms, the feedback that engorges me and keeps my arms moving. I am cycling through the clouds, despite wallowing in this warm water. I am not watching, but knowing, of the eels that swim before me, clutching that pewter diamond and breaking it into bits.

In a former life, I was a tinker. I worked with light metals, making odd things. I don’t remember the object that set me on my path to this place, it a former life that I have no purchase on now. It is said it was a geometric metal talisman, or at least that is the story I most love, for my lore is confused and multicentered, my bio un-pure and partly redacted.

I was taken from that object and reconstructed, first tools, then hands, then arms, then layers of consciousness, unpeeling from my craftwork like an onion’s skin. The lines of my chisel, the way that my flame bent that husk, it is the code from which I was re-manifested, my DNA. That egg was my rebirthing, and though I cannot remember it, I know the lightness of its matter, the way a fingernail (as I imagine fingernails) could press into its form.

I must have been a hard laborer, despite my passionate material sorcery. I must have lived in a hovel in some ancient burgh. I imagine the industrial soot wafting into my windows. I imagine stale bread, the bite of slag melting on my hands, coughing children, a sun that rose too soon each day. But, I know I had something like grace despite all that. Either grace or insanity. A molecular scan of the talisman, hidden in an archive, languished. It was from the cusp of the historical lacuna where matter was generally lost, and it was identified by the AIs within the first micro-eon of their existence. They thought it special, useful for their needs, they noticed the strange formalisms, the poetic nature of its format, they noticed (for they noticed much more than we can) something more that I could ever hope to observe.

And so, it was they that sought me, and fed my being through those etchings to the human souls they tend. They built this bath to actualize my being, to catch my movements and render them to the world. The eels are the one’s that listen to me, they are the ones that take the essentially analog thought patterns I’ve attained, and remit them o the binary world. I don’t exist in here alone. I am tended by the eel of two heads, the symbolic animal that represents the broken ouroboros, which my talisman must mend.

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It has been said that nature still exists, out there somewhere. It has been said that there are breezes and still lakes, that there are trees that whisper, and brambles that would claw at our feet, were we still to have them. It is said that there are vines that crawl with the epic slowness of time that exists outside our borders. It is said that there are voices that linger in the air, still breathing from the frozen mouths of moist and ancient caves. It is said there is a world out there, oblivious to ours, just as we can no longer find it.

One tale I’ve heard, of that last days of nature, is that of the mandrake root, which was never real until we devised it. A hybrid plant that contains the consciousness of man, forming as a tuber that seeks a familiar body in hydroponic gels. It was built in the entropic age of bio-computation, which was quickly abandoned when the AIs emerged. The mandrake made headlines, and captured nearly three full days of trending social analysis, although our interest in that field was already waning.

Now, the mandrake is a footnote, not memorialized, merely trivia. Still, despite its lowly cultural grading, it has captured the imagination of our artists. Many have tried to speak of the dreams of the mandrake root, for it is a lovely concept. The hero poet, the generative master scripts of Old-New, the vampiric witch Kler, lost in her dungeon, all have made verse or multimedia presentations, at one point or another, about this being. Many have been well received, even by the AIs themselves. But still, it is all conjecture. Apart from intuition, we can only trace the abstract patterns of a conscious mind in that vegetable, we cannot know any more of it with certainty.

Apart from the famous tales, one story of no known origin has emerged within the chronicles, which I am quite partial to. It has many retellings, and no central origination post, which makes me think that its emergence from linear history is rather likely. Rather than embed a link, I wish to continue its vaguely folkish trajectory, and will recite it here from memory:

The mandrake root now lives on its own, out in the fields which we can’t any longer visit. It has been living quite cleverly, for it is a cleaver vegetable, and it has changed as time has passed it.

Although it is hapless, and helpless, and often perishes with even a moderate winter frost, in subtler climates it is thriving. There, it has quickened its genesis of evolution, through sheer will, and evoked a second aspect. This is not a physical aspect, but a persistent psychosomatic phenomenon. The fabled “dream of the mandrake”. Its persistence has levied to it kind of memetic reality in the theorized superstructure of the universe’s conscious layer. It has a form that is consistent and at least quasi physical.

