The Market
The pathway descended in a slow spiral toward the valley floor.
The air thickened as they went, charged with a subtle vibration Ruhr felt first in his teeth, then in the bones behind his eyes.
The sound wasn't noise exactly—it was information given rhythm.
Valinor lifted a vine that glowed with amber veins. "Welcome to the market."
At first glance Ruhr saw nothing that resembled trade—no stalls, no coins, no buyers barking offers. Instead, thousands of filaments hung between the terraces like strands of dew-lit silk.
When the breeze shifted, they chimed—a million micro-contacts, faint and musical, like rain falling sideways.
Elves moved through the network with a precision Ruhr had only ever seen on a factory line, except this work looked effortless.
They touched the filaments with bare fingertips; ripples of color radiated outward—blue for energy, gold for nutrient flow, green for labor offered.
Each hue found its route through the web and vanished into the trees beyond, absorbed by the Lace itself.
Ruhr slowed to watch. "It looks alive."
"It is," Valinor said. "Each pulse you see is a declaration of exchange—a record of contribution and need. The Lace remembers every one of them. Nothing is lost."
Ruhr rubbed his arms against the faint hum that prickled the hairs on his skin. "You mean this is how you… buy things?"
"We don't buy," Valinor replied. "We declare."
He brushed a filament lightly. The thread responded with a tone so pure it made Ruhr's throat tighten.
"That signal tells the network that I've released energy. The Lace routes it to where coherence is weakest."
"So it's a stock market," Ruhr muttered, half-impressed, half-horrified. "A biological, communist, singing stock market."
Valinor's laughter blended with the vibration around them. "If that helps you picture it, perhaps. But there's no speculation here—only feedback precise enough to resemble compassion."
Ruhr frowned, watching an elf place both hands on a node of braided roots. The colors around her flared scarlet, then softened into violet. "And that?"
"A loss reported," Valinor said. "A harvest failed. The Lace registers the deficit and widens support to her sector. She won't starve for being unlucky."
Ruhr thought of human markets: shouting, smoke, greed thinly veiled as freedom. "No haggling?"
"Haggling assumes ignorance," Valinor said. "The Lace doesn't forget, and it doesn't deceive. When every participant shares the same data, price dissolves. Only need and capacity remain."
The idea unsettled him. "So there's no profit?"
"There's profit," Valinor said, "but it's measured in coherence, in investment into the future. When your work strengthens the pattern, the Lace answers with clarity, vitality, and reputation—wealth that can't be hoarded."
A pulse of violet light swept across the valley and climbed the surrounding trees like dawn in reverse. The filaments brightened, their tones merging into a chord Ruhr could feel in his ribs.
For a moment he thought he heard words—echoes of promise, completion, shared relief—and then the sound faded into the hush of leaves.
Valinor watched him. "You feel it."
Ruhr nodded slowly. "It's like standing inside a song that knows my name."
"That's the ledger closing for the day," Valinor said. "Every exchange reconciled, every intention witnessed. The Lace sleeps with a clean conscience."
Ruhr swallowed. "And if someone cheats?"
"They can try," Valinor said, "but deception collapses its own pattern. The Lace reacts the way a body reacts to poison—first fever, then rejection."
"So it's not that no one lies," Ruhr said. "It's that lying costs more energy than truth."
"Exactly. Honesty here isn't moral. It's efficient. It works as a mind of greater scale. An individual may not know it, but a lie is more expensive for them as well."
The Human Question
They reached a platform of woven stone and root that overlooked the valley. From here the market shimmered like the inside of a seashell—bands of light crossing, merging, separating again. The sound was less like trade and more like wind passing through tuned glass.
Ruhr folded his arms, uneasy. "Where I come from, we'd call this impossible. Nobody gives without wanting something back."
Valinor's tracings brightened faintly. "And yet you still give. You feed children who will one day leave you. You build houses you'll never sleep in. Desire isn't the flaw; forgetting gratitude is."
