Microstory 1733: The ESS Dorado

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When the first of the asteroid miners went up into space, they were looking to make some money. There were tons of resources up there that they hoped would make them rich. It was probably about to, but it wasn’t long before the economy shifted, and no more value was placed in things that once meant everything. Yes, the metals and minerals they mined and processed from the asteroids were still incredibly important for the future of the human race, but everything they could exchange them for was now readily available, and distributed freely. That material was now only useful for making spaceships, and other vacuum structures. Trying to take it all the way down into Earth’s gravity well was a waste of time and energy. Still, their lives weren’t purposeless. Someone would have to build those ships, so it might as well be them. They still weren’t making any money, because it didn’t exist anymore, but people were grateful for their efforts, and the species was quickly becoming a multiplanetary culture. They kept working, kept looking for more, and were surprised about how much gold there was up there. Back in the ancient days, gold was the standard for monetary value. Everything was based upon its worth according to scarcity, measure of work needed to refine the raw material, and an arbitrary love of all that was shiny. Even after gold stopped being the official standard, people placed value on it simply because of how pretty it looked. To this day, it’s used in a number of technological instruments, but in relatively small amounts. As it turns out, the solar system is chock full of the stuff. Scarcity was a component of man’s inability to reach beyond the atmosphere at the time, and that is no longer the case. Still, what are they going to do with all this gold? Sure, some of it can go to those devices, but there will be a lot left over. This gave one of them a crazy idea.

They decided to build a ship. This ship would be composed almost entirely of gold. Propulsion, of course, and wiring systems, required specific materials in order to function, but the basic idea was that if it could exist in gold form, it was to be manufactured out of pure gold. It was the dumbest thing that anyone on Earth had ever heard of, but they too realized they had plenty of gold to satisfy their needs, and they recognized that the asteroid miners earned rightful control over everything they found that wasn’t claimed by someone else. It took them years to gather all the gold they would need, and refine it, but they were essentially immortal now, and most of the business was automated, so what did they care? It wasn’t until they were just about finished when they noticed that no one had thought about what they were going to actually do with the darn thing. Even with their indefinite lifespans, it wasn’t a good way to get to other planets in the solar system, or to other stars. It was more a piece of art; a think piece, a proof of concept...a proof of strength. They didn’t know if there were any aliens flying around out there, but they figured that their big gold ship would be a pretty good message to send anyone looking to see if the Earthans were weak enough to attack. If humans were advanced enough—and bored enough—to construct a literal golden ship, they were probably nothing anyone should want to trifle with. So they placed it in a permanent stable orbit around Earth, and named it The ESS Dorado. People came to visit occasionally, but it was mostly there to be marveled and appreciated from a distance. Aliens never came, and eventually they let it burn up in the atmosphere.

Microstory 1001: Edna

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Well truthfully, I didn’t know the victim at all. I think she said hello to me once, but a lot of people did that to me on my first day. I started here at the beginning of the year, so I’m not as new as you are, but this is a pretty small town, so I still feel like an outsider. I don’t feel like I should comment on the situation, because all I know is what they wrote in the real newspapers. Not that you’re not writing for a real paper; I just meant…I don’t know what I meant. Sorry, let me start over. My name is Edna, and I’m a senior at Blast City Senior High. Go Miners! I’m kidding, I don’t care about sports. I’m a bit of a loner, but my fellow classmates have been pretty decent. If they’re saying mean things about me, they must be doing it behind my back, because they don’t say it to my face. Come to think of it, I did have one particular run-in with the victim; with Viola. The grief counselor says we should say her name; to honor her memory as a person, not just a victim. She sat next to me at lunch one day. She wasn’t being nice, or treating me like a pathetic loser, but it was the only empty table available. Mostly empty, I guess. My personal therapist says to count myself out. Anyway, so she sat next to me out of convenience, because she got in a fight with her friend. I heard her talking to someone on her phone the entire time. She used cryptic language, so I don’t really know what it was about, but apparently Maud did something she just couldn’t forgive. That ultimately seems untrue, because I saw them laughing with each other by the end of the week. Still, she seemed pretty upset, and the person on the other end of the phone call wasn’t helping her feel better. She slammed her phone down on the table hard enough to crack it, and got up in a huff. “I’m not hungry,” she stopped to say to me, before leaving. Maybe she was trying to be nice, because everyone knows I can’t afford a full lunch, so I was grateful for the extra food. I never got to thank her for that, even though it was weeks before she passed—I mean, died. Both the grief counselor, and my therapist, said we shouldn’t use pretty language to avoid reality. She didn’t pass by her life, and go somewhere else. She’s dead, and that’s the end of it.

Microstory 1000: Alma

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The death of high school senior, Viola Woods has a dying town with a bloated population reeling like something out of an edgy fifth network comic book adaptation that’s not about superheroes. As an unbiased new student, I feel it is my duty to get to the bottom of this mystery, and there was no better place to start than by interviewing every single one of her classmates. From the gay jock harboring a dark secret, to the random acquaintance who has no apparent connection to any of this, everyone is a suspect. Out of everybody in the whole town, only the authorities are confident that the true killer was unmasked, and put to justice. Blast City might have been founded by a gold mining company, but the history of its residents is anything but glittering. This is not the first unsolved major crime committed within its borders, like something out of an anachronistic prequel to an iconic serial killer thriller with incestuous undertones. Over the next four and a half months, I will be releasing abridged interview transcripts with each of Viola’s classmates. Some reveal other secrets, while others offer no more than red herrings. I shall come to no conclusion, instead leaving that up to you to decide for yourself. Did they get the right guy; or girl, as it were? Or is the real murderer still out there somewhere?