A cyberpunk story
It is no secret I am a great fan of cyberpunk. I wrote this to illustrate how Dappnode could be used for a self-sovereign, self-hosted AI assistant that doesn't rely on providing your data to a big tech company. Then added a bit of a "noir" flair to it because A E S T H E T I C S.
A trembling vibration in the shape of a dot showed on the bottom right corner of her visual field. A ping from her daemon. Low on balance again. FFS, what the hell happened to her money? Did she really spend that much last night? There was supposed to be enough until next month!
- How much do we have? - she switched to subvocalization.
- I've switched to only basics on food, and we have until friday - the voice of her daemon replied in her consciousness, projected via a neural implant.
- Fuck. Wait, does that include rent too?
- Of course not - I haven't touched that. We have 2.5 months of streaming on the rent account. - she relaxed her shoulders in relief. She knew her daemon wouldn't have used the rent money, but she couldn't help panicking. Her daemon had housing as a max priority since, a few years ago, she got locked out from her unit when she couldn't pay for it in time. She was left with only what she was wearing, lost access to all of her stuff, her dappnode - where the daemon is hosted-, clothes and instruments as she came home and the door wouldn't open. It took her weeks and a substantial fine - not dissimilar to ransom - to get her stuff back and recover full daemon capabilities.
Since then, for every stream or one-off payment that she received, the daemon automatically diverted a part of it to a separate rent account, untouchable for any other reason. Plus she kept encrypted backups of her daemon data synced in the federated dappnodes with Pieter, Leyla and Drabz. Even if she was cut off from her dappnode, she could borrow one and load it up with her private data and config. It's never ideal to run your daemon in untrusted hardware, but much better than being completely cut off from it.
- Research on food solidarity networks -she blurted out- maybe we can get something there to get us through the week.
After a small pause, the daemon replied:
- The only pick-ups available this morning are half-way across town. I think it's best to wait until I check again at 7pm, when the lunch scraps are published.
She opened the cupboard and found an open packet of soggy crackers and a can of dip. The fridge wasn't much better, with a lone brick of butter, dried up leaves that might have belonged to a cabbage a long time ago and a variety of sticky spills on the shelves.
- ... ughh, how far are those food pick-ups?
- Far. Considering your balance, you can only reach there with public transport or you'd be spending more on the trip than the savings on food - and you have to meet Pieter in 30 minutes. This is potentially your highest impact activity as he might have a potential stream for you. I would advise to eat whatever you can and leave in the next 15 minutes.
Her mouth felt like the boot of an undercity crawler, and stuffing it with a month-old laminated carbs plate didn't help. She drank from the tap, hoping to wash everything down, but miscalculated the approach and water entered her nostrils, causing a fit of cough.
She held herself with two hands on the counter, slumped between her two straight arms. If it had been years ago, before breaking that promise too many times, she might have sworn never to drink again.
