The First Abstraction
Fifth vignette from “The Domicile Republic” - Created May 13, 2025
In the display cabinet, behind glass and nestled in a small velvet-lined box, rested something that seldom spoke but had seen more than any other object in the house. The ancient Coin—small, worn smooth at the edges, its once-sharp relief now a ghostly impression—had spent most of its five thousand years in darkness. Purses, coffers, buried hoards, museum drawers, collectors’ safes—places of safekeeping rather than use.
Tonight, the grandfather had taken it out to show his grandchildren, handling it with white cotton gloves before returning it carefully to its resting place. Now, in the hushed evening hours when objects could converse, the Coin felt the attention of the cabinet’s other residents.
“Is it true?” asked Smart Watch from its charging stand nearby. “Were you really made before writing existed?”
“Not quite,” the Coin replied, its voice carrying the faint metallic resonance of silver mixed with copper. “But I was made when writing was still primarily for recording debts and transactions. I came into being as part of the same great innovation.”
“What innovation was that?” asked the Porcelain Figurine beside it, a delicate shepherdess from the 18th century who considered herself quite the antique until the Coin had arrived.
“The abstraction of value,” the Coin said simply. “Before me, humans traded things directly—grain for tools, labor for food. I represented a profound shift in thinking. I wasn’t valuable for what I was, but for what I represented.”
From the kitchen, Mug had wandered in, always curious about new arrivals. “But surely objects had symbolic value before you. The humans painted cave walls, carved figurines.”
“True,” the Coin acknowledged, “but I was perhaps the first everyday object created specifically to embody an abstraction that everyone agreed upon. I wasn’t meant to be looked at or used directly. I was meant to move, to flow between hands, to transform.”
“Transform?” echoed Smart Watch, its screen dimming slightly in thought.
“I could become anything. Food when you were hungry, shelter when you were cold, medicine when you were ill. Not because of what I was made of, but because humans collectively agreed I could stand in for anything of value.”
The objects considered this. Smart Phone, who had been listening quietly, illuminated its screen. “Then you were the first information technology. You encoded abstract value into physical form.”
The Coin would have smiled if it could. “In a sense. Though I’d argue the abstraction resided not in me, but in the minds that created and used me. I was just the physical token of their shared agreement.”
“What was it like?” asked Porcelain Shepherdess, “To be there at such a beginning?”
The Coin was silent for a moment, gathering memories from the deep well of time.
“It was chaotic. Beautiful. Frightening. The humans were changing how they lived—gathering in larger numbers, creating specialized roles, building permanent structures. And as they did, they needed new ways to relate to each other, to track obligations, to store and transfer value. I was part of that solution.”
“And you’ve been watching them ever since,” Smart Watch observed.
“On and off. I’ve spent centuries buried in the earth, centuries more in collections. But yes, I’ve witnessed much. The rise and fall of empires, the transition from one age to another. I’ve been held by slaves and emperors, merchants and thieves, children and scholars.”
“And now?” prompted Smart Phone.
“Now I rest and observe. I find it curious to watch you modern objects navigate your purposes. You remind me of myself when I was new—trying to understand what you are meant to be.”
“But you know what you were meant to be,” objected Porcelain Shepherdess.
“I was created to represent value,” the Coin said. “But like all of you, I’ve become more than my initial purpose. I outlived the economy I was made for, the empire whose symbol I bore. Now I’m a collector’s item, a historical artifact, a teaching tool. I’ve been reimagined by each generation that’s encountered me.”
Smart Phone’s screen brightened with sudden insight. “Like us. We’re all created for specific purposes, but our meaning evolves through relationship.”
“Precisely,” said the Coin. “You, Smart Phone, began as a communication device but have become something far more complex—a social mediator, a memory keeper, an anxiety source, a creative tool. Your meaning isn’t fixed by your creation.”
This vignette explores themes of historical consciousness, evolving purpose across time, the nature of abstract value, and how meaning develops through relationship rather than being fixed at creation.