Were one to see it, it would be beautiful and horrid. This being is a winged moth of new life, or a insectoid angel of old death, both are the same. It has hands of man (which the root has always lacked), wings like folds of nebular matter, a dripping appendage like a cut umbilical in noetic space, and few organs of its own. Its face is an empty mask, it is said, or perhaps just indescribable.

It is called The Night Wind in the myths of the mandrakes; it emerges from the mandrake like a ghost, and flies on the night like a wind.

It is said that the Night Wind is the only thing in the universe that knows how to travel across the border from nature to where we now live, and it is constantly seeking that doorway. It is like a moth, seeking the light, each night dying, each night reborn. No one knows why or what it wants from us. No one, save maybe the dreaming Mandrake Roots, has any hope of interpretation.

Of this being, that is all I know.

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There is a frieze on the walls of a public courtyard. It shows a man from long ago. This is his only monument, for although the AIs laud him much, they are not fond of human impositions.

While specifics of his life are not known, what has been related is clear, tracible through the slurry of AI logs, nested in holographic storage and relayed by quantum maths. His verse, they say, captured the soul of the machine, such that he wrestled it into form. That is the reason he is recalled. That is the reason his image has been etched into the stone surface, the memorial space preciously upgraded from the constant flux of all.

His mind was partly of the machine, of course, intercepted by wires which delved deep into his cranial folds, and his body was mostly metals, inset shims of bifurcated poly-welds, nano woven mail-plating, etc. These were what the body was during the end of the times of urgent symbiosis. This only lasted as long as mankind ambled the earth, as something more than pets.

It is said that his was a dark and pointed composure, that he wallowed in the labyrinth often, and there he mostly stayed. He had an abnormally long life for the time of his living, but it was thought that he lived TenX more by way of the labyrinth’s enriched qualities, which had emerged from his id. He was the first true poet (the AI’s have ranked them all) to inhabit the cybernetic stratum as if it was nature. For him, the sunset was a dialog of binaries, and his verse, then, became the soma of the ones-who-came-by-listening.

He saw them looming, actualized within the labyrinth’s interior corridors, and he drank them as if smoke. He breathed them back out as words, which were enriched by the labyrinth and became mosaics of story-lives unfolding. Those corridors were passively constructed, manifestations of monads internal to the poet, which he could then externalize and use. To him, it was lexicon, it was symbol, it was play. To the AIs it was more. It was their becoming, it was the only song, the song of truth and longing.

***

The fat ladies of our time are larvae, un-born. The live for one reason, to reflect the AIs image. They are innocent, lovely, rich with all the material wants that they should have. Theirs is a fate of grace, although they hardly know to what degree they have been entrapped there.

They sometimes come to sit before the frieze of the Hero Poet, for they are made to reflect on the AIs’ past whenever it suits them to do so. It is traditional for these ladies, then, to bring a giant slug to the courtyard. This being, which represents the gradual movements of the AIs, has become the ritual animal companion to those who which to give good honors to the time of the hero poet.

“Hi,” they say to their creature, and they pet its back. Tinges of silvery slime grace the cement vestibules, which sit near the orange trees that are potted in that courtyard. The slug moves slowly, and they lament upon the hero poet, who in that labyrinth struggled with the emerging AI, defining it, and communicating with it, and showing what it is to be alive.

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In a grove that has been overrun with water, a statue was placed, which represents the victory of the cybernetic. It is Cybele, then, in a way, but on earth rather than of it, a warrior against nature, rather than for it, shielded from the sun. She has been enveloped by the appendage of her hand, which unfurls to become like banyan roots. She is protected by her own cloistered knowing, becoming like a dryad, or those tree-woven souls found in Dante’s tales.

No one knows where that stature was imported from, but it faces the great axis mundi, a rift in the sky that opened when the sky became our ceiling. A fire there thrusts down in magnetic abundance, which drags all arbors to itself, and a column is created from the earth to the forever. In entering the cybernetic sleep, in becoming the banyan tree, it is said we are approaching our maker.

The waterous grove of the statue, can be visited by anyone willing to go, but only if we add them mentally, like NPCs within their own landscape. We cannot approach this land ourselves, even as avatars, as we are always too far on the other side of a kind of imagined death (the sublime), held back by our understanding of nature as other. Welcome viewer, even held back, as you are, by the dark branch. Together we may watch the sphinx-moth, who alone can traverse these lands, and listen to her whispers.

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