It was cold, a contest between the alpine air and the heat of his metabolism and movement, with a neutral zone established in the thin layer between his skin and base layer of long underwear.
Marcus, of course, was more expensively and appropriately attired, complete with hiking poles and steam-punk looking goggles that Babacar, when he first saw them, had thought to be augmented reality lenses, maybe another gift from their mysterious patrons at Reincarnate or Daemon DAO.
Global warming meant that the weather was unseasonably temperate. The only reason Marcus was here, he suspected, was the snow wasn't good for snowboarding. He'd wanted to go to the more challenging Wheeler Pass, but Babacar had talked him into using his car to pool a group of them to Blue Lake instead. To compensate, Marcus had announced he would hike ahead, and wait for the rest of them at the lake. Babacar, against his better judgment, had joined him.
Why did white people have to compete at everything? he wondered, watching Marcus bound up the trail too quickly. Even surrounded by nature, the wildflowers tumbling down the pine-scented mountainside, Marcus seemed focused more on himself, his gear, and his physical performance, checking something on his phone every few minutes, taking pictures seemingly at random.
"What app are you using?" Babacar asked him, resting behind the windbreak of a boulder by a waterfall. Marcus had used a filter, squeezing potable water from the stream into Babacar's canteen, and his own plastic bladder in his pack, which he sucked on from his shoulder-tube like an astronaut. Then he'd opened his phone again (he had a solar charger, the panels sewn into his ultra-light backpack) and was pointing it out into the aspens.
"What? Oh, it's the one that woman Matty told me about. I'd met her before, at one of Sunitha's parties."
"Sunitha does seem to know everyone, doesn't she? What does the app do?"
"It's one of those citizen science things. You know those plant or bird identifiers, where you point the camera at something, and it tells you the species?"
"Sure."
"Well, with Bioframe you're just supposed to take pictures at random intervals, where you would be looking anyway. After the hike, or commute, or whatever, it gives you a statistical report on the different plants and animals the AI detected."
"Let me guess," Babacar said. "You get rewarded in crypto depending on how rare the species is." He'd heard of something similar on the Minos blockchain, some game where you minted NFTs for rare bird sightings, and a glitch had slowed down the entire network. He'd kind of liked the visual idea of billions of little birds clogging the wires, population dynamics playing out in digital space, hogging resources.
"No," Marcus said, "the idea is that you don't go out looking for something, or spend too much time on your phone. You just walk, snapping a photo at timed intervals, and the software does the searching for you. It's a more accurate way to do biological surveys, correcting for visibility bias."
Babacar thought about it, listening to the waterfall, rubbing his hands to keep them warm. "You would probably get biased results based on what the app can detect, though," he said. "Probably not good for insects."
"Nah, you need a special shoe-cam for that," Marcus joked. Babacar had just noticed a millipede near his shoe, sine-waving its rows of tiny legs to glide over the pine needles and rocks. A school of fish flashed in the water they'd just drank from. He didn't see a lot of birds, but heard what must be hawks overhead, and the staccato bursts of woodpeckers.
"So what does it have to do with crypto?"
"Nothing," Marcus said. "Not everything is about crypto."
"Heresy!" Babacar said.
"You know, I really only got into all this because of my friend, Damien. He introduced me to Nico, and got me into the Daemon DAO. Honestly, I don't even understand a lot of it."
Babacar took a long pause before answering. "I got into crypto as a way to hide my family's savings, so my father wouldn't drink all of it away."
Marcus was silent. "Should we get moving?"
After the next rise, they saw some mountain goats, and Marcus took their picture.
"I thought it was supposed to be random?" Babacar said, out of breath.
"That's not for the app, that's for all my fans on Flitter," he said, turning his back to the goats for a selfie, mugging for the camera. Marcus wasn't even breathing hard.
"You can go on without me, if I'm slowing you down." Babacar wasn't one to let his pride interfere with reality. Keeping up with Marcus was harder than he'd thought it would be.
"Nah, it's all good. I hurt my leg pretty bad last month. I shouldn't even be going this hard, to be honest. It just feels good to be outside again."
"That was a cool game last night," Marcus said, after a few minutes of walking, where the trail gave them a glimpse of a logging road, some equipment, and the stumps of trees. "I've never played a RPG before."
"Really? you were a natural."
"Thanks." They passed in and out of cloud-shadow, the wind pushing them impatiently across an altitude-bright sky.
"Do you make money off the stream?"
"No, not directly. I sell asset packs on Digital Table. You know, the little sprites for the characters and monsters? I get random commissions from it, too, to illustrate a campaign or rulebook."
"For crypto?"
"No, not everything is about crypto. Sunitha said she was going to record some music for the next stream, though, make some NFT tie-ins on their label, so who knows? She's got thousands of followers. I have about a hundred."
They got to the lake where they were supposed to wait for the others. Marcus took out a protein bar, and Babacar, refusing the offer of one, took out a bruised apple. "You know, we're probably the least technical people working on Reincarnate," Marcus said.
"Well, there's Chase. He talks like he knows about things, but I don't think he actually codes."
The lake was beautiful. There was a family nearby, a little girl skipping stones, but they wandered off. A beaver slapped its tail against the water, then ducked under spreading circles.
"Look," Marcus said. "I hope it doesn't bother you when we drink around you. I know Chase and I got a little crazy last night."
"No, it's fine. It was fun watching you two go after the trolls."
"That might have been my fault, too. I shouldn't have encouraged them by talking about the trucker protests. That was when they brigaded us." After they'd shut down the stream and were packing things up, Sunitha had lit into Marcus, accusing him of escalating the politics.
"No, they've been in my streams before, and said worse things. I'm glad you all were there."
Marcus got up, and started doing toe-touches, and what seemed like yoga exercises.
"So, I know you don't drink, but do you smoke weed?"
"No," Babacar laughed, "but you go ahead."