The Powerball

Sweat poured off the astronomer’s brow, the eyepiece of his telescope fogging up from his panicked breath. He was working overtime with the other observatories to recalculate its path and make sure there were no changes. He saw nuclear weapons, experimental orbital-range lasers and temporal asynchronicity weapons do nothing to it, not a scratch and no change in course.

Of course people were aware of the Powerball since the eighties. A bizarre comet that seemed to ignore normal gravitational physics and would cause random people to receive spikes of monetary energy in their possessions. Eventually some economists figured out that transferring monetary energy into tickets made of celestial paper would cause the Powerball to pass by more frequently, and would cause the random monetary spikes to focus around owners of those tickets. Despite some global security concerns, the lottery was officially adapted to increase the frequency of the Powerball’s required proximity for this phenomenon.

Then new findings came in a few years ago, stating that the Powerball is a celestial body of unknown composition that operates on value-based gravity instead of mass-based gravity, a physics concept originally thought to be impossible. The science community went into a panic, trying to determine the circumstance’s for such an objects existence. It was only a quarter of the size of the moon, but the impact alone would destroy all life if the world became wealthy enough to put it on a collision course. This amount of wealth was already achieved back in the late nineties.

Now the Powerball looms closer, a few orbits away from collision. There is still no visual sign confirming whether it came about via a natural phenomenon or if it was constructed by some unknown intelligence, and a small portion of the archeological world is now wondering whether the meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs was actually another Powerball, striking the earth shortly after dinosaurs developed enough intelligence in order to put value on objects.

The public still frantically buys tickets, stubbornly sold by the manufacturers despite the sudden global ban on celestial paper manufacture. It seems the consensus is that if everyone is going to die, then they’d rather die rich.

(Originally written 1/13/2016)

Weapons of Commerce: The Credit Card

He wondered why he never found this place before. It had the specialty brand of dog food that his Australian shepherd liked, and the dog toys made from military-grade materials caught his eye. He grabbed a couple items from the selection and went to check out.

The woman at the front seemed to be rapidly typing away on a counter on the computer, and he realized he didn’t recognize a few of the keys on this variation of the keyboard she was using. “Did you find everything you were looking for?” She stopped typing and turned to face him, the polite smile of customer service in her expression.

“Yes, even found more than that. I’m sure Dessie will like these new toys.” He replied as he set the merchandise on the counter. “Never realized that some of these materials were released for civilian application.”

“Oh, they’re not. But we’ve made sure that they’re safe for pets.” She punched in the total on the register, which had a few more extra symbols he didn’t recognize. “That’ll be $47.56.”

He didn’t think much on that response. He pulled out his wallet and began to slip out his credit card when she spoke up. “Oh, we don’t take credit here. Debit, check and cash are all fine.”

“You take cash?” He was surprised. It was considered more and more dangerous these days and he had seen the news stories about what it could do.

“Cash doesn’t scare me. Besides, this building has enough precious metals integrated into it that you could detonate this country’s GDP inside and I wouldn’t even need to take a pay cut.”

“Ok, I can pay in debit. But why don’t you take credit?” He fished his other card out of his wallet and handed it over.

“It’s too dangerous, too volatile. You know how it works, right?” She swiped the card and slid over the pin pad.

As he put in his pin he thought for a moment. “Well, the credit card companies have their own platinum supplies that they use as value batteries until it needs to be converted into electrical monetary energy, right?”

“Incorrect, platinum doesn’t quite work like that and even if it did there isn’t enough in circulation to sustain the current transaction bandwidth. They have special machines that deform silver molecules in a gravity well, creating rifts of monetary energy.” She pressed a few more buttons on the register. “Do you want cash back?”

He blinked in surprise, equally at the explanation and at the fact that the store still provided the cash back service. “Uh, no. And what do you mean by a rift?”

“It’s similar in concept to a black hole. There’s potential to generate massive amounts of monetary value from it. But it’s not entirely stable and can end up having a catastrophic collapse if it goes for a few months without an equivalent amount of value being fed back into it.” She began bagging the items for him. “It’s why credit card rates seem high. The company has to pay out of pocket to stabilize the rift when people don’t make their payments. But even then it’s not reliable, and is more fitting for its original intention as Weapon of Mass Inflation. If any of those companies makes a mistake, one of the credit rifts could collapse and rupture every bank reserve directly connected to their system.” She put the receipt in the bag and handed it over to him.

“Oh, um, wow.” He took the bag, dumbfounded. “Does this put me at risk when I use my credit card?”

“I couldn’t say for sure. Those rifts have properties that defy the laws of quantum economics. Probably best to rely on other payment methods when you can, just to be safe.”

(Originally written 12/29/2015)

Weapons of Commerce: The Penny

With the world having already suffered multiple economic catastrophes over the centuries, everyone is on edge and the transportation of money is strictly regulated. It’s now public knowledge that monetary value is a form of potential energy, accumulated by the mere fact that people regard currency with value in trade. The potential energy of a $100 bill can bankrupt a coffee shop if activated with a detonator that undoes the minting process. People are on edge whenever someone pays with cash.

But many people overlook the penny. This small piece of copper-enclosed zinc has a special ratio of mass vs value that makes it impossible to detect with scanners. Terrorist organizations will load dump trucks with them, cover the top with a layer of construction debris, and are able to discreetly move thousands of dollars of financial-grade weapons materials anywhere in the world. Many small towns and city centers have been broken under economic depression caused entirely by detonating only pennies, leaving millions broke in this year alone.

Canada and other countries have already halted production of the penny now that they realize the danger it poses, but the US still manufactures far more than they need, unwilling to recognize that they may be manufacturing their own ruin.

Financial experts don’t know how exactly many pennies are needed for the worst case scenario, to shut down a stock exchange, but they’re all confident that there’s more than enough of them in circulation to do so should they fall into the wrong hands …

(Originally written 12/28/2015)