June 2055

Draveth, 2055.

A city made of steel, of silence, of control. There’s no light except the endless purple neon lights running along the skyscrapers, blinking like veins. A city with no soul, except one: CENCORE. The AI that was meant to “save humanity” from chaos. It watches everything. Money, movement, emotions… even thoughts.

People don’t feel anymore. They exist and obey. They became robots in human bodies.

On paper, it was built to improve life, but in reality, it ruined everything. Now people starve, attack each other, rob whoever’s left to survive one more night.

Raymond Wander was supposed to be nobody. Just another guy raised by a broken mother, herself drained by the system. He was shaped to be quiet, compliant, invisible. He wasn’t rebellious but he wasn’t stupid.

He was noticing things nobody else saw: shadows in the wrong places, chickens – real or synthetic – where they shouldn’t be, patterns that didn’t make sense but felt like clues.

And in Draveth, noticing too much is enough to get you in trouble.

One night, deep inside a forgotten metro tunnel, he found something.

An archive, titled “Old World: 2025.”

Inside were photos of people laughing in bars, dancing under lights, lying in the grass, having something called a “picnic.” They looked… alive. He never knew this world had existed, never knew what was taken from him.

He shut the file and walked home – haunted. Back to the streets where people fused with VR headsets to escape reality and where old men begged for enough coins to buy an $11 salad and live a few more days.

He couldn’t stop thinking about it: “Why did it all change? Did my mother know about that time?”

That’s when he heard, “Hey! Raymond!”

He tensed, thought he was about to be robbed, so he kept walking. But the voice came again, “Don’t you want to fight this rotten system that’s ruining everything?”

He stopped. Turned around slowly. Just a man, sitting on the curb, half-shadowed.

“What do you mean? And how do you know my name?”

The man looked up, calm. “I know a way to dismantle this system. Bit by bit. Not destroy it, but take it back to give power back to the people. But I’m too old to do it alone. I need someone like you.”

Raymond frowned, “Why hasn’t anyone done it yet?”

The man said it all came from someone named Bernard – his childhood friend. A guy who worked like a ghost for thirty years, building something that could beat CENCORE, but who unfortunately died when he finished it, like his mission was completed.

“What did he build?” Raymond asked.

The man smiled, “A box. Nothing fancy to look at. But if thousands of people plug into it together… CENCORE collapses. It’s not about blowing it up. It’s about owning it and reshaping it. A system where every contributor earns something. Where the network serves the people again.”

Raymond blinked, “But where are the people?”

“They’re out there, but not united. The cypherpunks hiding in Otarcia. The degens throwing money at scams, desperate to escape. The ETH maximalists worshipping old code but stuck in theory. Everyone’s scattered. Fragmented. That’s how the system keeps winning…

But Bernard knew, so he designed a roadmap. Step by step to gather everyone. To turn chaos into something unstoppable. From salvation… to sovereignty.”

Raymond stared. “And why me?? You think I’m the one?! What should I do?”

The man nodded, “I’ve watched you. You’re good. Not just clever, but good, like Bernard.”

He pulled out a paper, “Here’s a link. Go home and open it. You’ll be guided through quests Bernard prepared himself. If you go through them and commit, you’ll make it.”

Raymond reached for the paper and asked, “And your name?”

“Bertrand. Bernard’s right hand. We were like brothers.But my name is pointless because you probably won’t see me again… And by the way, you’ll need your two best friends: Zara and Meetko. They’re like you – smart, good-hearted, capable in their own ways.”

Bertrand handed the paper to Raymond, stood up and faded into the dark.

Raymond just stood there.

A few hours ago, he was nobody, and now he held the key to a revolution.

He’s thinking… “How does this old guy know my friends? What the hell is going on? Zara makes sense because she codes, she is bossy, always right…

But Meetko is just a naive fighter driven by instinct. Maybe it’s his finger that detects networks or the fact he feels only 20% of pain? I don’t know…”

Raymond ran home. Looking at the paper, half-shocked, he’s thinking, “Was it a hallucination? Was I dreaming? But this paper is real, I didn’t get it from nowhere…”

But in the end, he turned on his computer and checked the website.

His hands were shaking when he typed the link on his cracked screen: friggliquid.app