Permies Coin Speculative Fiction

This story is fiction, any resembalence to actual people or events is merely coincidence. .' )

Diane like many expert permaculturalist had always had an uneasy relationship with technology. She was not what you would call an “Early Adopter.” In fact from the year 1979 (when they moved to their off grid rural homestead) to 1991 she and Paul had used kerosene to light their house. “Prefer low light or no light to having to pay another power bill,” she was oft heard screeing. She only consented to LED bulbs when her newborn daughter Marlow had an asthmatic response to the kerosene soot . Now 27 years later the splashsplash of the mini-turbine in the creek,[1] powered a battery bank which kept the lights going at night as they cooked their extravagant meals, harvested from their multi-tiered food forest in temperate North America. [2]
Even hardliner idealists have to make compromises.

Meeko on the other hand had always had an uneasy relationship with the outdoors. Long before he moved to Tennesee to follow a love interest, he lived on the 14th floor in a San Jose apartment where the only contact he had with nature was when the occasional cockroach would nest inside a Dr. Thunder can rolled under his AISC mining rig.[3] At that point in his life he preferred the proof of work algorithm that generated bitcoin,[4] to working with his hands in the dirt.

Marlow would inevitably be the one to bring Meeko and Dianne together in their fruitful collaborations. Mar grew up in and amongst the counter culture of her parents life style choses. Her childhood home was described by the Tennesee locals as “hippie holler”.[5] Her parents rural off the grid homestead had been a “hard fork” of another down the road called Paradise Earth Acres, a commune (now self described as an intentional community and eco-village.) Diane and her husband Paul had first moved to P.E.A. in the early 1980s full of idealism and passion for a life less dependent on the industrial supply chain and fossil energy. However the disorganized project management and emotionally draining heart circles at P.E.A had lead them to explore other land ownership options nearby. They had financed the land their current farm now sat on with a collection of loans from family, friends, and a commercial bank. The last demanding a hefty interest rate. [6]

Marlow loved her non-convetional parents and the home they built from scratch very much. She loved their crazy neighbors, with their elaborate water catchment designs, and chicken tractors, and she love their enigmatic work ethic. She gained a love of mechanical engineering with the myriad of projects that needed completing around the farmstead from Barn Building to Passive Solar heating systems. [7] However by 18 years of age and with a home school GED under her belt. She decided that she needed some experience with urban life so opted to take the full college scholarship to UC San Jose far away from her parents permaculture paradise.

That is where she met Meeko, a pale and pasty javascript programmer, at the neighborhood counter culture coffee shop. He was just finishing up a speech he had prepared for the local bitcoin meetup when Marlow walked thru the door. Her eyes glimmering with mischief and intrigue. His eyes caught hers and some unspoken passion was ignited in both. Yet it took him the whole hour to pull himself away from the chitchat of the krypto nerds and altcoin compatriots, [8] to Marlow's table where she sipped black coffee and drafted pencil sketches of steam engines into her leather bound notebook. “May I buy you another? I can pay in bitcoin.” “With what coin? Marlow slyly retorted. “Anyways you call that a pickup line?” “Oh uh well, you know... the digital currency revolution poised to change the whole world.” said Meeko weakly (his heart was in his throat). “Well if you're using techno jargon to fire me up, know that I am mechanical engineer not an economist.” “Uh errr well, would it be something we could discuss over diner? Meeko ungracefully blurted” Marlow's eyes gleemed, “Y

our place or mine?” (When Marlow knew what she wanted she didn't waste time.)


After graduation Marlow convinced her boyfriend Meeko to move to rural Tennessee to experience the life of a farm hand. “If for any reason more than, too have you eat my fathers famous chesnut raised Tennessee pork barbecue. [10]”

Marlow now 27 brought in a load of split fire wood into the kitchen. Despite Marlow's lung condition the family still cooked with wood, primarily because of another technology (efficient rocket stoves and rocket mass heaters [9]) The stoves used 1/10th of the wood with less soot and allowed the family to decrease their reliance on propane, trucked in from town. Marlow turned to her father “Did you just get that e-mail dad?” About the hazelnut order? ”

Dianne and Paul had always considered Internet access a distraction from their outdoor work of perennial fruit and nut tree breeding. Sure, they would answer the occasional hotmail correspondence while at the town library, but the bulk of their tree business was at the Nashville farmer's market and wholesale nurseries across the state. So it would be anathema to their younger selves to know that since Meeko's arrival they had integrated rather than segregated [11] themselves with the digital age.

