Would you 'Adam and Eve' it?

JUNE 2007 – A CAFÉ IN ZUG, SWITZERLAND.

Outside a quiet café, one unusually, hot afternoon, an elderly, refined gentleman sits at a table reading a paper. A spirited, young, African-American girl, sporty and athletic swoops in on rollerblades taking the seat next to him.

“I’m sorry I’m afraid that seat is taken, I’m waiting for someone,” said the gentlemen, focusing upon the source of his interruption.

“Tsk..” replied the girl rolling her eyes, continuing to remove her footwear.

“Did you not hear…” he scowled.

Then he stops halted by a flicker of recognition.

He knows this girl.

“It can’t be, is that you, Eve?” he said.

“The one and only,” she replied lifting her arms triumphantly.

“You look incredible, so young.”

“And you Adam look terrible, so old,” she retorted.

“Thank you,” said Adam with a hint of crushing realisation.

“It is Adam? You have dropped that St. Germain nonsense.”

“Yes, back to Adam.”

“I’m glad.”

She removes some designer pumps from her bag and slips them on, tying her blades together and fixing them to her bag.

“Still, as always, Eve?” asked Adam.

“Yes, although I’m thinking of mixing it up.”

“Why?”

“The world is about to become extremely fluid in regards to identity. I'm considering a change, just for a century or two.”

Adam processed this statement, his mind scrolled through a multitude of possibilities. Satisfied with his imaginative conclusion he continued.

“I have ordered for us, iced coffees and their cherry liqueur cake, it is their speciality, unless you would prefer the strudel?”

“Urgh... No. I have gone right off apples.”

Adam signalled the waitress that he was ready.

“Why are we meeting here?” asked Eve.

"It is Switzerland, neutral territory."

"Stop playing your games," Eve countered, "Why here?"

“We spent a long time here together,” answered Adam, “this was one of our biggest successes.”

“Until they started to forget about us and challenge our positions.”

“It was your pal Brigit whispering to her Celts that started all of that.”

“I don’t care about that, I'd rather be by the Med,” grumbled Eve, dismissing Adam with a wave of her hand.

“In this heat, Greece is a tinderbox, just primed to explode, it's cooler in the mountains,” said Adam

“I have always hated this place.”

“You haven’t.”

“I have, ever since you put that ridiculous extension on that castle with the Hapsburgs back in the 1300s.”

Adam turned to look. He chose this spot so they could see the castle and remember all that they had achieved. This was not how he wanted this to go. They had already started verbal sparring.

“I've missed you,” he said.

“We had dinner the other day.”

“That was 1918, in Versailles.”

“Exactly, just the other day.”

“That is not just the other day.”

“When you have been married like us for 42 millennia what is the odd decade here and there.”

“We have been coupled together for 43 millennia.”

“Look we are the only original couple left. The only ones still together. Out of the hundreds sent here after the flood, there is just us," Eve paused, "all good marriages need a bit of distance from time to time.”

“The only?”

“Yes I have some incredible gossip," Eve whispered for dramatic effect, "the Americans are not speaking. Liberty spoke to me the other day. Irreconcilable.”

“Really!”

“Just wait and see. That whole continent has at least five decades of fallout coming.”

“There are so few of us left now.”

“Forget them, they failed to adapt, they were never as strong as us.”

“How are you so young looking?” inquired Adam.

“It's this.” Eve pulled out a shiny black rectangle, and continued, “Just out in the states, it is called an iPhone.”

“That's made you so young, a magic looking glass?”

“You are so frustrating, you’ve been living in France too long," Eve grunted, "you're like the French, you take two centuries to adapt to anything.”

“Where are you living now?”

“Here and there,” she smiled coyly, “but with this I'm about to be living everywhere.”

“How?”

“I am inventing influencing; it is ridiculous, a new type of worship. It is starting to make me very powerful,” she replied.

“How do I get one?”

“I have ordered you one. They will be here in Europe by the year’s end.”

“Then can I be younger?”

“No. I am not sharing. You need to invent your own thing. But you're going to do Facebook so I can keep a closer eye on you.”

“Facebook?” he said.

“I will explain when your new looking glass arrives, there are rules I’m going to give you rules to follow." She wagged her finger at him, "I know you. You will make a good thing weird, very quickly.”

Then just like that there was silence. They had ran out of things to say. Ninety years had passed and all their small talk had dried up. The waitress delivered the 'Kaffee mit Kuchen'. Eve took a slurp on her straw. Adam took a forkful of his cake and took a slow deliberate breath. Adam knew that the next thing he said was critical.

“I think I've invented something; it is why I asked to meet,” said Adam tentatively.

“Go on.”

“I call it icons,” boasted Adam.

