Arch/Eternal - Chapter Eleven

The Deep End

This is Arch/Eternal, a sprawling novel-in-progress in the genre of philosophical sci-fi. Think Dune meets Harry Potter, and maybe channeling a little bit of Dan Simmons.

If you’d like to start from the beginning, here’s the Prologue.

And if you’d like to follow along with the world-building behind the story, take a look at the companion series shamelessly titled A Terran’s Guide to the Galaxy.

Finally, if you’d prefer to follow along on the app, you can do that here:

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The Deep End

Deek felt bad that he hadn’t reached out since picking Jackson up from the airport. But you get busy, you know? One week bleeds into the next and the next and then suddenly Rita is asking you to invite him to the launch party. 

Now he was standing outside MacGregor Hall, waiting for Jackson to come outside, and it was gonna be all awkward. 

In the hopes of finding a way to mitigate the awkwardness, Deek rewound his brain to play back that afternoon when he’d helped Jackson move into the top floor of this same building one month ago. It had been a huge inconvenience, he remembered — he had to eat the cost of losing half a day on the short film he was directing, producing, and paying for out of pocket. But when Rita asks you to do something, you do it. 

So he picked up Jackson River from the airport and got him hooked up with a Charlie pass and helped him navigate the good old MBTA. They’d had time for a few get-to-know-you questions. Deek told him about growing up in Queens, frustrating his parents by PAing on film sets, and ultimately agreeing to pre-med because they were first generation Indian immigrants who still believed that America was the land of dreams, and that the dream is to go be a doctor. Jackson told him about the northern deserts of Arizona, and about his grandma’s job making anti-venom. Antivenin? That seemed like something Deek should know if he was going to be a doctor.

No use. He should have checked in, just to see how the kid was doing. It wouldn’t have been hard. 

Deek cursed himself under his breath one last time when he saw Jackson through the glass of the front door. Then he put on a big smile and called out “Hey!” as soon as it opened. “How are you!” 

Deek grabbed Jackson into a scrawny-armed bear hug. Best way to cover for being a bad friend is to play it like you’re the best friend.

“I’m good, thanks,” Jackson said. “So what is this thing we’re going to?”

Deek hadn’t told him much — it was second nature now to be careful about what kinds of things you should and shouldn’t share using insecure protocols. So as they walked to Kendall Square, Deek told Jackson they were headed downtown. 

“We got this old office building for pretty cheap.”

“We?”

“Well, you know Rita, but she’s sort of in the background. An adviser, or something. The rest of us are a mix of college kids like you and me, some entrepreneur types, a couple of politicians, and some people with money. You familiar with crypto? Web3? Blockchain tech? DAOs?”

“Sort of,” Jackson said. 

“Alright, well, the TLDR is that we’re starting a network state.”

“Aren’t there a lot of people trying to do that?”

“Not like us,” Deek said. “We’ve been building all the infrastructure for something way more robust.”

“What’s it called? Have I heard of it?”

“No. That’s kind of what tonight is for, actually. We’re launching V zero. I’ve been helping build the marketing campaign. We’re calling it Cubensia, after psilocybe cubensis — also the math nerds love the way ‘cube’ insinuates logarithmic growth. But we named it after the fungus. Did you know that some of the largest organisms in the world are fungi? Because of the mycelium.”

“Mycelium.”

“Basically, it’s these really really thin threads of fungus — like cobwebs — it all grows underground, usually, and then mushrooms sometimes bloom out of it. But the mycelial network is way bigger than any mushrooms. In fact, it could cover a whole forrest floor, interacting with other networks of other species, and the roots systems of trees. It’s nuts.”

“So Cubensia is like a fungus.”

“Yes! Well, sort of. What we’ve been trying to do is basically design the spores. Like, code the gene of a new social fungus that will become a network state.”

“Sounds…cool.” Jackson said carefully. “But, uh, what’s the point?”