Paul and Dianne though techno-luddites at heart were increasingly finding that more and more wholesale tree buying clients arrived to them via an open source on-line bizarre [12] which used an alternative currency called Permies-coin [13]

Permies-coin differered from conventional state issued fiat currencies (which were backed by sovereign debt and military expansion[14]), in that, this currency was backed by a rolling fund paid into by member owners. [15] The income generated by the living capital [16] the various participants stored at their land projects, started to show up in the business papers. In London and New York, headlines announced PERMIES-COIN HELPS INVESTORS COMBAT THE PEAKOIL BLUES [17] and EVEN CLIMATE CHANGE SKEPTICS [18] LOVE PCV (permiecoinventures) AS A BUY. Soon calls from swarms of vulture like venture capital arrived and attempted to find their way into the fold. “They just want to milk the coffers of this decentralized autonomous coorporation [19], in financial flight away from risky Petrol-Expansionist dead ends [20]!” Screamed Marlow from the background as her mother sat patiently on the phone with one of them. Dianne politely quipped “Get your Permaculture Design Certificate [21] first and then we'll talk,” then put the cooper land line phone back on the hook. Dianne had to explain to these slick businessmen and women, who were calling now at least once a week , “The good will within the entire permaculture movement depends on a strong base of knowledge [22]” she would say.

The Internet access the family now enjoyed was first brought to the homestead by Meeko. The pale young man, with atrophied muscles, initially had no interest in nut-tree breeding , and spent the first 3 weeks doing nothing but futzing with a Pringels Can, which he had fashioned into a wi-fi repeater [23]. Then truged thru much poison ivy to installed on the hill across the valley. “I NEED TO CHECK MY REDDIT FEED!” He could barely operate the rocket stove and was much more competent at techno gadget manipulation, than splitting wood.

The black box he installed to the family's power inverter was called a Maid-Safe [24] and though Meeko explained in depth how it worked. Most of the technical jargon of end-to-end encryption this and cross reference distributed hash tables [25] of a global mesh network via raspberry pi ardino hardsplice went over the Dianne and Paul's head. Paul did enjoy how the visualization of the mesh network Meeko brought up upon the display terminal reminded him of the creek system of the watershed they lived in. [26]


Meeko soon became much more ruddy in complexion, with time spent outside assisting in loading of infant trees. He could soon split wood for more than 10 minutes and had much more stamina and endurance (much to Marlow's pleasure) Over time came to love the intensely rewarding work of nut tree breeding. He was won over by Paul and Dianne enthusiasm, and their attention to detail. After 40 years of cultivating a blight resistant strain of the American Chesnut they were into their 5th generation of fully mature nut trees bringing the species back from extinction, in the North American continent.
[27]
The pair prided themselves on doing all the genetic modification on their farm the old fashion way, through massive farm-scale research. Planting thousands of trees at a time and taking copious notes.
The heirloom breeding program was not unnoticed by Agrobusinness and CHEM-AG hotshots from around the globe. Meeko was able to help the family submit a hash (Algorithmic Abbreviation) of the relevant blight resistance gene sequence to the PermaGene Virtual Seedbank blockchain keeping the whole permacreditsDAC ecosystem resilient from the likes of would be intellectual property thieves. Though they mostly did this as a P.R. campaign on behalf of PermiCoinLocal, [43] which enjoyed a lovely boost in their donations that week from their write up in the Cannon County Courier.

Dianne, Meeko, Marlow, and Paul found themselves shipping their “rapidly adapting” chesnut, pecan, and hazelnut varietals often to the other side of the globe. This gladden their hearts knowing that whoever it was out there using their trees, would be taking back their seed sovereignty (there nuts planted true to type) and replacing many more acres of GMO corn and soy [45] with deep rooted Permanent Agriculture, and keeping that much more soil from washing into the ocean.

