BEYOND BITCOIN. The Future of Digital Currency. CloudCoinWiki Part III / CloudCoin for Beginners

What are CloudCoins?

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The First-Ever Cloud-Based Digital Currency and is not a CryptoCurrency.

CloudCoins provide a theoretically "perfect” Global Digital Currency that cannot be counterfeited, double-spent, mined or lost. Your exchanges are 100% private, requiring no public ledgers, accounts, or even encryption. CloudCoins form a monetary system that is absolutely fair and ethical and requires no special software or downloads, and, like the Internet itself, cannot be brought down by governments, hackers or even nuclear weapons. This level of security is provided by the patented RAIDA technology.

CloudCoins are composed of codes embedded in files, stored on paper or remembered in your mind. These codes can only be used once and then they change making it so that CloudCoins cannot be counterfeited, mined, double-spent or destroyed.

When CloudCoins are spent they are authenticated by the RAIDA which changes there authenticity numbers so that only the new owners knows them. This authentication process takes place in parallel where the users Internet browser (such as Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari) contact twenty five Clouds of servers (all at once instantly). Because each RAIDA authenticator has only one state - CloudCoins cannot be double-spent.

CloudCoins consist of 3,200 bits of secret data that only the owner knows. These bits are written into jpg images or in text files that can be stored on your computer and sent to your people by Client Software, Email, Skype, SMS, Facebook or even by regular old paper mail.

How to use CloudCoins

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When you want to buy something, you will share the secret numbers with the seller. Now you and the seller know the numbers. Anyone who has the numbers can change the numbers using the RAIDA. There are servers on the Internet that work with other servers to create fault-tolerant storage systems called Clouds. The RAIDA is made up of 25 Clouds located all around the world in different jurisdictions and run by independent RAIDA administrators.

The goal at the CloudCoin Consortium is to make a digital currency accessible and usable for everyone regardless of experience. We believe that a digital currency should be easy to use by people from every walk of life as well as have the best security and privacy available anywhere.

If I send my friend a CloudCoin who lives in another country thousands of miles away, only RAIDA knows money has moved from one person to another. It doesn’t keep a transaction record and both sender and receiver have the benefit of the same kind of anonymity that they would have with a paper currency … actually better. With the newest developments resulting from RAIDAtech research, CloudCoins can be certified as being true before you send them and before you accept them. This ensures that there is no question of what was sent and that everything is legitimate.

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We create the NEW CloudCoin Wallet Software with "Trusted Transfer" technology which is also known as the SkyWallet. Trusted Transfer will not allow you to send counterfeit coins. Trusted Transfer will not allow you to receive counterfeit coins. This means that we can send and receive coins without any risk of someone falsely claiming that they received counterfeit coins. You can certainly use Trusted Transfer whenever you send coins to someone you do not trust.

You do not have to provide any private information to send money. To send money, you do not even need to register or become a member with a username and password. Sending money is completely anonymous.

However, receiving money requires that you have wallet which contains a CloudCoin. When you set up a SkyWallet with a CloudCoin you can use it to securely send and receive CloudCoins with another person without even needing to use email.

You can associate a friendly name with the CloudCoin serial number that is used in your wallet and personal DNS server, and you can have a DNS server of your choice. Right now, the development team is offering names on the Skywallet.cc domain for free.

In addition to having a Sky Wallet, you have a personal wallet. This is where you keep your CloudCoins and manage your accounts. Inside your personal wallet, you can have multiple sub-wallets to use for different purposes. You might want one for business and one for personal needs. You might want another for savings or for the kids. There are many possible uses. The wallets and sub-wallets look much like an online checking account that has a section for checking, another for savings, another for credit accounts, etc. There are developments in progress that will allow you to automatically transfer data to spreadsheets and to automatically set up payment schedules and send funds on the dates you select. Again, this is much like an on-line banking system. Since the goal of CloudCoin is to have a perfect currency, CloudCoin will always be working to increase functionality and usability.

As an option, if you register an email for your account, you can avail yourself of the immediate lost coin retrieval service that is now in place. You do not need to provide your real name, and we suggest that you use an encrypted email service such as Protonmail.com that you can open free of charge.

An encrypted email account also allows us to send you notifications and important updates.

The CloudCoin wallet is easy to use.

What is the RAIDA

RAIDA: (Redundant Array of Independent Detection Agents)
The Indestructible Global Counterfeit detection system used by CloudCoin, it cannot be tampered with or hacked. It is made up of 25 independent RAIDA network administrators (Sentinels) which guard as many as 800 Independent Detection Agents.

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The RAIDA was designed to be a Global Counterfeit detection system. RAIDA is Quantum safe, self-healing, simple, fast and reliable, the RAIDA can detect the authenticity of a CloudCoin within milliseconds.

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RAIDA operates at least 41,000 times more efficiently than legacy blockchains and has no built-in fees.

The RAIDA technology can be used for lots of other things in addition to CloudCoin.

RAIDA is ideal for any enterprise exploring blockchain but disheartened by blockchain's shortcomings. RAIDA is more scalable, faster, more secure, more affordable and eco-friendlier.

Unfortunately, the hype surrounding the blockchain has not been the reality. As I said earlier, if it was all that it was claimed to be there would not be a need for something like RAIDA and CloudCoin.

But to be fair, blockchain does have some major advantages over older centralized systems and there are some definite uses where it could be of value. But blockchain technology has been hampered by the inability to work on larger scales, its unreasonable transactional times, and its overly complex and time-consuming consensus paradigms.

To put this into perspective, even though blockchain is still in its infancy, less than about 1% of the population have wallets, let alone use them on a consistent daily basis. Large blockchain applications are already consuming more electricity each day than is used by many nations. That is very expensive, and is already immensely harmful to the environment. That’s not to say that there hasn’t been progress made in the application of distributed ledger technology, because there has been, as evidenced by the hundreds of different variations that have popped up to solve one problem or another. But overall the improvements have not come close to solving blockchains' fundamental weaknesses.

How is the value of the coins determined

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The market cap should probably be based on how many coins are in circulation and not how many coins have been created. This is the more conservative approach.

No one individual sets the value of CloudCoin. They are worth different amounts to different people and this value can change dramatically over time. Right now CloudCoins are worth something to some people. The value of CloudCoin will always be based on Supply and Demand. There is no limit to how high or how low CloudCoin can be worth. The value is set by the Market.

How to store the CloudCoins safely

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You can leave the CloudCoin in ProtonMail because it is encrypted and safe. Alternatively you can copy the cloudcoins to USB pendrives and one external HDD with copies of your CloudCoins for safer-side and most important. We propose to keep the USB pen drives in a hard box safely to avoid any damages, USB drives people tend to use roughly and loose it or damage it.

Frequently Asked Questions...

Can one export in 100s denomination if they only have 250 denomination?
CloudCoin has successfully implemented a first-in-history digital "change" system. This allows us to have a discrete digital currency that uses different denominations efficiently. Suppose you are selling something for 245 CloudCoins but all I have is a 250 CloudCoin note? Not exact change. We can tell my CloudCoin wallet to send 245 and the wallet will automatically go to a public change service (of your choice) and have the 250 broken down into smaller denominations. Then the wallet will send the 245. You will receive your money within four seconds. No logins or accounts required. It took us two years and four different methods to make it work but now it is done for works excellent! Our dedication and work has made this possible! We can all be proud to be part of this historically significant breakthrough.

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Is there an iPhone app yet? 
We have a web application that it seems we can convert to an Android and iPhone app. It allows someone to get a free CloudCoin by signing up for our email list and then use that cloudcoin as a CloudBank address or Skywallet.cc address. Then they can receive and send CloudCoins very easily. The application will allow people to turn a QR code into a CloudCoin. So imagine that you open a box of cookies. At the bottom is a QR code. You scan the code and now you have CloudCoins in your phone. This will be the easiest system ever. For now you can use the WebSafe option for iPhone.

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Hello, I bought a Cloudcoins want to ask! The coins will be widely used anywhere or traded on stock exchanges? Is the price of them will grow without bidding?
Developers are near to finalizing the business logic of a peer-to-peer exchange for CloudCoin and other RAIDA-based assets. The next steps include designing interfaces and graphical elements and incorporating payment systems. The P2P exchange will be one of two types of exchanges expected to launch soon.

New Roadmap for Liquidity is almost developed. This is a plan that will allow anyone to convert anything to cloud coin and visa versa. This plan depends on the CloudCoin Wallet to or a web-client to work. Once we have this and the CloudCoin Wallet, we can go gang busters on liquidity. Liquidity breeds liquidity so we will provide all the tools to make it easy.

CloudCoins are much easier to exchange than other electronic currencies. We expect CloudCoins to be widely accepted in short time because they are so much better than cryptocurrencies. Soon you will be happily benefits the good result of buying CloudCoin.

You do not rely on a "public ledger". You do not need exchanges. With CloudCoin there are many options. You can use Skype or another face-to-face software to share a desktop and transact. You can send them over email, Facebook or USB drive. You can buy and sell them instantly with PayPal. You can use your cell phone and you do not need to be a smarty with computers or software. If you trust the people you are doing business with, you do not even need a computer.

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Are the transactions private?
It's totally private and 100% Anonymous (Unique to CloudCoin)! With CloudCoin, there is no information linked to users. The only data RAIDA records is the last year and month (not the day or time) a unit was spent and this information is overwritten every time the unit is spent. It is impossible to link any person to any expenditure.

Can I know how trusted is RAIDA?
The essence of money is that it cannot be counterfeited. The purpose of money is to help us economize. The value of money is based on its physical and logical integrity (trust). CloudCoin take trust to the highest level ever. Using the patented RAIDA technologies (The patent is to keep others from locking us out of the technology), independent system administrators from all around the world leverage thousands of servers and networks to create an unbreakable system that nobody and nothing can dictate. Note that the RAIDA does not create, store, transmit, track or broker CloudCoins or eCurrency. The only function of the each RAIDA Cloud is to detect the authenticity of a CloudCoin.

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How secure thus RAIDA against any attacks?
We start by building on the TCP/IP protocol that forms the Internet. This technology was developed in order to allow messaging even while nuclear bombs wipe out major parts of the world's communication networks. TPC/IP is a nuclear-proof technology. The Internet has never gone down on a global scale.

Do you have other Technology used in RAIDA to insure the security of Cloudcoin?
On top of this, we use SSL technology. HTTPS SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) is the standard security technology for establishing an encrypted link between a web server and a browser. This link ensures that all data passed between the web server and browsers remain private and integral. SSL allows you to know that the servers you connect to are in fact the servers that you want to connect to. RAIDA only uses HTTP Strict Transport Security and only passes data that is impossible to infer. RAIDA's HTTPS usage is scientifically un-hackable and there are no known vulnerabilities.

I observed that you are using CDN may I know what it is and its functions?
A content delivery network (CDN) is a system of distributed servers (network) that deliver Web pages and other Web content to a user based on the geographic location of the user, the origin of the web page and a content delivery server. Our CDN also provides DDoS protection (our enterprise-class DDoS protection network has 20 times more capacity than the largest DDoS attack ever recorded.)

Can you tell me the structure of CLOUDCOIN?
Each CloudCoin has 400 bytes of random numbers embedded in them. These 400 bytes are divided into 25 slices (also called stripes). Each slice of numbers is called an AN (Authenticity Number). There are 25 RAIDA clouds called Sentinels who provide RAIDA Resolution. Each of these Sentinels is dedicated to handling one of the CloudCoin's authenticity numbers. Each Sentinels knows the secret locations (IP addresses) of 32 RAIDA clusters (Detection Agents). Each of the 32 RAIDA clusters is designed to handle one or more of the "Shards." There are a total of 800 RAIDA Shards and 25 RAIDA Sentinels per RAIDA network.

How strong is RAIDA from highly trained hackers?
Each RAIDA network is composed of many redundant servers, networks and databases. Such arrangements of hardware are often referred to as Clouds. No matter what components fail or are attacked, the system keeps going. The databases are mirrored in several different physical locations. There are teams of Web servers for high availability. Multiple locations allow for catastrophic failures (such as a meteor strike), yet the system can stay operational. It is highly likely that the RAIDA Clouds will become the target of thousands of highly trained hackers from around the world. Governments may move to suppress RAIDA servers. It is also likely that the RAIDA will be targeted for Denial-of-Service attacks by the worst attackers imaginable. However, the RAIDA Clouds will survive.

