The Invitation
Let Deshawn make his maps in peace
Previously: On one of his mapping trips to Central Park, Deshawn meets the group calling itself TPONY.
○ Opening Era: Spring, 2026, Manhattan
Deshawn put down the guitar once his trance was complete. His trance was more of a place than a state, a place above beyond else, like a roost in the sky where an owl might see everything, the whole landscape. The nexus he called it.
He opened his notebook. Some amount of time between a moment and an eternity passed.
“Deshawn!” called his mom.
But Deshawn was at work.
He looked down at the notebook splayed on his desk. He checked his notes from his previous day in Central Park. Then he looked up at the computer monitor. He used his mouse to drag the text Electrofolk across a vast map of land masses. The masses had labels like Wokeistan containing subregions like Trans Lives Matter. A separate continent Twitter encompassed both The Cozies and overlapping regions called Postrats, Whimsy Twitter, and TPOT. (This part of the map needed some clarity.) There were also a few new Opening-specific cultures on there, like Mindspace Splinternet – separatists from the new world wide web of mind. He dragged Electrofolk all the way over toward a region called Solarpunk.
He closed his eyes for a moment to double-check the connection. Luckily, when you’d found a link in culture-space, it was easy to re-establish, even when you were relatively out of range of a subculture’s members. It was as if you only needed to encounter a “mental URL” once. Yes…Electrofolk and solarpunk – a strong connection. When he reheased Electrofolk music in his mind’s ear, there were definitely images of solarpunk cities. Due to his spotty signal, the images were blurry, yet far more elaborate than anything he could have imagined on his own: gleaming skyscrapers covered in solar-panels, towers draped with greenery.
“Deshawn!” his mom shouted.
“Damn, Deborah, let the boy do his thing.”
“Deshawn!”
“Five more minutes!” he called to his parents in the other room.
“Dinner’s getting cold, Deshawn!”
“Yeah, ok!” he said distractedly.
What had he been doing again? Right: connecting Electrofolk with solarpunk.
One final check before he published: he needed to find tangible evidence of the connection. He searched the web for “Electrofolk” but nothing relevant popped up. Electrofolk was his label after all – the subculture he’d found might not even have a name yet. Unfortunately lyrics and words didn’t travel well across minds, so he lacked material to search with. All he had was a sonic genre archetype that generated vague musical snippets in his mind.
He alt-tabbed over to the Mapmakers Discord that one of his followers had made and began to type:
Mapmaker: Hey guys, I think I found a new musical genre a few days ago I’ve labeled ‘Electrofolk.’
Mapmaker: It integrates folk music with motifs from electrohouse, trap, and other EDM genres. Seems to be associated with solarpunk somehow. Does anyone have IRL links to it?
Mapmaker: Here’s roughly what it sounded like:
Deshawn hated this part. He hit record and hummed into his USB microphone. (He’d configured a custom way to record voice messages and automatically upload them to the Discord.)
He added a caption to the file: That’s what the synths sound like.
Then his hand hesitated above the send button.
That woman Jen from the park flashed through his head. She seemed confused by why on earth he made his memetic maps. Why did he make his maps? He’d honestly never thought about that before. What purpose did they serve? Were they helpful to other people? If they weren’t then what the point? Shouldn’t he be doing something more useful with his time?
A DM arrived. It was from Yeet. Who he apparently now knew in person.
MoYeetO: MAPMAKER!
Then four more:
MoYeetO: whaddup whaddup
MoYeetO: crazy to run into u in the park today
MoYeetO: but I guess coincidences like that happen all the time now
MoYeetO: so dope to meet u in “the flesh” ! 😝
Quickly, Deshawn ALT-TABed away. His world became blurry. What was it that gran had told him to do when the world became blurry? Find the Spirit of Christ deep within. He didn’t want to do that, but he remembered the other one: Imagine me giving you a big hug. OK. Gran floated down from (imaginary) heaven to give him a big hug. He felt a bit better.
A pop-up notification appeared to the right of his screen.
MoYeetO: I wanted to invite you…
Deshawn clicked it.
MoYeetO: wanted to invite u to our lil mindspace jam this weekend
MoYeetO: we’re doing a reverie
A reverie? Was Deshawn supposed to know what that was?
MoYeetO: get this: we’ll have aletheia from hypersigil as our special guest and SHE SAID SHE’S PUMPED TO MEET YOU
MoYeetO: so you gotta come no choice bro 🥳
More DMs:
MoYeetO: 6p Wednesdsay
MoYeetO: BYOB. hosting here at little satori. address is 284 mckibbin st, brooklyn. we’ll have the whole NY hypersigil fandom there
Deshawn had no idea what Yeet was talking about. Quickly he typed:
Mapmaker: Sorry I can’t come. I’m not allowed anywhere other than home or school
MoYeetO: lol wut? didn’t we just meet in central park?
Deshawn set his status from “Online” to “Invisible” and thought about what to do. His thoughts felt sluggish. Deshawn had never been invited to a party before.
By the sounds of it, this wasn’t just any party. Aletheia, Hypersigil, Little Satori – Deshawn didn’t know what any of these terms meant. But he did know enough about the world of terms to know that these were unusual ones. Interesting ones…
But he didn’t have any idea what to do at a party. He’d probably just embarrass himself.
But Sandeep’s crew represented a rare, undocumented memeplex! Deshawn had never felt anything like it, i.e., one with such high betweenness centrality (this was a network science concept he was learning about with MIT OpenCourseWare). And if a crew like memeplex like that was inviting him to a party because of his maps, it probably meant his maps were helpful to people, right? So…maybe his mapmaking did serve a purpose after all. It was like what that psycho dude said way back at the RenFaire: maybe the world did need him in some weird way, and for some reason it needed him to make maps. So, like, he could just show up at this party, talk about his maps, and be useful.
But – and this was critical – he’d probably just embarrass himself.
The door to his room opened. Deshawn’s mom was standing there with her hands on her hips. “I gave you 10 minutes. Now come eat.”
For once he was grateful for his mom’s interruption.
Next release: Humanity meets the goddess of mirrors, lust, polyphony-in-waiting. A decision is made.