It seemed an blessing from beyond that the modest income they enjoyed from their educational broadcasts on a PermieCoin based Educational Media Network [29] about Bamboo construction, help them subsidize their farm's expansion. Now that their farm was approaching neighborhood scale infrastructure (the current residents would still jokingly refer to it as a commune) , it was a breeze to bring in other regenerative entrepreneurs doing soil and natural building research. The local Tennessee residents less and less called the area hippie holler and more and more referred to it as “That Swiss Family Robinson place.”[30]



1. [Couger Mountain Permaculture - (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42tglFVFVSo) (http://eugenedailynews.com/2012/03/cougar-mountain-farm-and-its-40-years-of-sustainabilty/)
1]
[Dave Jacke, with Eric Toensmeier - Establishing and Maintaining your Edible food Forest (http://www.edibleforestgardens.com/)
b. Geoff Lawton Establishing and Maintaining your edible food forest (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QG_vRG66wkA)
2]
[AISC a.(https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining) b. (http://www.coindesk.com/private-china-meeting-bitcoin-mining-industry-leaders/)
3]
[AISC song - (https://soundcloud.com/deadnettlez/cloudfarm-aisc-miner)
4]
[Intentioal Communites and EcoVillages (http://www.ic.org/communities-magazine-home/)
5]
[Farm Loans for rural properties - (http://www.permaculturevoices.com/podcast/the-future-of-agriculture-changing-the-concept-with-mark-shepard-pvp039/)
6]
[Michael Renyolds Earth Ships - (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Reynolds_%28architect%29)
7]
[SuperNET whitepaper - ((http://thesupernet.org/)
8]
[ Earnie and Erica (http://www.ernieanderica.info/rocketstoves)
9]
[Heritege Breed Hogs (http://www.permaculturevoices.com/podcast/permaculture-voices-podcast-010-heritage-breed-livestock-farming-later-in-life/)
10]
[Tennesee Bitcoin Alliance (http://tennesseebitcoin.org/about/)
43]
[Permaculure Principal Integrate Rather Than Segregate (http://permacultureprinciples.com/principles/_8/)
11]
[Open Bizarre - (https://blog.openbazaar.org/what-is-openbazaar/)
12]
[Permacredits.com (http://permacredits.com/)
13]
[David Graber - history of debt (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5000_Years)
14]
[Organic Valley Co-op (http://www.organicvalley.coop/about-us/overview/our-history/)
15]
[8forms.org (http://www.8forms.org/)
16]
[PRI - article peak oil blues (http://permaculturenews.org/2014/11/08/perennial-polyculture-prevails-peak-oil/)
17]
[Permaethos.com (http://permaethos.com/about/)
18]
[Daniel Lahermers - DAC that spawn DACs http://letstalkbitcoin.com/dacs-that-spawn-dacs/#.UoPDfWSxPVQ)
19]
[Rockifeller gets out of Fossil (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/22/us/heirs-to-an-oil-fortune-join-the-divestment-drive.html?_r=0)
20]
[What is a PDC? (http://www.patternliteracy.com/courses/permaculture-design-course-faq)
21]
[12 traditions of DAC named Al-Anon (http://www.al-anon.alateen.org/the-twelve-traditions)
22]
[DIY guide to Prigles can repeater (http://spectregroup.wordpress.com/2009/10/02/sat-hacks/)
23]
[MAIDSAFE (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MaidSafe)
24]
[DHT what is it? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_hash_table)
25]
[Bioregional Congress concept (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioregionalism)
26]
[Badger Set Permaculture Chesnut (http://badgersettresearch.blogspot.com/2014/07/permaculture-voices-podcasts.html)
27]
28.. [Mark Shepard Perrenial Nut Crops ( http://www.thepermaculturepodcast.com/?s=mark+shepard&searchsubmit=)
28]
[Permaethos.tv (https://permies.com/t/37698/permaculture-podcast/PermaEthos-Part)
29]
[Approvecho (http://www.aprovecho.net/)
30]
45.. [ Soy and Hazel side by side Comparison ( http://www.permaculturevoices.com/podcast/hazelnuts-a-viable-broadacre-crop-for-the-midwest-almost-with-phil-rutter-pvp079/) 45]

Paul Wheaton Dianne Leaf Christian

Love it!

And I think you are spot on about tiny, low power computers like raspberry pi and ardino connected into mesh networks replacing our current bulky data infrastructure. A very believable vision of what John Michael Greer calls our ecotechnic future. Where we take the technology that is able to survive the long descent of catabolic collapse and energy decline and learn to live in a more sustainable way because that is our only choice.

I love your story so far, and it has great character development with a pleasantly well-woven integration of permaculture knowledge. I look forward reading to more of your writings!