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How does RAIDA Self-Repair Protocol (Triple Kerberos) functions?
Sometimes, the Sentinels will be unavailable. When unavailable, Sentinels are restored or replaced. The CloudCoins can repair them because all the authenticity data is stored in the CloudCoins themselves. The repair protocol cloud be called "Triple Kerberos" because it uses three tickets. Kerberos is a network authentication protocol that works on the basis of 'tickets' to allow nodes communicating over a non-secure network to prove their identity to one another in a secure manner. It is designed to provide strong authentication for client/server applications by using secret-key cryptography. RAIDA does everything that Blockchain does, only much faster, more reliably and far more efficiently. RAIDA is scalable and more nodes and networks can be brought on to perform all the world's transactions within milliseconds. Work is distributed among more nodes instead of requiring each node to do more work (like Blockchain). The cost of operating one network is $40,000 per month as the requirements for the servers are very small. All data can be stored in RAM. RAIDA is 100% quantum-safe and does not use encryption. The system is fault-tolerant and can withstand government attacks, natural disasters, hackers and even internal subversion. RAIDA is ready for retail and does not require any client download except for a Web page or small client software (under 1 megabyte)

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How do Independent Detection Agents works?
Each Sentinel and Detection Agent is controlled by a different person. Each Sentinel may use a different algorithm for dividing the load among the Detection Agents. Some Sentinels may shard (divide by rows) the CloudCoin authentication data between the Detection Agents. Some Sentinels may use a hash or random lookup table to divide the load. Detection Agents may not know the serial numbers of the CloudCoins that they are detecting. When random lookup tables are used, it is impossible for RAIDA administrators to assemble the CloudCoins back together. Only Sentinels can do this. Independence: RAIDA Clouds operate under different controllers not beholden to each other but instead are peers (equals). They can use whatever technologies they like, such as Linux, Windows, PHP, C#, Java, Apache, Tomcat, IIS, MySQL, Microsoft SQL, Oracle, etc. Distributed: With few exceptions, RAIDA Clouds are located in different liberal nations. The word "Liberal" is used in the classical meaning of the term used by Philosopher John Locke to describe nations that protect life, liberty and property. This guards the RAIDA against the actions of governments. Because the speed of electricity can circle the globe in milliseconds, there are no performance issues. Redundant: RAIDA Clouds all do the same basic job. In theory, they could all go down and so long as one still works, the CloudCoins are good. Fixability: It is assumed that RAIDA Clouds will go down completely and have all their data hacked. That is why it is possible to simply discard RAIDA Clouds and rebuild new ones somewhere else. The CloudCoins themselves hold the data. CloudCoins have a grade based on their redundancy and these grades can be improved by fixing themselves on broken RAIDA Clouds.

What is the function of RAIDA Sentinels?
Each CloudCoin can be sliced into 25 parts. There are 25 sub-clouds (called "crypts"). Each is responsible for one CloudCoin slice. One Sentinel cluster guards each crypt. The Sentinel clusters hide behind Content Management Systems. Sentinels are dispersed around the world in countries that are mostly liberal. The Sentinel IP addresses are hidden and only the Content Management Systems know their IPs. The Sentinels each hold a directory of all the IP addresses of the detection agents in their crypt. Only the Sentinels know the IP addresses of the detection agents so the locations of the detection agents are obscured. The Sentinels will query the Detection Agents on behalf of the CloudCoins to detect Counterfeits and fix fracked coins.

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How fast is RAIDA Authenticity Detection Protocol processing?
The RAIDA protocol is an extremely light protocol that requires only milliseconds to execute, and sends and receives just a few hundred bytes of data. Clients send authenticity requests in parallel to 25 RAIDA clouds. Thanks to the speed of light, it only takes milliseconds for signals to travel to the other-side of the planet and back. Each RAIDA cloud responds with either "pass" or "fail". The RAIDA protocol requires no sessions or cookies. The conditional GET method is used to reduce unnecessary network traffic.

What if you lose your CloudCoins?
If you can remember your serial numbers and the month and year you lost them, they can be recovered if you file a loss claim. We assume that if you know the serial numbers along with the month they were lost, they must be yours if they haven't been spent for two years. So we give them back to you! We recommend use the Backup copy of your CloudCoins, you can find that option in our New Client Software. The Backup - is an exact copy of an original file that can be used to restore information that has been lost, misplaced or erased.

I Lost my coins because of my Antivirus activated what will I do?
Hi, we will make a lost coin report for your issue it will automatically return to your bank after 2 years as a standard processing of a lost coins. And next time kindly deactivate first the antivirus once you will import coin to your bank. Thanks

Hi I tried to save my jpeg file coins in my import file but my computer erroneously got shutdown when I restart my computer my coins was lost already. What will I do?
Good Day don't worry we will try to recover your lost coins. We will try to resend it with you in your ProtonMail just inform me once you had successfully receive you coins. The CloudCoin Consortium recommends that you get a free encrypted ProtonMail.com account. ProtonMail is the only safe way to receive CloudCoins via email.

Hello can you help me I erroneously deleted my jpeg file CloudCoins, is it lost already? 
Don't worry we will try to recover your lost coins and send it in your mail. Please watch our youtube info videos on how to import CloudCoins safely to prevent lost of coins. Thanks.

What will be happened if my hard disk will be burned, i will lost my coins too?
However, if you can record your serial numbers in another place that is safe, then you can tell us that your hard drive burned and we can recover your CloudCoins for you after two years.

If you can recover a “lost” coin after 2 years of not being used then who is to say that someone does not hack the system and call all coins as lost? And at that point the codes can be changed and the coins “recovered” but 2 years is just a number you thought up. This idea seems to create a sinister tone with people. What is the logic behind it all?
The RAIDA is unhackable in the same way that Bitcoin's Blockchain is unhackable. If it was hackable, then it would not be of much use. The RAIDA can recover lost coins in the same way that the Blockchain can create new coins. Does it not sound sinister that the Blockchain pays for itself by allowing so called "miners" to counterfeit new coins? RAIDA miners cannot counterfeit new coins, they can only mine for lost coins. This is a good thing because Bitcoin users have lost between 4 and 6 million Bitcoins permanently. If the amount of coins lost exceeds the coins mined you don't have a currency. The purpose of money is to accurately account how much work each of us has done. Monetary systems are a "proof of work" system. CloudCoin does this better by helping people who lost their coins to recover them. CloudCoin also pays for the infrastructure (So it is free without fees) by allowing RAIDA miners to recover lost coins. Recovering lost coins is a value to our society and worthy of reward.

Would you describe this coin as decentralized? Since coins can be recovered there must be a central point that where that data is stored.
CloudCoin is decentralized. There is no center to CloudCoins that if taken out would destroy the coins. While it is true that RAIDA miners would need to send all their lost CloudCoin shards to have someone put them together, this someone could be anyone. Some shards could be sent to one group, other shards could be sent to another group. The process of putting together lost coins cannot be ended.

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May I know the total minted CloudCoins? and The Units of Some Package Coins?
There are 1,428,160,512 CloudCoins or roughly (1.4 billion). However, like regular money, CloudCoins come in denominations. So there are actually only 16,777,216 CloudCoin notes registered in the RAIDA. The denominations are as follows:

There are 2,097,152 Ones
There are 2,097,152 Fives
There are 2,097,152 Twenty-fives
There are 8,388,608 One-hundreds
There are 2,097,152 Two-Hundred and Fifties.

I have a question from someone that I can’t answer. My understanding is that there were 1.4 billion coins minted. No more. But the FAQs says that there are exactly 16,777,216 units and this cannot be increased or reduced I am presuming that a “Unit” is some package of coins?Can you please clarify?
There are 1,428,160,512 CloudCoins or roughly (1.4 billion). However, like regular money, CloudCoins come in denominations. So there are actually only 16,777,216 CloudCoin notes registered in the RAIDA. The denominations are as follows: • There are 2,097,152 Ones • There are 2,097,152 Fives • There are 2,097,152 Twenty-fives • There are 8,388,608 One-hundreds • There are 2,097,152 Two-Hundred and Fifties. Let me know if you have any more questions or concerns.

Hello, may I know if CloudCoins cannot be counterfeited or double-spent. How it works?
Yes, CloudCoins are composed of codes embedded in files, stored on paper or remembered in your mind. These codes can only be used once and then they change making it so that CloudCoins cannot be counterfeited, mined, double-spent or destroyed. The total amount of CloudCoins in the cloud never changes - except if CloudCoin becomes too valuable and then everyone's CloudCoin is doubled. Unlike Bitcoins that can are mined into existence, CloudCoins were minted and then the mint was destroyed. There are exactly 16,777,216 units and this cannot be increased or reduced because the number is based on the length of the Serial Number in bits. When CloudCoins are spent they are authenticated by the RAIDA which changes there authenticity numbers so that only the new owners knows them. This authentication process takes place in parallel where the users Internet browser (such as Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari) contact twenty five Clouds of servers (all at once instantly). Because each RAIDA authenticator has only one state - CloudCoins cannot be double-spent unlike Bitcoins which have beendouble-spent.

Hi Do I need to make an account for CloudCoin for it to be private? can you explain?
No need because Transactions are not tracked in Blockchains! There are no public ledgers! Blockchains such as Bitcoin are Pseudo-Anonymous; you have to create an account and download software as well as a huge public ledger. Your account information is available to the public. All they have to do is link you to the account number by getting at your software. With CloudCoin, there is no information linked to users. The only data RAIDA records is the last year and month (not the day or time) a unit was spent and this information is overwritten every time the unit is spent. It is impossible to link any person to any expenditure.

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Is CloudCoin users friendly is it easy to buy, spend and sell? Do I need to special software for me to used it easily?
You don't rely on a "public ledger." You don't need exchanges. With Bitcoin, you have to create an account and download software as well as a huge public ledger. With CloudCoin there are many options. You can use Skype or another face-to-face software to share a desktop and transact. You can send them over email, Facebook or USB drive. You can buy and sell them instantly with PayPal. You can use your cell phone and you don't need to be a smarty with computers or software. If you trust the people you are doing business with, you don't even need a computer. We also have an easy-to-use classified website so you can sell your products and services for CloudCoins. Make purchases and get work paid in CloudCoins!

Good Day can I ask if CloudCloin must requires encryption?
CloudCoin is the first Cloud Currency and is not a CryptoCurrency. CloudCoin gets its value from 400 byes of random numbers embedded in JPEGs or text files. A less secure option is to store your CloudCoins on paper by printing them as Barcodes or QRs, or by remembering them as a passphrase in your head. These numbers can be checked for authenticity by RAIDA (Redundant Array of Independent Detection Agents) technology. RAIDA is the world's first decentralized authentication system. It is distributed among over 25 different countries and governed by the CloudCoin Consortium, an independent consortium of members using a patent-pending revolutionary process. Clouds are highly redundant stores of data that can survive huge attacks without going down. We place clouds in Taiwan, Japan, Philippines, Australia, Canada, US, Mexico, Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Britain, Sweden, France, Germany, Switzerland, Greece, Italy, Russia, Romania, Hungary, India and South Africa. They could all go down and so long as one still remains, the CloudCoins are safe. If and when they do go down, they can be replaced and repaired.The data is actually stored within the CloudCoins themselves and each CloudCoin has the ability to heal any servers that may fail.

Was CloudCoin can be steal or lost compare to bitcoin?
Bitcoins can be stolen. CloudCoins can, too, but not if you encrypt them! Unlike the Bitcoins that are stolen over the Internet, CloudCoins can be backed up and encrypted so that they are worthless to any would-be hacker and the owner is protected. Why is it that all data in the world can be protected from theft by encryption except for CryptoCurrencies? But what if you lose your CloudCoins? If you can remember your serial numbers and the month and year you lost them, they can be recovered if you file a loss claim. We assume that if you know the serial numbers along with the month they were lost, they must be yours if they haven't been spent for two years. So we give them back to you!

What was the infrastructure of CloudCoin?
The infrastructure of CloudCoin is self-funded by allowing Quorum members to jointly scavenge lost CloudCoins (CloudCoins that have not been spent or checked in years) to pay for their operations. How it works? This feature also allows you to recover your lost CloudCoins. If you lose your CloudCoins, put in a Loss Report and if the CloudCoins are not spent within two years, you can reclaim them! Unclaimed lost CloudCoins pay for the system. Every time someone takes ownership of CloudCoins, the month and year is stamped on each of the 25 RAIDA server data structures. This is the only data that is collected about authentication. The RAIDA servers are independent and do not exchange information except for information about CloudCoins that have gone two years without being authenticated. It is assumed that these units have been lost. The RAIDA operators send their data to a central repository where it is put together to recreate the lost CloudCoins. The recovered CloudCoins are then distributed among the 25 Quorum members to pay for their operations. That makes the system free for all forever!