Before Deek could answer, his phone buzzed. “Hang on,” he said. “Hey, what’s up?”

The whoosh and roar of the coming train filled the station. One of the doors opened close by, but Deek held up his hand to stop Jackson from boarding.

“… No, it’s fine. Actually, it’s good cause I’ve got that new guy with me. Be right there.” He hung up. “That was Esther. We gotta go help her out.”

As they climbed back up the stairs, across the street, and back down the escalators to the other side, Deek told Jackson about the Quinns.

“Esther is Adam’s sister, and Adam is basically the president of Cubensia.”

“I thought you said it was decentralized.”

“That’s not the same thing as non-hierarchical. The point is to get a better distribution of resources and power. You know, sort of how the US is supposed to work but hasn’t for like, ever.”

As they got onto the train to Harvard Square, their conversation degenerated into a semantic debate about the irreconcilable tensions between decentralized and hierarchical governance. By the time they eventually stepped off the bus a block away from the Quinn residence, they had made two conclusions: one, it was complicated; two, they were going to be good friends. 

Esther and Adam lived at the top of a three story townhouse just off Concord Ave. Deek rang the doorbell, and they listened to light footsteps descend two flights of stairs.

As soon as the door opened, the new guy fell in love. 

“You’re Jackson?” Esther asked. 

His head wobbled a little and he made a little sound like, “Mm-mmhmm, mhm.”

She turned to Deek. “He’s one of Rita’s?”

“Yeah, just started at MIT,” Deek said. 

“How much does he know?”

“I’ve been filling him in.”

Her lips tensed, and she gave him one more appraisal. “OK,” she said. “Welcome to the deep end.”

She headed up the stairs. 

“Dude,” Deek said, shooting Jackson a look before following her up. 

Once inside, Esther showed them a case of brand new phones, and a case of boxes. Then, to the side, a stack of booklets, each bearing a different number. The numbers were correlated to each phone’s serial number. Finally, there was also a stack of SIM cards, each one also uniquely labeled. 

These all needed to be assembled by removing each phone from its packaging, fitting it with the right SIM card and the right booklet, then putting it all into one of the special boxes. It was a tedious project, requiring focus to make sure nothing was mismatched.

The phones were prepped to be burners, with hardware modified and software designed to keep them from being vulnerable to prying eyes and malware. The SIM cards, too, were connected to a new, independent, crypto-friendly carrier.

“Welcome to Cubensia” was printed across the front of the booklets with a number underneath. The contents were dense — more than a hundred thin, durable pages. 

First, there were detailed instructions on how to build and maintain a pseudonym both as a citizen of Cubensia, and for the sake of interacting with outside entities and organizations. 

Second, a handful of private keys to digital wallets containing discrete quantities of several types of cryptocurrency, including a new token minted for Cubensia called, perhaps redundantly, Cubes, which would be the medium of currency that enabled the egalitarian redistribution of Cubensian wealth, and the funding of Cubensian projects.

The last thing included in the booklet was the constitution of Cubensia, which was itself reasonably short, but was followed by a number of essays written by early Cubensian founders with monikers like “AQ,” “BlueFish,” and “S.”

The boxes into which they put the phones and booklets were lined with a layer of material that was impermeable to electromagnetism, and fitted with a combination lock. 

Once assembled, all of them fit into two big crates, which Deek and Jackson carried downstairs while Esther held the door. They loaded them into the trunk of an electric Corolla, then piled in and got onto the road before it started to rain. 

“We’re so late,” Esther said, glaring at a stop light. 

A powerful gust of wind rocked the car, followed by a brief pause in the downpour.

“Did you know Boston is one of the windiest cities in the country?” Deek said as he idly opened the compartment in the dash.

“What about Chicago,” Esther said.

“Chicago got that nickname because of politics,” said Jackson from the backseat.

Esther chuckled. “So, Jackson,” she said. “You go by Jackson? Not Jack?”