“We have had icons. They used to be really powerful, then slightly less powerful, then they gave off a mild buzz and now they are just dust collectors.”

“No this is different. They are invisible.”

“Explain?”

“Do you remember when we invented money?”

“How could I forget, we were in big trouble,” she replied.

“We had just gone to South America for the remarriage/reconciliation of the Pacas. It was a disaster. We had been ousted and rejected here in Europe. Almost powerless, then the ceremony turned into a bloodbath.”

“We barely got away, it was horrific.”

“We ended up at that oasis in the desert.”

“Oh yes,” she remembered.

“You took that poisonous belladonna plant, xitomatl and made it edible for them.”

“I invented the tomato,” she boasted.

“Yes, we exchanged it to thirsty travellers for anything they could give us.”

“Then you started to accept cocoa beans for them.”

“Yes. Our strength returned. Then travellers returned wanting to get more fruit and their own plants. What was the name of the shop we built?”

“‘The Ankh.’”

“Oh yes, Egyptian for the word 'oasis'.”

“Their need for that tomato, became worship, it started to restore us.”

“In no time at all you were exchanging three tomato plants for one cocoa bean. The cocoa beans became a currency.”

“Cocoa beans were used as currency in South America right up until the 1800s.”

“You turned that idea into bits of metal, then discs, then paper, then banking, then credit, then debt. You replaced our conventional worship with the lust for money.”

"Yes but your tomatoes brought us pizza, pasta, ketchup on chips... Oh, and the best soup on a cold winters day."

"Don't forget, gemista."

"Stuffed tomatoes, do you still make them that way you used to?"

Eve nods and blushes slightly. Another silence starts to descend between them.

“We survived because we adapted,” Adam declared. “Has it done us well?”

“We have done fabulously out of it. So why do you look so damn old.”

“Money is sick, it has a terminal disease. They're finding ways to get round it. They're growing bored of it. New ideas from the others are sneaking in. I need to reinvent it again.”

“So ‘icons’ are money?” she said quizzically raising an eyebrow.

“Yes. A mysterious new money which will have a greater power for us through their worship of it.”

“Invisible money?”

“In a way, you can't hold it. We create a finite number of icons, let some people find it, let others trade for it. If someone has one he can break it up and sell parts of it.”

“Parts of an Icon?”

“Well, more bits of an icon.”

“Bits of Icon?” puzzled Eve, “That’s a terrible name, change the name.”

“To what?”

“Coin, you are still far too focused on being treated like a god.”

“Bits of Coin.”

“No. Bitcoin.”

There was a pause.

“I like it,” Adam said thumping the table with enthusiasm.

“Easy Tiger. How are they going to handle it?”

“With that.”

Adam lent over and tapped his fingers on the iPhone.

“Ooh cheeky, you knew what it was the whole time,” purred Eve. “So you are getting with the times, I can see the black coming back into your grey hair already.” Eve was clapping her hands in physical excitement, “Have you found one of them to run it.”

“No.”

“Why?”

“I am going to run it.”

“Really? Ooh that is extra thrilling.” She was clapping her hands again and now bouncing in her seat. “What are you going to call yourself?”

“I don’t know. I thought we could come up with something together.”

“Right, pick three words,” she ordered.

“Any three words?”

“Words connected to the endeavour will have more power.”

“Okay,” he said, “Tomato.”

“Really?” she smiled.

Adam nods then said, “Oasis.”

“Okay.”

“You choose the last one.”

“...and Ankh, the name of the first ever shop should be involved.”

She pulled out of her backpack a pad of paper. On a torn out sheet she wrote the words tomato, oasis and ankh. Then waiting deliberately for obvious dramatic effect, she twinkled her fingers over the writing. The letters danced across the page in circling spirals. She clenched her fingers into a fist then opened them again. Two words had formed.

“Satoshi Nakamoto.” she ceremonially declared.

“That sounds proper. It has a gravitas. It has a resonance,” said Adam.

“We all have our skills,” Eve giggled, “Right we need to create a new look for you.”

“No we don’t,” he smiled, “No one will ever meet Satoshi Nakamoto. He will be a mystery. An unseen architect.”

“You are combining their old worship with their new. You are going to be so young after this takes off I am going to have to carry you around like a baby,” screamed Eve.

“I think you would like that.”

“Do you know, I don’t think I can remember a time, when I have been quite this attracted to you.”

Shocking the waitress, the youthful Eve leaned over and kissed the geriatric Adam hard on the lips. Both smiled, sensing the beginning of a new era in their relationship.

They spent the afternoon fiddling with the threads of finance and the future, ecstatically developing new ways for mankind to blindly worship at their altar, dreaming of a new untold power and youth that awaited them.