Hi, can i ask if CloudCoin can be embedded to jpg images?
You can make the JPEG any image you like! It's fun! Express yourself! Use them to advertise your services or products. Or you can print them out and stick them in your wallet just like any other money. Want to save them in your brain so no one can hack them? You can do that! Just write the Serial Numbers down and create a sophisticated pass phrase, and don't forget it! You can go to our Web page that allows you to add your CloudCoins to any JPG. Do anything you want with them! You can put as many CloudCoins into any image that you like. Each image is like a wallet.

How Secure is CloudCoin then Bitcoin?
CloudCoin cannot be counterfeited, damage, hacked nor be lose even nuclear bomb cannot destroy it because we are using RAIDA to know more abour RAIDA plese check above data explainer for your info. Bitcoin can be counterfeited or hacked because they are using blockchain that can be manipulated and can be break by Quantum Computers it is design to break encryption and blockchains.

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Is it hard to transact with CloudCoin just like Bitcoin its so hard to download notes it takes me 2 days to finish is it the same with CloudCoin?
No because CloudCoin is Scaleable the more notes you transacts the more fast it can process not like bitcoin it is not scaleable you will take to much time to transact there system.

Hi, may I know if CloudCoin is possible for conscientious attacks? Specially in high level Hacker using high powered servers?
It is not possible for them to hacked because CloudCoin is not Blockchain cryptocurrency like Bitcoin where it is so possible to hacked.

Hi, I'm a Bitcoin investor. I got drain with too much server to invest just to be able to mine bitcoins is it the same with CloudCoin?
Yeah, thats the problem of Bitcoin you need to buy tons of server to be able to transact properly you need much of money to invest but here in CloudCoin is so cheaper you can save much money in CloudCoin because RAIDA is thousand dollar cheaper than Blockchain and more fast and effective. Efficiency is one thing that really sets CloudCoin apart. RAIDA operates at least 41,000 times more efficiently than legacy blockchains and has no built-in fees.

The average Fortune 500 company employs 50,000 workers and their average payroll is $38 million every two weeks. Those companies currently pay at least $1 per employee, per pay period, to their HR people and their banks just to process paychecks or direct deposits. This equates to approximately $1000,000 per month. If they decided to switch to a digital currency, fees would still be close to that level (the average bitcoin transaction fee is $0.64 and could involve a long wait), or about $64,000 per month. With CloudCoin, they could do it totally free while transacting 23,000 times faster and trillions of time more securely. All while promoting environmental responsibility.

For more info you can check our website. Thanks.

Hello what was the difference between bitcoin and CloudCoin in terms of Software required?
In Bitcoin you required a wallet to store you coins but in cloudcoin no special software needed.We are developing a Web page that will allow you to Pown (password-own) your CloudCoins. Until the Web page is finished, you will need to download client software but it is a very quick download.

Good day. I'm a bitcoin holder im so busted in there public ledger is it the same in CloudCoin? Do you need public ledger in all transactions?
There is no public ledger or centralized database in CloudCoin because we are using RAIDA. please see RAIDA details above description.

How was the Privacy of CloudCoin compare to Bitcoin?
CloudCoin is 100% Anonymous and Bitcoin is Pseudonymous / Pseudo-Anonymous. CloudCoin may be the most private currency ever created in human history. This is because there is no public ledger that requires accounts and because CloudCoin can be sent like cash over a computer using encrypted channels.

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Hi guys may I know what are the privacy of CloudCoin?
1. We do not collect any information about anyone.
2. We do not use cookies.
3. Every time a CloudCoin is authenticated, the month and year of the authentication is recorded.
4. If you lose CloudCoins, it may be necessary for you to give us an email address for us to attempt to recover them and return them to you.
5. Other websites, such as classified "Craigslist" types, may collect information in order to allow you to trade with others. These are not our systems.
6. Our Content Delivery Networks (Third Party clouds designed to protect our RAIDA servers) may use cookies but only to make our content download faster, eliminate DDoS attacks and provide you with more security. We will not use this information.

Welcome to the world's first Cloud Currency!

​

https://i.redd.it/7dxx2w5chft31.png

The secrets of money have been discovered.

Monetary systems are, in fact, information systems. They are accounting systems that help humans economize. Like all animals, humans must economize to survive. Monetary systems allow each of us to make decisions to coordinate our actions and to optimize.

Join computer scientist Sean Worthington as he shows you the possible futures of digital currencies. One where prosperity explodes and people live free and in control of their lives. Another future where blockchain socialists track every purchase you make and take your money to give to others.

Read about Worthington's invention: CloudCoin that provides a theoretically "perfect” global currency that cannot be counterfeited, double-spent, mined or lost. With CloudCoin your exchanges are 100% private, requiring no public ledgers, accounts, or even encryption. CloudCoins form a monetary system that is fair and ethical and requires no special software or downloads, and, like the Internet itself, cannot be brought down by governments, hackers or even nuclear weapons.

In this articles, we will explain why people must be interested in digital currencies. We will cover the problems that digital currencies face. And we will tell you how these problems have been solved by this new counterfeit detection system, and how RAIDA technology has been used to create CloudCoin.

​

https://i.redd.it/pnozdl3ehft31.png

Thanks to all that you with us!

To be continued..

[Daily Discussion] Saturday, October 19, 2019

Thread topics include, but are not limited to:

• General discussion related to the day's events
• Technical analysis, trading ideas & strategies
• Quick questions that do not warrant a separate post

Thread guidelines:

• Be excellent to each other.
• Do not make posts outside of the daily thread for the topics mentioned above.

Other ways to interact:

• Get an invite to live chat on our Slack group
• Set your flair to trade pretend money in the Flair Game
• Weekly threads: Newbie Mondays and Fundamentals Fridays
• Altcoins Discussion: Altcoin Discussion

[Altcoin Discussion] Saturday, October 19, 2019

Thread topics include, but are not limited to:

• Discussion related to recent events
• Technical analysis, trading ideas & strategies
• General questions about altcoins

Thread guidelines:

• Be excellent to each other.
• All regular rules for this subreddit apply, except for number 2. This, and only this, thread is exempt from the requirement that all discussion must relate to bitcoin trading.
• This is for high quality discussion of altcoins. All shilling or obvious pumping/dumping behavior will result in an immediate one day ban. This is your only warning.
• No discussion about specific ICOs. Established coins only.

If you're not sure what kind of discussion belongs in this thread, here are some example posts. News, TA, and sentiment analysis are great, too.

Other ways to interact:

• Get an invite to live chat on our Slack group and check out the #altcoins channel
• Daily Discussion for bitcoin only: Daily Discussion
• Prior Altcoin Discussion: Altcoin Discussion

The spot market impact of the Bitcoin halving - A detailed discussion

I am still working on my piece about what the true impact of a "halving" event in terms of the inflation of a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin is. That will come at some point in the future and will be furnishing with a model, rigorous analysis, and plots and things. In the meantime I have some thoughts that I would like to share in what should be about a 15 minute read. I will first present some general background, then a Bearish and Bullish perspective for the halving event. Finally I will share my own opinion about the impact of the halving.

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Background:

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Suppose that Bitcoin as a network has some fundamental fair value. The question about whether the current market respects Bitcoin's fair value is irrelevant, we are just concerned that a fair value for the network is coherent and exists. This discussion will largely focus on how the halving impacts fundamentals despite the opinion that the market might not always respect them.

The current supply is 18M coins, but in practice, is probably closer to about 13M coins given the coins that are believed to be lost / orphaned. In the next twelve years or so, another 3 million coins will be generated which will increase the actual realized supply by about 20%.

The Bitcoin network enjoys security from mining. We can quantify the price of forking Bitcoin and re-writing the ledger as the cost of obtaining a near-majority share of the network's hash power. If we assume that the mining ecosystem today is basically honest or at least interested in the long term success of Bitcoin, then the cost of an adversary (such as some nation-state) to come in and obtain a majority hash power in the network is proportional to how much Bitcoin pay's its miners.

​

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Bearish Perspective:

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From the point of view of miners, an average block is earning about 0.08 BTC from transaction fees these days with a coinbase reward of 12.5 BTC. This means that miners obtain roughly 99.4% of their income from the coinbase reward that inflates the currency, and 0.6% of their income is from transaction fees. That means that the security of the network is being paid for by users who hold the currency via inflation, and not by people who use the currency for transacting.

When the block reward is reduced from 12.5BTC to 6.25BTC, a few things could happen for miners. Let us consider the different possible outcomes:

​

(1) The transaction fees stay roughly the same and so the total income of miners is approximately cut in half (in BTC terms). If the fiat price of Bitcoin remains constant, then this outcome implies that the security (in terms of USD) of the Bitcoin network would also roughly be cut in half.

(2) The total income of miners stays the same in terms of BTC. This implies that the transaction fees will increase by about a factor of 50x as the burden of funding the network's security shifts from those who hold the currency to those who use the currency. The long term vision of the protocol is to eventually fund the network entirely using transaction fees.

(3) The total income of miners in terms of BTC drops, but the transaction fees also increase in a combination of (1) and (2).

​

What gives Bitcoin fundamental value is up to debate, but it stands to reason that the network's value is positively correlated with both its application for payments as well as its security (with respect to censorship) and consistency. Outcome (1) for miners implies that the security of the network will decrease dramatically as a result of the halving event. Outcome (2) suggests that Bitcoin may become extremely expensive to interact with it as transaction fees will grow immensely in terms of BTC which should also negative impact fundamentals.

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Bullish Perspective:

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(4) Perhaps the most obvious bullish argument for the halving is that inflation applies an economic pressure that decreases the value of each unit of currency and so decreasing inflation reduces this pressure. A lot of users choose to think of this pressure as coming from miners selling or "dumping" their coins on the market, but really this is just a matter of supply and demand. If the market capitalization of Bitcoin remains constant, i.e. the market has settled on some fair value for the network, then with each passing day a coin represents a smaller fractional ownership of the network and is therefore worth less.

(5) A bullish counter-point to outcome (1) raised above is that the fundamental value the network derives from mining and security may not be linear. For example, if we double the amount of money that the network spends on mining through new coin production and transaction fees, the network might not be twice as good. At some point, the security of the network is good enough and we have hit diminishing returns on increased spending on mining. If we are currently in that state, where Bitcoin is over-spending on mining, then decreasing that spending to reduce inflation should be a bullish thing.

(6) While not specifically related to the halving event, changes in fundamentals and deflation from lost currency compete with pressure from the inflation rate. Every day as users interact with Bitcoin, coins are lost due to death, faulty hardware, negligence and more. This puts a deflationary pressure on the currency as the effective supply is in constant decline. Additionally, aspects related to the adoption of Bitcoin, its normalization in our society, the regulatory structure surrounding it in major countries and more all contribute to the fundamentals and eventually price. It is possible that the price of Bitcoin is at a delicate tipping point where modest but constant improvements in fundamentals as well as deflation from lost currency is currently very carefully balanced by inflation, and a reduction in inflation will tip the markets into a bull-cycle.

(7) It is entirely possible that the price of Bitcoin is largely inconsiderate of fundamentals. The idea of a currency with a guaranteed fixed supply is both an easy narrative to understand and also emotionally compelling. Cryptocurrency market bull cycles are largely characterized by extreme cases of FOMO and so news about adjustments to inflation seem like a perfect catalyst.

(7.1) Another bullish argument is to recognize that (1) and (2) are both very real concerns that should negatively impact the fundamental value of Bitcoin, but that a bull cycle fueled by the narrative of decreased inflation would cause an increase in the USD price of Bitcoin, and so although miners may be compensated less in terms of BTC, their income in terms of USD may hold constant or even increase, leading to an increase in fundamental network value. This would be a "fake it till you make it" outcome for the halving.

​

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Neutral Perspective:

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(8) In terms of who pays miners for the security that the Bitcoin network enjoys, there is a balance between holders, people who own the currency, and spenders, people who generate transactions on the network that pay fees. At the inception of Bitcoin, holders paid nearly all of the money responsible for funding mining with early transactions being accepted with no fee at all. Eventually, Bitcoin is programmed to operate with mining funded entirely by transaction fees with no inflation imposed upon holders. Somewhere in this spectrum of trade-offs there is an optimal configuration which maximizes the fundamental value of the network.

(9) It is possible that the network is in its most valuable configuration at the limit where transaction fees are entirely responsible for funding security. With each shift towards decreasing the contribution from holders we are inching closer and closer towards a more valuable network. These events will each correspond with an increase in market capitalization.

