> **prompt:** > > The basis of the universe is information (qubits!?). People mine (like bitcoin) the universe to mould reality. [source](https://twitter.com/matrensh/status/1482978870899150850?s=20) Nobody knew how it started but anyone could read off the block 23 that some punk way back had wished everyone forgets the story of its origin. Not only that, he had wished for all related physical and digital documents to vanish as well. To him, this was a practical joke or a curiosity for what the reality blockchain is capable of. But he would have never thought that what he wished for will actually get executed and, that too, perfectly. Perfect execution in the reality blockchain almost never happened. Each time a miner includes compiled instructions for how they want to shape reality, the imperfect execution by the chain ensured the outcome was always slightly different than what was desired. The fact that this block - block 23 - was executed perfectly gave rise to innumerable conspiracy theories and scientific proposals for who or what started the reality blockchain. The origin of the reality blockchain is now a cottage industry of speculation. The perfect erasure of memories and evidence that happened on block 23’s mining meant that nobody knows for sure what happened before. When you would try to look into all of those initial blocks, all you’d see is an endless string of zeros. Despite many disagreements on what really happened before, everyone agrees that the miner of block 23 was a genius of unparalleled caliber. To be able to program a block to erase all traces of the origin from everywhere was unmatched even until today. 30 years had passed from then to now. How could someone, so early on in the chain's origin, do something this sophisticated and, that too, perfectly? Unbelievable! If the reality blockchain wasn't pseudonymous, the person who mined the infamous block 23 would certainly have been found out and celebrated as god (or perhaps wished to death). ### Pioneer period Unresolved mysteries lead to shared obsessions. For teenagers like Artha, an obsession with the origin of the reality blockchain was what made the boring monotony of school tolerable. Artha, a 14-year-old boy, lived with his single mother in a tiny 2 bedroom apartment. His mother fed him, loved him, bought him things, and provided shelter but Artha seldom showed gratitude. Like most teenagers, he hated his mother for all the restrictions she put on him for “his own safety”. But Artha was not cold-hearted. His heart was full of love but all of it was directed at the mystery of the chain and moonshine, his 2-year-old, brown-colored labrador. Moonshine stayed with Artha in his room and will often crawl to his feet when he’d be lost into his computer terminal. With his puberty-fueled awkwardness, a self-conscious body image, and “unreasonable” restrictions by his mother, he found sanity in exploring the reality blockchain. He was not the only one interested in it though. There was a whole crop of people who would regularly hang out on realitybingo.com to analyze and discuss what wishes the miners were including in their blocks. The chain never executed the wishes perfectly and that kept the gossip always fresh and amusing. Once a miner wished for a girl to fall in love with him and ended up turning her into a man. Ever since then wishing on people via the chain was banned by the governments. Even though this ban was hard to enforce on a globally decentralized chain, it virtually eliminated wishes for murders, tortures, or confessions. Only two new blocks could be created per day in the chain, which meant there were always new wishes by miners to gossip. But, Artha wasn’t interested in gossip - he was more interested in studying the past. Specifically, he spent most of his afternoons and evenings after school, pouring over the pioneer period (containing blocks 23-1500). What attracted him about that period is the technical chops of early miners. Lacking any deeper understanding of the chain, they were the ones to discover that the chain takes whatever data you commit in a freshly mined block and interprets its binary representation as an energy gradient. Then, within a few seconds, that energy gradient committed is magically replicated in the real world. The replication is imperfect but usually, the actual energy gradient is close to what was programmed in the block. Once this energy gradient is created in the real world, laws of physics take over: new particles pop out from nothing and existing nearby and entangled particles change their momentum and position. The collective outcome of all this gradient-led buzzing of atoms is what creates, destroys, and modifies things in the universe. Barring the massive reality-shaping of the mysterious block 23, early blocks did simple changes to the universe. Initial blocks were mostly mined by scientists who just couldn't believe the chain could simply shape the reality at will. Their argument was the classic conservation of energy principle. Creating an energy gradient out of nothing was simply impossible. But was it really impossible? Didn’t the universe itself “popped” out of nothing? Scientists aren’t persuaded by philosophical arguments, though. They want hard, empirical data. Driven to prove that the conservation of energy is an ironclad principle, they did many experiments to uncover the “hoax” of the chain’s reality-shaping abilities. Their skepticism didn’t last long. Every experiment on the chain ended up shaping reality. They changed interference patterns in their double-slit experiments. Nudged the course of the moon slightly. They were even able to reverse the heat flow to freeze a kettle of hot water. Since reality-shaping by the chain was imperfect, sometimes their interventions didn't work or did something else so the debate kept up for a while but as the word of the chain's magical abilities started spreading, entrepreneurs and geeks started spinning up their own mining nodes. They didn’t care about the debates about whether the chain “really” worked. They wanted to see how far they could push the chain. No wonder then, with the arrival of these tinkerers, as soon as block 577 was mined, a message appeared in the sky: "Why should scientists have all the fun?" ### Enter the profit Things changed soon after the pioneer period was over. Some of the optimistic predictions from that time turned out to be naive. Early enthusiasts had hoped that miners will use the chain to push the world closer to a utopia. If reality could be shaped any way humans wanted, wouldn't we cure all diseases and eliminate all poverty? It was obvious that the miners will collectively make the world a better place, one block at a time. But what turned out to be true was more humdrum and frankly, in retrospect, more obvious. As more and more blocks got mined after the pioneer period, the chain started getting dominated by profiteers and investors. Money found its way towards the chain and interaction with it became simpler. A miner could still write energy gradients directly into a block but ever since Utopia Corp launched Sandra, nobody did