"Eleven thirteen", that is what it said in the text message. And I recognized the fake phone-number it came from. My oal' friend just gave me a clue and now I had to figure out what it ment. Coordinates, time and place, would need to hand calculate, really something I do dislike a lot. "Now I'll teach you some cool mathematics Coop, but you may only do them with your brain.", I remember him saying it with that typical 'I am bloody serious' look on his face. It had been a while since I had seen him for the last time, alive that was. Because last year I was at his funeral, well, at least of what looked like him. It was a few months before that when he explained to me what was going to happen. "It will be like me, but it is actually not me, do you understand?", this was the kind of conversation we sometimes had after a few rounds of special brew. Natoshi Sakamoto, he lived in my hometown, close to where I live. He had two stores, a restaurant and a pet-shop. And sometimes I helped him out, we had become good friends over time. It was when I got to understand he was the inventor of Cryptos and the Blockchain technology that I started to doubt about almost everything I though I knew.
He called me 'Coop San' and as he had become a good friend and mentor, I named him 'Sensei'. There had been some crazy conversations that we had, most of the time after we had quite a few drinks. So at first I did take it as fun, as I could appreciate some good Science Fiction. But he also showed me 'proof', offline, that made it very hard for me to deny he actually was 'Natoshi'. "Leave your spy-devices at home Coop San, that also means USB sticks and so on...", this made me sceptical at first, until he showed me some creepy shit. "It is not the average data, that is being filtered, even random words might trigger an alert, but that would lead to enormous amounts of useless storage.", when he started to talk like that I just nodded now and then, hoping to get at least some of it. "What is of value, so to speak, is the data that is out off bounds, that what is potentially dangerous to a certain system, as a threat to the continuum.", and when I thought I had gotten it I even dared to summerize it: "Ah I see, at that point it becomes valuable information for an 'intelligence' entity." He took up his glass and smiled: "Cheers Coop San, finally you are learning to understand, always think three steps ahead!" Have to admit though that those last words still are bugging me. Just like when he told me: "In chess, every piece you want to move has to be backed by at least one other." The rule of 'think three steps ahead' also seemed to be related to that.
It now was the third time that I passed by the coffin. In there was a dead body, or so it seemed, of what looked like Natoshi Sakamoto. The buriel ceremony was today. And there were only a few people here, most of whom I had never seen before. Weird, even though he had prepared me for this moment, it still felt like I had lost a very dear friend. "Coop San, sit down I have to tell you something..." It is always like that, if people want to talk about some serious stuff, they'll ask you to sit down first. What would happen if we did not do so, would we fall over, all of a sudden? "Soon I am to go 'back' and for you I will be like, eurm, dead, at least for a while...", he had talked about 'the Quantum' before, but I did kind of take it for a Sci-Fi fantasy. "You know Coop San, everything is 'now', time is unreal, just like place.", and the most bad thing I did after he told me that was to laugh and say: "Ha ha ha, yeah right cheers to that my good friend, no more beer for you!" He then just stared for a few minutes and I could almost hear him think "ZEN, ZEN, ZEN..." Turned out he was actually serious. And even though he tried to explain 'the Quantum' to me in detail, most of it went right over my head. But at least I learned how to keep an open mind.
One last time I looked into the coffin, it was him, yet it was not. And I had seen a few corpses in my life so far. What was missing was the 'spark' of life. But in this case, something else was missing too, as if this was a copy of Natoshi Sakamoto, but then a very bad one. And he had talked about this, it would be like him, but it had actually never been alive... This was just an empty clone, that never had been living. It was constructed like this, it was even him, on a DNA level, but it had been without the 'spark' all of the time. It made me wonder who the few people actually were that also were present. Most of them acted like they were here on their own, as if the rest did not excist. "Until next time.", I whispered and slowly walked to the exit, as it was not him, I did not want to stay any longer than I had to. He told me that he would come back, even if I would not recognise him right away, I would know it was him. And then I got the text message on my phone: "Eleven thirteen..." That could only be him. And shortly after that he would leave a public message to proof he was alive again. Or, to put it otherwise, he was the never dead.
The message he posted online was just one word and he befriended somebody. Combined with the text message I knew I had to do the math. Just before he was found dead we had one last talk. And I asked him why he had not moved the original Bitcoin {BTC} that he had mined. Or why he stayed out off the spot light. "Do you really think, Coop San, that it would have been safe for me to do so?" After that we just sat there in silence for a while and then he continued: "It is hard to grasp how 'the Quantum' works, in essence, or even why or what it is. Although one could state that it is because what else could it be?" Those were the times he really lost me. "Nothingness, what could it be other than the excistence of everything and vica versa...?", yep, that made it even worse. "At least you do try to grasp it Coop.", and he laughed out loud as he slammed me on my back. "Okay, a way to look at 'the Quantum' is to see it as all that there is and there is nothing it is not. It was, is and shall be, it is continues consiousness, all in the now and there is only now." After a few rounds of special brews it was actually harder to understand. My memory took me back to the time where I was thinking about stuff like: "If we are in a universe, then where is its end and what comes after that. Or where is our universe? And where is what it is inside off."
