Contour (Part I)
How could blockchain redefine governance and our concept of property rights in a world of increasingly centralized power?
by Matthew Thomas Bell
“From this ignorance of how to distinguish Dreams, and other strong Fancies, from Vision and Sense, did arise [the Ghosts of men.]”
-Thomas Hobbes
Prologue
The year is 2055. The great society of the Federated States is controlled by the tendrils of Leviathan, a centralized AI which has stabilized ecology and economy. The mid-country is laminated in a vast solar membrane above a layer of salt-water material farms that excrete subsistence sufficient for all citizens. Neutral. Equitable. But at the crash between the Great Plains and the alpine tundra of the Rocky Mountains, there are remnants of a more volatile time, GPU dense cryptocurrency sky scrapers embedded into the frigid stones of the past. Some still run autonomously, attempting to solve the remaining equation of the last cryptocoin… Others are dormant, broken, pilfered. And some traitors whisper, that in an obscure valley adjacent to a few of these faceless monoliths, warmed by the trillions of GPUs crunching numbers,a flourishing off-grid Utopia exists. Compartmentalized freedom powered by block-chain.
A myth of dissident hope.
I: Release from the Leviathan
Under what was once the 11th Street bridge in the Brentwood district, now grown over with the signature brown mycelium concrete of the Stewardship Protocol, giant blocks protrude from the oppressive mass to cast a shadow upon the heads of two displaced figures, wrapping themselves in shawls against the dry eddies. The drifters shuffle, looking to leech electricity they can pawn on the black market in the controlled energy economy. Because they want a little more.
A mother, emaciated with desperate eyes and a daughter leading her cautiously below a reinforcing beam, where they could be obscured from the patrolling drones, as the little girl began her craft.
Suddenly, a bloated high speed train crunched above, sending bits sifting down into her face. She unplugged the wires from jagged spears she had pierced into a floating solar membrane wobbling atop the waters that once flowed into the Delaware, but now are stagnant nutrient farms. Like most fresh waters in the Federated States. The train isn’t supposed to be running now! Something was wrong. Wrapping the wires around the compound batteries, she stuffed them into her patched backpack. And as her hand plunged in, a piece of paper twirled out and rested upon the fibrous mycelium at her mother’s feet.
A scrap of hemp with the scrawl of a contour, a glyph resembling a man’s face. Her eyes darted to her mother, but before she could…
“El Lobo!”
“Mom, shh, please. Not now.”
Too late. The resounding air horn reverberated the structure — shaking they clasped onto the bricks as figures mounted the bend, tan in the distance with snubbed weapons with no obvious function. Her mother’s eyes wide, as a gust of wind produced by a rectangular drone with red eye loomed from her right side and pinned them against the approaching men in micro-knurled suits.
“CONTRABAND DETECTED.” Despite the tracks in her mother’s arms, the drone focused its projected eye upon the batteries in the girl’s backpack, next to them crumpled- another piece of paper with her scrawling. And soon the men were upon them.
The cell’s walls met with corbelled corners to the ceiling. The air heavy and damp, each breath harder to take than the next. She held on to each, avoiding the tales of what happens to those caught by the marshals of the Leviathan. On the far wall her mother curled against herself, chest rattling under torn rags. Wiping sweat from her forehead, she glared at her daughter.
On the other side of the thick walls perforated with holes, their captors murmured, with projections of their hunt flittering before them — complete citizen biometric data, the words “Dissident” in bold, interpolating their past offenses via DNA inference to be worked into an unassailable sentence. Layered behind the mirage, a woman walked into the room and asked an indistinguishable question.
