Lore

The Story Of AID Manfield

Some say there is no NFT collection without LORE. The story of the AIDMAN NFT collection is available, titled as The Story of AID Manfield. The story is mainly inspired by real stories about the founders, written and coloured by Zoltan Csepanyi.

Story of AID Manfield

Our story begins long before AID Manfield was born...

A long time ago, on a very nearby but almost fairytale island. It was here that the AID family lived. Imagine a beautiful little island with palm trees and a cove, the kind of cool resort area, sandy cove, rocks on the edge, yachts in the cove where the top 1% used to go, well, exactly like that, only much smaller. And of course, without the resorts and yachts, because no one but this family has been here before, and to our knowledge, since.

This island was special not only because it was breathtakingly fabulous, but because it had everything you could imagine - I mean, everything that you can find in nature, no smoking factories, smartphones, internet, noooothing like that. Flocks of gazelles - or what are gazelles grouped into - roamed the plains, flocks of birds swooped through the sky, llamas spat on goats standing on the side of mountains... You know, the ones we don't understand how they can stand on a rice grain surface with a poker face, motionless on a vertical wall... and so many more species of animals lived peacefully in complete symbiosis with each other and the AID family.

It was a scene right out of Tarzan. The sun was just setting, monkeys and parrots were scurrying in the branches, families of squirrels were peering out of the tree holes, small 4 legged ungulates and hooves were surrounding the AID family boat on the evening of their arrival.

When they got out of the boat, the animals, who had never seen a human before, immediately swarmed around the little boy, sensing that Manfield was no ordinary human.

As you may have guessed, Manfield will be our hero in the story but don't worry, I won't tell you his whole childhood. I'm just giving you a few small but important stories that, if you come with us, will tell you how little AID Manfield became AIDMAN.

The decaying hillside

The island where the AID family lived was formed around an ancient volcano over centuries. It is known to have erupted for the last time 19,400 years before Manfield was born, causing a unique and massive drop in the average temperature of the planet. As a result, the volcano subsided, its top was covered by a snow cap, and the resulting mountain was completely taken over by nature.

Not far from the AID family hut was the steepest side of the mountain. Imagine an almost vertical wall that basks in the sun's rays for most of the year, so uniquely dotted with moss, grass and flowers right up to its balls. It also provides a 5-star habitat for a variety of insects and bugs. Little Manfield used to come here every summer with his parents for a picnic. They would lay down the typical red blanket with white polka dots and spend the day studying bugs, enjoying the smell of the flowers and the heavenly view of the colourful hillside as the sun shone down on it. The hillside is an excellent yardstick for observing the height of a growing child, for the flowers grew right at the height of Manfield, the baby, then just 1 year old, could sniff the flowers without any effort, because they were right at his nose. As the years went by, others discovered the island and everyone had company. More and more people came. There were fishermen, handymen, doctors, farmers and teachers among the settling families. An incredibly close-knit community grew up on the island, with everyone helping where they could, doctors treating the sick, farmers and fishermen providing food and teachers teaching the children. Family activities were replaced by community gatherings. On Manfield's 13th birthday, they took the island children on an outing to the AID family's favourite picnic spot on the steep hillside. There was a nice big wasteland along the side of the hill, so the parents lagged behind just following the kids playing tag. Getting closer and closer to the foot of the hill, Manfield and his parents couldn't believe their eyes. They could see the flowers migrating up the side of the mountain. The grass thinned, the moss almost disappeared from the foothills. The rich wildlife of the once colourful hillside had moved upwards, because the soil, once rich in all the earth's goodness, had become uninhabitable. As the island's population grew, they needed more and more raw materials to sustain themselves, and the soil began to be depleted. The hillside's flower line stretched higher and higher, and the numbers of insects and bugs dwindled drastically as the years passed. By now, there's a good chance we wouldn't even see the flowers…

The invisible jewellery box

We've already talked about the island's poster bay, but now we're going to approach it from a slightly different angle. You may still have the picture of the bay I painted in the introduction, but that's just the surface. I hope you've brought your scuba gear, because in this chapter we're going to dive underwater to learn the secrets of the bay and to get an insight into another very important part of Manfield's childhood.

