The Blockchain Winter and the Tale of the Future Monkey — Part III
By John Wolpert on ALTCOIN MAGAZINE
Part 3 of 4 (Read Part 1…Part 2…Part 4)
“Have an Apple,” Steve heard someone say as he awoke. The light and warmth of the sun shone on him, and he squinted his eyes, then suddenly opened them wide. To his surprise, he lay perched on a wide branch set high up in a lone deodar tree rooted to the side of a cliff. The mists below it billowed and stretched as far as the eye could see, out toward the afternoon sun. The cliff rose from the mists and kept climbing past the cedar to unfathomable heights.
“Welcome to Seb Mountain, Steve,” said the voice. “What brings you to Devabhumi?”
A violet-blue monkey sat motionless, looking away at the very end of the branch. With a quick flick of its paw, it sent a glistening red apple arching over its intricately tattooed shoulder and into the starving wanderer’s hand.
“Have an apple,” the monkey repeated.
“I was trying to find some kaaphal fruit,” Steve stammered as he bit into the apple.
“Ah…your timing is off,” said the monkey, still looking away toward the horizon. “This is not the season for the kaaphal.”
Then the monkey turned and sat facing Steve, showing off a beard of spiky red and gold hair. “I am the Bhavisi,” he said.
Steve munched the apple and said, “Hi Bhavisi.”
“The Bhavisi,” the monkey repeated.
Steve could feel the strength returning to him with every bite of the delicious apple. With it returned his boundless curiosity. “When did the kaaphal season end, Bhavisi?”
“I do not know when it ended. I am the Bhavisi. I only see forward. The season will come in…” The monkey paused and closed his eyes. The markings on his short blue fur began to move. Dots melted into wavy lines, crisscrossing every inch of his body.
Then he opened his eyes. “Ten suns after the toad jumps in the stream.”
“What’s that?” Steve asked.
“If you want to pick the first ripe fruit of the kaaphal, stand by the pool at the base of this mountain and wait for the red-spotted toad to leap into the stream, and then wait ten days.”
“Um…thanks Bhavisi, but…”
“The Bhavisi!”
“Right, so Bhavisi how many days until your frog jumps into the stream?”
“A month, a year, perhaps two, possibly never again,” Bhavisi replied.
“Wait, man…”
“The Bhavisi,” the monkey said again, cocking an eyebrow.
“Bhavisi, that’s ridiculous.”
The monkey briefly considered throwing some poo at the foolish American, but then relaxed and laughed to himself. This human might be annoying and stupid, but it lived almost entirely in the future. They had that in common. And clearly this Steve person hadn’t bathed in a long time and smelled positively simian. So they had that in common, too.
“The toad is an anchor in the stream,” Bhavisi said and pointed to a spot on the right side of his chest. A golden circle marked the intersection of many wavy lines. From it a single straight line ran a few inches before breaking apart into many wavy lines again. They diverged and ran out of sight around the monkey’s side.
Steve took another bite from the apple casually, unfazed that he was having a metaphysical conversation with a blue monkey on a mystic mountainside. This was what he had come for. What he had imagined. And what he had intended to get. He was also aware of the ability of fat cells to store LSD and “drop” it on you at any moment.
“Why do the lines come together just at these spots, and why do they fall apart like that?”
“The universe is dented,” Bhavisi replied.
“Dented?”
“Yes. I was there but don’t remember what happened,” Bhavisi said. “The fabric of the universe is perturbed, and I am now just a monkey.”
Steve looked closer at the monkey’s fur. “So, the universe was all straight lines, and now it’s dented into all these wavy lines?”
“No,” Bhavisi replied. “The opposite. The fabric of probability now has all these dents of determinism in it. The circles, the straight lines.”
“Well, I didn’t need any animated tattoos to know that I would get what I was looking for, coming here.”
“You were looking for a monkey on a mountain?” Bhavisi asked. “I thought you were looking for kaaphal fruit.”
“I was looking for my future.”
“I am the Bhavisi, the Future Monkey,” exclaimed Bhavisi. “But you don’t need me…you need a psychologist to tend your ego.”
“No…I can see this place…this moment…it’s the circle, the anchor. I know exactly what’s going to happen from here. I’m going to change the world. What did you say before?”
“I don’t know. I don’t remember the past…”
“You said the universe is dented. My car was dented once. You know how you fix a dent? You dent it again from the inside. I’m going to put a dent in the universe!”
The monkey closed his eyes. The dots on his body melted again into lines. Circles appeared and disappeared. Then he opened his eyes.
“You will succeed,” Bhavisi said, four-thousand one-hundred and seven suns from the moment of your greatest failure. That is when you will make a reasonably sized ‘dent’, as you say. Watch for this moment.”
“I have no intention to fail at anything,” Steve said.
“Then I pity you. It will all be much harder for you. The anchor will be difficult for you to see.”
“So that’s it? I nearly starve and all I get is an acid flashback and some advice from a monkey?”
“I am the Bhavisi. And while I’m strangely fond of you, you are really annoying. So yes, this is ‘it’.”
Then Bhavisi pulled from a knot in the deodar branch a wad of papers and handed them to Steve.
“Here’s some cash and the passport you lost in Chandigarh,” he said nonchalantly. “Go home now. And by the way, there is another Steve, only dumpier and smarter than you. A friend of yours, I see. You have those?”
“Woz,” Steve murmured.
“You might want to look him up when you get home. He is the toad who jumps.”
And with that, the mists below the branch rose up, obscuring the monkey, the branch and the cliff. As the air cleared again, Steve found himself standing in front of the mystic arch clutching a wad of cash, enough to get him to an airport.
And so the foolish American returned home, found his leaping toad, jumped into the history books…and promptly made a mess of things.
