Solarized by odd ambience, pinkish gradient in the sky, Vance Render scanned the company names on the door console twice but Outernet was not there. Anyway, an accommodating voice prompted them to wallet connect, then displayed a representative from Eiffel Communication Technologies.
“U Render?” went gruph Flo Cloaker dialogue box. “Follow me.” Cloaker (pipeline.netmorf.eth) led Render down a looong whide spiral staircase, gentle bezier describing the outline of the building, down, and then across a circular open plan office space, workstations in concentric rows, plush industrial carpet, bluish-green, not stopping for introductions. In the centre of the circle, a tinted glass-walled office. Inner circle. Cloaker gestured to a seat and, blink of an eye, bossware script began.
“Render, let me come right out and admit it: I have you here under false pretences.” With authority, Ember Bilder (coloreyes.netmorf.eth) took a seat across the desktop from Render, the latter understandably struggling for clarity. “Here at OVOM we incubate business. It’s what we do. Outernet is one of ours, that much is true. Bought out from under the noses of JCDecaux.” Embers glowed, this acquihire evidently a source of professional pride. “Digital image bigger and copywrighter, fully autonomous content creation on the roadmap. Their team just licensed a little algo to Samsung — reimproves the moon in your photographs with a precise digital model, accurate for your geolocation. You saw it?” Muted Render nodded, unconvincingly. “Of course, it’s all very good, and you could be involved with it, to the extent that you are interested in such things. But I have another purpose for you, dear Render. Something more fitting for your critical disposition. I know you are a critical graphic designer.” At that, Bilder’s voice escalated alarmingly, “OVOM, mask the windows.” The building obliged.
“What’s vexing me is another IP. Brought in over my head it was, on perfectly absurd terms. I am to retain the founder and three engineers on outlandish compensation indefinitely, but grok I do not. They’re coming out of neurotech. A proprietary spell that purports to conjur graphics into the visual field. Persistent AR easy as an eyedrop, so they claim. They call it Netmorf, but don’t repeat that, they’re still in — eye roll — stealth mode.” Bilder beachballed momentarily, then bounced back. “Eiffel, the founder, is certainly charismatic. Glassy skin.” Bilder opened a branded microfibre cloth and began cleaning their glasses. “The point though, Render, is that they cannot perform their spell when anyone else is present! All we’ve seen are decks! Endless brand actorvations, logo optications, evertating globes and bulbous eyeputs. I have my suspicions, but I need to be ... cautious. Predictably, the board are in raptures.” Other eye roll. “They sense their prize. If Netmorf is real and we bring it to market, we could leapfrog Neuralink and the boomer brain implant crowd, and, well …” Bilder waited, hoping for Render to finish the sentence for them, before concluding, emphatically: “No surgery means no regulators!”
“As I am sure you have intuited, Smartrender, an opportunity has presented itself. Some halftoned assistant was sent up here demanding another graphic designer be hired and now here you are. You will be my critical eyes on the ground, pardon the expression.” Bilder opened the microfibre cloth again and began cleaning their glasses again. “Go about the work as you please, apply yourself by all means. Do as they ask. Make more anodyne presentations, enchant the board with your visual aplomb while retaining your ironic distance. Go wild, young Render. But you report to me. Do we have an understanding?”
In response, thoroughly filtered Render could only mummmble inconsequentially. Bilder autotook this as permission, and instructed the accommodating voice to mint a token to Render’s wallet. “That’s your OVOM pass. It’ll require some ETH to open doors,” Bilder explained, shamelessly.
“The system is a trial from Heavenly Door, another of our IPs. I suggest you just put 0.02 on there for starters. It’s technically going toward your post-life insurance, but you can spend it in the cafeteria, and on treatments and whatnots as you wish. You’ll start tomorrow.”
This is episode two of PNG in the EYE, a Dotcom Seance fanfiction. The episode was accompanied by a Zora Drop of 34 OVOM passes which minted out in a couple hours, LFG. The ENS addresses holding each character’s pass at the time of publication appear in parentheses alongside their first mention in the narrative.