"Pope Francis? Is that really you?"
were the first words that came out of my mouth when I realized who was the man in front of me. We were sitting in a great hall, in what seemed like the St. peter's basilica in Rome. I just been there a little over a month ago, but it was way more crowded. Now it was completely empty, beside me and the old man, who I thought was the pope, who said with south African accent (pope francis is not south african by any account):
"Yeah I'm da pope. Wanna hit this?"
He handed me a Papal cross, one like I've never seen before – I actually never been handed or seen many papal crosses before - it had marijuana leaf on the cross, crucified. I felt nauseous. Upon further inspection I saw it had a "bowl" on the cross bar, and that the other side of the cross bar had a mouth piece… could this be a papal bong?
"What is it my child? Is everything good?"
I couldn't lie to the pope, even though I'm not Christian… He is just such a dope pope. You don't mess with The Francis. I said:
"I'm unwell, little bit nauseous… Do you mind I wait my stomach to stop churning before I hit this? It looks really good, really hope you filled it with holy water from your little fountain…"
He nodded in approval.
So we waited, at first I didn't say anything just stared around at the beutifull artwork all around us, when he asked me:
"Do you steem?"
"What do you mean?" I replied
"Do you have a user on steemit? Are you part of the crypto revolution?"
"Ummmm" "Well I try to, but recently I've been busy sleeping and feeling bad to publish anything, is it bad?"
He didn't say anything. He closed his eyes, bowed his head and sighed. He looked disappointed.
"I'm sorry, I really am" I tried to make things better, but he actually became more upset, almost yelling:
"NO! Don't apologize, publish things! Take part in the blockchain! Upvote, comment, resteem! You can't wait idly while people from 3rd world countries are making serious dough, this is not god's plan for you!"
Honestly, I'm not religious so I wasn't that impressed with his god plan thing. But I did feel bad, the pope is a chill dude.
We kept on chatting about steem, our crypto portfolio, his new ICO… 10 minutes passed when I asked to hit that. He handed me The Staff of Dankness, I put my mouth to it, lit the bowl, and started pulling. I took the entire bowl in one hit. The Dope Pope was smiling, I smiled bad, and I exhaled. The white smoke filled the entire cathedral. I kept blowing more and more smoke, until I ran out of breath. The entire hall was filled with smoke, couldn't see a thing, and I couldn't breath. I clawed at my throat for air to no avail, and just as I was about to pass out, pope Francis yelled fiercely: "STEEM!".
I opened my eyes, it was dark. There was something against my face – a pillow. I was hallucinating from lack of oxygen as the pillow was slowly suffocating me, till I woke up in panic. The Pope, the Cathedral, The Staff of Dankness… Steem? I was really confused, the clock in my phone showed it was 4:20am. I lit a one hitter, drank some water, and got back to sleep.
The next morning… Oh who am I kidding, the next evening as I woke up few hours earlier, I started my browser, checked my facebook, reddit, checked the price of the SBD… And then I recalled part of last night dream. I couldn't remember most of it, but Steem felt right. I browsed a little, until I stumbled upon some cool history post, with pictures and interesting explanations… Naturally I resteemed as my barren steem profile should have some activity, and once it showed there, I clicked the upvote. I looked at the blockchain action taking place, and I expected this 3$ post to now be 3.10 at best. When It showed 5$ I wasn't sure what was going on. Did I become a dolphin out of the blue? Wasn't this supposed to be more gradual process of powering up? I was perplexed.
I checked my wallet, and indeed it showed that on top of my ~350SP, I was delegated a staggering amount of SP, with no clue about who delegated it. No memo, no post… Just fragment of a dream about a really dope pope.
I liked my new power. It felt nice having voting power – I decide who is popular, I decide who makes money. It felt good. But the more I was thinking, the less content I became. I can't just use it however I want. This is not fair, Sure, I can start publish like crazy, pope francis knows I got all the pictures I need for 100 more Rome posts… But getting 200-300 SBD, is that my goal? Should it be? I was thinking not.
I picked up my holy bong, just an old D-020D that knew much better days – and I hit it. And again. And once more. And maybe one more time. I sat and burned through 3g of weed. The entire room was filled with white smoke. I could hear the Dope pope yelling at me in that massive church, "STEEM!". And I started talking to myself: "Maybe he wanted me to use Steam? To find a match for CS? That was a cool game, with smoke grenade, and flash, and deagle… But it wasn't much fun with bots…" That was when it hit me – I should check my steemvoter and see how many people I can autovote now.
I picked the 15 most active member in Ilana's steem discord server, and I add them to my voting rules. And with that done, I could focus on my photography, or QA work on utopian, commenting passionately with sincere criticism on top photography posts. From that day onward I resteemed, commented, voted... I became a pillar of the community, with people at steem community meetups doing toasts for me, praising my name. "Hip hip - Achiron!" Their yell was deafening. "Hip hip - Achiron!" - it was like a jetplane taking off, how can 6 geeks at dimly lit bar be so loud?? "HIP HIP - ACHIRON!"
And with that cheer I woke up, drooling all over myself, looking at my Back to Rome 15 post waiting for me to send it. I looked at it, toked a little bit to help get my thoughts in order... Checked I was still a plankton with measly ~350SP. Indeed, it was all a dream. I sighed in relief, toked some more... and Post.
Feels Good Man.jpeg