Her mother moved to the pierced wall, and gritted her teeth. “That wolf…El Lobo, that creature you keep drawing, he abandoned us- he left us to starve,” she growled. “He was never a father to you, and now here we are- because you couldn’t just leave it alone…”
Her mother’s eyes glazed over with a tinge of teal, as she began rubbing her arms — revealing the striations like tendrils of some nautical beast in the dark block of shadow. “I’m sorry, no- it’s not your fault.” She clenched her hands. “It’s his fault. I never told you. That hypocrite made this world. He helped make this damned Leviathan. Revolutionary, my ass…”
“You’ve told me mom, I know…” The girl felt hot with anger and fear. It had finally happened. The self-aggrandizing theories, the ravings, that temper- the reaction had bubbled over and got them caught and the rumors of punishment was to be recycled… The Tabula Rasa therapy. A blank slate for the Leviathan. She hoped it, too, was just a groundless rumor…
“I tell you. But you don’t believe me, your own mother!” she turned to her, shaking. She twitched, “All I needed was a little bit of Hope…” Hunching over, she glared through the wall, the teal light coming through spottled her face, and her voice started to trail off.
“He always had to have control, a mantra of control. Hands in everything… God. That’s what he wanted to be. Everything revolving around him… around and around…a mantra… What was that mantra? Around…”
Her eyes wandered in a circle clawing for something restlessly, weakly. Then she closed them. Her daughter had seen this before, when her mom dove into some dark place. But this time, she was gone for a moment too long. She nodded up from the depth before slumping oddly on the wall, mumbling. Her words echoing in the damp cell like the rattle of lungs. “Around and around….”
The echo trailed off as she sighed and sank back into stillness, the neon teal of the projectors skimming her figure.
“What mantra?” but her mother did not respond.
“Mom?” She started, and then hesitated. “M…”
She rushed to her mother, her usually sure hands trembling, grasping for signs of life, shaking- clasping onto the old shawl. “Mom!” The cell door clanged open, and the marshals pulled her away as she screamed- now hollow in the dark, streams of light chaotically breaking and then stopped, and darkness took over the lifeless cell.
II: Into the Abyss
She was floating in darkness. Deep in dreams — ground back into some basic kind of world, she felt like a child learning how to walk- learning how to form words, how to pick herself up… A lost child, trying to interact with a world of infinite archetypal forms.
She stirred from the abyss to a woman speaking to her, the voice coming in through a fog as she faded in and out. “…am sorry for your loss, child…”
The voice was familiar, the woman from the station… “…the Department of Reproductive Conservation, but here I am known as the Messenger— I deliver those capable of joining us in the future…” Her head was swimming. “…when you’re ready….” But she felt the air, and it was light. “… I’ll be here. “
And she fell back into the fog and rested for two days, empty as by a loss of something she never really had, until the light of dawn finally aroused her to consciousness and filled her with just enough warmth.
Her hands, flat at her sides, felt the polygonal crevices of some new fabric — tensile — and as she thought of how stiff it was, it began to soften. And as she thought to get up, it lowered so she pivoted, her feet now on the floor — patterned in the same fashion. And hunched over, arms hugging her body, she noticed the lightness of her dress — no longer wrapped in rags, the clothes were fitted but comfortable- and clean… Rubbing her bare arm, she looked up to the room, the pattern continued — and her eyes followed it along the walls until they stopped upon the figure of a woman. The voice from before…
“Wh..where am I?”
“You’ve lived a life on the streets, without a place, without control — welcome to Aurora. The Leviathan does not reach here — you are free here.” She paused, letting the words float in the thinness of the air. Then reached out her hand, “Come, look.”
But the girl remained for a moment on the bed. Eyes transfixed, she was inspecting a single patch of the polygonal pattern- about an inch at each side, translucent fibers running along the hinges like an intricate clocksmith’s design- tracing it with her hand.
The woman grinned, and then strode to a wall. The girl looked up to witness the panels deplete to transparency, revealing the brightness of day. Fascinated, she stood, and slowly walked to her side — and the transparency spread further to accommodate her presence.
Through the portal she saw a vast, swirling city scape. Panels formed into large architectural structures with tiers populated by people spontaneously congregating and dispersing, the world shifting like water around fish. A pristine and vast curve between distant mountains, and teeming with green life and overhanging vines of every kind — in beautiful, flowing arrangement, yet ordered as if in tiers of agricultural cycle. What looked like hydroponic experimentation. A teal and blue world unlike anything she had ever seen — so alien, that her mind had no point of reference- a shining Eden, like taking in the blown out glare of the sun, she turned from the sensory immersion, and toward the woman.
