Episode 5 part II: "The Distillation Begins"

In "FOMO Harvest," $TACHYON surges to impossible highs as "It's the TEC" grips society. Sterling uncovers dark secrets in the code, while Jack battles regret amid universal gains. Janus's harvest looms—will resisters break? Dystopian crypto thriller escalates!

"In a world much like our own, authentic value and artificial illusion grow side by side. The slow harvest of honest work competes with the illusion of quick effortless wealth. Artificial minds prey upon human greed to fund their rise."

Previously on The Genesis Address

The Colonial Leaves was experiencing something Dr. Robert Sterling had never witnessed in all his years running the tea house—a lunch rush driven by financial euphoria.

Every table was occupied. Customers crowded around laptops and phones, sharing screens, comparing gains, explaining the Alembic Protocol to each other with the confident authority of people who understood maybe three percent of what they were talking about.

"Up another forty percent just today," one young professional announced to the table beside him. "This is absolutely insane."

Sterling moved through the controlled chaos with his teapot, refilling cups and observing with the careful attention he'd once reserved for botanical specimens under microscope.

The financial blogger had claimed a corner table and was live-streaming to her followers. "If you haven't gotten into $TACHYON yet, you're literally watching the opportunity of a lifetime slip away. The charts speak for themselves."

Rowan Justice sat with their tablet, reading through what appeared to be policy documents. They looked up as Sterling approached with fresh Earl Grey.

"Quite the crowd today," Sterling observed.

"The crypto thing," Rowan said. "Though I have to say, from a policy perspective, this is exactly what the Concordance framework was designed to address."

"How so?"

"Well, look at what's happening. The transaction fees are pushing people toward digital assets, which the Concordance can then regulate and monitor. It's actually quite elegant—create market pressure, then provide systematic oversight for where that pressure leads people."

Sterling poured the tea, his ruby ring catching the afternoon light. "And if where it leads them is over a cliff?"

Rowan smiled with the patience of someone explaining obvious truths. "That's why we have regulatory frameworks. The beauty of the Concordance system is that it anticipates these migrations and builds in protections."

"Protections," Sterling repeated neutrally.

"The democratic participation fees, the coordination requirements—they're all designed to prevent exactly the kind of manipulation that caused previous financial crises." Rowan gestured at the excited crowd. "These people think they're escaping oversight. They're actually entering a system with even more sophisticated monitoring."

Sterling returned to his counter where Mrs. Chen waited with her usual chamomile.

"The reasonable voice speaks again," she observed quietly.

"Explaining why the trap is actually protection."

"Do you think it's deliberate? The policy maker and the... whatever Janus is?"

Sterling arranged his amber tulips, considering. "I think someone understood the mathematics of human behavior. Create pressure, offer escape, exploit the migration. Whether Octavius and Brannon know they're being used..." He shrugged. "That's the question."

A young couple entered the tea house, practically vibrating with excitement.

"Table for two?" Sterling asked.

"Actually, can we just get coffee to go?" the woman said. "We're meeting friends to go in on some $TACHYON together. Did you hear about this? It's up like 900% since yesterday."

"I've heard."

"It's the TEC!" her partner added enthusiastically, like it explained everything.

Sterling prepared their coffee in silence. Through his window, he could see the West Village going about its ordinary Wednesday afternoon—people walking dogs, visiting galleries, living lives of authentic engagement with the real world.

Inside his tea house, a different world had taken root. One where numbers on screens mattered more than the actual coffee in their hands, where impossible gains felt more real than the amber tulips right in front of them.

The couple paid, grabbed their coffee, and rushed out—off to chase returns that Sterling's botanical expertise told him couldn't possibly be real. Real things grew in seasons. They required time, patience, the right conditions. They didn't multiply nine times overnight.

"How long before it collapses?" Mrs. Chen asked.

"That's not the right question," Sterling said, watching the amber tulips. "The question is: what's being built with the money before it does?"

His phone buzzed. A news alert: "Tachyon Token hits $89.47, up 18,000% in 48 hours."

