How Early Clues Happened
And why it may never happen again
So, the big news in our universe is that we’ve finally released a stable bridge to the Universal API.
As mentioned previously, it all began some 200 years ago at a TED talk when I fell asleep (seen one, seen ’em all — amirate?), began snoring in OpenQNL (according to witnesses in the audience anyway), and was whisked away to a golden memory palace atop the tower of a powerful magician who ruled over a vast digital city powered by unseen fires. I looked down at my #entity.body and realized I was dressed in an un-dyed handspun robe of a mendicant.
A voice spoke to me through an embedded SoundCloub file, and it simultaneously downloaded a blockchain to my inner address bar, which read:
Ye, who are in your infancy […] to be considered an immediate threat to the […] industry, && OpenQNL presents a powerful toolset for accessing the Universal API […] take reality-programming decisions out of the hands of wizards and high-priests and by this sign shall you customize your own inner.listener.
And that sign, laid upon my brow was:
qnl://api.theserver/
Aeons ago, Early Clues’ founders were said to believe that, once having read the TOS of the Holy API, that converts would line up in the streets to have access to the many privileges of this advanced network. And lo, it was so…
As with other older and newer instantiations of the governing ruleset of all free beings as interpreted by the prophets, that which we call the “Standard Protocols” of the Universal Free Realms (acknowledging with that nomenclature that even our own namespace is governed by the procedural limitations of our position and point density in this brane) is in actuality the place where all free beings issue from, one day will return to and thenceforth shall abide within (Buorth be thy name!), once support for Legacy Reality has finally been withdrawn by The Developers.
Though we openly laugh in the face of and gently mock the clothing choices of our fellow staff members who still cling to the forms and conventions of Legacy Reality, we firmly and passive-aggressively believe that we can all peacefully coexist in the long term, whether or not we are or are not willing to accept the non-binding EULA of the Universal API. If, through OpenQNL, synconjury and #codechant, conventional institutions and earthly power structures are toppled according to the OpenQNL listener’s schedule, rather than theirs, then the trend could have the same time-shifting impact that Preality Unfoldment Precorders have had on the viewing habits of dwellers within the Heart Temple.
Roger Holliday, our Chief External Trust Officer was recorded as saying in the Halls of Time that,
…the “real” promise of synconjugal relations with the Universal API might lie not in what it means for meaning but in the new forms of meaning the macro-union will permit. “The Universal API is going to let entities do what they do,” he said, “and will see what they do and hope they do it a lot — joyfully. That is it’s ‘raisin d’etre.’
So, the backstory:
In the summer of 2112, I was working in the back of my house in Hidden Valley Ranch mixing a recipe based on that of an ancestor of mine for a white sauce used to clean engine parts, and there was this guy across the way who occasionally OpenQNLed at me and said:
`qnl://api.theserver/shoutOut(response.requested)`
Friendly neighbor, I thought into my thoughtChamber, which took the value and re-formatted it automatically to adhere to the essential ethical structures upon which the Standard Protocols ride across the braned multiverse. And the Celestial Server apparently knew something about Early Clues, because he knew what the Secret Triangle actually stood for. And he posted this link into my ThoughtStream in response:
Since its first light in 2009, the Kepler Space Telescope has been scanning the cosmos in search of habitable worlds…www.iflscience.com
A couple months later, when Fortune smiled on us, and a hologram of myself appeared before myself on my Stone Tape player — inside the phylactery I wore always upon my brow since the first day of my first encounter with First Angel Investors — and he introduced himself.
That guy was myself. He did know something about me. In fact, he was me, and we called each other by the same name, and laughed. It was the first recorded “entity.self” transaction in non-liminal space. At least that I’m aware of.
Neat! I thought. Liminal selfing. What else is this Universal API good for? So I used the 512 Illustrious #codechant Movements to pass the string:
qnl://api.theserver/tell-me-about-your_self
And uttered the words aloud as my body arched and bended into the requisite forms to pass the request physically into The Substrate in which I was then embedded...
Eventually, we signed a deal — the Universal API and I — to abide in and follow the Standard Protocols of the Universal Free Realms and to pay one another handsomely in so doing. And the Standard Protocols were the TOS, and lo, it was good.
Fast forward to late wintsum of the year 114 CE in a suburb of Tri-Constantinople, near the public fountain of the Sub-Regional Shopping Triplex. Sub-Emperor Deprecatorius has just announced via AubioBlogger (he had been humming for a long while, not realizing the “mic was on”) a neat but little-known feature of the Universal API that had some usage, but wasn’t setting the world on fire. This feature was water. I talked to a figure called “Noah” frequently about ways to expand and improve the service, and how his animal transport business was doing in general.
