”Your teeth are amazing so they are” said a woman with terrible teeth. Half an hour after finishing work John was still waiting on the fifty-four. The route connected two of the worst parts of the city and those riding it frequently littered and graffitied. So First Bus deployed the shabbiest rolling stock on that route. These older buses often struggled, especially in the winter, hence the wait.

Another bus missed its appointment. John escaped the woman's chatter and crossed the road. The pub would be warm, and there he could drink enough to forget about the cost of a taxi home.

There were few there, befitting half-nine on a Monday night, so he sat at the bar. “Awright, pal. How's it going? The usual, aye?” asked the barman. “Aye, the usual. No bad I suppose. Two sales today. Keeps them off my back.”

“I tell you, John. You need to get in the crypto game. Bitcoin's up, Ethereum's up. I'm making as much from that as I am here. Passive income. Crypto's the future. Get on board before you're too late and get out of that call centre.”

John wasn’t listening. He had a habit of converting the many facets of someone's personality into a single value: good, bad or indifferent. Despite the barman’s many virtues, he had been deemed bad. His taste in music and fashion didn’t align with John’s and the barman’s success with women didn’t help either. Because of this verdict John dismissed the argument for blockchain technology, thinking it a pathetic attempt to impress others. “Nah, not for me. I don't understand how that stuff works and I'm not putting money into something I don't understand.”

As he lay in bed that night processing the alcohol, a mantra ran though his mind: Hi, I'm John calling from Alliance Telecom. Have you ever thought about changing your phone provider?

Soon after that trip to the pub he'd quit the call centre. It was a point of principle. His bosses couldn't comprehend why he'd make such a fuss over a small thing like cigarette breaks. Neither did John really, oblivious to the months of compounding frustration.

It was a tough six weeks of unemployment. Six weeks of instant noodles, depression and borrowing cash from friends. When he finally landed a receptionist job he vowed that never again would he find himself in that position. From the next payslip forward he'd always have something put aside, something in the bank to weather the storm. The sea is never calm after all.

He found being a receptionist easy. The good telephone manner and salesman's charm he'd unwittingly developed at the call centre meant he was good at it. When his contract was made permanent it came with a fifty pence raise.

It was tough saving money. The tendency to fritter it away on booze, clothes or gigs was hard to shake, and when he finally shook it he didn't know what to do with himself. That's when he began writing again. He'd sit with a book while eating his sandwiches and in quieter moments stories of his own would coalesce. When he got home he'd scribble notes which would later expand into prose. Some reflected the struggles of his mundane life, others documented his fantastical daydreams of wish-fulfilment.

His savings accumulated in an account with near zero interest. “Put your money to work” was what the barman had said, and finally John started taking crypto seriously.

He became convinced it was the future, but not being technically minded John steered clear of altcoins. The mechanism underpinning a DeFi protocol or L2 blockchain was as incomprehensible to him as that of an nuclear power station. He was never confident in backing Aave over Maker, or UniSwap over Curve.

Two years later NFT summer arrived: Cryptopunks, Chromie Squiggles, Bored Apes. As with cryptocurrency John first wrote it off as something he didn't understand. But they kept appearing in his feed. Realising he was making the same mistake again he spent hours in the space until it finally clicked: the power of digital art, the joy of discovery, the sense of community. He didn't need to read technical posts about zk-SNARKs or bridging solutions. Within a few seconds of looking at a piece he could assign it a value: good, bad or indifferent.

His own art had been struggling. Acquaintances said they wanted to read his work, but they either never got round to it or were scared of being honest with the feedback. Every now and again he submitted a piece to a journal or competition but was lucky to get a letter of rejection. It’s okay though, he said at night, I write for myself first, others second.

It was a busy Friday behind the desk when the thought came to him. One of those moments of creativity where you flip between thinking you're a genius and a fraud. In his mind the idea took all directions before eventually choosing a path then running down it. Ten minutes later he grabbed a pen and wrote one word on his hand.

As soon as John arrived home he opened his laptop, created a document and typed that one word:

Genesis

[image by scottishduck on flickr, used under CC BY-NC 2.0 license]