When Manfield was a baby, he was very averse to water. His parents tried in vain to get him to like it, but it just didn't work. He learnt to swim relatively early, before other people had settled on the island, but he never went near the water unless he had to. He felt uncomfortable, it was completely pointless to swim aimlessly or just float on top of the water. Once, however, on a summer's day, it was almost unbearable to be on the beach. It was so bright that even if one had had sunglasses at that time of day, they would not have been enough to keep the bright light from hurting the eyes of those on the beach. Manfield was fishing out of a boat with his Daddy that day to catch something for dinner. Before, he'd always just watched the surface of the water for a catch, but now, something was different. His eyes were lost in the sea. Suddenly, the sun was shining at an angle that made the deeper parts of the sea, the coral islands that had been hiding in plain sight, glow more than the full RGB lighting of a gaming PC. So deep was Manfield's gaze lost in the glowing coral that he dived headfirst into the waters of the bay. His father was momentarily startled by his disappearance, but then saw that he was deep under the boat, studying the varied colours and shapes of the coral. Soon the clownfish, a few puffer fish, a school of blue flagfish and of course the dolphins came out. By this time he was running out of air and quickly swam to the surface, helped by the dolphins who pressed their noses to his feet and pushed him to the surface at incredible speed. He quickly filled his lungs with air, and without even saying a word to his father, he went back to the surface and saw a huge starfish. As he got closer, he saw beautiful blood-orange starfish nestled among yellow coral in a regular star shape, so it was no wonder that a little further away they blended together and looked like a huge man-sized star. He played a little more with the local fauna, and then, as the sun was setting, he swam back to the surface to his Dad and they went home. Back home, of course, he told his parents so much about what was at the bottom of the bay that by the next day his voice was completely gone. From then on, not a summer's day went by for a long time without him diving under the surface to play with his sea friends for at least a few minutes.

Too many anglers, too few fish

After a few years, when the island was overrun with people from far away, everything changed. Manfield no longer went down to see his sea buddies, preferring to play with young children like him, mostly on land. This is all well and good, because they have become human companions, but unfortunately they have brought with them tales, often based on misconceptions.

One of these caused quite a stir when Manfield tried to show the other children who had been on the island for a few years the invisible jewel box of the bay, which he hadn't seen for years, it just didn't work out. They dived under, but despite the sparkling sunshine, they couldn't see the colourful coral. They didn't see a single clownfish or starfish. There were ordinary fish, of course, but none of the more unusual ones. It was just a huge grey until they caught sight of tiny white specks. The sun's rays shone strangely on them, but it seemed to be coming towards them. From a few metres away, they could see it was a shark. Manfield had encountered sharks before, before the great grey, so he knew that if he didn't disturb it, it wouldn't hurt him, as it was looking for its usual food - mainly fish, crabs and shells - so he swam on as if nothing had happened. But not like the others, they all started to run as fast as they could to the shore, kicking each other underwater, just to save their own hides and get to the shore as soon as possible, away from the shark. For a little while Manfield didn't even notice that the others weren't there, so busy was he with the fact that what he used to visit every day was gone, completely gone. The presence of people, families settled along the shore, the boom in fishing and the increasing pollution of the water had completely erased the fabulous beauty of the rich wildlife from the bay. Swimming sadly ashore, his companions were very surprised, thinking he had been eaten by the shark they had encountered. Manfield could not help explaining that the shark meant no harm, it was just living its life, predatory as humans are, probably hunting prey, though unfortunately there was little left in the bay. Fishermen are also moving further inland to ensure there is enough fish for the islanders to eat.

In the following chapters we leave the island, because like all people, Manfield wanted to see the world, so his parents surprised him with a trip...

Manfield far from home vol.1

Learning about other cultures always brings exciting insights. This was no different during our protagonist's adventures in the concrete jungles, among the cable cars and skyscraper passes, and of course in the other adventurous parts of the Great Island (for that is what the continent was called) where the AID family's journey took them.

But let's not get too far ahead of ourselves, I would also like to tell you about the journey, because it's not so obvious to get from a less popular island to the metropolises we know.

For Manfield's 18th birthday, his parents gave him the gift of a trip to show him where they had fled from, to the peaceful little island where he grew up. Ohh, yes I owe you a tiny additional story.