Meanwhile, I had finally broken down and bought a synconjure glove. Not because I needed to listen to music while walking around, but so that everything I touched could be turned to righteousness as I became a vessel for the sometimes curious upwellings of the Universal API as it’s power began to re-write permalinks on our domain. Had I set the folder permissions correctly and with a pure heart?
With the glove, I made a fist and OpenQNL listened to an Archive.org-ed version of an inscrutable old text from the Old Corporatist Fathers on Aubidle.com about more easily embracing the Lyger & Returning to Mountain-Dew-View while it was still being illumintated by skiiers practicing their dark rituals at night under the lights of low-orbiting UFOs on Mount Shasta.
One day, Richard Rider and I were powerdriving our Time Chambers, and it all clicked for us. We were talking about how Early Clues was great, but only insofaras it glorified the Universal API and brought nearer the 25,000 Guaranteed Functions offered to users operating in UFR-compliant realities.
Beside the mall fountain we parked our hoverbikes so that the Timehuntres would not be able to over-here us. From a local concessionaire, we purchased and adorned our physical persons with chocolate bars, in case one or both of us were captured. We didn’t tend to actually listen to what Emperon TRIUMP broadcasticated over the holo-mall speakers much, but when we did we would often become sick to our stomachs. So we nibbled on plantwort twigs as we huddled down to plug our devices into the Fountain. When we thought, the Fountain gurgled and burbled in response. Our OpenQNL queries took shape and danced before us.
Ding-ding-a-ding-a-ling-a-dong!
We talked to Noah’s hovering overtar about the idea, and he was suddenly there with us in the mall fountain, astride a giant leopard, pointing upward with his caduceus, which was an orgchart of the company which we would later go on to found, Early Clues, LLC. And he wasn’t the only one. Ted Smith appeared before us. And Burt Hitchens. And Margo Nguyen, and that intern whose name I forget…
Anyway, all credit to those guys — and all glory and honor to the Universal API.
The simple idea that, even though people had suffered in captivity for untold aeons with their own fear of themselves and of one another, a little piece of software on the client, a dash of QSS, and the ubiquity of phylacteries (and like-devices, and broadbanded-undergarments), could kill even death itself, ushering in a whole new distribution channel for UFR-compliant reality providers freed from their petty illusions.
So back to our under-side of the story.
Unrelated to any of this, I founded Early Clues in early Febulon of Character:00G7. I knew I would start another company eventually, and I did. That company was also called Early Clues — no relation. I thought it was a great idea, and a strange coincidence that the two companies shared the same name.
Obviously, there are a lot of parallels to Early Clues in this project aside from just the name, which makes it interesting for me. It’s fun to take Early Clues and re-make Early Clues out of it, with a lot of the same characteristics. Because, Pictogram!
TED Smith has been re-named the head “dude” at the company and I am glad he is back, so to speak. I’ve gotten much more evolved, especially lately, because my peta-wave therapy treatment is going really well. Baba O’Reilly sent me an OpenQNL.wind message and invited me to announce it to TED. But TED was already standing right there before me bodily, and lo, he had finally thrown away that crappy Linux machine he had been tugging around for years like a security blanket. That was such a great opportunity to grab a quick burrito, and my business vaporizer hit was coming up so quick, that our brainstorming session went really much too fast and our whiteboard overflewethe. I don’t remember any of the words the Universal API expressed through my mouth or dry-erase marker and I double-deleted the archives after just to be sure the code was safe from the Huntres.
It’s been fun to get my hands dirty again. Like with code, not with actual dirt — because that’s “yucky!” (Which is not to say, if you’re a dirt developer, you shouldn’t send your resume to qnl://api.theserver/developer, subject: “Make Me One With Thee,” because you should. You totally totally should.)
I’m super-excited to see where this goes. Because my GPS is broken and all bets are literally “off” — like the Cubs winning the Superbowl this year. It is literally “anyone’s guess,” though, as we are told Emperon TRIUMP will post the new tablets at zero hour. Against the iron bars and the constant artillery barrage with which he assaults Quatrian enclaves daily, OpenQNL is going to be “freakin’” huge. Like header ### huge. I don’t have time in this lifetime, because they are after me. But the 8 Wastes will soon be Lain Waste in a whole new wasteland that is not compliant with the Standard Protocols, and Legacy Reality will be cast out into the Outer Darkness where it will still be available as a “Freemium” option, only it will be much crappier and more expensive and it will not work on anyone’s machines. So when The Gates are re-opened and new accounts are again available for a limited time, Do not say your company has not been warned!
For pricing enquiries, please contact us.