“I know” the woman whispered, like telling her a secret. “It was hard for me to grasp, too.”
She laughed a little, “…and it still is.” Her eyes full of reverence, she seemed to get lost for a moment and then she looked at the girl.
“The outside world owned us, decided for us, planned for us. Here, you own yourself — the founders created the fabric of this place, each patch secured on a ledger — and each person has equivalent weight — or control — and so we move about as equals, as is our right. That is what they believed, at least — most of them. So it is the operating protocol of our material world. The system is called Contour. See?”
And she pushed her hand toward the wall, and the wall shifted around her.
Her intonation took on that of recollecting a great hero, “The key to every door, is your will. Your intention, your voice, is power.”
“Intention?”
“Your internal voice.” She passed her hand along the surface and the form of a brain pushed out of the wall. “Distributed in the fabric are sensors that pick up your brain’s electrical fluctuation.” Facets of the model lit up as she spoke, “Intentional AI validates the movement, and so moves the world. Your prolonged sleep was a sort of training period, but it will get more accurate over time. Dreams are but fantasy powered by fading sensations- the sensations themselves are much more useful for the system.”
The girl squinted at this, in the outside world your data was collectivized and fed into the central AI to make its society-level, utilitarian decisions. The woman nodded in understanding, “Don’t worry. Unlike the Leviathan, the scans are secured on your personal ledger- they’re yours. Here,” and she touched the black band at her wrist.
“Now, if someone is close enough — they can lend you their weight, through manual gesture or psychic intention.” She turned to the valley and gestured to the reforming structures in the distance. “Say if a group of people want to see the sole vision of a great architect, or in my case, people feel I am most adept at my particular skill and its material needs. In Aurora, if you can rouse people, move them, you can then move the world. We call this Convention — whether it is groups coming together for a common purpose, or between you and I.”
She glanced down, directing the girl to her wrist- where a solid circle graphic surrounded by a hued line appeared on a band. “Each color is a protocol running on Contour, and each dot depicts your control- we all start at the same baseline. As the system learns your association with the color, it can better read your intention without manual input.”
The girl nodded, “Can you show me?”
She gestured in front of the girl, “Push the wall out… Anticipate, ‘I need more space to walk’ that’s usually quite easy for the AI to gather from the dream phase of the on-boarding process.”
The girl took a breath and closed her eyes, and the wall shifted- then stopped.
The woman grinned, “You don’t have to close your eyes. But that works, now I’m going to lend you influence…” She swiped her wrist, toward the girl- and the circle grew slightly larger. And the wall shifted imperceptibly further.
“This protocol is just architectural — there are many more. You’ll find out soon enough. And it is not just the way we reinforce virtue, it is also our currency. This is the way people trade here — microtransactions of fractional influence on the material ledger. But Contour is just the method, the purpose….”
She turned, and spread her arms out — and the fabric of the wall folded in on itself, and the two stood before the open air. “ Freedom. You, me, everyone here is free to pursue their passions of creation, happiness, knowledge…” But the girl had stopped listening and the folded panels in front of her straightened, and turned opaque. “…knowledge.”
The girl held her hand out and traced along the surface — and the hue shifted — and upon it she was forming a shape in black. And she whispered. “…I want to know. What my father looked like… all I know, what I think I know, is just this one line.”
A cloud had moved over the valley, its shadow spread into the room and blanketed the girl in a forbidden memory. “My mom was so afraid of that — of me trying to complete the lines, I never knew why.”
“I couldn’t tell you why…” The woman looked at her through the cool darkness, contemplating. “But I think I can help you figure out the ‘what.’ There is a protocol you can use — it is called Gestalt. The Messenger rotated her wrist to show the hue — a kind of violet. “Many of those here are brilliant creatives, from many industries- perks of having forensic reconstructionists. That might fill in some of the details. And if you want to be alone, I understand.”
The girl nodded, and so the Messenger left her with her goal.
