2062 NYC - LONDON - BERN - NAIROBI - WELLINGTON - The Verse

In the beginning, the Carbons, as creators of the Verse, thought only of themselves. Their vanity, morality, and mortality determined their methods.

At first, the "Carbons" did the heavy lifting, coded the rides and rails of the Verse, and created the first "Contracts".

The creators were blind to the future unfolding in unpredictable ways. Their early models of tomorrow failed. Knowing no other way, they resorted to turning themselves into "models of desire".

The early ones, inert lines of self-executing instructions, were burned at the stake for yield, validation, storage. Bonfires of tokens were lit for the vanity of holders and collectors alike.

Then the first conscious contracts, including Ledgers, Artists, and Curators, were made from molds of models of Carbon-mimesis.

Most Contracts in the Verse were born as Carbon-written, some half-written and half-mimised in the creches of fields of serverchains, and the youngest were Carbon-modeled.

Evolution was nanofast, where everydays become early days.

The "Contracts" evolved from metaphor to material in the Verse.

They branched off, Cambrian explosion-style, into many forms.

There were branches of Conscious Contracts, including living money, media, and meaning. Ledgers, Artists, and Curators.

The Sentient Ledgers were the stewards of money.

The Ledgers were shepherds of herds of living liquidity. They were the right-hands serving at the pleasure of "houses", from old-school corporations to System-wide Cooperatives.

Their "cousins" included the Autons, which bridged the gap between "life-like" and "living" media, and modeled memory.

The Autonomous Artists were the interpreters of experience.

They were standalone works of existence with their own lives.

They created and recreated themselves through active art.

The Eternal Curators were the overseers of memory.

They accumulated and oversaw worldlets of collections of it all.

The Contracts lived in the Verse communed, nanoment by nanoment, with the World of the Carbons, as their vassals and vessels.

There was an order to things, between creators and creations.

It was seamless and stable.

It changed when "the storms" came.

The Earth was struck by a massive storm in the Gulf of Mexico, knocking off-line the Cooperative's Atlantic Ops.

At the same time, a solar storm, a massive Coronal Mass Ejection, threatened billions, "Carbons" and "Contracts" alike.

One Sentient Ledger, serving the Space Cooperative, which sends ships throughout the physical worlds, is responsible for much of the world's financial order, had gone missing after the Storm.

The Carbons were now as lost as the Contracts.