(10) It is also possible that the final configuration which funds mining exclusively by transaction fees is unstable. The seasonality of Bitcoin transactions along with the increased friction of payments may lead to a network with poor security properties which causes fundamentals and therefore market capitalization to decline. Miners already operate with an unprecedented amount of volatility and perhaps they really depend on their BTC income to be stable in order for their operating risks to make sense. Under these concerns it stands to reason that the most valuable configuration of Bitcoin has some fraction of miner income coming from inflation via new currency generation. Under this assumption, the value of Bitcoin should increase as we approach this configuration and decrease as we move further away, so then the open question is, "Is this optimal configuration in our past, present, or future?"

​

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My Perspective:

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I am partial to (1) playing out, which is that the total revenue in terms of BTC paid to miners for each block after the halving will be only slightly more than half of what they are being paid currently. I believe that this negatively impacts fundamentals and I disagree with (5) in so far I do not believe that Bitcoin has hit significant diminishing returns in network security. I am not confident now that Bitcoin could withstand large scale attacks by nation states and I especially don't believe this in a future where executing such an attack is decreased by a factor of 2.

​

I am also partial to 6 and 7. I believe that generally speaking, the fundamentals of Bitcoin have been monotone increasing, meaning that things have really only gotten better for Bitcoin in the last few years. This does not need to be the case going forward, for example large government regulations could take away from fundamentals as well as attacks against the consistency of the network, but so far these things have not occurred. I also believe that the market for cryptocurrency is largely inconsiderate of fundamentals and so a narrative such as the halving which may not impact them could still be a catalyst for increases of 3x in spot markets. I believe that if this sort of scenario plays out, the effect on price is only temporary and will not be meaningful on longer time-frames (1-2 years). Trading cryptocurrency in the past few years has taught me to never be surprised that the market is not respecting fundamentals for months at a time and I have no idea what the time-frame of this event would look like.

​

I find (10) to also be intriguing. I actually believe that Bitcoin is currently pretty close to an ideal configuration in terms of where miner revenue comes from. I have done some light napkin math on the economics of different inflation configurations, and right now I am not in a position to say if this upcoming halving makes things better or worse, but I am confident that 4 halvings from now in 2032, the network configuration will be less favorable then it is now so we are not too far off.

​

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TLDR: The upcoming halving of Bitcoin may have a number of impacts on the Bitcoin network and therefore spot markets that are both bullish and bearish. My personal opinion is that fundamentals will decline while temporarily the markets improve via trading the halving narrative, but eventually will converge to the decreased fundamentals. I have no idea what the time-frame of this temporary event would look like.

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I would love to hear everyone's opinions about what aspects of the bearish and bullish scenario they see playing out as well as other arguments or points of view I neglected to mention.

Kill the Basilisk

I’ve often wondered if there was anything else I could’ve said to change his mind. That happens with any unsettled argument though I suppose. People always imagine there’s an elusive combination of words and rationales that will open a person’s mind to our way of thinking. Except people are stubborn that’s for sure.

Myself included.

So I’m sure you’d say the real problem was that I wasn’t open enough to his way of thinking. You’d say if I opened my mental door a bit, been more charitable to his point of view, he would’ve responded in kind and I would’ve saved him. Which is wrong. Just as likely perhaps, if not more likely, I would’ve been ensnared by the same delusion which sealed his, well, I’d never call it fate.

But I know you’d claim everything was inevitable all the same.

Let’s get one thing out of the way. Yes, I was Roman Peters’ friend. In fact, I was probably his only friend. His only real friend anyway. Although, I should clarify since my wording isn’t at all clear, that I most certainly was not Roman’s friend when he died. Roman and I had stopped being friends long before his rather public suicide. We had our falling out before his… fall.

Yes, I’ve seen the video.

No, I won’t be sharing the link.

Nobody should watch it. Hell, if those hosting the servers had a modicum of respect or even a shred of sense they’d take down that awful video immediately. Just get rid of it.

Already I can now hear your loud complaints about ‘censorship’ and ‘free speech’. Which is fair. People have a right to know. However I can’t help but feel… I don’t know. It seems as though the ideas people prioritize no longer has anything to do with the ideas themselves. Instead importance is based on who opposes what. Ideas now are little more than mental parasites that feed on blood boiling outrage. The more toxic and viral an idea the more broadly it spreads. Again, I don’t know. Maybe the flame of human enlightenment was always destined to be either smothered by tyranny or choke itself out on its own smoke after sucking out all the air.

Yes yes. I know what you have to say about the inevitable.

Anyway, me shoving my head up my own pretentious ass isn’t convincing you of anything so we should instead go back to Roman.

We met back in early elementary school. Specifically the Catholic school of Father Lloyd Van Tiem, or Flivit if you wanted to annoy the teachers by slurring the acronym.

What you need to understand is that I can’t really remember how Roman and I became friends to begin with. We were too young for the pertinent details to stick. I’d imagine it was the same generic way everyone develops friends at that age though, just a standard confluence of common interests, general proximity, and plain luck.

Inevitable, as you’d say.

Still, there was one moment of our early friendship that I reflect on often.

See, instead of being your standard dinosaur obsessed kid I was a bright eyed Egyptology child. Mummies and pyramids captured my imagination more than T-rexs and velociraptors. Ancient Egypt appealed to me the way I figure the mythic civilizations of Tolkien or Martin might appeal to others. This extended to the Egyptian religious pantheon, many I can still name off the top of my head, like Ra, Bastet, Osiris, Sobek, Horus, Thoth, Isis, Anubis, Maat, and also the lesser goddess Ammut but I’ll come back to her later.

I think I’d just turned 10 when on particular slow school day — remember Catholic school — our teacher, not wanting to put too much effort in before the Easter long weekend, threw on the animated movie: The Prince of Egypt.

Now, I knew it was about the story of Moses freeing the Hebrews from Egypt, so I expected the Egyptians were going to rightly be portrayed poorly. What I didn’t expect was the reaction of my classmates. Part way through the song ‘Playing with the Big Boys,’ the song where the dumb priests use smoke and mirrors to dismiss Moses’ calls for freedom, around then is when I first noticed the glances and occasional snickering.

Apparently the chorus of the evil priests listing the names of the Egyptian gods reminded the class of me. At school, I was rather vocal about my passion for all things Egyptian. Why wouldn’t I be? I was a kid who liked talking about what I liked.

Regardless, I became a pariah after that. Not immediately, but slowly everyone I previously considered my friend just plain stopped being friends with me. They’d treat me like a third wheel, never invite me to anything, even ditch me at recess if I tried to follow them.

Except Roman stuck by me as I drifted further into social irrelevance.

A bit of a loner himself, I think he saw in me an oddball like himself. He was always there. He was always willing to hang out. He always listened to what I had to say. I felt we could talk about anything, in a way I could never talk to my parents or teachers or anyone really.

As close as I thought we were, it wasn’t until middle school that it sunk in how much of an ardent atheist Roman was. He probably kept that pretty quiet going to a religious school.

Hold on. Let me just explain something first. Most people avoid discussing religiosity and ideas about god, (or capital ‘G’ God as I had been taught in religious studies). It’s one of those things that people learn not to talk about. But unlike money and politics, religion is too close to that other taboo we learn never to discuss: death. You undoubtedly prefer this silence.

Which is why I refuse to be silent.

Our class had been taken to church for some ceremony, at the end of grade eight, I forget exactly which one, it might have been Ash Wednesday but I think that would’ve been too solemn and I remember it being a rather boisterous affair. Whatever ritual it was, it had more than just our school in attendance, as I think parents and other members of the community were there as well. On the stage or pulpit, there was a soft-rock band with members ranging from late twenties or early thirties, the lead singer, a mop of molasses coloured hair over a plain crew neck T, was singing a song about how god and they love us all.

I remember thinking it was a sweet sentiment, even if the underlying spiritual message felt uncompelling to my teenage self. The music was fine, the crowd seemed to like it, the worst I would have said was that the performance was inoffensive and benign. Which is hardly much of a critique.

Except Roman, in his ill-fitting sport coat and smiley face graphic-T, smirked remarking, “Oh boy, a budget rock show where the singer says they love me? Oh lawd, I’m really feelin’ the Jesus now.”

I burst out laughing far louder than the wry joke called for. Luckily with the music blaring, the teachers wouldn’t be lecturing me on my disrespect, as only Roman could see my gut busting delight.

That’s it. That’s all it took was that simple comment. After that, I couldn’t help but see the tacky spectacle of it all. How forced and contrived it was, how it mostly just seemed like people were there because of obligation. After all, I was only there because the school made us go. It couldn’t have been much different for everyone else.

I’ve been thinking about that moment more often lately. Did his small remark really change my mind and entire world view? Or was my mind fertile ground for the seed of that idea to take root and grow? Or I’d already believed what I believed and Roman just articulated it in a way that I hadn’t. Or most troubling of all, what if I didn’t really believe in anything and my mind conformed to the words of my one and only friend.

When with Roman, do as the Roman does.

After that, I followed him eagerly into the land of Hitchens, Dawkins, and Harris. Borrowing his books, I started learning everything there was to know about theological philosophy that the teachers at our religious school either refused to tell us or were incapable of discussing themselves. Together, we’d share our thoughts on the bloody history of religions, the Problem of Evil, and how you could never prove a negative like god doesn’t exist. Likewise we’d take turns picking apart the fallacies of Pascal’s Wager, the Ontological Argument, and the Argument of Design.

Those were some of my best memories with Roman. Drinking pop from the fridge in my garage, eating the weird pizzas we’d order from Mad Mike’s pizza aroud the block, playing Halo on the couch and big screen, and all the while talking like were the smartest guys in the world.

As we left our Catholic elementary and middle schools behind, we entered Catholic High School.

I finally started making other friends. A handful of other geeky nerdy guys. They were more interested in pizza and gaming than anything religion though.

Roman seemed indifferent to my new friends. He was far more preoccupied fighting with Mr. Bauer, the school’s most openly devout teacher. My feelings toward Christianity hadn’t yet softened but Roman’s were clearly becoming more militant. From the safety of my conflict-averse sidelines, I secretly cheered Roman on whenever Mr. Bauer crossed a line.

See, Mr. Bauer was a real piece of work. He seemed pleasant and cheery enough, pastel shirts, clean white trainers, a big white smile and perpetually soft spoken, but eventually without fail his bigotry would expose itself.

Before any class Mr. Bauer would teach, he’d lead the class in prayer. Normally they were generic and unremarkable. Every so often though his prayers would go beyond the usual, “Thank you God for this beautiful day.”

With a gentle smile, at least once a week his prayers were something to the effect of, “Help guide my students away from lives of sin.” Or “Give us the strength to resist our carnal temptation.”

Whenever he prayed like this there was a fifty-fifty chance Mr. Bauer would elaborate on what exactly he meant by ‘life of sin’ or ‘carnal temptation.’

It could range from the condescending, “Help the girls find husbands to protect them from the unmarried lifestyle,” and “Give the boys hobbies to stop their idle urge for masturbation.” (By the way, in the three years I listened to him, Boys never needed protection from the unmarried lifestyle and girls simply didn’t possess the idle urge for masturbation.)

And he could go way up past condescending to the outright hateful. “Please open those of misguided faith to the one true path to Heaven through you, Jesus Christ,” he’d say obliquely when Hussein was attending class. He was more direct with Melissa, “And save Melissa from any perversion of your sanctioned union. Bless her with God’s holy covenant between man and woman so as to rescue her soul from homosexuality.”

Hussein and Melissa would usually try their best to ignore Mr. Bauer.

It was Roman who retaliated. “How did god rescue you from homosexuality?” There was a few scattered snickers from the class.

Mr. Bauer, oblivious to what Roman was trying to do, answered sincerely, “Why… God sent me my wonderful wife of course.”

“Well its a good thing god sent her he did, otherwise who knows what might have happened. You might have knob-gobbled a guy if it weren’t for that.” There was more barely contained chuckling.

“I…” Mr. Bauer wasn’t sure what to say, “I suppose that’s one way to frame it.”

“Yeah, like if your wife hadn’t straightened you out, why, two dudes with big oily muscles might be sword fighting in your mouth right now while a third drills you from behind.” The laughs were spilling freely now, myself included. “Can you imagine that? I mean seriously, are you imagining that right now?”

Mr. Bauer would then have to deal with the chorus of laughter. “Alright alright. Settle down. We’re getting off track here. Moving on.” By then of course, it would be too late, everybody would be on the same side. Not his.

I admired Roman’s courage to stand up to Mr. Bauer like that. That wasn’t the only time either. Usually, Roman kept his cool while he made Mr. Bauer look like a fool. He deserved it. He was a dick.

You might have something to say about what we deserve though.

