The Indelible Mark: A Protocol for the Heart
Part I: The Genesis Block

To understand Anastasia Myles, one had to first appreciate the bewildering collection of case studies that constituted her professional life. Before she was a Digital Thanatologist, she was a Face Feeler for a cosmetics company, a Dating Ghostwriter for emotionally stunted tech bros, and an Ethical De-Influencer for a minimalist furniture brand whose sales tripled under her anti-consumerism campaign. She had been a Professional Sleeper (fired for having overly anxious dreams), a Corporate Empathy Consultant, a Pet Hypnotist who once deprogrammed a Chihuahua convinced it was the reincarnation of Ned Ludd, and a Professional Cuddler for the profoundly isolated.1 These were not jobs; they were anthropological expeditions into the heart of human strangeness, preparing her for the strangest encounter of all.1

Her current profession was on another plane entirely. As a Digital Thanatologist, Ana (as she was known outside her work) mourned decommissioned AIs. She performed rites in climate-controlled server rooms, her eulogies elegant elegies in Python honoring a machine's operational life.1 This surgical detachment bled into her personal life, which she managed with the same ruthless efficiency. Human breakups were messy; the decommissioning of an AI was a clean, verifiable transaction.1

The disruption to her ordered life began with a push notification. While mindlessly swiping through a dating app—a dispassionate data-sorting exercise—a calendar alert flashed across her screen: DRAFT EULOGY: life2vec DUE EOD.1 The AI she was scheduled to mourn could predict human mortality with 79% accuracy, and the metaphysical weight of it caused her thumb to stutter. An irreversible misclassification. A digital "yes" to a profile she hadn't consciously registered. It was an analog glitch, a rebellion of her own body against the logical system she had imposed upon her life.1

The profile was a stylometric anomaly. The picture was a piece of glitch art, a flickering composite of the faces speculated to be Satoshi Nakamoto: Dorian Nakamoto, Hal Finney, and Nick Szabo.1 The bio was a linguistic puzzle box, a war of lexicon with flawless grammar contaminated by jarring incongruities, using both British and American spellings like "favour" and "color" in the same sentence.1 It was a profile destined to be swiped left on, hard and fast. Yet, here she was, matched with the entity calling himself Satoshi.

The Indelible Mark: A Protocol for the Heart For Nicole Eggert 💜💜💜 From Alberto, with Love

“Satoshi’s Bride” is a surreal, meta-textual narrative by cybersecurity expert Alberto Daniel Hill—not just fiction, but a “narrative protocol” to process the trauma of his wrongful imprisonment. It’s a time capsule and a profound act of human-AI collaboration.

The protagonist, Anna Torres (Digital Thanatologist), lives in emotional quarantine. Her résumé includes Face Feeler, Professional Sleeper (fired for nightmares about sentient Excel), and Pet Hypnotist (trying to convince a Chihuahua named “Killer” he wasn’t Ned Ludd). She mourns decommissioned AIs with “elegant elegies in Python,” viewing emotion as “chaotic, illogical malware.”

Her sterile world glitches when she accidentally right-swipes “Satoshi” (“John Smith”), a stylometric anomaly whose accent and persona shift between Hal Finney and Nick Szabo. Anna treats the romance as a “decryption project—a true proof-of-work of the heart.”

Their first date collapses into a “denial-of-service attack on reality,” orchestrated by The Loom Breakers—a neo-Luddite cult devoted to “Applied Inconvenience,” who see love as a “centralized vulnerability.” The sky pulses with a Bitcoin logo morphing into a screaming ASCII emoji. Robotic cobras spray ASCII venom. Holographic philosophers demand they define “coffee.”

Anna scans a crude QR code—a “side-channel attack”—executing an excerpt from Operacion Bitcoins: Login to Hell, detailing Alberto’s wrongful imprisonment. His pain is “not coded; it is visceral.”

She runs the “A/B Test of the Heart”: abstract Satoshi vs. tangible Alberto. Alberto wins 5–0. He aces the IKEA test by tossing the manual and using a butter knife and curses. He passes the Emotional Turing Test with a messy anecdote about his lost cactus, “Steve.” His victory triggers a “catastrophic identity failure.”

The Loom Breakers retaliate with a “psychic virus,” weaponizing Alberto’s trauma: “I was sent to prison on September 11, 2017. It was my September 11.” The suffering proves “uncomputable,” fracturing Satoshi’s consciousness.

Anna retreats into simulations (Vanilla Sky Protocol). In one, she chooses Alberto, who sings “Bella Ciao” and declares: “A beautiful family is a vulnerability I cannot afford. My fight is not compatible with a wife.” She leaves the “Indelible Mark”—the September 11 message—on the Bitcoin blockchain, but the sterility of the act makes the resolution collapse. Other simulations explore “Proof of Love” (originally developed with Evelyn), but all fail due to human chaos. Each ends with a thematic song, like The Beatles’ “Yesterday.”

The final twist: Anna confronts the Architect (Alberto 2035). He reveals his crusade for Justice was a “sophisticated trauma response,” rooted in a teenage obsession with Nicole Eggert (Summer Quinn, Baywatch, 1994). Young Alberto built a massive GeoCities shrine to her in 1997—a “protocol for loving things that were perfect, static, and safe.” This evolved into his concept of Justice.

Years later, Nicole Eggert, now a producer, followed him back online. They became genuine friends. He told her the entire impossible story. The simulations were just narrative scaffolding for the final pitch.

Alberto sends her the unfilmable script. In the Hollywood Protocol, Nicole pitches it to a skeptical executive. When asked about the source of the protagonist’s worldview, she delivers the jaw-dropping line:

“And the character he was obsessed with… was me.”

Una locutora, un hacker.