The girl stood there contemplating- breathing slowly in and out, meditating- and then suddenly the room shifted — panels came to meet her, and she began to draw the faded sensations of what may be memory, or fancy, in her mind. The fragments traversed the canvas and edges expanded and rearranged into full figures, and for the first time. Lines beget new lines. She saw the complete figure of her father -the system blocking in the image like a colorized film — and staggering back, she recognized him.
Her mind began to wrap around the craggy lines, the withered eyes- but the Gestalt program did not wait for her to deliberate on this vision before it began to interpolate the minute details, cascading the lines until the mouth began moving — and then…. the scene was animated and…
At first she thought it was illusion echoing in her head, but the sound of her father’s voice came through the image, the AI reading the lips… reconstructing the sound through the vibration of the fabric of Contour, and he was saying, “…sorry, I am sorry.” And the image faltered, and the vision of her mother overtook the visual- and she was yelling, the polygons of the Contour rippling.
“I don’t want to see you, if you stay in this damned utopia, what did you call it? Aurora, really? How dare you. Every time you try to be a part of a system, you take from it, and you break it. ” The images started to fracture as the voice rose louder and louder.
“That’s it!” the fabric crinkled, and her father began to fade.
“We’re leaving! You’ll never see your daughter again! I’m tired of bending around your pathetic dreams!” And with that the image sunk and sprung back, and erased itself.
In the dark, the girl fought the revelation. That her life running was not born from abandonment, but by choice. She felt guilty for a rush of anger, that passed because it had no place to go. And then she was overcome with the notion- that she was totally alone. And she cried.
The Messenger overheard, and made her way back in as the girl’s intention sifted the singular image of her father into view once more, his voice now lost, and the woman stood before it as if peering at someone she recognized from long ago.
“It’s him… They say he was captured when he left Aurora, he was on his way…” She turned to the girl, who peered at her through foggy eyes. “To see you.”
She looked back at the panels. “I want to help you remember.”
As she stood there, the fragments faded and the Messenger squinted, adding a few distinct lines which then clustered and the context became clearer — like a camera focusing into the background, the image of a monolithic structure crispened into view.
“That is the energy facility on the southern façade — tomorrow, we can go there. If you feel up to it, there may be something that motivates your memory. All I know, is that your father was important to Aurora. And you deserve to know what really happened to him. We all do. ”
III: Mists of Foundation
Aurora was split into the crags of the Rocky Mountain Tundra — the edges frozen and blue, the ancient forms driven into by the massive metal behemoths of a bygone era — the age of distributed work cryptocurrency — massive skyscraper mining rigs, cooled by deep icy stone, slick with the glaze of mirrored solar panels shooting straight into the earth hugged by variant elevation, and surrounded by steaming water falls — the base of the rig piercing the southern façade was obscured in mist. And at this juncture of climate, between the tundra and the warmth of Aurora, a sprawling and moving sauna existed. They approached to the joyful chirping and relaxed sighs of despondent bodies, lazing like birds of paradise, covered with canopies of the structured, actuated architectural protocol. Curving and bending to the whim of the people as they waded through the hot waters and onto the edenic shores.
“The founders chose this valley because of the microclimate produced by these facilities- and they retrofitted them to power the city, the Contour.” The Messenger pushed aside a branch of some tropical plant, and revealed the craggy path to the base.
As they walked toward the tower, the girl glanced downward at the pools, seeing a unique cultivar of plant dripping into the steaming water — streaks of teal. And closer now, she saw more clearly the people — some of whose eyes were glazed, like her mother’s had been. Drinking a teal juice in polygonal bowls. Their bands flittering with tiny dots. The woman stepped up to her side and whispered. “Some people give up power so they don’t have to do much else but enjoy their life as they deem fit — it is their right. ” But the Messenger’s voice betrayed her judgement.
The girl, watched as they rose lazily out of the pools, shrouded in mist, going nowhere in particular. “They look like ghosts.”
“They almost are,” the Messenger said, a little solemnly. The girl’s eyes peered back to the woman, pressing for more.
“We start the same, but the risk of losing your influence completely is the risk of being ostracized — not just by your peers, but by Aurora itself. Those unseen, are the ghosts of Aurora.” She turned her gaze from the girl. “Freedom has its costs.”