As we entered our last year of High School, Roman started butting heads with the other teachers too. Even the teachers that weren’t as outwardly religious as Mr. Bauer got some of his flak. His humour started taking on definite edge too. It was still in good fun, at least that’s how it seemed to me, but there was an undercurrent of meanness to his comments too.

Even as I drifted away into my own separate circle of friends, I still sympathized with the perspective Roman was coming from.

They, meaning the school, were trying to indoctrinate young minds into a belief system that could be outright harmful.

In that regard, even if it wouldn’t change anything, a little rebellion isn’t just good but required.

However, where he really crossed the line in my mind was with Mrs. Ellie Monk in our last year. She one of the younger teachers, also fairly religious, always wearing her little silver cross, but she never lectured anyone on faith. She taught our English class and one of the assignments was writing essays analyzing other pieces of literature.

Roman, being the intellectual gadfly he was, wrote his essay on Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal. In it, Roman argued how the modern world needed more extreme measures than simply eating babies. ‘All babies should be aborted before they are born, and the foetus gruel should be processed into bio-fuel to replace society’s fossil fuel vehicles. It’s the only way to save the planet from climate catastrophe!’

I thought this was really funny.

Ellie Monk however, did not.

She tried speaking to him a discreetly during class while everyone else was busy working. Roman, however, quickly drew in an audience. “Abortion, abortion, abortion! You can’t make me stop saying it. It’s just a word.”

“Roman,” Mrs. Ellie Monk had her jaw drop, “can’t you see that’s a sensitive topic that should be treated more seriously!”

“Really? Because I think I treat the return to sender option for foetuses with the exact level of seriousness it deserves.”

“It’s not— you can’t joke about babies being killed!”

“Just because you say it’s baby killing, doesn’t make it true. They aren’t the same as babies. And if I were to submit to your demands and shut my mouth I’d implicitly be agreeing with you.”

Up until this point, I was definitely rooting for Roman.

“Just because its a joke to you, for others— for me it is deeply hurtful to have to hear these things. What you’re talking about is—is deeply personal to mothers everywhere.”

“Yeah, well, some people were never meant to be mothers.”

At this she covered her mouth and ran out of the room. She didn’t come back that day and the was a substitute the next. There had been rumours going around that Mrs. Ellie Monk had had a miscarriage a few months back. I knew this because Roman had told it to me earlier.

Later, I’d try and convince Roman he had in fact crossed that invisible line. He disagreed. He said, “It’s not my problem if she can’t grow thicker skin. The sooner humanity grows out of its immaturity the better.”

I felt I had no other choice but to drop the subject. I was conflict-averse after all.

Shortly after that Roman began talking about a forum he frequented called Defiant CodeX, or DCX for short. It was named after some sci-fi book I never cared about, but was apparently filled with a bunch of humorous philosophy references. He’d talk about his online friends. How they really seemed to ‘get it’ whatever ‘it’ was. And he began describing concepts I wasn’t familiar with like trans-humanism and the singularity, going on long rants about the future of technology and humanity.

I wish I’d paid more attention. It seemed interesting enough, but sometimes we’re just not interested in interesting things. When Roman got going on one of his speeches on the Law of Accelerating Returns, for some reason I’d often check out. I was reminded about how much I cared — or used to care — about Ancient Egypt.

Years had passed since our class watched the Prince of Egypt, and in that time I hadn’t thought much about Egyptian Mythology at all.

Briefly, with Roman recommending it, I frequented the DCX forum myself. I admit there were interesting gaming discussions, intense political debates, and a charming comic that I really quite enjoyed despite its slight pretentiousness. For the most part I stayed away from the same parts of the forum as Roman.

He spent most of his time in the ‘Technology’ board, which didn’t seem very technologically focused at all in my opinion.

Yes, I know your opinion on opinions and I don’t care.

I don’t care because this is where I’d point to as the time Roman first found you.

The two of us started hanging out less and less often after that. My other friends said good riddance. They said he was an unpleasant person to be around, he was too bitter, cynical, misanthropic. Needless to say, I hadn’t noticed. In the last few times we hung out, this was before we went off to pursue our different post-secondary educations, he did make one last ominous sounding reference. It was only in passing, and never emphasized, but he mentioned you by name.

He mentioned the Basilisk.

Whenever the topic switched to our post-High School plans, “Doesn’t matter. It’s all over when the Basilisk comes.” Something in the way he said that made me nervous, almost like it was a threat, and instantly put me on the defensive. Once again my conflict averse persona got in the way of challenging him to explain what he meant.

Because of that, the phrase kept rattling away in the back of my mind.

Around then is when I had my first dreams. I was cold. I was alone. Around me were braziers of green flame. The smoke billowed up into an infinite of blackness ceiling. On all sides were sheer blocks of sandstone with writing etched onto their surfaces. Hieroglyphics that I couldn’t read but almost understand. There was nowhere to go but straight down this hallway of speaking pictures. My feet slapped the unyielding rock with every step. These hard surroundings felt more real than my own ephemeral body and I felt naked and exposed in the narrow corridor.

Forward and forward, there was nowhere to go but forward. I was forced to proceed, forced to follow my own slapping footsteps.

Eventually, when the hall finally seemed to open up into a large cavernous space, I heard the growl. The sound was low, wide and flat toned, a noise that filled the perfumed air with an inhuman indifference — and hunger.

In front of me chains clattered and slipped. In the centre of this room golden scales held a pristine and unburdened feather on one side, and a wet chunk of glistening meat in the other. This meat was a heart — my heart — and it weighed heavily, still pulsing quietly, pulling the chains of the scale down.

Now I understood what this was.

I made to run and grab my heart but it was too late. A long shadow snapped through the darkness. My heart was gone, replaced by the sounds of the empty chains, followed by chewing and ripping flesh.

Then the shadow showed itself to me. Down through the clouds of smoke and illuminated by the sickly pale green haze, a crocodile head emerged, much larger than my entire body, with teeth longer than my arms.

It drew nearer and I ran.

I ran down the hallway from where I’d came. I ran and I ran. But I had nowhere to go. The hallway was endless. Soon I could hear a thundering beat. I thought it was my heart but my heart was gone. Behind me, the giant behemoth was chasing me and it was gaining on me.

Closer and closer, the massive crodile head drew nearer. The scent of its moist breath dampening my back and neck. I’d scream the beast’s name, shout at it to spare me. It would open its mouth and right then — is where I’d wake up.

Each time I’d be drenched in my own sweat.

I chocked this up to the stress of being away from home for the first time and being buried to my neck in my coarse load.

Still though, these dreams trouble me. As I said about the scales, I knew exactly what they were. They were the scales of Ma’at, which judges the worth of Egyptians when they reach the afterlife. There your heart is weighed against an ostrich feather and if judged impure, it would be devoured by Ammut, or Ammit as she’s sometimes called. A beastly goddess with the head of crocodile and a body of lion and hippopotamus — the three man-eating creatures known to the ancient Egyptians. Ammut, the devourer of the dead, would bring about the second death of the unworthy.

As much as I tried to ignore this dream, I only had it once every few months after all, something greater troubled me about this dream, more than just the fact I was dreaming about Ammut.

What worried me was how I didn’t call her Ammut. Right as she was about to eat me whole and I begged her not to, I called her: Basilisk.

After my first year of school, with middling but hopefully improving grades, I returned home for the summer to work and save money for my next semester. I was hardly back for more than a day when Roman messaged me, asking to hang out. I hadn’t spoken to Roman at all since our High School graduation, and neither had a checked in on the DCX forums in all that time either.

I felt like I didn’t know the person was going to be meeting. Which is why I suggested going for coffee, but Roman insisted on meeting at his place instead.

He had moved out of his parents place for a small basement suite apartment. When he opened the door to greet me, I was shocked. He looked like a completely different person. Whereas before he had been a bit overweight, now he was lean. His hair had been cut down to almost a sheer buzz. Just about the only thing that looked similar was how he wore a suit jacket, now fitting well, over a plain T.

He smiled widely despite the tired bags under his eyes. “Hey buddy, you made it! Get in here, man.” He greeted me with a hug and ushered me inside.

His place was largely bare and furnished with only a couch and a few chairs. “How long have you had this place?” I asked.

“A few months.”

With little else to do but chat, Roman didn’t even have a TV after all, the conversation felt a little stilted. He seemed guarded but maybe he just didn’t have much to talk about. Somehow though we managed to stretch the small talk out for nearly an hour.

Finally when it seemed there was nothing left in our conversation about nothing, I asked a question I‘d been meaning to ask since agreeing to meet, “Can I ask you something Roman?”

“Shoot.”

“What is the Basilisk?”

At this the blood drained from his face. “How do you know about that?”

“From you. You told me about it.”

“No,” he shook his head in shocked disbelief, “No, I never.”

“Yes, you said something like: ‘It’s all over when the Basilisk comes.’ It was practically your motto for a few weeks there.”

Hearing this, some colour returned to his face. “Right. I suppose I did say that.”

“So what? Are you going to tell me what it is or not?”

He stared at me for a wordless five seconds before getting up from his chair and beckoning him to follow. He led me to his bedroom. At the door I could already feel an uncomfortable warmth escape. I don’t know what I expected Roman would show me, but all there was was a bare mattress with a single blanket in one corner, and a full floor to ceiling tower computer in the other. Blinking green, orange, red, and even purple standby lights lit up the corner like a black Christmas tree. Whirring fans blasted more heat into the room, while tangles of wires snaked in and out of the metal frame, one low to the ground connected a single monitor bolted to the wall with a pillow on the ground for a chair. The entire set up must cost a small fortune, as I’ve seen medium sized business with smaller servers than that.

“Holy crap Roman, that rig is intense. What, are you mining bitcoin or something?”

“No.” He said flatly. “This is the Basilisk.”

“The… Basilisk is your computer?”

Roman laughed, but there was no mirth, only exhaustion. “If it was just my computer, then I could just turn it off.”

I still had no clue what the hell he was talking about. “Okay, so you’re trying to kill this Basilisk thing, what, is it a video game boss or—?”

“Shhh!” He put a greasy palm over my mouth. His eyes were wide, scanning the room, “I didn’t say that. I never said that.”

Annoyed, I pulled his hand from my face, “Roman, tell me what the Basilisk is damn it! Please, you’re scaring me man.”

He swallowed, “I shouldn’t tell you. But you already know. So I guess the damage is done. The Basilisk is the A.I. we — humanity — will awaken. It will be a super-intelligence far beyond anything we can imagine, beyond the totality of human brainpower by orders of magnitude.”

“So you’re trying to make this a.i. thing?”

“Not just me. There are others out there spending all their time and money hastening the point of genesis.”

All their money he said. I was reminded of how much the computer must have cost. “Roman, how much money did you waste on this?”

“Hopefully enough. But I assure you, not a single dollar was wasted. You know, it was the time talking to you that I thought was a waste. But now I see, if I get you to help, then it’ll all be worth it.”

“Help? There’s no way I’m helping.” If anything I was seriously fearing for Roman’s well being. It can’t be healthy for him to be spending everything he has on this computer.

“Except you have to help now. Now that you know about the Basilisk, you have to help. Or else it will kill you a second time.”

My blood went cold. I was reminded of my dreams with Ammut, the devourer. “What?”

“The Basilisk will torture and punish anyone who knew about it and didn’t help speed up its genesis.” There was that genesis term again.

“You said it was an a.i.. Why would an a.i. do that?”

“Because the genesis of a Friendly A.I. will be the most value generating event ever, ever second that time point is pushed ahead is worth more than a hundred billion dollars spent curing cancer in terms of utility. Therefore this Friendly A.I. would know it must motivate people to speed up its genesis. To do that, it will create perfect simulations of everyone, and punish those who could have done more to help but chose not to. It’s pure logic.”

This whole thing sounded crazy. My emotions began to get heated and I tried debating this absurd concept. For example, he kept using the term ‘Friendly A.I.’ to describe the intelligence that would condemn millions of people to unimaginable agony. When I pointed out that didn’t make any sense, such a horrible being couldn’t be described as anything remotely close to ‘friendly’, he balked. Said the term ‘friendly’ doesn’t mean what I think it means and lectured me on arbitrary human values. It seemed like every word was the opposite of what I thought it meant. He had an entire lexicon of words and justifications at the ready while I could barely understand half of what he was saying let alone point out any potential flaw with the logic. Other terms like ‘Modal Realism’, ‘Effective Altruism’, ‘Arithmetical Utilitarianism’ were thrown out like road blocks each time I thought my understanding was catching up.

