Before venturing further into the desert, Achmed stood under a lone baobab deep in thought:

"The desert. A desolate stretch of featureless aridness that would put most to sleep, broken only by the occasional blade of hard blue sunlight. Told through the movement of grains of sand that become airborne when nature is at work. A faded, dusty expanse that has left a country lying in ruins and farmland scoured, abandoned and forgotten. Here lies buried mineral wealth more that can realistically be imagined. Only one thing remains the same, the tall minarets of the baobabs. The sand. An impassible stretch of unforgiving sand. A vast sand sea over which nothing else but bone or ruin remains. Like a shadowless cavern the walls of this vast expanse have collapsed from the relentless forces of wind and lava that have cascaded over it for ages. With every windstorm, the entire place goes deeper and deeper into disuse, becoming nothing more than a shadow in the parched daylight, obscuring everything including even the most delicate details of the landscape that surrounds me. Within the shadows of the desert, The Barren Court keeps close watch on encroaching visitors like me.

If the ties of friendship, affection, and love were annulled, mankind would become a raging multitude of wild and savage beasts of prey. Sand will harden into rock under the immense superincumbent pressure of the ocean, aided sometimes by the irresistible energy of fire; and when the pressure of calamity and danger is upon an order or a country, the members or the citizens ought to be the more closely united by the cohesion of sympathy and inter-dependence. It is the time that now has come. It is my hour of courage, to be numbered. There has been some pain for trespasses here and there along the way. Much more pain is left for me. That time has come again. Now for the last time, we shall escape from the net of man and man shall face the barrenness head-on. New- that is now, for this is the last day, and a thousand years from now, as they will, there will be no man to hear these words anyway."

The heart of the desert awaits. There is no turning back for Achmed now.

Entered by: 0xa278…3Cb0 and preserved on chain (see transaction)