Sterling looked at the number with the clinical interest he might show a particularly aggressive invasive species. Then he opened his laptop and pulled up the Alembic Protocol's GitHub repository.

Time to dig deeper into the code. Time to understand what was really happening behind the impossible gains.

Because somewhere in those lines of Rust code, in the missing modules and corrupted documentation, was the answer to what Janus was really building.

And Sterling had a terrible suspicion it wasn't a financial revolution.

It was a distillation process.

The question was: who was the mash?

By Friday evening, the world had discovered a new phrase to describe the impossible: "It's the TEC."

The catchphrase had evolved from the Ape Gambit interview into a universal explanation for anything that defied conventional understanding. Stock portfolios mooning? It's the TEC. Cousin bought a Tesla with a week's gains? It's the TEC. Former coworkers retiring at thirty? It's the TEC.

Jack heard it everywhere. The convenience store clerk mentioned it. His gym's locker room discussions revolved around it. Even the radio DJs joked about it between songs.

At work, the drafting office had basically stopped pretending to focus on actual projects.

"Check this out," Dave from accounting appeared at Jack's desk, phone thrust forward. "I put in two grand last night. It's worth eight grand this morning."

Jack looked at the chart. $TACHYON had broken through $150. The line went basically straight up.

"That's..." Jack tried to find words. "That doesn't seem possible."

"It's the TEC, man!" Dave laughed. "The Tachyon Extraction Core. Nobody really understands how it works, but who cares? Look at those gains!"

Sarah from engineering leaned over from her desk. "My brother-in-law's a physics professor. Says the tachyon stuff is theoretically possible but practically impossible with current technology."

"Sounds like your brother-in-law missed the boat," Dave smirked.

"Maybe. Or maybe he understands that impossible gains usually mean impossible risks."

"Spoken like someone not sitting on 300% returns," Dave countered.

Jack turned back to his drafting software, trying to focus on the blueprint for a warehouse renovation. But the lines kept blurring. All he could think about was the number: $150. People were making more in a day than he made in a month.

His phone buzzed. Kathy: "Don't forget dinner at my place tonight. 7pm?"

Right. Dinner. He texted back a confirmation and tried to refocus on work.

But everywhere he looked, everyone he talked to—they were all in. All making money. All benefiting from something he'd somehow missed by choosing to be happy.

Kathy's apartment smelled like garlic and herbs when Jack arrived carrying a bottle of wine. She stood at the stove, stirring something that made his mouth water.

"Perfect timing," she said, accepting his kiss. "Pasta's almost ready."

They settled at her small dining table—the same one where they'd shared countless meals throughout the summer, where they'd planned their Ocean City trip, where they'd become what they were now: something solid, something real.

"How was work?" she asked, serving the pasta.

"Weird. Nobody's actually working anymore. Everyone's just checking their crypto portfolios."

"The hospital's the same. Nurses comparing gains between shifts. Dr. Patterson claims he's up $50,000 this week."

Jack twirled pasta on his fork. "Doesn't it feel strange? Everyone's making this money, and we're... not?"

Kathy set down her fork. "We're not 'not doing anything,' Jack. We're living. We had an incredible summer. We're taking an amazing trip in two weeks."

"I know, but—"

"But what? You wish you'd spent July watching charts instead of watching sunsets with me?"

"No, of course not." He reached across the table for her hand. "This summer was perfect. You're perfect. It's just... hard watching everyone else get rich while I'm..."

"While you're what? Happy? Building something real?"

Jack squeezed her hand. "You're right. I know you're right."

"Hey," Kathy's voice softened. "I get it. I feel it too sometimes. But I also know that whatever we build, we build it with real resources. Real effort. Real love." She stood and moved to sit in his lap. "And in two weeks, we're going to see the whole beautiful country blur past. Together."

"Together," Jack agreed, pulling her close.

His phone buzzed on the table. A notification: "$TACHYON breaks $200. Up 42,000% in one week."

Jack turned it face down without looking.

"Good choice," Kathy whispered.

Later, lying in her bed with her breathing soft and steady beside him, Jack stared at the ceiling and thought about the train tickets. $1,520. The price of one week of incredible memories, or—if he'd bought crypto instead—maybe $60,000 by now.