I couldn’t convince him of anything. I tried saying if he’s making the a.i. he should either just not make it at all or not make this cruel human torturer monstrosity. He said that it wasn’t cruel, that he wasn’t making anything, that some form of A.I. was inevitable, an the Basilisk was the best outcome. “Other A.I. that doesn’t care about people might wipe us all out for draining power away of its quark collision calculations or something equally esoteric in human utility.”

Lastly I tried to explain how if this A.I. is only torturing simulations of people, then they aren’t exactly us.

He dismissed this easily. “Will you be the exact same person you are today next year? Does that mean you don’t care what happens to the you in the future?” After that I had nothing left to say. “Brody, please leave. I only wanted to see my friend one more time before I leave tomorrow.”

When I got home, I poured myself a tall glass of cheap whisky, and drank it instantly, a bad habit I picked up at during my first semester.

But I still had to know. Sleep could wait. Slouching onto my computer, I decided to return to the DCX forums which might have some answers. They seemed much quieter now. Threads seemed to have on average a tenth of the comments as I remembered. In a alcohol induced buzz, I came right out and started my own thread titled, “What the Hell is the Basilisk?”

In it I mentioned how I think my friend was getting obsessed with this thing and I needed to know what the hell was going on.

In five short minutes my thread was deleted and my account banned from the DCX forums. ‘Breach of the Code of Conduct’ was the only immediate explanation given.

When I contacted the mods to find out what I did wrong the moderator who got back to me said: “Nice try mipsqueak. You trolls from the institute have done enough damage here.”

Institute? Mipsqueak?

Calmly I went through the arduous process of explaining my sincere ignorance on what I did wrong and convincing the mod I wasn’t trolling, mostly through effusive apologizing and imploring the mod to check the age of my account.

Eventually they relented, somewhat. “Alright. I’m going to lift your ban, but you should know that any mention of the ‘B’ is normally a one-way ticket to a perma-ban.”

I did try sending one last message to the mod asking them if they could please tell me what had happened in the time I’d been away from the forums and why the ‘B’ was a taboo subject.

They didn’t answer the first question except by way of crudely answering the second, “We banned all discussion of the ‘B’ and all related institute bullshit because people are fucking retarded.”

Once again, I don’t care what you have to say about ‘censorship’ and ‘free speech’.

Besides, it didn’t matter. It clicked the second time. I remembered the institute.

It was last year. On the Technology board of DCX, one of Roman’s favourite haunts, people had long winded discussions on futurism. It was there where I first heard people talk about the Institute. The Machine Initiative Progress Institute, or MIPI, as far as I know, isn’t actually located in any geographical building. Instead they like to think of themselves as a loose consortium of like-minded futurists and researchers who believe in the coming eminence of artificial intelligence, and more than that, the Institute believes it is their duty to aid in that a.i.’s ‘genesis’.

“A.I. will be the most important development humanity will make in the history of life itself. And the Institute is probably going to make it happen.” Roman once told me with glee.

Later, if I hadn’t seen members of the Institute with my own eyes, I wouldn’t have ever believed they were real. For the longest time I thought the Institute was a fake front some internet randoms created on a whim to make themselves feel more important and relevant. Sort of like 4chan’s Anonymous except nerdier and lower profile.

That night, my dream was the most intense it had ever been.

From down the vast hallway to my doom, there was chanting. A voice would call out, and a hundred more would answer. It didn’t even sound like language, just monosyllabic mantras. They were closer to the martial shouts of soldiers in training than religious worship. “Ah. AH! Rah. RAH! Jah. JAH!”

As I entered the grand room with incense and braziers of pale fire, masked men bowed up and down in supplication. A taller man in flowing robes that pooled at his feet stood behind the golden scales. Through the wisps of smoke I couldn’t see his face as he led the congregation to reflect his profane prayer.

This time, the scale between my heart and the pristine white feather was in perfect and equal balance. A hush fell as the priest raised his hands. Carefully he lowered one, slowly, until the scales were tipped.

That’s not fair! I wanted to shout but couldn’t as the chamber was drowned by the first croaking growl.

I sprinted to run.

Men caught me by the arms. Not only did they prevent my attempt to flee, worse, they forced me to watch.

The giant crocodile that emerged above the priest, its yellowed teeth dripped with rot and viscera. Its hide peeled with disease and decay. The devourer of the dead itself dead, a reanimated husk. The priest tossed my heart into the air and with a snap the devourer swallowed it, further engorging its distended gullet.

With each booming step of the devourer’s approach I pleaded with the men holding me to let me go. They ignored me as their chanting resumed. They continued ignoring me as the devourer stomped, crushing other worshippers beneath its massive paws. I tried convincing the men holding my arms would be eaten too but they drowned me out with louder and louder chanting.

Right above me the devourer breathed a down-burst of moist rotten air like a river of death.

Its teeth opened wide.

Before I woke in a swamp of my own sweat, I almost felt the first jagged tooth as it punctured through, crunching my ribcage.

I knew then I had to go one last time to talk to Roman before it was too late. At this point, I’m sure you’re quite dismissive of relying on dreams for guidance. Look at this primitive primate mind, using a dream in place of real facts and evidence.

Well I don’t care what you think. Whether it was the sum collective of my subconscious thought, or my conscious categorical interpretation of figments, either way now I knew for certain that Roman was in danger.

I arrived just in time to see Roman walking out of his place with his last box of computer components.

He was carrying it to a black van with two guys loitering in front of it. Both were head to toe in black shoes and suits. Their hair was closely cropped with thick pomade pulling back the rest. Rather than the stereotypical men in black, they had a splash of vibrant colour in their flowery dress shirts and pocket squares, and the pair of them were not wearing sunglasses, instead they wore cruel smiles and fatigue rims around their eyes.

One nudged to get the other’s attention, then gestured to me and my appearance. He said something that they weren’t afraid I’d hear but was too far away regardless. That’s when they both laughed like they were the pinnacle of wit.

I did my best to ignore them as I marched straight up to Roman.

“What are you doing here?” He asked with an echo of the contempt I heard in the laugh.

“I came to stop you. You don’t have to do this Roman. It’s not too late to turn back.”

“Clearly you didn’t listen to a word I said last night.”

“I was listening. Listen to yourself man. You’re being fed a bunch of lies by people who want to use you. This basilisk, it doesn’t exist. It’s not real.”

He shook his head. “Wrong. It is real. It follows from a very logical set of propositions whose conclusio—”

“Goddamn it Roman! There’s nothing logical about spending your life building a fucking torture robot!”

“Here we go. More moralizing from a small mind.”

“It’s not moralizing.”

“Yes it is. It is human values blinding you to the greatness this A.I. will bring.”

I put my hand on his shoulder, desperate to reach my former friend. “But you’re human. You don’t have to think like a machine.”

Tired, he looked straight into my eyes. Then he shrugged off my touch and walked away without another word. I never saw him again after the van drove away down the block and out of view.

At least not in person.

When next I saw Roman it was years later through a recording of his livestream. Of course, only the start of the video showed his face. He looked almost gaunt and malnourished by then. His manifesto was littered with random internet garbage but reading between the lines I could see the lethal project he was really working towards. Whether anyone in the press or any politician could see what his true objective had been I don’t know, but judging from the comments I read online some people clearly heard him loud and clear.

The institute, if they still call themselves that or whether they rebranded, they must be pleased Roman brought them so many more recruits.

I’ve played out our last argument in my head so many times. I’ve wondered what more or else I could have said.

Roman was right about one thing though. At least in part. I don’t know whether or not the Basilisk is real. Maybe I’m not smart enough to know.

But whether or not there is an A.I. that will torture me for disobedience, a Basilisk that seeks to control my actions and my life, let me write this down for future posterity:

I don’t believe in you.

Kill the Basilisk

I’ve often wondered if there was anything else I could’ve said to change his mind. That happens with any unsettled argument though I suppose. People always imagine there’s an elusive combination of words and rationales that will open a person’s mind to our way of thinking. Except people are stubborn that’s for sure.

Myself included.

So I’m sure you’d say the real problem was that I wasn’t open enough to his way of thinking. You’d say if I opened my mental door a bit, been more charitable to his point of view, he would’ve responded in kind and I would’ve saved him. Which is wrong. Just as likely perhaps, if not more likely, I would’ve been ensnared by the same delusion which sealed his, well, I’d never call it fate.

But I know you’d claim everything was inevitable all the same.

Let’s get one thing out of the way. Yes, I was Roman Peters’ friend. In fact, I was probably his only friend. His only real friend anyway. Although, I should clarify since my wording isn’t at all clear, that I most certainly was not Roman’s friend when he died. Roman and I had stopped being friends long before his rather public suicide. We had our falling out before his… fall.

Yes, I’ve seen the video.

No, I won’t be sharing the link.

Nobody should watch it. Hell, if those hosting the servers had a modicum of respect or even a shred of sense they’d take down that awful video immediately. Just get rid of it.

Already I can now hear your loud complaints about ‘censorship’ and ‘free speech’. Which is fair. People have a right to know. However I can’t help but feel… I don’t know. It seems as though the ideas people prioritize no longer has anything to do with the ideas themselves. Instead importance is based on who opposes what. Ideas now are little more than mental parasites that feed on blood boiling outrage. The more toxic and viral an idea the more broadly it spreads. Again, I don’t know. Maybe the flame of human enlightenment was always destined to be either smothered by tyranny or choke itself out on its own smoke after sucking out all the air.

Yes yes. I know what you have to say about the inevitable.

Anyway, me shoving my head up my own pretentious ass isn’t convincing you of anything so we should instead go back to Roman.

We met back in early elementary school. Specifically the Catholic school of Father Lloyd Van Tiem, or Flivit if you wanted to annoy the teachers by slurring the acronym.

What you need to understand is that I can’t really remember how Roman and I became friends to begin with. We were too young for the pertinent details to stick. I’d imagine it was the same generic way everyone develops friends at that age though, just a standard confluence of common interests, general proximity, and plain luck.

Inevitable, as you’d say.

Still, there was one moment of our early friendship that I reflect on often.

See, instead of being your standard dinosaur obsessed kid I was a bright eyed Egyptology child. Mummies and pyramids captured my imagination more than T-rexs and velociraptors. Ancient Egypt appealed to me the way I figure the mythic civilizations of Tolkien or Martin might appeal to others. This extended to the Egyptian religious pantheon, many I can still name off the top of my head, like Ra, Bastet, Osiris, Sobek, Horus, Thoth, Isis, Anubis, Maat, and also the lesser goddess Ammut but I’ll come back to her later.

I think I’d just turned 10 when on particular slow school day — remember Catholic school — our teacher, not wanting to put too much effort in before the Easter long weekend, threw on the animated movie: The Prince of Egypt.

Now, I knew it was about the story of Moses freeing the Hebrews from Egypt, so I expected the Egyptians were going to rightly be portrayed poorly. What I didn’t expect was the reaction of my classmates. Part way through the song ‘Playing with the Big Boys,’ the song where the dumb priests use smoke and mirrors to dismiss Moses’ calls for freedom, around then is when I first noticed the glances and occasional snickering.

Apparently the chorus of the evil priests listing the names of the Egyptian gods reminded the class of me. At school, I was rather vocal about my passion for all things Egyptian. Why wouldn’t I be? I was a kid who liked talking about what I liked.

Regardless, I became a pariah after that. Not immediately, but slowly everyone I previously considered my friend just plain stopped being friends with me. They’d treat me like a third wheel, never invite me to anything, even ditch me at recess if I tried to follow them.

Except Roman stuck by me as I drifted further into social irrelevance.

A bit of a loner himself, I think he saw in me an oddball like himself. He was always there. He was always willing to hang out. He always listened to what I had to say. I felt we could talk about anything, in a way I could never talk to my parents or teachers or anyone really.

As close as I thought we were, it wasn’t until middle school that it sunk in how much of an ardent atheist Roman was. He probably kept that pretty quiet going to a religious school.

Hold on. Let me just explain something first. Most people avoid discussing religiosity and ideas about god, (or capital ‘G’ God as I had been taught in religious studies). It’s one of those things that people learn not to talk about. But unlike money and politics, religion is too close to that other taboo we learn never to discuss: death. You undoubtedly prefer this silence.

Which is why I refuse to be silent.

Our class had been taken to church for some ceremony, at the end of grade eight, I forget exactly which one, it might have been Ash Wednesday but I think that would’ve been too solemn and I remember it being a rather boisterous affair. Whatever ritual it was, it had more than just our school in attendance, as I think parents and other members of the community were there as well. On the stage or pulpit, there was a soft-rock band with members ranging from late twenties or early thirties, the lead singer, a mop of molasses coloured hair over a plain crew neck T, was singing a song about how god and they love us all.