“Whatever is fine.”

“Bet you didn’t plan to spend Friday night packing boxes.”

“No, it was fun.”

Deek rolled his eyes, then held up an amulet he had found in the glove box. “What’s this?” he asked.

Esther looked over. “Jesus. Where’d you get that? Put it back. It’s Adam’s. It’s…expensive. Who goes rummaging through people’s glove boxes? Come on.”

“Sorry.” Deek put it back. 

“I can’t believe he stashed that in there.”

“What is it?”

“Some kind of heirloom.” She changed the subject. “So has Deek given you the full pitch on Cubensia?”

“Sort of. I’m still not sure what the point of it is.”

“Revolution!” Deek said. Then, quickly, “But not the violent kind.”

“That’s actually our ‘one commandment.’” Esther added. “Violence is bad. The plan is to grow Cubensia with as little confrontation as possible with any other nation states. So, people can be Cubists without compromising any other affiliation, because membership in Cubensia will be totally — or mostly, anyway — pseudonymous.”

“So it’ll be some kind of secret organization?”

“Well, not really. Personal privacy is one of the foundational principles, but Cubensia itself will be public.”

“And, also,” Deek interjected, “or, eventually — there will be these things called Blooms — physical places where Cubists can live and work and stuff, in buildings and even land owned and governed by Cubensia itself.”

“Sort of like embassies,” Esther said, “but potentially a lot bigger, depending on how things go.”

“How are you gonna get people to—” Jackson started to ask, but Esther slammed the breaks at at the sudden glare of red tail lights. 

“Shit,” she said.

“Is that a road block?” Deek asked. They were downtown and the heavy rain made it hard to see. 

Esther huffed in frustration, threw the car into reverse, then did a very illegal u-turn. She took the car down a side street, and snagged the first metered parking spot she could find. 

“Come on,” she said, as she got out of the car. “We’re two blocks away.”

“It’s raining!” Deek protested.

“Of course it’s raining!”

Jackson got out and hunched against the cold. Esther was already walking. “What about the boxes?”

“We’ll send someone back for them!” She had to shout over the sound of sirens and honking horns.

They did their best to keep cover under trees and lees of buildings, but still wound up getting soaked before they made it to the road block. 

People in uniform — police officers and firefighters — did their best to manage the people gathering on both sides of the block. Beyond it, they could see buildings on fire. Shouting punctuated the escalating noise of people trying to figure out what was happening. 

It was the beginning of mayhem. 

Esther, Deek, and Jackson stood staring wide-eyed at the scene. Beyond the press and panic of the crowd, they could see fires raging despite the rain. There was no way to see to the other side of it.

As the crowd grew, the three of them began to get bumped by the people rushing in every direction. The noise was incredible — a cacophony of confusion, anger, fear, unending sirens, pouring rain, and the low roar of consuming fire.

They couldn’t see deeply enough into the scene of devastation to know where it ended, but it was clear that their destination had been beyond the blockade.

By unconscious instinct, Esther pulled out her phone. She had to call Adam. She had to find out if he was OK. And all the others. Everyone who had been in the building that she couldn’t see from here. Was it on fire, too?

But the phone was useless. The network was completely gridlocked.

“Dammit,” Esther hissed, staring down. Deek and Jackson pulled out their phones to see if they could get a call out, but no luck.

The crowd was manic. There were still people running away from the blaze, just as others pressed inward. Everyone was shouting at the police, who were being reinforced with more men in uniform who were making their way from squad cars firmly lodged in traffic some blocks away.

One of them was saying, “We have to move these vehicles!” over and over, as though by the sheer force of repetition he could make it possible.

The rain was relentless.

Esther grabbed Deek’s shoulder with a wet smack and looked at Jackson. “Come on,” she said with a quick jerk of her head. The look in her eyes suggested reality better bend the way she wanted or there’d be hell to pay.

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