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Chapter 1 – Part 3

Jenks recalled just how his pride swelled and confidence just grew, like the bubbles in champagne that just seem to appear and effervesce. Jenks was out of the starting blocks, ‘Well, do you know what’s the biggest limiter of modern blockchain, what’s holding back the industry?’ he started, ‘It’s the vast amount of energy needed to maintain the full chain of data – that’s why it’s called blockchain.’

‘Here,’ added Emily, ‘add a link to our paper ‘blockchain’’.

She handed the parent a few Christmas ‘make-your-own-paperchain’ links, and the parent played along, adding their links to the long paper chain as they listened.

‘Your average blockchain adds hundreds of links, recording each, and every transaction, every second, all the way back to the very first minting of that coin or data point. So, a single coin has trillions of pieces of links to maintain, to secure its identity, and therefore its value. Running the servers that hold all that information is costly and sucks energy. Crypto isn’t ecologically sustainable,’ informed Jenks.

A listening mum laughed, ‘I’ve got ‘me cards luv. I don’t do fairy money.’

Jenks loved this, she’d played perfectly into his narrative, he could recall his confidence growing as more people stopped to listen, ‘Of course not, you don’t need your bank to track your money transferring to the store, to the hairdresser, or from your employer to you. You don’t need to worry about the council balancing traffic flows across their conurbation, or how the hospital secures your medical data – it’s all blockchain – it’s all secure!’

For a moment, he felt like a rockstar, explaining his revolutionary idea to an eager audience.

As he looked out across the booth, Jenks’s out-of-body experience let him ‘take in’ how many people he’d drawn in, they’d loved him, they were getting it!

Jenks continued to expound, occasionally tracking the VIP as he moved on to their next victim. ‘So my code, at regular intervals, converts the blockchain into ‘bases’ and structures them into ‘pairings’ and then constructs them into a double helix to further shorten them.’

Then a voice of a disinterested VIP from the neighbouring stall piped up, ‘That’s all solved, son, you’re late to the party mate!’ The VIP sloshed around his reasonably priced bubbly, spilling some of it on to his cheap crumpled polyester suit, ‘God, what are they teaching these kids?’ he asked no one in particular.

Jenks didn’t even skip a beat, ‘Quite right, there are blockchains that regularly truncate and discard-’

‘SEE?! He even knows it’s useless…’ cut in the VIP, his chins wobbling in agreement.

Jenks felt his fists clench, and he fixed his smile, what an obnoxious nob, ‘Which, which, which…W’

‘Spit it out – another stutterer,’ The VIP chastised, ‘Please!’

Emily picked up the baton, ‘Which is the weak point of their systems,’

She demonstrated how the links must be broken to shorten the chain. And Jenks had swept in with his hazard embossed link, ‘Which allows malware and hackers in.’

The academic chaperone whispered into the VIP’s ear and tried to steer him away from the argument, ‘Oh and you… and your little girlfriend have done what teams of coders, highly paid coders couldn’t – give me a break!’ slurred the dignitary.

Jenks felt his nails dig into his fist again, he knew his fixed smile had dropped, but he focused on getting the presentation across to everyone else. ‘I’ve looked at nature, at the very building block of us, we have so much data encoded into our DNA double helix.’ Jenks told the gathered crowd.

The VIP finished his bubbly, grabbed another one and wafted a dismissive hand at Jenks, ‘yeah right’, as he moved on.

Jenks recollected looking over to Emily, who was using the paperchain to show how the twisted chain was significantly shorter. ‘How is this any more secure?’ came the question from another champagne flute holder.

‘There’s no point of destruction; the chain is intact, always,’ Jenks explained.

‘I can’t see how it saves energy,’ another queried.

‘A single sperm holds all the data to make a new person, a football field-sized data centre struggles to hold half of that. With my double helix compression, our data would be super condensed. And that saves storage space, which… saves energy – gigawatts!’ Jenks replied.

‘But how do you access the information? Surely you can’t wait years for it to grow back?’ another asked.

Jenks chuckled inwardly at this. ‘Like genes, we have markers, so we just unpack that specific data – with my proprietary code – not the whole blockchain. So it’s secure, now, tomorrow, and always!’

But just as he was finishing answering the question, Jenks felt his attention being pulled over to Alex’s booth, where ‘that’ VIP was pointing accusingly at her. Jenks couldn’t hear the exchange.

‘Mr Jenkinson! Please describe the consensus mechanism used by your blockchain and its advantages,’ the Dean prompted.

In this memory of the incident, the Dean and her alumni were picked out in a halo of light. He’d immediately recognised Dr Cooper’s guest. It was Hathaway, this tech guru had been out of his wildest wish list. She’d been famous from before Jenks could remember, one of the few who’d stayed the test of time. She was the Bill Gates of coding, she was the Elon Musk of data, she was the Jeff Bezos in almost all smart devices. She and the Dean, they just… glided from the back of the crowd, as it parted for them, to be up close – and very personal. It was a religious experience for Jenks. Hathaway’s perfume filled his nostrils. She wore her age with pride. Her lips moved but he couldn’t recall the words; it was like birdsong. But that smell! It seemed to generate its own set of colours. It was heady, with an idea of strength and a softness that only really expensive perfume can achieve.

When Jenks snapped back into the reality of the day, he remembered seeing Emily staring at him, and then Ms. Hathaway, and then the Dean. ‘Well?’ Emily prompted.

‘Sure?’ Jenks tried.

_{© Lewis Webster 2024 – all rights reserved}