Actually the thing with the nothingness made sense, as the eternal consiousness as being the always now. This would make everything like instant on. Somehow I had a hard time believing in the mechanics of time-space, as everything would fall apart, right away. Even the slightest of lag,inside the smallest of realms, would cause everything to go out off excistense, in a jiffy. Therefore Natoshi made sense when he told me I had to forget about time-space and the apparant limit of the speed of light. "Listen Coop, if you want to understand this then just try to think about 'non-space-time', as a concept, it being a thought experiment." Then he got a piece of paper and a pencil and wrote down a big zero. "Look, explain this '0' to me. What is it, where is it, when is it and why is it...?" Then he laughed out loud like he would do so often when his teachings caused me a headache, again. "Hm, yeah, I do get how 'nothing' could excist, without 'it' there would be 'lag' in the communcitation, as it were, between the smallest of particles or waves. Hence therefore all that excist needs to be instant on, being the always 'now'." At this point he was looking at me with his eyebrowes raised: "By George he's got it!" And then he laughed at his own 'My Fair Lady' reference. "Ha ha, yeah very funny Natoshi, now tell me, do you like musicals a lot?"
Another drink was put in front of me as he said: "Ah come on Coop, life aint that serious, really, you need to laugh now and then, at least, especially at your own behaviour." He was right, I guess, so I replied: "Yes, so you being quite anal about just everything must have you laugh a lot." We 'high fived' and laughed. "Listen Coop, you know I told you that I had to leave, at some time. Well, that relative time has come. To you and others it will seem that I am dead, the body that is found will appear like that. It is not me though." Do not know for how long I had stared at his face when I said: "So, you are going for another Quantum Leap?" He stood up from the bar-stool and started to clean up, did not say a thing, like he was in some kind of trance. Then he reached for the special bottle, single malt 'Oaldamster' whiskey, the only kind that was made around here. "We are going to drink one of these, for a farewell and one after that for the 'until next time'", and he poured us quite some heavily filled glasses, chilled with stones, not ice. It was one of those little details that I had copied from him, ice would make the whiskey waterish, that was almost like an insult, ha ha ha... Can not believe I actually started to copy that from him.
He then explained his apparent death, but I did not have to worry, as he had been declared dead many times before. "Just like Bitcoin...", I said and we clicked our glasses. "How can you even return, I mean, there is no record of you and people will not know you." This was actually puzzling me quite a bit, although I saw this video online where somebody acted as if he was very famous and there were lots of people that actually started to go for the fake as if it were true. "Everything can be manipulated, if not blockchained, ha ha ha, computer data, information, even backwards, as there is no real time-space, remember?" Too much information, I got a headache, or was it the booz, but Natoshi went on with his story: "And you will recognize me as being familiar. My new name will be Japanese again: Sukoshi Genkin, 少し現金 means little money, ha ha ha. You will know it is me when I publish the word 'Nour' on a Social Media platform and befriend somebody there with a name, that will be a clue to you." Oh, I never liked Crypto puzzles, as everybody seemed to be able to find the solution it would keep my mind bended until it felt like it would explode. "_Come on Natoshi, you know you have choosen the worst person for this-." Yet I did manage to learn how to crack the numbers, with my own mind and now it was time to find Sukoshi.
Blocks 11 and 13 would help me to get to the right coordinates at the right time. Strange thing was that my reading glasses disappeared three weeks before I was supposed to meet Sukoshi Genkin. Really, they just were gone, never to be found again. It was one thing he stated, when still being Natoshi, that would prove he had returned. After I had read the message Nour and got the other part of Wagner and the Japanese link, my reading glasses would disappear. One moment I would have had them, next they would be gone. Again I must have looked at him with an open mouth, like a dumb-ass, as he sometimes called me, but he was right. Creepy 'Quantum' shit, did kind of dislike that. As I thought only 'gnomes' took socks, leaving us behind with just one of a kind, frustrated. Now I knew this was all 'Quantum' stuff happening and it got me a bit worried. Anyway, with the message Nour I came to a translation, it meaning 'Light' in Arab. Arabs were the ones that gave us numbers, that being the connection to mathematics. Then the text-message, information in blocks 11 and 13, like he told me that all blocks that he mined could be used to 'crack' any kind of code. And with his nice way of giving compliments he'd then say: "Even you could manage it Coop San, ha ha ha!" This kind of roasting I would only accept from a real good friend.
So, D(e)ut(s)chland it was. Controversy came with the Wagner reference, so it was not to be taken literally, I knew this for sure. Music is mathematics and frequencies are the fabrics of what we experience as our 'reality'. Complete code, sub tuned, one thing acted out, while the music gave another impression, or was confirming. The cooordinates seemed to be right. It was a town in Germany that also was known as being connected to the well known composer. It was his ex-wife though who had mangled the data about Wagner, after his death, to be used for her own hatred propaganda agenda. Now my mind was baffled again. The connection to Richard Wagner as revolutionary and so much more, troubles with banking loans. In some crazy way it all started to make sense, the connection to Natoshi (he was quoted wrongly many times, by people with their own agenda), to Bitcoin and the Blockchain Technology. And so I started to prepare my trip, to meet Sukoshi somewhere in Dutchland (The real Dutch/ Deutsche write it as: Deutschland), or as it is called in English: Germany. The return of the light, on the 21st of december, that was what it was about. And so I planned a stay for a couple of days in Dresden, at the Vienna House QF Hotel. There I would meet Natoshi again, on friday, or as he now would be known as Sukoshi Genkin.
Now I wonder if his return had anything to do with Bitcoin and the other Cryptos. Would it not be fun if they would go up again around the time of return? Ha, ha, ha, imagine that. And I doubted if I had not lost it already a long time ago. Yet no matter what, I was on my way, some long traintrips ahead: "Bis zum wiedersehen in Dresden am eintundzwanzigsten December Natoshi...", I softly whispered as I got on the train in Winschoten.
First stop, Weener in Germany.
