PNB Chapter 3

AVID:

Working on selling the tapes.
Has few bids.
Seems to be catching a WHALE.
Deep sea fishing metaphors.

AVID enjoyed language, simile, metaphor. The way in which discursive elements og language combined and recombined. One could be exactly specific, and even have multilayered messages in one phrase.
He particularly enjoyed dropping in quotes and words from esoteric poetry - embedded in his chat messages like encrypted gems.

Of course most people missed those completely. But occasionally his best friends, like PNB really gave attention to what he was adding in.

That's why he would always do PNB afavor, a solid. He was as reliable as rock, as consistent as the ever creeping geological pressures pushing the Himalayas higher into the sky. And... as he was discovering, so were the climbers OPNB had identified in his video.

As he had scrubeed through the footage, and begun adding meta-tags, specific timestamps (usually an additional fee, but friends don't quibble with friends) he found out othat the expeditioneer. Etienne LaMont - had made not one, two, or three, but SIX attempts at this specific peak. A few were short 'aborts' (he loved this how this computer term spanned the physical as well.)More of exploratory ventures, learning about the mountain, its characteristics of snow, what signalled avalanche, when certain wide expanses could be crossed with a relative margin of safety.

AVID employed metaphor to understand - just like the GenAI this would likely end up training, the idea of getting unique insights was about leaping from one realm , one body of words, to another. A hacker swapping chat rooms, where the commands in one became near magic spells in another, a higher order command channeling the powers of the system back onto itself.

"Bootstraps bootstraps, pull me up"

He had recorded the last few minutes of his scrubbing and tagging workflow, and that spoken command sent of a little companion program to replicate his work across the rest of the found footage. His various command phrases, mostly old movie lines and memes that had lost all connection to their original sources = doggerel phrases spoken into the mic he wore at nearly all times, triggering his AI programs to perform and orchestrate various tasks.

AVID shifted back into research on LaMont. The amount of news coverage and relevant media dwindled inversely to LaMonts increasing attempts. AVID discovers that the last three, really two - attempts were solos by the climber. Apparently his frustration with failure led him to remove team members - or perhaps it was running low on resources. At the same time, whatever was gleaned from LaMont, had become more grandiose, more arcane even... he was quoted saying that this one path lead to Nirvana, it was the final ascent, the only one that mattered. The words and actions of a man on the edge of insanity or brilliance.

An electronic melody chimed, a little frog avatar popped on screen, a daemon saying the work was completed. He reviewed the summary, and - his processing routine had a finished

"Cut the chaff, cut the chaff"

--- POSTS THE VIDEO
GETS THE SALE

DISCOVERIES MYSTERY

FINDS THAT THERE IS A HIDDEN LOCATION WITH MORE TAPES AND INFO!

--- metaphor, hacking, what was BEHIND the barrier The firewalls (in this case the ice cliffs...)

PNB C2

PNB experienced the rarest feeling, of waking from dreams to find that reality bore the same , if not greater possibilities. Visions of sugared teas, rich bean pastryies, and egg slurry porridge had run through his head.

And he awoke to an astoundingly (relative to his recent earnings) new balance of cryptos in his accounts. Food for weeks. A warmer room, less eposed on the cliff side. Maybe even new software, or if he really stretched his food funding, enough to travel to a real city and book a stay in a microtel somewhere. Maybe a small town with hitsprings. Immerse himself in water rather than the constant embrace of an enviro suit.

Outline:
PNB enjoys the delicacies
Finally checks messages. Sees that AVID has sent more than the balance. But additional questions.

Wants to explore PNB: