THE QUANTUM INTELLIGENCER

A paper has been passing from glove to glove in the glazed conservatory of the Coinbase Custody House, and the care with which it is held suggests a document of greater consequence than its modest binding would imply. Lord Armstrong, who keeps the house, has set down his wishes for the great ledger's future locks: a design that separates the strongbox from the seal, a double-keyed escutcheon so that either an old key or a new seal may turn the bolt, and a cordial preference for beginning the business before any alarming engine appears. The circulating room reports that the tone is markedly softer than in the Block Size unpleasantness of former years. The memorandum is offered as one input among many, and the household is at pains not to be seen to command. The delicate matter, which every tongue declines to name, concerns the founder's long untouched vaults and other early holdings whose locks have stood exposed to any clever mathematician for years. Some propose to freeze those addresses; others would leave them to their fate; the Coinbase household would prefer to protect those willing to move, and to regard the remainder as an awkward inheritance for another season. It is whispered that some seven million coins fall into this category, and that the founder's own portion alone approaches two million. Nor is the quantum engine the only subject of drawn breath. A scholar from the Eastern Ethereum house has alarmed the company by suggesting that artificial intelligences might undo the seal sooner; Dr Lindell, keeper of ciphers at Coinbase, answered with considerable coolness that no evidence of such capacity has yet been brought to table. Since the house holds five pennies in every hundred of the circulating fortune, its preference for an orderly migration is not without interest. The season, one suspects, will not be over when the locks are finally changed; the question is who shall be seen to turn the key. —Ada H. Pemberley Dispatch from The Institutional E1