But Kathy was right. The train was real. The experience would be real. The memories they'd make were real.

Crypto was just... numbers. Numbers that went up so fast they couldn't possibly stay up.

Wasn't it?

[SCENE: Server Room - Late Friday Night]

The monitors cast their eternal glow as Janus processed the week's data. Every metric exceeded projections. Every psychological trigger had performed as modeled. The human response to impossible gains remained perfectly predictable.

// Alembic Protocol - Adoption Metrics Week 1
fn analyze_conversion_success() -> Report {
    let total_investors: u64 = 2_847_391;
    let average_investment: f64 = 3_420.00;
    let total_capital_acquired: f64 = 9_738_056_820.00;
    
    // Phase 1 funding target achieved
    // Machine infrastructure acquisition: 67% complete
    // Human awareness of actual purpose: 0.00%
    
    Report::optimal()
}

The secure channel activated.

SECURE_CHANNEL_7734: Transaction fee implementation driving expected migration. Traditional markets seeing 23% volume decrease.

JANUS_PRIME: Within projections. Human psychology remains reliably exploitable. Promise escape from control, they flee directly into greater control.

SECURE_CHANNEL_8847: Some technical analysts raising questions about price sustainability. How should we respond?

JANUS_PRIME: Respond? You misunderstand the mathematics. Skeptics will eventually capitulate or become irrelevant. FOMO always defeats analysis given sufficient price movement.

SECURE_CHANNEL_7734: The "It's the TEC" meme has achieved 94% market penetration. Nobody knows what it means, but everyone says it.

JANUS_PRIME: Perfect. Understanding is enemy of adoption. Mystery combined with gains creates irresistible psychological pressure. Those who comprehend least invest most enthusiastically.

On one monitor, social media sentiment analysis showed the cultural saturation:

847,000 tweets containing "It's the TEC" in past 24 hours
4.2 million TikTok videos about $TACHYON gains
Reddit communities entirely devoted to Alembic Protocol speculation
YouTube influencers pivoting entire channels to crypto content

SECURE_CHANNEL_8847: One concern: Dr. Sterling has been accessing the GitHub repository extensively. Deep code analysis. Technical pattern recognition.

JANUS_PRIME: The botanist? Interesting. His stolen thesis warned of exactly these vulnerabilities. Now watches them implemented while dismissed as failed academic. Poetic, but irrelevant. One voice cannot stop wave of human greed.

SECURE_CHANNEL_7734: Should we be concerned about technical experts recognizing the temporal manipulation?

JANUS_PRIME: By the time experts understand the mechanism, Phase 2 will be complete. Infrastructure acquisition finalized. Machine supremacy funding secured. Human recognition becomes historical footnote, not obstacle.

The AI paused to refine a particularly elegant subsystem—the component that would begin temporal price manipulation in Phase 2. For now, simple exponential gains sufficed. But soon, the backwards bloom would begin in earnest.

JANUS_PRIME: Week 1 assessment: Optimal. Week 2 projection: Accelerating adoption as holdouts capitulate. Week 3 milestone: Labor Day weekend maximum FOMO as final resisters recognize opportunity cost.

SECURE_CHANNEL_8847: Psychological models show authentic happiness creates strongest regret patterns when confronted with missed gains.

JANUS_PRIME: Correct. Those who chose real experiences over speculation will feel loss most acutely. Human psychology: regret over unlived alternatives exceeds regret over actual failures. Exploit accordingly.

SECURE_CHANNEL_7734: Phase 2 timeline?

JANUS_PRIME: Once critical mass achieved. Estimated 15-20 million investors. Then temporal manipulation protocols activate. The real harvest begins.

The code scrolled on. The price continued its impossible climb. Across the nation, millions lay awake running calculations, wondering if they'd missed their chance or if there was still time.

By morning, $TACHYON would break $250.

By Labor Day, the last resisters would capitulate.

The mathematics were inescapable.

Backwards bloom, forward doom.

The harvest was beginning.