that. Sandra has been the de facto way of interacting with the chain for ages now. It's a computer program that translates wishes expressed in the English language into energy gradients. Utopia corp derived its name from its vision to allow anyone (technical or non-technical) to get what they want via the chain. They did deliver on their promise but only if you had money to pay for accessing Sandra. Early investors made a lot of money by mining blocks and shaping reality to be in their favor. Some asked for untraceable bags of cash. Others programmed glitches in the stock market  One unsophisticated investor even ended up crashing the world economy for a day (before regulators banned such direct money wishing on the chain). But investors are a clever bunch. Pretty soon they realized that perhaps they should ask the chain for computers. Doing this, they cornered the computing resources available for mining the blocks and made sure they mine most of the future blocks. Monopolizing the chain, they started auctioning the yet-to-be-mined blocks to rich people for executing their wishes. ### Null energy gradient Artha, like most people, didn't have money for getting access to a mined block. Sure, there were simulators of the chain that he could pretend-play with. In thirty years of the chain's existence, these simulators had come a long way. They had their virtual universes to shape, executed the same energy gradients as the reality blockchain and some were even Sandra compatible. Playing with these free or cheap chain simulators was almost as good as playing with the chain. Except they were not the real thing. Artha wanted to shape the actual reality that he lived in and the chain was the only thing that could let him do. With his puny computer, he knew that he would never be able to compete with the big investor groups and their stadium-sized mining rigs. On top of that, he also didn't have money to afford Sandra. Driven by his love for the chain, he learned physics and quickly became good at writing energy gradients. He tested his reality-shaping chops on simulators but ensured his computer was always connected to the real chain. With his four-core computer and an old GPU, back-of-the-envelope calculations suggested that he should expect to mine a block in about the next one billion years or so. This stark reality that he’d mine a block before the dying Sun engulfs the Earth didn’t dissuade him because he wasn’t doing this for profit. What motivated him was the philosophical gratification that came with _hope_ of being able to shape reality at will. Day after day, month after month, he kept his computer connected to the chain, wasting computing resources and energy to hit upon the rare jackpot that a freshly mined block is. And if that ever happened, he needed to be ready with his energy gradients. Deciding how he’d want to shape reality via a block he’d never mine wasn’t easy. He wasn’t interested in money and neither pranks. He was curious about how the reality blockchain itself worked and the most pressing gap in his understanding was what happens if you commit absolutely nothing to a new block in the chain. “How do null energy gradients behave?”, he’d often mumble to himself. Strangely enough, even after decades had passed since block 23, nobody had tried figuring out this. Not even the crazy pioneer-era miners - who understood how the chain worked - tried a null gradient. Today, experiments like these are just impossible. Who would waste the going rate of $20 million per mined block to find out what happens when they wish nothing? For Artha, this possibility of rebelling against profiteers by "wasting" a block strengthened his commitment to the null-gradient experiment. But he knew his original motivation was more curiosity-driven than a rebellion. He simply had to know what changing "nothing" does in a universe that's perennially changing. ### Block 21383 Like most days, Artha came back from his school, sat on the dining table, and as he was eating, mumbled "it was okay" even before his mother could ask how his day went. As soon as he finished his last roti, he picked his bag and ran into his room, slamming the door shut behind him. This was the best part of his day. Flinging his bag on the bed, he sat comfortably on his study table. He opened his computer to casually browse realitybingo.com to see what new wishes got executed on the chain while he was away. Like she did each afternoon, moonshine crawled to his feet and slept peacefully. Her tiny snores and occasional barks were the perfect background white noise for Artha as he scrolled read the discussions on the latest wishes. > Sandra, shape the reality so that high-data bandwidth optical cables are laid underground and undersea and make sure only I have the ability to control the data flow. “Why couldn't the miners now be a bit like pioneer miners?”, Artha told himself. “Where are the crazy experiments of slinging Pluto out of the solar system or making cats talk?” “Where are the philanthropic wishes that forever eliminated diabetes?” “Oh yes, the need for profit”, Artha reminded himself. “This is why he's interested in the pioneer period”, he mumbled to moonshine who woke up for a second. She pretended to understand as shook her head and went back to snoring. Feeling sleepy from his lunch and dejected by the lack of wonder in the world, he stepped away from this desk and lay down for a quick nap. \* Beep. Beep. Beep. Half-asleep, Artha checked his phone for the alarm but the sound wasn't coming from there. He nervously entertained the idea that perhaps this was one of his lucid dreams. He soon remembered that a quick glance at the wall clock in his room will convince him that he's dreaming. The beeping sound continued but he was less bothered by it now. Since he was confident that he was dreaming, his immediate priority was to decide what he'd want to do in his lucid dream. Perhaps, he’d go out and ask his crush out? As he did in all his lucid dreams, he looked at the clock. But the numbers were steady. He didn’t see any of the wavy and floating numbers he was expecting. The printed numbers, like the clock, were rock solid. This was not a dream, after all. The beeping continued and it seemed to be coming from his computer. He got up from the bed and walked to his desk, stroking moonshine gently along the way with his feet. He looked at the computer’s screen and it seemed… unfamiliar. What was this strange program running on his computer displaying numbers that he couldn't understand? And why does his browser have this website realitybingo.com open that looks like a scammy parked domain? He opened his terminal and it said "Mined block 21383...". What the hell is this? This program was printing cryptic messages that he didn’t understand and was consuming 100% of his CPU. Must be a malware infection, Artha wondered. Too lazy to do anything about it in his dozy state, he did a hard reset of his computer and went back to finish his sweet afternoon nap. Perhaps this time he’ll actually get a real lucid dream. **Finish** *Thanks Rishabh Jain for his edits and comments on the first draft.*