The Taproom, like so many of the bars in Denver, had the feel and smell of a ski lodge, except instead of a fireplace they had a pizza oven. It took him a second to find Damien, at a small table by the wall, under an oil painting of the Western slope of La Plata Peak, autumn aspens in the foreground. Damien looked up from his laptop, through those weird lenses that were supposed to lessen eye-strain from screens. Without thinking, they clasped hands, pulling each other into a chest-thumping hug, mindful of the beer and cheesy fries on the table.
After a long day of acting fake around strangers, or around strangers that seemed like they were being fake to him, Marcus was glad to see his friend, to be able to sit and relax without watching what he said. Their little rituals washed him in a comfortable buzz, before he had even started drinking. "What'd you get?" Marcus asked.
"Altitude," Damien said. It was one of his favorite pale ale's, from a local micro-brew.
"Want another?"
His friend considered. "Nah, not yet. Let me nurse this one. The altitude really does make it stronger." It was a little joke they'd both made many times.
When Marcus came back with a beer of his own, Damien asked what he thought of the conference. "Other than getting fired."
"Remember that anime thing you dragged me to in Boulder when you were obsessed with that show?"
"Taiku 7. Yeah, it was Otakucon, sophmore year. Stacy Maples got you to cosplay as Kitatus."
"Just because she made the costume, and offered to do the make-up. And because she, you know."
Damien grinned, some fries still stuck in his teeth.
"Yeah. Well, this conference reminds me of that, but with more nerds. No," he said, knowing he couldn't offend Damien, "it's like all those freaks now have tons of money, and see all their cringey collectible crap as investments". They clinked glasses, took gulps, and made contented sighs.
"Huh. Accurate. Speaking, of freaky nerds, I was wondering if you could talk to someone, while I do this for a few minutes." He gestured vaguely at the laptop. "Someone I'm working with. In Luxembourg. Told him about you, and he's curious."
"Are you serious? You're...outsourcing having a conversation with me?"
"Just for a few minutes. I promise, he's cool. Then I'll spot us another round."
"Whatever," Marcus said as Damien propped up a tablet to face him, handing him some wireless headphones. The man was already on the screen by the time he got them over his ears, dampening the sounds of the bar.
He was older than Marcus was expecting, with thinning white hair down to the shoulders of his dinner jacket. He was either using a well-rendered background, or was seated in a study that wouldn't have been out of place in a medieval castle, with high oak cabinets and bookshelves, queen Anne chairs, tapestries, and actual candles in glass hoods, their light softening the glow of the screen Damien's friend was looking into. The only thing out of place was a modern scupture cast in bronze, mounted on the wall. Marcus wouldn't have been at all surprised to see a skull on the table, or a quill pen and bottle of ink.
"Ah! You are drinking! Please, let me join you." His accent didn't sound German so much as Eastern European, with a touch of vampire. There was the sound of pouring off-screen, and then a big stein filled the view.
"Noroc!" the man said.
"Cheers."
"My name is Nico," he said, wiping froth from his moustache. "This is Trappist beer, from an actual monestary. I wish I could share it with you!"
"Marcus. And thank you. I don't think I've ever had it."
"A pity. Yes, Marcus, Damien has told me about you. You are at the conference, too, no?"
"Well, I'm here, and I have this .jpg of a unicorn buffallo that I paid 300 dollars for, so I guess I'm at the conference." Nico laughed appreciatively. "Isn't it, like, 3:00 in the morning there?" Marcus asked.
"Yes, yes, after 4:00, actually, but the sun is not yet up. I'm working with your friend, so now you understand why he wants to finish, not for his sake, but for mine. Old people like me don't need sleep, though, and I'm on Colorado time. Tell me Marcus, what are you there for? What do you do, if I may be so bold?"
Marcus sipped his beer. "I make videos. I did the one for the Goalrand bounty, although I guess my NDA says I'm not supposed to tell you that."