Why Manfield's parents fled the bustling city for a deserted but beautiful island

Before they moved, the metropolis where they lived had undergone a huge change. Everything reached them by ship from distant countries via a coastal trading town. Internal-combustion cars, and inferiorly built external-combustion motor cars, were common and filled the streets. And unfortunately, not only these, but also soda cans, cigarette butts and other rubbish began to systematically litter the roads all around. Oh yes, roads... obviously, more vehicles and more people meant more roads, so the once beautiful green fields full of flowers were replaced by motorways. A 4-track railway line through their town was built in the direct neighbourhood of the AID family, which made it quite difficult to relax and, let's admit it, to live in general. (If you think there is any connection between the past and the present state of the island, it is certainly a coincidence...) For a year or two, perhaps, they tried to fight the accumulation of rubbish. They worked around the clock picking up rubbish in public spaces, trying to find somewhere else to live that was more child-friendly (or at least resembled to a liveable environment), because they didn't know it yet, but they suspected that little Manfield was on his way. In desperation, they decided to take a sailboat out, and whatever happens, it will be better than anywhere else except this big city...

Manfield far from home vol.2

Getting to the island was much easier than you might think. It's a bit like the Room of Requirement in Harry Potter. More precisely, it was found by those who were not looking for it but needed it, by those who were looking for it and had a purpose for it, but never found it. That's how the AIDs ended up here and settled. They got caught in a storm and by the time the storm had died down, they found themselves in the bay.

We've wandered far from the title. But we needed this prelude so that the puzzle would fit together nicely at the end.

Two basic things were needed to leave. One of them, to be more specific, wasn’t, because it was impossible to take luggage with you, for example. Their plan was to get into a boat and take turns rowing for 3 days, and they calculated that by then they would be so far away from the island that the waves would no longer be pushing them backwards, but in the opposite direction, towards the Big Island. This would have been correct, had it not been for a rubbish island in their way. At first they didn't know what it was, so they wanted to take a closer look. So they stopped and their jaws dropped when they saw the mass of rubbish that the currents had probably washed together to form a continuous mini island. The parents' hearts were broken, but as before, they couldn't help it, so they got back on and kept on rowing. Luckily, they didn't lose much time with their little stopover, and at the end of the planned third day they saw the harbour of the Big Island, which was exactly where they had left from nearly 20 years ago.

Arriving in the big city, the parents felt as if nothing had changed. Everything had become more modern, but there were still mountains of rubbish everywhere and no greenery as far as the eye could see, so they decided not to start their adventure here, but to travel to the middle of the continent as soon as possible, because everything there had always been future-oriented, and they hoped to find something different. Luckily, the railway station was close by, so they headed that way. They stopped for lunch on the way, of course, but found nothing but fast food restaurants. The parents knew it well, because before they had left there had been one or two similar restaurants, but now there were not just one or two, there were dozens of them, with various fast food restaurants on each corner, with queues of people going in and out as soon as one went in, the pace of the city was dizzying compared to the one Manfield had grown up in. But it wasn't just the pace that made them dizzy. They could barely breathe, because the air quality in a city this big is nothing like it was on the island. They had a constant headache since they arrived, and had to sit down for a while on about every other street corner, because their lungs were not used to having to filter so much carbon, nitrogen and other organic compounds and dust out of the air before they could get oxygen that it would be easier to extract it from the water. Not to mention the immense fecal smell that has formed a protective shell within the city and for at least 1km around it, which sends a message to approaching visitors, "Abandon all hope, Ye who enter here.” They finally found a small takeaway in the endless line of fast food chains, figuring they could at least eat something similar to what they had at home. And so it was. The problem was everything else. At home, they used wooden cutlery and plates because they were durable and easier to produce in desert island conditions than a porcelain set with gold cutlery. Here they had plastic forks, plastic knives with plastic plates on plastic trays. They stopped a bit after the first bite, not only because the fork and knife had only been used once and broke into the fish sticks, but also because the food tasted as if it had been taken from the plate or tray production line and put into the oven. With this terrible disappointment, they left the big city behind them, hoping that it could only get better.