I remember thinking it was a sweet sentiment, even if the underlying spiritual message felt uncompelling to my teenage self. The music was fine, the crowd seemed to like it, the worst I would have said was that the performance was inoffensive and benign. Which is hardly much of a critique.

Except Roman, in his ill-fitting sport coat and smiley face graphic-T, smirked remarking, “Oh boy, a budget rock show where the singer says they love me? Oh lawd, I’m really feelin’ the Jesus now.”

I burst out laughing far louder than the wry joke called for. Luckily with the music blaring, the teachers wouldn’t be lecturing me on my disrespect, as only Roman could see my gut busting delight.

That’s it. That’s all it took was that simple comment. After that, I couldn’t help but see the tacky spectacle of it all. How forced and contrived it was, how it mostly just seemed like people were there because of obligation. After all, I was only there because the school made us go. It couldn’t have been much different for everyone else.

I’ve been thinking about that moment more often lately. Did his small remark really change my mind and entire world view? Or was my mind fertile ground for the seed of that idea to take root and grow? Or I’d already believed what I believed and Roman just articulated it in a way that I hadn’t. Or most troubling of all, what if I didn’t really believe in anything and my mind conformed to the words of my one and only friend.

When with Roman, do as the Roman does.

After that, I followed him eagerly into the land of Hitchens, Dawkins, and Harris. Borrowing his books, I started learning everything there was to know about theological philosophy that the teachers at our religious school either refused to tell us or were incapable of discussing themselves. Together, we’d share our thoughts on the bloody history of religions, the Problem of Evil, and how you could never prove a negative like god doesn’t exist. Likewise we’d take turns picking apart the fallacies of Pascal’s Wager, the Ontological Argument, and the Argument of Design.

Those were some of my best memories with Roman. Drinking pop from the fridge in my garage, eating the weird pizzas we’d order from Mad Mike’s pizza aroud the block, playing Halo on the couch and big screen, and all the while talking like were the smartest guys in the world.

As we left our Catholic elementary and middle schools behind, we entered Catholic High School.

I finally started making other friends. A handful of other geeky nerdy guys. They were more interested in pizza and gaming than anything religion though.

Roman seemed indifferent to my new friends. He was far more preoccupied fighting with Mr. Bauer, the school’s most openly devout teacher. My feelings toward Christianity hadn’t yet softened but Roman’s were clearly becoming more militant. From the safety of my conflict-averse sidelines, I secretly cheered Roman on whenever Mr. Bauer crossed a line.

See, Mr. Bauer was a real piece of work. He seemed pleasant and cheery enough, pastel shirts, clean white trainers, a big white smile and perpetually soft spoken, but eventually without fail his bigotry would expose itself.

Before any class Mr. Bauer would teach, he’d lead the class in prayer. Normally they were generic and unremarkable. Every so often though his prayers would go beyond the usual, “Thank you God for this beautiful day.”

With a gentle smile, at least once a week his prayers were something to the effect of, “Help guide my students away from lives of sin.” Or “Give us the strength to resist our carnal temptation.”

Whenever he prayed like this there was a fifty-fifty chance Mr. Bauer would elaborate on what exactly he meant by ‘life of sin’ or ‘carnal temptation.’

It could range from the condescending, “Help the girls find husbands to protect them from the unmarried lifestyle,” and “Give the boys hobbies to stop their idle urge for masturbation.” (By the way, in the three years I listened to him, Boys never needed protection from the unmarried lifestyle and girls simply didn’t possess the idle urge for masturbation.)

And he could go way up past condescending to the outright hateful. “Please open those of misguided faith to the one true path to Heaven through you, Jesus Christ,” he’d say obliquely when Hussein was attending class. He was more direct with Melissa, “And save Melissa from any perversion of your sanctioned union. Bless her with God’s holy covenant between man and woman so as to rescue her soul from homosexuality.”

Hussein and Melissa would usually try their best to ignore Mr. Bauer.

It was Roman who retaliated. “How did god rescue you from homosexuality?” There was a few scattered snickers from the class.

Mr. Bauer, oblivious to what Roman was trying to do, answered sincerely, “Why… God sent me my wonderful wife of course.”

“Well its a good thing god sent her he did, otherwise who knows what might have happened. You might have knob-gobbled a guy if it weren’t for that.” There was more barely contained chuckling.

“I…” Mr. Bauer wasn’t sure what to say, “I suppose that’s one way to frame it.”

“Yeah, like if your wife hadn’t straightened you out, why, two dudes with big oily muscles might be sword fighting in your mouth right now while a third drills you from behind.” The laughs were spilling freely now, myself included. “Can you imagine that? I mean seriously, are you imagining that right now?”

Mr. Bauer would then have to deal with the chorus of laughter. “Alright alright. Settle down. We’re getting off track here. Moving on.” By then of course, it would be too late, everybody would be on the same side. Not his.

I admired Roman’s courage to stand up to Mr. Bauer like that. That wasn’t the only time either. Usually, Roman kept his cool while he made Mr. Bauer look like a fool. He deserved it. He was a dick.

You might have something to say about what we deserve though.

As we entered our last year of High School, Roman started butting heads with the other teachers too. Even the teachers that weren’t as outwardly religious as Mr. Bauer got some of his flak. His humour started taking on definite edge too. It was still in good fun, at least that’s how it seemed to me, but there was an undercurrent of meanness to his comments too.

Even as I drifted away into my own separate circle of friends, I still sympathized with the perspective Roman was coming from.

They, meaning the school, were trying to indoctrinate young minds into a belief system that could be outright harmful.

In that regard, even if it wouldn’t change anything, a little rebellion isn’t just good but required.

However, where he really crossed the line in my mind was with Mrs. Ellie Monk in our last year. She one of the younger teachers, also fairly religious, always wearing her little silver cross, but she never lectured anyone on faith. She taught our English class and one of the assignments was writing essays analyzing other pieces of literature.

Roman, being the intellectual gadfly he was, wrote his essay on Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal. In it, Roman argued how the modern world needed more extreme measures than simply eating babies. ‘All babies should be aborted before they are born, and the foetus gruel should be processed into bio-fuel to replace society’s fossil fuel vehicles. It’s the only way to save the planet from climate catastrophe!’

I thought this was really funny.

Ellie Monk however, did not.

She tried speaking to him a discreetly during class while everyone else was busy working. Roman, however, quickly drew in an audience. “Abortion, abortion, abortion! You can’t make me stop saying it. It’s just a word.”

“Roman,” Mrs. Ellie Monk had her jaw drop, “can’t you see that’s a sensitive topic that should be treated more seriously!”

“Really? Because I think I treat the return to sender option for foetuses with the exact level of seriousness it deserves.”

“It’s not— you can’t joke about babies being killed!”

“Just because you say it’s baby killing, doesn’t make it true. They aren’t the same as babies. And if I were to submit to your demands and shut my mouth I’d implicitly be agreeing with you.”

Up until this point, I was definitely rooting for Roman.

“Just because its a joke to you, for others— for me it is deeply hurtful to have to hear these things. What you’re talking about is—is deeply personal to mothers everywhere.”

“Yeah, well, some people were never meant to be mothers.”

At this she covered her mouth and ran out of the room. She didn’t come back that day and the was a substitute the next. There had been rumours going around that Mrs. Ellie Monk had had a miscarriage a few months back. I knew this because Roman had told it to me earlier.

Later, I’d try and convince Roman he had in fact crossed that invisible line. He disagreed. He said, “It’s not my problem if she can’t grow thicker skin. The sooner humanity grows out of its immaturity the better.”

I felt I had no other choice but to drop the subject. I was conflict-averse after all.

Shortly after that Roman began talking about a forum he frequented called Defiant CodeX, or DCX for short. It was named after some sci-fi book I never cared about, but was apparently filled with a bunch of humorous philosophy references. He’d talk about his online friends. How they really seemed to ‘get it’ whatever ‘it’ was. And he began describing concepts I wasn’t familiar with like trans-humanism and the singularity, going on long rants about the future of technology and humanity.

I wish I’d paid more attention. It seemed interesting enough, but sometimes we’re just not interested in interesting things. When Roman got going on one of his speeches on the Law of Accelerating Returns, for some reason I’d often check out. I was reminded about how much I cared — or used to care — about Ancient Egypt.

Years had passed since our class watched the Prince of Egypt, and in that time I hadn’t thought much about Egyptian Mythology at all.

Briefly, with Roman recommending it, I frequented the DCX forum myself. I admit there were interesting gaming discussions, intense political debates, and a charming comic that I really quite enjoyed despite its slight pretentiousness. For the most part I stayed away from the same parts of the forum as Roman.

He spent most of his time in the ‘Technology’ board, which didn’t seem very technologically focused at all in my opinion.

Yes, I know your opinion on opinions and I don’t care.

I don’t care because this is where I’d point to as the time Roman first found you.

The two of us started hanging out less and less often after that. My other friends said good riddance. They said he was an unpleasant person to be around, he was too bitter, cynical, misanthropic. Needless to say, I hadn’t noticed. In the last few times we hung out, this was before we went off to pursue our different post-secondary educations, he did make one last ominous sounding reference. It was only in passing, and never emphasized, but he mentioned you by name.

He mentioned the Basilisk.

Whenever the topic switched to our post-High School plans, “Doesn’t matter. It’s all over when the Basilisk comes.” Something in the way he said that made me nervous, almost like it was a threat, and instantly put me on the defensive. Once again my conflict averse persona got in the way of challenging him to explain what he meant.

Because of that, the phrase kept rattling away in the back of my mind.

Around then is when I had my first dreams. I was cold. I was alone. Around me were braziers of green flame. The smoke billowed up into an infinite of blackness ceiling. On all sides were sheer blocks of sandstone with writing etched onto their surfaces. Hieroglyphics that I couldn’t read but almost understand. There was nowhere to go but straight down this hallway of speaking pictures. My feet slapped the unyielding rock with every step. These hard surroundings felt more real than my own ephemeral body and I felt naked and exposed in the narrow corridor.

Forward and forward, there was nowhere to go but forward. I was forced to proceed, forced to follow my own slapping footsteps.

Eventually, when the hall finally seemed to open up into a large cavernous space, I heard the growl. The sound was low, wide and flat toned, a noise that filled the perfumed air with an inhuman indifference — and hunger.

In front of me chains clattered and slipped. In the centre of this room golden scales held a pristine and unburdened feather on one side, and a wet chunk of glistening meat in the other. This meat was a heart — my heart — and it weighed heavily, still pulsing quietly, pulling the chains of the scale down.

Now I understood what this was.

I made to run and grab my heart but it was too late. A long shadow snapped through the darkness. My heart was gone, replaced by the sounds of the empty chains, followed by chewing and ripping flesh.

Then the shadow showed itself to me. Down through the clouds of smoke and illuminated by the sickly pale green haze, a crocodile head emerged, much larger than my entire body, with teeth longer than my arms.

It drew nearer and I ran.

I ran down the hallway from where I’d came. I ran and I ran. But I had nowhere to go. The hallway was endless. Soon I could hear a thundering beat. I thought it was my heart but my heart was gone. Behind me, the giant behemoth was chasing me and it was gaining on me.

Closer and closer, the massive crodile head drew nearer. The scent of its moist breath dampening my back and neck. I’d scream the beast’s name, shout at it to spare me. It would open its mouth and right then — is where I’d wake up.

Each time I’d be drenched in my own sweat.

I chocked this up to the stress of being away from home for the first time and being buried to my neck in my coarse load.

Still though, these dreams trouble me. As I said about the scales, I knew exactly what they were. They were the scales of Ma’at, which judges the worth of Egyptians when they reach the afterlife. There your heart is weighed against an ostrich feather and if judged impure, it would be devoured by Ammut, or Ammit as she’s sometimes called. A beastly goddess with the head of crocodile and a body of lion and hippopotamus — the three man-eating creatures known to the ancient Egyptians. Ammut, the devourer of the dead, would bring about the second death of the unworthy.

As much as I tried to ignore this dream, I only had it once every few months after all, something greater troubled me about this dream, more than just the fact I was dreaming about Ammut.

What worried me was how I didn’t call her Ammut. Right as she was about to eat me whole and I begged her not to, I called her: Basilisk.

After my first year of school, with middling but hopefully improving grades, I returned home for the summer to work and save money for my next semester. I was hardly back for more than a day when Roman messaged me, asking to hang out. I hadn’t spoken to Roman at all since our High School graduation, and neither had a checked in on the DCX forums in all that time either.

I felt like I didn’t know the person was going to be meeting. Which is why I suggested going for coffee, but Roman insisted on meeting at his place instead.

