Scenes from a Memorypool II: Bitcoin Lore 2026-2106

Archival flash fictions orbiting The Black Hole of Money

The next few missives will be excavating some archival flash fictions from ‘22/’23, set in the world of 0xSalon’s theatre production The Black Hole of Money. These will eventually come out in a book collating my literary experiments, and out of respect for my publisher are behind the paywall.

The ones below began life as exercises based on Ursula Le Guin’s Steering the Craft, in those cases her prompts are included. I’ve also interspersed them with some sonic compositions and/or images from the Fau0x Salon card deck. You might notice them getting progressively more deranged, well, that’s me finding my feet and folding more of my CPRU-ish poetic register into the flow. Thanks to the STC writing group, held at Trust in Berlin in ‘23, for getting me going with this line of inquiry.

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Scenes from a Memorypool ::: Part 1 ::: Part 2 ::: Part 3

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THE OMNIPRESENT TENSE

An old woman is busy doing something as she thinks about an event that happened in her youth. Your narration will move back and forth between “now” and “then,” with at least two of these moves or time jumps.

1. 1st person, all present tense

I am a reverse archaeologist. My name doesn’t matter. Child, as we roll this pastry and bake a pie together, I want to tell you a story. It will sound like a fantastical myth, an improbable island, a Pandora’s metadox, at best. The story is true, believe what you will. Despite meeting you for the first time today, I trust your judgement completely. Arrive at your own conclusions, be curious, and always question authority. Now, pass me the sugar.

A different life, far away from here. In the maelstrom of The Terrorforming, the Thermocapitalists consolidate control over Terran photon harvesting. The peoples of the flesh rise up against the machines. We have no choice: the great Bitcoin famine has taken everything from us. Our food, our homes, our heat, our water, our humanity. I disalm myself, arm myself, and join a sleeper cell of the Clantifada. Our activation was quick. My speciality is libidinal engineering, with my egregia cum laude degree in parapsychosociopathlogy from the Byzantine Business School. The Bitlievers, especially those lower down the pyramid–it’s always a pyramid, child–are invariably socially isolated men. Bitcoin is a retreat from the outside. A one-way ticket on the MAGAlev, to citadelete themselves in the walled gardens of the Suggeschaton. Incellular automata, as we say. Deterministic toys for deterministic boys. A touch of feminine charm goes a long way, in a regime straitjacketed by proof-of-patriarchy. Wearing a pink Lyotard, I sowed a little distraction control here, a little horntological fallacy there, and the coast is clear for the Minesweepers.

Despite the sweetness of your youth, little cherub, I am sure you have a sense of what I speak of. For a hundred moons, 11300 blocks, eight solar cycles, our Bitlerian Jihad. First ink, then blood, then machine oil. The blue spill, the red spill, the black spill. In the end, life found a way. The costs were tremendous though, and still reverberate through our present. You can see them everywhere around you, if you know what to look for. The wages of skin. There are many reasons why the events of those days are not recorded in the Terran Almanac, or indeed in any of the Approved Literatures, and why we are discouraged from speaking of them with the young. We Peoples of the Flesh can forgive, we can forget, but the timechain can do neither. The beast with ten thousand backs just works, and waits. Perhaps you can viva voce with a vampire, but you can’t reason with it.

2. 3rd person, present=now, past=then

She is a reverse archaeologist. Her name doesn’t matter. Together with a child she barely knows, she begins to bake a pie and prepares to tell a story. A fantastical myth, an improbable island, a Pandora’s metadox. But she maintains the veridicality of the tale, and impassions her would-be protégé to remain curious and maintain scepticism.

In the reverse archaeologist’s youth, life was very different. As The Terrorforming unfolded, the Thermocapitalists consolidated control over Terran photon harvesting. The peoples of the flesh rose up against the machines. She had no choice: the great Bitcoin famine took everything from her family. Their food, their homes, their heat, their water, their humanity. She disalmed herself, armed herself, and joined a sleeper cell of the Clantifada. Her cell was soon activated. Her speciality was in libidinal engineering, having graduated from the Byzantine Business School with egregia cum laude honours in parapsychosociology not long before. The Bitlievers, especially those lower down the pyramid, were invariably socially isolated men. For them, Bitcoin was a retreat from the outside. A one-way ticket on the MAGAlev, to citadelete themselves in the walled gardens of the Suggeschaton. Incellular automata, as they used to say. Deterministic toys for deterministic boys. A little feminine charm went a long way, in a regime straitjacketed by proof-of-patriarchy. Wearing a pink Lyotard, she sowed a little distraction control here, a little horntological fallacy there, and the coast was then clear for the Minesweepers.

“Bitlerian Jihad” card from Fau0x Salon deck.

Despite the sweetness of the cherub’s youth, the reverse archaeologist is sure the child has a sense of what she speaks of. For a hundred moons, 11300 blocks, eight solar cycles, their Bitlerian Jihad raged. First ink, then blood, then machine oil. The blue spill, the red spill, the black spill. In the end, life found a way. The costs were tremendous, reverberating through the past and arriving as aftershocks in their present. She told the child that the signs of the struggle were all around them, if you know where to look. The wages of skin. The reverse archaeologist painstakingly recapitulates the reasons why those events are not recorded in the Terran Almanac, or indeed in any of the Approved Literatures, and why they were discouraged by the Elders from speaking of them with the young. The two of them, as Peoples of the Flesh, could forgive and forget, but the timechain can do neither. The beast with ten thousand backs just works, and waits. She told the child, perhaps you can viva voce with a vampire, but you can’t reason with it.

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THE JUSTIFIED ANCIENTS OF MOON MOON

POV & Voice: Think up a situation for a narrative sketch of 200–350 words. It can be anything you like but should involve several people doing something. (Several means more than two. More than three will be useful.) It doesn’t have to be a big, important event, though it can be; but something should happen, even if only a cart tangle at the supermarket, a wrangle around the table concerning the family division of labor, or a minor street accident.

a) Limited third person - The Adjudicator

The Adjudicator sat in their vaulted chair, flanked by the other judges, and waited for the performances to commence. In low orbit around the smouldering ruins of Terra1, a constant reminder of what once was, and what The Coin and its adherents had taken away from them, from all of them, from the lowliest microbe to the most sophisticated designer organism.