Short story – “Buyer’s Market”

I first wrote this story back in 2014 and posted it on a site that is no longer around.  Some months back, I went through all the stories I had posted on that site and picked out a few I felt I needed to revise and repost.  They’ve sat on my desktop since then, but – for some reason – I figured today would be a good day to post this one.

“Buyer’s Market”

Closing the door, Mike walked into his bedroom lit dimly by a streetlight.  He sat on his bed, took a deep breath, and slowly spoke, “I will sell my soul to win this election.”

A silent puff of red smoke erupted before him.  When it cleared, a four foot tall, green lobster looking thing standing on its tail appeared before him.  “Hello,” it said, sounding as if it had a mouthful of marbles.  “What soul transfer transaction can I help you with today?”

It took a moment before Mike could bring himself to ask, “What?  Who are you?”

“Forgive, please,” the lobster said.  “You may call me ... Ralph.  I am qualified to handle all your soul transaction needs.”

Mike looked at it for several seconds before saying, “I was trying to sell my soul … to the Devil.”

“I can help you with that.” A small puff of white smoke appeared in Ralph’s right claw and when it cleared there was a clipboard.  Ralph began scratching on it with his other claw.

“Who are you?” Mike asked.  “Where’s the Devil?”

“Ah, I see the confusion,” Ralph replied.  “So many people began selling their souls, the Devil had to outsource their acquisition to beings from another dimension.” Here Ralph touched his thorax.  “I am fully capable of handling your soul transaction.  If you prefer to wait to speak with the Devil himself, that can be arranged, but I must warn you the current wait time is seven months.”

With the election two months away, Mike didn’t have a choice.  “Okay.  You’ll … do.”

“Very well.” Ralph finished scratching something on the clipboard.  There was another puff of smoke and Ralph now held a large, black crystal.  “I need to examine the soul in question.” There was a flash of blood red light, and then the crystal disappeared in a puff of smoke.  Ralph spent most of a minute scratching the clipboard.

“I’m sorry,” he eventually said, “you’re soul is too damaged.  There is not enough value in it to let you win an election.  The best I can do with it is,” Ralph looked at his clipboard, “have your opponent’s website experience technical issues for twelve hours, have you win a five figure dollar amount in a lottery, or arrange for a threesome.”

When Mike had finally decided to sell his soul to win the election, it felt as if a great weight had lifted from his shoulders.  Now that weight returned, and it felt as if it had brought friends.  Mike took a deep breath, then asked, “Can I have time to think about this?”

“Of course.” Ralph took something from his clipboard and handed it to Mike.  It was a grey plastic card with a strange, golden symbol on it.  “When you have decided,” Ralph explained, “kiss the symbol and I will return.  Good day.” He then disappeared in a large puff of blue smoke.

Mike laid back on the bed.  “Damn it,” he said.  “If I want to win this election I’ll have to work for it.”

For a moment, he felt like crying, but he pushed that away and sat up.  He needed to figure out a new strategy.

Trump’s mugshot

I had a thought the other day.  If during all these investigations information is found to not only have Congress impeach and remove Trump from office, but also to have criminal charges filed against him, his mugshot will break the internet, among other things.  Every news show – from major cable news channels to Joe Bob’s News Wrap-Up on YouTube – will air it.  It will be the subject of countless vlogs and reaction videos.  It will be the header photo on a million Twitter accounts and every other person on Facebook will change their profile photo to it.  And then the majority of newspapers – not just in the US but around the world – will print it along with countless magazines.  And then there will be the bumper stickers, and the posters, and the T-shirts, and the coffee mugs, and the shot glasses, and people getting it on cakes, and on and on and on.  I mean, all the movies and TV shows that show a college dorm room with a Che Guevara poster will just swap in a Trump mugshot poster.

This raised two questions for me.  One, who owns the rights to mugshots?  I’m just curious because I’m sure Leroy who makes flags with the mugshot replacing the stars will follow the law on the matter.  But more importantly, two, will having the most famous mugshot in history just stroke Trump’s ego?  Or would it be better if – if he’s found guilty – when he goes to jail to just say, “Good riddance,” and let him fade into obscurity?

Making a quick buck on the moon

Over the years I’ve written several posts – and an ebook – about why I support returning to the moon over rushing off to Mars.  The basic reason boils down to money.  Setting up a lunar base/colony will be expensive, but then in a decade or two resources and new businesses will return the investment with interest.  Setting up a Mars base/colony will be even more expensive, and hopefully billionaires on Earth keep funneling money into to.  Because outside of genuine Mars rocks to be sold to museums and collectors and tchotchkes stamped “Made on Mars” there’s nothing on Mars that will be worth exporting.

These are all thoughts I’ve had for some time, but I started wondering what would be the first business to make money on the moon?  If we can figure out the engineering challenges to beam energy from solar collectors around the moon to Earth, that’s untold billions in profits right there.  But it will take a few decades to hammer the bugs out of the – mostly – autonomous mining, processing, manufacturing, and emplacing of the solar panels.  What businesses could make money with the first return missions to the moon?

Outside of the money private companies will make sending rovers and government astronauts to the moon, the first money making ventures will be small.  These will be genuine moon rocks bought by museums and collectors on Earth, shooting ads, or maybe some company will want to archive some data completely off-grid.  None of these will pay for setting up a lunar base.  They will just be exploring the ways to make money on the moon.

Probably the one business that will make the most money the quickest will be tourism.  I had assumed that Phase I of a lunar base would just be a pure scientific outpost figuring out how to live on the moon, but Phase II of the base might include a hotel.  But then I realized that a hotel at a scientific outpost probably isn’t that great.  Yes, you’d be on the moon, but there wouldn’t be that much you could do.  You could put on a spacesuit and go walk where … dozens of other people have walked in the area right around the base. 

The solution would be to just skip the hotel – until there is enough infrastructure and population to support playing fields for lunar sports, for example – and go with a rover.  Over the years there have been hundreds of ideas for improved lunar rovers.  Instead of little golf carts like some of the Apollo missions had, these would be enclosed habitats that you would drive to some spot and then put on your spacesuit and walk around where no one has been before.  Some of these rovers are also the rocket that lands you on the moon and lets you take off again.  It’s a lot of extra weight to lug around, but it means if there’s an accident you don’t have to drive a hundred kilometers back to where you landed to take off again.  Ideally, these rovers would dock with a space station in lunar orbit where they’d be refueled and sent back down.  These would be ideal for scientists to explore new areas of the moon and for prospectors to find the resources to start building lunar industry.  And they would be perfect for tourists.  Instead of spending most of your time on the moon in a cramped room with a screen showing you camera views from around the base, you could spend your time in a cramped rover with a window with an ever changing view. 

The moon contains untold riches and opportunities; it will just take time to develop them.  Letting tourists take their own “small steps” may be the way to buy that time.