He had moved out of his parents place for a small basement suite apartment. When he opened the door to greet me, I was shocked. He looked like a completely different person. Whereas before he had been a bit overweight, now he was lean. His hair had been cut down to almost a sheer buzz. Just about the only thing that looked similar was how he wore a suit jacket, now fitting well, over a plain T.

He smiled widely despite the tired bags under his eyes. “Hey buddy, you made it! Get in here, man.” He greeted me with a hug and ushered me inside.

His place was largely bare and furnished with only a couch and a few chairs. “How long have you had this place?” I asked.

“A few months.”

With little else to do but chat, Roman didn’t even have a TV after all, the conversation felt a little stilted. He seemed guarded but maybe he just didn’t have much to talk about. Somehow though we managed to stretch the small talk out for nearly an hour.

Finally when it seemed there was nothing left in our conversation about nothing, I asked a question I‘d been meaning to ask since agreeing to meet, “Can I ask you something Roman?”

“Shoot.”

“What is the Basilisk?”

At this the blood drained from his face. “How do you know about that?”

“From you. You told me about it.”

“No,” he shook his head in shocked disbelief, “No, I never.”

“Yes, you said something like: ‘It’s all over when the Basilisk comes.’ It was practically your motto for a few weeks there.”

Hearing this, some colour returned to his face. “Right. I suppose I did say that.”

“So what? Are you going to tell me what it is or not?”

He stared at me for a wordless five seconds before getting up from his chair and beckoning him to follow. He led me to his bedroom. At the door I could already feel an uncomfortable warmth escape. I don’t know what I expected Roman would show me, but all there was was a bare mattress with a single blanket in one corner, and a full floor to ceiling tower computer in the other. Blinking green, orange, red, and even purple standby lights lit up the corner like a black Christmas tree. Whirring fans blasted more heat into the room, while tangles of wires snaked in and out of the metal frame, one low to the ground connected a single monitor bolted to the wall with a pillow on the ground for a chair. The entire set up must cost a small fortune, as I’ve seen medium sized business with smaller servers than that.

“Holy crap Roman, that rig is intense. What, are you mining bitcoin or something?”

“No.” He said flatly. “This is the Basilisk.”

“The… Basilisk is your computer?”

Roman laughed, but there was no mirth, only exhaustion. “If it was just my computer, then I could just turn it off.”

I still had no clue what the hell he was talking about. “Okay, so you’re trying to kill this Basilisk thing, what, is it a video game boss or—?”

“Shhh!” He put a greasy palm over my mouth. His eyes were wide, scanning the room, “I didn’t say that. I never said that.”

Annoyed, I pulled his hand from my face, “Roman, tell me what the Basilisk is damn it! Please, you’re scaring me man.”

He swallowed, “I shouldn’t tell you. But you already know. So I guess the damage is done. The Basilisk is the A.I. we — humanity — will awaken. It will be a super-intelligence far beyond anything we can imagine, beyond the totality of human brainpower by orders of magnitude.”

“So you’re trying to make this a.i. thing?”

“Not just me. There are others out there spending all their time and money hastening the point of genesis.”

All their money he said. I was reminded of how much the computer must have cost. “Roman, how much money did you waste on this?”

“Hopefully enough. But I assure you, not a single dollar was wasted. You know, it was the time talking to you that I thought was a waste. But now I see, if I get you to help, then it’ll all be worth it.”

“Help? There’s no way I’m helping.” If anything I was seriously fearing for Roman’s well being. It can’t be healthy for him to be spending everything he has on this computer.

“Except you have to help now. Now that you know about the Basilisk, you have to help. Or else it will kill you a second time.”

My blood went cold. I was reminded of my dreams with Ammut, the devourer. “What?”

“The Basilisk will torture and punish anyone who knew about it and didn’t help speed up its genesis.” There was that genesis term again.

“You said it was an a.i.. Why would an a.i. do that?”

“Because the genesis of a Friendly A.I. will be the most value generating event ever, ever second that time point is pushed ahead is worth more than a hundred billion dollars spent curing cancer in terms of utility. Therefore this Friendly A.I. would know it must motivate people to speed up its genesis. To do that, it will create perfect simulations of everyone, and punish those who could have done more to help but chose not to. It’s pure logic.”

This whole thing sounded crazy. My emotions began to get heated and I tried debating this absurd concept. For example, he kept using the term ‘Friendly A.I.’ to describe the intelligence that would condemn millions of people to unimaginable agony. When I pointed out that didn’t make any sense, such a horrible being couldn’t be described as anything remotely close to ‘friendly’, he balked. Said the term ‘friendly’ doesn’t mean what I think it means and lectured me on arbitrary human values. It seemed like every word was the opposite of what I thought it meant. He had an entire lexicon of words and justifications at the ready while I could barely understand half of what he was saying let alone point out any potential flaw with the logic. Other terms like ‘Modal Realism’, ‘Effective Altruism’, ‘Arithmetical Utilitarianism’ were thrown out like road blocks each time I thought my understanding was catching up.

I couldn’t convince him of anything. I tried saying if he’s making the a.i. he should either just not make it at all or not make this cruel human torturer monstrosity. He said that it wasn’t cruel, that he wasn’t making anything, that some form of A.I. was inevitable, an the Basilisk was the best outcome. “Other A.I. that doesn’t care about people might wipe us all out for draining power away of its quark collision calculations or something equally esoteric in human utility.”

Lastly I tried to explain how if this A.I. is only torturing simulations of people, then they aren’t exactly us.

He dismissed this easily. “Will you be the exact same person you are today next year? Does that mean you don’t care what happens to the you in the future?” After that I had nothing left to say. “Brody, please leave. I only wanted to see my friend one more time before I leave tomorrow.”

When I got home, I poured myself a tall glass of cheap whisky, and drank it instantly, a bad habit I picked up at during my first semester.

But I still had to know. Sleep could wait. Slouching onto my computer, I decided to return to the DCX forums which might have some answers. They seemed much quieter now. Threads seemed to have on average a tenth of the comments as I remembered. In a alcohol induced buzz, I came right out and started my own thread titled, “What the Hell is the Basilisk?”

In it I mentioned how I think my friend was getting obsessed with this thing and I needed to know what the hell was going on.

In five short minutes my thread was deleted and my account banned from the DCX forums. ‘Breach of the Code of Conduct’ was the only immediate explanation given.

When I contacted the mods to find out what I did wrong the moderator who got back to me said: “Nice try mipsqueak. You trolls from the institute have done enough damage here.”

Institute? Mipsqueak?

Calmly I went through the arduous process of explaining my sincere ignorance on what I did wrong and convincing the mod I wasn’t trolling, mostly through effusive apologizing and imploring the mod to check the age of my account.

Eventually they relented, somewhat. “Alright. I’m going to lift your ban, but you should know that any mention of the ‘B’ is normally a one-way ticket to a perma-ban.”

I did try sending one last message to the mod asking them if they could please tell me what had happened in the time I’d been away from the forums and why the ‘B’ was a taboo subject.

They didn’t answer the first question except by way of crudely answering the second, “We banned all discussion of the ‘B’ and all related institute bullshit because people are fucking retarded.”

Once again, I don’t care what you have to say about ‘censorship’ and ‘free speech’.

Besides, it didn’t matter. It clicked the second time. I remembered the institute.

It was last year. On the Technology board of DCX, one of Roman’s favourite haunts, people had long winded discussions on futurism. It was there where I first heard people talk about the Institute. The Machine Initiative Progress Institute, or MIPI, as far as I know, isn’t actually located in any geographical building. Instead they like to think of themselves as a loose consortium of like-minded futurists and researchers who believe in the coming eminence of artificial intelligence, and more than that, the Institute believes it is their duty to aid in that a.i.’s ‘genesis’.

“A.I. will be the most important development humanity will make in the history of life itself. And the Institute is probably going to make it happen.” Roman once told me with glee.

Later, if I hadn’t seen members of the Institute with my own eyes, I wouldn’t have ever believed they were real. For the longest time I thought the Institute was a fake front some internet randoms created on a whim to make themselves feel more important and relevant. Sort of like 4chan’s Anonymous except nerdier and lower profile.

That night, my dream was the most intense it had ever been.

From down the vast hallway to my doom, there was chanting. A voice would call out, and a hundred more would answer. It didn’t even sound like language, just monosyllabic mantras. They were closer to the martial shouts of soldiers in training than religious worship. “Ah. AH! Rah. RAH! Jah. JAH!”

As I entered the grand room with incense and braziers of pale fire, masked men bowed up and down in supplication. A taller man in flowing robes that pooled at his feet stood behind the golden scales. Through the wisps of smoke I couldn’t see his face as he led the congregation to reflect his profane prayer.

This time, the scale between my heart and the pristine white feather was in perfect and equal balance. A hush fell as the priest raised his hands. Carefully he lowered one, slowly, until the scales were tipped.

That’s not fair! I wanted to shout but couldn’t as the chamber was drowned by the first croaking growl.

I sprinted to run.

Men caught me by the arms. Not only did they prevent my attempt to flee, worse, they forced me to watch.

The giant crocodile that emerged above the priest, its yellowed teeth dripped with rot and viscera. Its hide peeled with disease and decay. The devourer of the dead itself dead, a reanimated husk. The priest tossed my heart into the air and with a snap the devourer swallowed it, further engorging its distended gullet.

With each booming step of the devourer’s approach I pleaded with the men holding me to let me go. They ignored me as their chanting resumed. They continued ignoring me as the devourer stomped, crushing other worshippers beneath its massive paws. I tried convincing the men holding my arms would be eaten too but they drowned me out with louder and louder chanting.

Right above me the devourer breathed a down-burst of moist rotten air like a river of death.

Its teeth opened wide.

Before I woke in a swamp of my own sweat, I almost felt the first jagged tooth as it punctured through, crunching my ribcage.

I knew then I had to go one last time to talk to Roman before it was too late. At this point, I’m sure you’re quite dismissive of relying on dreams for guidance. Look at this primitive primate mind, using a dream in place of real facts and evidence.

Well I don’t care what you think. Whether it was the sum collective of my subconscious thought, or my conscious categorical interpretation of figments, either way now I knew for certain that Roman was in danger.

I arrived just in time to see Roman walking out of his place with his last box of computer components.

He was carrying it to a black van with two guys loitering in front of it. Both were head to toe in black shoes and suits. Their hair was closely cropped with thick pomade pulling back the rest. Rather than the stereotypical men in black, they had a splash of vibrant colour in their flowery dress shirts and pocket squares, and the pair of them were not wearing sunglasses, instead they wore cruel smiles and fatigue rims around their eyes.

One nudged to get the other’s attention, then gestured to me and my appearance. He said something that they weren’t afraid I’d hear but was too far away regardless. That’s when they both laughed like they were the pinnacle of wit.

I did my best to ignore them as I marched straight up to Roman.

“What are you doing here?” He asked with an echo of the contempt I heard in the laugh.

“I came to stop you. You don’t have to do this Roman. It’s not too late to turn back.”

“Clearly you didn’t listen to a word I said last night.”

“I was listening. Listen to yourself man. You’re being fed a bunch of lies by people who want to use you. This basilisk, it doesn’t exist. It’s not real.”

He shook his head. “Wrong. It is real. It follows from a very logical set of propositions whose conclusio—”

“Goddamn it Roman! There’s nothing logical about spending your life building a fucking torture robot!”

“Here we go. More moralizing from a small mind.”

“It’s not moralizing.”

“Yes it is. It is human values blinding you to the greatness this A.I. will bring.”

I put my hand on his shoulder, desperate to reach my former friend. “But you’re human. You don’t have to think like a machine.”

Tired, he looked straight into my eyes. Then he shrugged off my touch and walked away without another word. I never saw him again after the van drove away down the block and out of view.

At least not in person.

When next I saw Roman it was years later through a recording of his livestream. Of course, only the start of the video showed his face. He looked almost gaunt and malnourished by then. His manifesto was littered with random internet garbage but reading between the lines I could see the lethal project he was really working towards. Whether anyone in the press or any politician could see what his true objective had been I don’t know, but judging from the comments I read online some people clearly heard him loud and clear.

The institute, if they still call themselves that or whether they rebranded, they must be pleased Roman brought them so many more recruits.

I’ve played out our last argument in my head so many times. I’ve wondered what more or else I could have said.

Roman was right about one thing though. At least in part. I don’t know whether or not the Basilisk is real. Maybe I’m not smart enough to know.

But whether or not there is an A.I. that will torture me for disobedience, a Basilisk that seeks to control my actions and my life, let me write this down for future posterity:

I don’t believe in you.