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glow & gloom⚓︎
eDAN had highlighted the entire golden route on Rigmor's topographical map, as Toril stepped back into the office. Her eyes lit up. Badg3rground was like a neural network with small glowing hubs and dendrites extending from them. It spread throughout the city in a decentralized fashion.
Until now, Toril's image of Rigmor's shipping system was the Warehouse from which all roads stemmed. The golden route felt so much different, as if it had grown organically. An area of the map was shaded in grey. It kept blinking orange, warning of a row of shipments stalled before it. eDAN's honey badger hollographic figure seemed at work, though Toril could not see what it was working on.
"They will reroute, automatically. The shipments discover open channels to get to their destinations." said eDAN in answer to Toril's concerned look, while it continued searching for something, as if the answer was not in the solution.
"It is the second time a node goes offline. Another one went out last night," said eDAN in a serious voice.
"They can't go offline?" asked Toril, trying to discover the deeper issue.
"Of course they can, but we do not know the reason for these two to go offline. Over the years, node runners have added or removed their nodes for a wide array of circumstances, but communication lines stay open in almost every case, except electricity or internet outages, and we can tell when those happen. Most node runners have spent years building up their reputations, to drop them so suddenly.
"Both node runners have gone silent. People are starting to notice, and, if others get afraid of this unknown reason, we could have a serious issue in our hands," said eDAN.
The orange blinking turned solid green for a few seconds. Shipments started rerouting to a nearby node. The offline node, however, remained greyed out.
Various chat bubbles with avatars popped up here and there. Toril started tinkering with the map. Conversations were happening, in what seemed to be real time, about items shipped and received, amongst everyday life comments like GM. Most of the talk was about the offline nodes.
"eDAN what is this? This whole thing?" asked Toril intrigued.
"What do you think it is?" asked eDAN in a cheery tone, as if glad Toril was curious.
"It looks like a marketplace." said Toril, her heart glowing as it perused through human thought connecting people throughout the city.
As in most places with rigorous rules, Rigmor was known for blocking most avenues of free will. Another question bothered Toril, like a thorn you cannot remove. "eDAN is this legal?" asked Toril with a pressing tone.
"Is that the question you should ask?" said eDAN, as if challenging Toril.
"eDAN what is the question or questions I should ask?" replied Toril as she tried to make sense of it all.
"Is this ethical? Is it supportive of human choice and freedom without bringing harm to others? Is it your right to exchange value through a marketplace with other people? Have humans not done so for thousands of years? If it is illegal, who or what about your society has made it so? Why do have they done so? Why are other societies different?" said eDAN trying to encourage Toril to question what she understood about her experience of the world.
"For example," eDAN continued, should it be illegal, to send food to your starving mom?"
"Of course not." replied Toril.
"What if she was in zone 4?" said eDAN
"That would be illegal here, because they lost the war..." replied Toril.
"But not unethical." she added in a saddened tone, understanding how most of life circumstances aren't a clear black and white.
"They are paying for the sins of their rulers," replied eDAN.
"eDAN can you fill me in on what you know about the offline nodes so far?" said Toril, thinking of Xileh and who or what could be behind this.
A third node went offline on their map, and it started blinking in orange. If eDAN's heart could race, it would be doing so then, with everything that it knew.
"You need to take a bike through the route. I'll fill you in as you make your way there. Which offline node do you want to start with?" asked eDAN, looking straight into Toril's eyes.