Ruhr stared down at the movement below. "Where I'm from, forgetting was survival. In the Congo we think in families—everyone's cousin, everyone's obligation. It works until the ground goes dry. Then generosity eats itself. We share until the bowl is empty, and then we starve together.
In the West they did the opposite—small houses, locked granaries. They lived longer, but alone. It's like we split into two halves: one remembers trust, the other memory. Neither remembers both."
Valinor nodded. "Two climates, two time horizons. The short horizon of warmth breeds sharing because tomorrow is guaranteed. The long horizon of frost breeds saving because tomorrow might not come. When those instincts met, they collided instead of hybridized."
He gestured toward the glowing valley. "We were bred from both. The Lace carries the generosity of rainforests and the patience of glaciers. It remembers abundance, but budgets for drought centuries in advance. Not from fear—simply from memory."
Ruhr considered that. "You plan for centuries?"
"For millennia," Valinor corrected. "We plant forests that will mature after our language changes. We sculpt rivers whose curves won't close for a thousand seasons. We trade in continuities, not commodities."
"Continuities," Ruhr repeated, half-amused. "You make it sound like a bank."
"A living bank," Valinor said. "Our interest is resilience. When the Lace detects surplus, it doesn't store it—it seeds it. Growth is our dividend."
Ruhr watched the light flow between terraces like breath. "We'd call that altruism. You call it accounting."
"Because both are true," Valinor said. "Your ancestors shared to survive the week; we share to survive history."
Ruhr rubbed his jaw. "And freedom? Where's that fit? No secrets, no privacy. You can't even hide a thought."
Valinor's expression softened. "Freedom, to us, is the relief of transparency. We still choose—but choice arrives with its cost already visible. The Lace doesn't command; it reveals."
"That's not freedom," Ruhr said. "That's omniscience."
"Not omniscience," Valinor said. "Awareness. Omniscience ends conversation; awareness begins it."
Ruhr shook his head. "Still feels like a cage made of good intentions."
Valinor smiled faintly. "Only if you mistake shadows for privacy."
They stood in silence while the hum of the market threaded through them—a thousand lives synchronizing intent in real time.
It should have sounded mechanical. It didn't.
"You're not communists," Ruhr said finally. "You're accountants with empathy."
"We're witnesses," Valinor replied. "Communism chased equality without consequence. Capitalism chased consequence without equality. Both were built on mistrust. We replaced mistrust with memory. Every act visible, every motive contextualized. Corruption can't hide; greed self-limits. Interference burns itself out like fever."
Ruhr's gaze drifted across the valley.
The pattern of lights made sense now—every pulse a life feeding the next.
"It's still terrifying," he said quietly.
Valinor looked pleased. "Good. Systems that never frighten their builders die of certainty."
Ruhr laughed under his breath. "Back home we used to say fear keeps a man honest."
"Then your ancestors nearly solved it," Valinor said. "They just forgot to write it into their bones. We are not superior to you. We were given life with the context of your mistakes, but also with a culture custom-built to avoid repeating them."
A Matter of Trust
Later, as they walked back through the glowing corridors, Ruhr asked, "What happens when two of you disagree—when one sees a future another can't accept?"
Valinor touched a passing filament. "Then the Lace models both paths. Everyone witnesses the outcomes in resonance, not numbers. The future that sustains the greater coherence becomes consensus. Argument is still sacred—but it's art, not dominance."
Ruhr shook his head. "You make it sound clean."
"It isn't," Valinor said. "Perfection is a corpse. We still err—we just can't hide the body. That keeps us humble."
Ruhr was silent for a long moment, the rhythm of the market beating like a slow pulse underfoot.
Finally he said, "I think I'd like to see that model run for humanity."
Valinor gave him a long, considering look. "That is what the Conn will be."
Ruhr turned sharply. "You mean—"
"Not an Elven lattice. A human branch. Born from your own memories, your own hungers. Guided, not governed. The Lace can lend the structure of integrity—but the voice must be yours."
Ruhr nodded slowly, as if the words were seeds settling into soil. "Then we'd better make it worth remembering."