Star in a Stunt
On camera, in the action. We roll, you shine.
Curious who my boss really is? →
Star in a Stunt
On camera, in the action. We roll, you shine.
Curious who my boss really is? →
The Foundation runs the actual archaeology. They have a person — Dr. Voss, I'm pretty sure that's her name, I always want to call her Dr. Voice — who's been translating the tablets for years. I'm not on the dig team. But I read the Gazette, and I talk to people who've talked to people. So here's what I think I know. If you want the real story, the Foundation has charts.
My administrator Gloria has a recording — about fifteen minutes — explaining this whole operation better than I can. You can listen instead of reading. The video's mostly just a black screen and her voice, to be honest. But it's a good voice.
the whole thing, more or less, in the order I think it happened · this is my version, not the official one
So apparently they found, like, a bunch of these tablets. In a vault. I don't know exactly where — I think Egypt? Or maybe the other Egypt, there's two of them I'm pretty sure. Anyway the lady in charge said the carbon dating put them at eleven thousand years.
Okay, the symbols are also the currency. And here's where it gets interesting, because I had this wrong at first. Kindness has denominations — and you really do earn and spend them. Think airline miles. Think credit-card points. Think a benefits package you build up by participating. It goes, in order:
Here's the part that got me. Star is the top — the most a single movement of kindness can become. But above the whole system is the Sun. You don't earn the Sun. You're already part of it. The Sun is all of us together, and it grows stronger every time anyone, anywhere, is kind. Spark to Flame to Blaze to Star — and all of it feeding the Sun. I had to sit down when Voss the Boss explained that one.
Okay, the obvious question — and the one I asked, loudly, in my first week: can you spend it? Yes. You can. This is a real economy. You build up Sparks by participating — by performing anonymous acts of kindness, or by volunteering directly with the civilization — and you can redeem them. Real perks. Days off. Products. Standing in the community. It works like airline miles or credit-card points: you earn as you go, and the active members — and there aren't many, but they've earned it and they deserve it — get the benefits.
The paradox, which I love: it's completely anonymous and completely tracked. Every Spark is recorded; no Spark is signed. Like a ledger that knows everything happened and nothing about who. Which brings me to my favorite brag —
This currency is going to outlast every other currency on Earth. Think about it. It's basically Bitcoin — except instead of living in some server farm, it's hard clay. You can hold it. Drop it. It survives. And here's the real difference: every other currency is backed by self-worth, scarcity, and a bunch of self-focused energy. Ours is backed by kindness. The one thing the human race has never actually run out of and never will. When the dollar's a museum piece, there'll be a clay Spark in a drawer somewhere, still worth exactly one good deed. I worked that theory out myself. Nobody's disproven it. They mostly just leave the room.
There's also a snowflake tablet. It's real. It exists. It is not in production, because the Council of Nine has been debating, for some time now, why a cold snowflake would appear in a currency that is otherwise entirely about heat and fire. Nobody can explain it. The snowflake says nothing. It just sits there being cold. I find it the most interesting one, personally, but nobody asked me — there's an empty seat on that Council and I have a few thoughts about who it's for.
(For the record: the round one is a Sun, not a daisy. I misread it for a month. Voss the Boss was very patient about it.)
The tablets are also receipts. Every tablet documents one anonymous act of kindness — somebody gave somebody a thing, or did them a favor, and never said who. 847 tablets. Not one signature. The Foundation calls that "not an omission, that's a philosophy." I think they got that line from Voss the Boss.
They keep calling me the Wearer. I've never gotten a straight definition. Some days I think it means the one who wears the cape (simple, I can handle that). Some days I think it means the one who wears the lessons — carries them, wears them down into something usable. Some days I think it's the one the kindness gets worn into. The contract has a definition somewhere on page eleven or fourteen. I'll get to it. Between us, I've decided it means whatever makes me sound the most important, and I'm sticking with that until someone stops me.
That's the ancient reading — gorgeous, but a mouthful. So the Foundation gave us the modern translation, the one we put in the Oath, short enough to actually carry around:
that one I memorized. I cried a little when I read it. don't tell the Foundation. it's in the Oath →
The Foundation runs aokworld.net — the Cookbook, the Hill, the Gazette, the Council, the Markets, and the real Discovery: all 847 tablets, eleven thousand years of receipts. Mine is just rumors and feelings. If you've gotten this far and you're starting to itch for the deep version, that itch is the civilization calling. It does that.
Walk into the civilization →go look. tell them I sent you.