"Ah yes, I remember that one! Clever. Subtle, though. Perhaps not everyone caught the irony."
"It was edited. But thank you. What about you?"
"I'm creative director for a game called Reincarnate."
"Cool, cool. One second." Marcus muted the call, took off the headphones, and asked Damien, "hey, there are these horns that are flashing on and off on his head, and, like, his eyes turn all black, and weird smoke or something. Is that supposed to happen?"
"Yeah," Damien said, "it's a filter he likes to use. I'll tell you about it later."
Marcus looked back at the screen. The horns and smoke were gone. He unmuted the microphone.
"Reincarnate, huh? Tell me about it."
Reincarnate was a game, Nico explained, where each player could mint one NFT, representing a past reincarnation. The probabilities of what life you ended up with were based on the actual statistical distribution (as much as could be inferred from the historical and paleontological record) of every human that had ever lived.
"How many people do you think that is?" Nico asked, refilling his stein.
"That have ever been alive? I don't know, a hundred billion?" Nico looked at him oddly, the horns and flames of the filter flashing around his head again.
"That's a very good guess. Close to current estimates. That means more than seven percent of all humans who have ever been born are alive today." He raised his glass and drank, Marcus doing the same. "That means a player's chances of being reincarnated within the last hundred years are disproportionately large. Most people end up as day laborers in China, India, Brazil. Half of those in urban areas.
"It wasn't until the industrial revolution that the global population reached a billion. Up until agriculture started popping up in the fertile crescent the number of humans on the earth never went above five million or so. Roughly half of all reincarnations, then, would take place after the birth of Christ." He grinned. "We're more interested in the half before that. How long have humans existed?"
"Ummm, sixty thousand years?"
"Ah here you do less well, Marcus, but this is understandable. Current studies keep pushing back the starting line, as more and older bones are found. It also depends on what you consider the cut off for speciation from earlier hominin, but the consensus seems to be around 190,000 years ago."
"Wow, okay. So reincarnations back then would be the 'super rare' NFTs."
"Precisely so. And yet, speaking temporally, they represent the vast majority of our species history. Modern, agricultural humanity is less than half of a percent of our time on Earth."
Marcus, nodded, wondering where this was going. "So people can trade their NFTs for cooler past lives? What's the point?"
"The point, my friend, is knowledge. Understanding. You can trade your reincarnation, but every individual can only mint one, ever. Ownership of an original confers the right, however, to mint derivative NFTs fleshing out your past life: artwork, fiction. There is even a significant amount of useful historical and paleontological research emerging as a result of our little game, to say nothing of education. People are learning about ancient lifeways no one had any reason to care about before: Minoans, Mesopotamians, the Indus Valley. More importantly, they are more aware of the nameless and unrecorded tribes, hunting and gathering in the African savannas and Asiatic steppes. Forgotten histories are recreating themselves, online, as players with NFTs from the same times and places come together, forming tribes of their own, helping imagine and depict the lives that fate, or the algorithm, allotted them."
Damien came back to the table with two more beers, even though Marcus had said he would get the next round. The old guy was actually fun to listen to, with the voice and mannerisms of an amateur thespian. When Marcus looked back at his screen, he saw it divided into two boxes, Damien in one of them.
"It looks good," Damien said. "Hardly any dropped frames, decent buffering, even with the VPN and Onions."
Marcus looked up at him, confused. "You were watching us?"
Damien shrugged. "This was the work I had to finish. We're testing a decentralized streaming app, an alternative to Boom. Figured we might as well do both things at once."
"And I thank you, Marcus," Nico said from the screen, "for making it so enjoyable. Now this old man must drag himself to bed. Our game, though, could always use a good videographer. Have Damien give you my info, and please do get in touch. We're giving out free NFTs to early adopters."
When the tablet was shut off and the laptop closed, the two friends clinked their glasses again, Marcus shaking his head. "Was that some kind of a job interview?"
Damien smiled. "I don't know, was it?"