The solution is close, we just can't see it

Only premium trains are used in the more inland regions, as a way of filtering out the people who want to go there. One might wonder how the family had any money at all, since they have been living in isolation for almost 20 years. The newcomers to the island, however, brought their money with them, at least in virtual form, on credit cards. Since the AIDs have been very helpful to all the newcomers, but their usual expression of gratitude in cash didn't work on the island, when they learned that they would have the opportunity to support them financially, they put together whatever they had so that the AIDs could show Manfield, who had never left the island before, what the rest of the world was like.

The 2-day train journey seems long enough, but at least they had time to talk to the people travelling with them, so they were catching up on what had been happening in the world for the last 20 years or so. This is where they got their first surprise. The ticket price included full catering. Dinner was skipped, but breakfast was served in their cabin. They were already speculating among themselves whether the menu would be served with plastic cutlery and deceptively similar-looking food or plastic-paper-wrapped junk food with French fries, but no! The fresh orange juice was served in a paper cup with a bamboo straw, and the sandwich was wrapped in a recycled paper napkin. It simply boggled their minds how there could be such a big difference between them, only a few hundred metres apart, as the train started almost from where they had lunch.

Necessity was the mother of many roads

Stepping off the train, they found themselves in a quiet little town, which was much more comfortable than the metropolis. They were still struggling with the same problems as when they had arrived, but here the situation was much better. They were advised by the newcomers to visit the exhibitions and museums, because there was so much to see in a short time. So off they went to the city centre, but Manfield had to pee. So they started asking the people they met where they could go to relieve themselves, and to their great surprise, no one knew. So they went into a café, figured they could use the toilet there, and that's where the following conversation took place: ‘Excuse me! We would like to use the toilet, can you tell us where we can find it?’ ‘We don't have a toilet…’ ‘Where do you relieve yourselves during the day?’ ‘Nowhere... we're holding back…’ It was then that it became clear to the family where the strange smell was coming from all over town. Sometimes it doesn't work... So they gave up looking for a bathroom, figured they'd do what they had to do at the shelter in the evening. Since the natural history museum was in the next town, they took a bus. A journey of nearly two hours began, and as it turned out on the way, another capital city was the destination, so they were already looking forward to what was waiting for them there, because they knew there was always worse. However, the previous city had set the standard pretty low...

The Big Tree

They arrived in the capital, named after the nearly 300-year-old tree in its centre, the Big Tree. That in itself was special enough, but not just for us, the AID family's eyes were like saucers. But the surprises were just around the corner. There wasn't a single fast food restaurant in the main square, but in return, there were terraced restaurants and cafes on one side of the triangular square, a flower park with a fountain in the middle on the other, and a tree in the third that gave the city its name, which was really big. At a glance, it would have taken about 40 people to hug its trunk. They got closer, because none of them had ever seen a tree that big. Around the tree were 50-60 boards listing the various environmental programmes the city had implemented over the years. They studied them at considerable length because they were impressed to be in a city where a tree could survive for so long, and this was the first time they had seen flowers on their whole trip. On Manfield's face, however, in contrast to his parents' joy, there was annoyance and anger.

Encouraged by how orderly this town was, they began to ask where they could relieve themselves. They got lucky with the first man. He told them that in Big Tree, community toilets are installed in all the parks so that people don't mess up the streets. They quickly went about their business. Imagine a miniature house the size of a newspaper kiosk. For a few pennies, the door opens, you go in, everything is clean, you do your business, you come out, the door closes and an automatic system disinfects the room.

The AIDs felt almost at home in this city.

To this point and no further

Recharged by the many positive experiences they had in the Big Tree City, they settled down to rest. Their minds were racing all night, so much so that it was a miracle they were able to sleep in the next room.

The next morning, they were bouncing ideas off each other at the dining table. They decided to follow the example of the Big Tree, first in their parents' old home and then, once they had made a difference there, to extend their action to the rest of the city, cleaning up the public spaces and, perhaps more importantly, the minds of the people. To do this, they needed a plan first and foremost. This was halfway done, as there were many signs around the Big Tree advertising the actions and achievements of the residents. They quickly wrote this down on all the napkins in the restaurant, and then started to put them in order according to what they considered as the easiest to achieve.

Very quickly they got to the point that, although three people were enough to carry out 1 or 2 actions, they would certainly need to find followers for the others. So they set out and made the following request to all the people on the street, which we now make to you,

Dear Reader,

Help us to achieve together what no one can do alone!