The Summoned

Written by Eva Pascoe for ‘Tales from Cybersalon’, November 2021.

The bell at GASDAQ rang loudly, as young CEO Rico Nada raised his hands and clapped at the SmoothCat Software team.  “Thanks to these guys, we have accomplished the impossible, I couldn’t ask for a better crew to share my journey” – hollered Rico at the top of his voice as the ticker tape showed Smoothcat’s shares going well above the launch price.

Carmen, his mom, was peeking from behind his team. She was relieved that Rico’s audacious IPO, with only small revenues, has reached 22 Alphas per share, valuing the company at 13 bln. SmoothCat code was a breakthrough, lifting Alphaverse gaming for everyone to a new comfort level, with no dropped frames or incorrect GPU frame-pacing, making Virtual Worlds possible for all, not just the hard-core gamers.

It was a long journey for Rico Nada. GASDAQ (Gamers Association of Security Dealers and Quotations) was a closed shop. Only the Summoned had been allowed to tap the market for innovation funds. Known as the Tall Men, The Summoned had a monopoly on access to Alphas money. Outliers like Rico Nada were not invited. Born on the wrong side of the tracks, Rico was the son of a single mom, a cleaner at Ivy Academy, where the Tall Men send their sons. The story was that they came from the East, on their big boats, many centuries ago. They brought their own currency, called Alphas, and quickly monopolised business funding.

They never failed, their deals always worked out and fortunes were made due to the special capability that Tall Men brought with them from The East with their enhanced money making gift which they absorbed from an ivy plant. It was a type of ivy that surrounded them at the Academy for 4 years. It spread a type of virus that, if absorbed for four years, ensured a high level of viral load and gave Tall Men an instinct to de-risk financial decisions to zero.

With time, they became the sole handlers of new funding and banking. Their wealth grew rapidly as they concentrated their Alphas currency and became owners of all real estate. Then, the Summoned extracted fees from the people for access to anything from housing, to transport, even digital worlds like the game platform Alphaverse. Tall Street Journal, where Tall Men’s wives worked, praised their wins, reinforcing the idea of Tall Men “magic” financial powers. It was a perfect set up that worked for centuries as the rich grew richer.

The rest of the people fell into poverty, unable to save to acquire assets, to borrow money for housing, trapped in skyrocketing rents and poorly paid gig jobs. The poor were only allowed small tokens for Alphaverse for a few hours of gameplay. Tall Men kept the population occupied.

Against all odds, Rico found a way in. Home-schooled by Carmen, he developed his love of making games and coding late into the night, surrounded by the scent of ivy. His bedroom was decorated with ivy leaves that Carmen would steal from the Academy, smuggling out a few fresh branches at a time. With the ivy, Carmen made sure that her only son had the same chances with Alpha’s money gift as the Tall Men sons.

When Rico Nada was seven, Carmen told him that his father was a student at the Ivy Academy. ‘He was tall and good looking, that is all I can tell you. That is why you are tall, you are in part a Tall Man”. Rico grew with the conviction that he too could succeed. He pushed thru to get funds for his game tech- something that nobody beyond The Summoned could dream about.

His gaming buddies chipped in from their gig-jobs income to fund his ideas for SmoothCat. The team was camping in Carmen’s tiny apartment behind the Academy where Rick’s code developed on funding from players, independent of the big backers. Rico realised, he could turn the tables on the Tall Men.

Smooth Cat made any metaverse smooth – taking the power away from Alphaverse owners. Any wins in any universe were accumulated in CatCoins and transferable between games. Players could leverage assets in one game to borrow for a new homestead in another. Their assets grew quickly. CatCoins were so convenient for gamers that they became a widely used currency.

New game startups could use their earned CatCoins from one game as a collateral for their own metaworld. And after 12 months, Rico got to raise his hand in triumph at the GASDAQ podium.

Descending the podium behind him, Carmen’s happy expression began to change. She opened her handbag taking out a photograph. “Take a look at this” – she handed it over to Rico.

The photo showed a young, very tall man, standing next to a waterfall in the lush mountains. There was something familiar about his smile.

“It is your father” said Carmen quietly. Rico looked at her surprised. ‘I thought he was one of the Tall Men students?”

“Rico Nada, your Dad was not one of those Summoned fakes here” she said dismissively. ”Your father was the real Summoned –  my childhood sweetheart from back home, from the tallest tribe in the South, Quinamo, meaning “The Summoned”. He played basketball for the village team but he was gunned down, defending his younger brother from drug dealers. I escaped up North, getting a janitor job at the Ivy Academy”.

Rico asked, “Why are you telling me this now?”

“I wanted you to know, that you did it all by yourself. That you succeeded without being one of them”.

“Was it the ivy in my room? Isn’t it why the Tall Man are so money-savvy?” – asked Rico.

“It is just a ruse to persuade others about the mystery surrounding the Tall Men, a trick they play on us to justify their stratospheric high salaries, banking fees, exclusive control over Alphas.

“I have found a paper from the last century under the bed of the Ivy Academy Dean – it described the Ivy story origins, the creation of “super credentials”, to make them look infallible. The truth is it’s just a fable. I put the Ivy in your room, so you felt confident too.

The finance companies on the Tall Street only recruit for Risk capital and banks from the Ivy Academy, so nobody ever found out that outsiders can be good with money too.  The truth is that your coding skills didn’t get better just because you sniffed your Ivy for four years!” she giggled.

Rico raised his eyes and saw the giant GASDAQ tickertape running his stock ticker. It was going up. He smiled. He liked the idea of being a Quinamo, an ancient tribe famous for tall men, top traders before the fake Summoned arrived in their big boats.

Quinamo owned property as a collective. “We will share this with others”, Rico decided.  “CatCoins will be a DAO-owned venture, everyone will participate in the success and grow our capital.

Your destiny was to break The Tall Men monopoly on Alphas”. Carmen looked at him with pride- “you and your gaming crew are the real Summoned. Bring on the CatCoin revolution!”