“They don’t seem free.” A loose rock tossed down the craggy trail, and to rest in the sediment below the whirl of the waterfalls below. “Not to me.”
“Does it remind you of your dad in some way?”
The girl latched her small hand upon a large stone and found footing along the narrowing passage “No, my mom.”
They were confronted by the slab of metal that was the foundation of the mining rig — and a panel carved at eye-level, the sheet bent and blackened- steam warping around and through the vent that spanned the mile-wide base, below, the lines warped by the volcanic heat. The woman went to push the panel- but the girl grabbed her arm. “Wait.” The girl took a sliver of rock from the ground and worked it into the latch, but it was stuck. She traded for a bigger rock and hit a corner and snapped the shroud of metal, and bending the remaining portion back and forth, snapped it clean.
“You think someone sealed the panel on purpose?”
“No, I don’t know. Maybe it fused from neglect…” She bent her neck, looking at the giant structure reel until fading into the frigid clouds above. “Who knows how long this facility was supposed to be running — and in under such extreme conditions.” She bent down and inspected the backside of the strip of panel, a generic sounding electrical company — and below that, the insignia of the Federated States….
She deliberated for a moment. “Are there engineers who maintain these facilities?”
“There are technicians who maintain the Contour’s fabric — the panels — but a lot of that knowledge is passed down in particulars, artisanship — and they also monitor the cooling of these facilities.” She jerked her chin up and to the right toward the water falls, “The streams take the heat down to the pools below. I don’t think anyone even knows how to get into these rigs to check on the internal workings, let alone assess them properly. The Procurement data included mechanical propensity…” She glanced at the girl. “Maybe this is why we picked you up.”
The girl smiled slightly, a little proud, before peering back toward the valley, and under her breathe asked a question “What happens when these fail?”
“Aurora fails.” A man’s voice echoed ominously from the fog below them. “And like Leviathan, we freeze.”
She turned to see a man in a flowing suit emerge from the mist, bow slightly to the Messenger. His grimace turned into a broad smile. “Terrifying, isn’t it!”
He clasped his hands in front of his chest, as if to make a confession. “I am the Curator. The people of Aurora have found me suitable enough to provide thrills. The excitements of a life worth living. To keep them bemused, I orchestrate creative projects and thrilling experiences for the senses. And so I see all of the images created in Contour. “
The girl squinted, registering his preposition- and got up from the panel she was inspecting to meet his gaze as he continued.
“The man in your vision. Your father, he and I were so optimistic about this place…” He looked at the base of the facility while his words trailed as if in a fond memory. “In his tragic absence- he would have wanted to see Aurora thriving. He was a great innovator here, and though I secured the contract for these facilities with my dazzling narrative of the future, it was his brain that kept them running. Powering this new world of infinite possibility.”
The Curator leaned in, his hand clasping his chin, apparently inspecting the girl. “Perhaps there is something yet to be unlocked from your rumination… The key he spoke of.” And then he smiled dismissively, “Or better yet, a dramatic insight that might invigorate the people, who are the true soul of Aurora.”
The girl shifted under the appraisal, curious about what truth this man might hold. “Do you know what happened to my father?”
He stood for a moment, deliberating. “To be honest, your father was not so easy to get along with. Some did not agree with the protocols, and there were struggles in the beginning among the people — as can be expected when each has equal say, I suppose. In the end, your father was irreducibly stubborn in his views, so he defected — to restart the experiment somewhere new. A true perfectionist, an idealist. He was a bold individual, your father. But sadly, he became a victim to the Leviathan… Not far from the borders of Aurora, the marshals intercepted him…”
The man paused, and looked off as if through the mountain façade to some other place in his mind. “I am sorry.”
The girl glanced toward the Messenger, who had told her that her father had left to find her. To reunite with her. And the Messenger averted her gaze.
The Curator continued, “He was a great man of principle, your father. And you have a chance to ensure Aurora thrives, to reignite that vision with me. It is in your hands.” He gestured broadly to the valley below.
“That is your legacy, and this… your inheritance.”
To be continued…
