LESLIE SOULE
Bitcoin Star-Chaser
The year was 2027, and a lot had changed in the last ten years or so – mankind had
journeyed to other planets, and started expanding its knowledge of the universe. In addition to
the government-owned ships, an individual could buy one, if they were rich enough. But with
these personal ships running millions of dollars, few people had the funding necessary to have
one of their own. But if you’d bought cryptocurrency ten years ago, back when one Bitcoin
would only set you back a couple thousand dollars, you’d now be a millionaire several times
over.
That’s how I ended up pinning all my hopes and dreams on a shiny metal machine that
would blast me into space, and away from the bureaucracy that had taken hold here on Earth.
You see, I was a government employee once, tucked away in an office, typing away in a tiny
cubicle, until I uncovered corruption in the agency, and in the process of trying to expose it,
ended up an outlaw. That’s usually how it happened, these days. When I was a child, I never
thought the year 2027 would be quite like this. Weren’t we supposed to have moving sidewalks
by now, and world peace? Whatever happened to those things? What we ended up with instead,
was a government that had outgrown its usefulness, and grown even more corrupt than it was
before.
Part of me was scared, at the prospect of all the dangers of space. We still didn’t know
what strange species of plants or animals lived on those far-flung realms of the galaxy. But I was
even more afraid of staying here on Earth. A few years ago, they’d made microchipping of
humans mandatory. And now the government was silencing political dissidents by disabling their
chips. This sent an electrical signal to the brain of the victim, to also shut down. And the
government could just claim a malfunction, and thereby get that highly sought-after thing they
called plausible deniability.
And I’d had enough of all this bullshit. I’d managed thus far, to not get microchipped. I
wasn’t in the military, so it wasn’t mandatory. And I didn’t want or need the convenience of
paying for things by waving my hand. Thankfully, they hadn’t been phased-out like the non-
chipped debit cards of yesteryear. And even though the government had no use for paper bills,
the underground economy still used it as their primary medium of exchange. At any rate, I
decided that now was the time to cash in my chips against the game of possible future returns. So
I had ten million dollars to work with, and that would buy my ship, but just barely. That’s why I
decided to call it the Bitcoin Star-Chaser.
They let me come down and look at it, fresh off the assembly line. It sat there, glistening
in the sun, with decorative flames in metallic blue, on a bed of purple. I was starstruck. This was
the ship that I would captain, if I could just find a qualified pilot to come along on this journey
with me. Good riddance to my trials and tribulations – to working fast food jobs because the state
had blacklisted me – to trying to find a good man in a world of little boys who worshipped comic
books, to trying in vain to find others who weren’t scared of the state, whose courage would see
them through. People like that maybe existed in fairy tales. For so long, all I wanted was to leave
the difficulties of Earth behind, because those difficulties had caused my heart so much pain.
The vastness of space represented rebel territory, a land undiscovered and ripe for the
possibilities that flooded my heart. There, out there somewhere, I might find other black sheep,
on the run from the Empire. Where Earth represented only limitation to me, space was the
opposite. I walked toward my Bitcoin Star-Chaser, and smiled. “Hi there, baby,” I said. “This is
your captain, speaking.”
Then, sure as if I were the Oracle of Delphi, came exactly what I predicted – namely, the
throng of young onlookers who also wanted to leave Earth, and who waited for the captains to
come and claim their ships. These beggars came in many forms – the filthy, fresh off the streets,
with no prospects of a good job on Earth (and usually with no motivation either. So nope), the
professionally dressed (and eager to make their way up the corporate ladder, just waiting to hit
an Empire-run planet. Nope), and then there was that other category. And that was the category
of people I was looking for – the qualified, dedicated, but outcast from society because of their
virtues, ironically. How did you spot them? Well the theories varied, but I looked for those who
carried books with them, and by that I mean the old-school version, with pages and everything.
So far, I’d only found one, named Brandon. You see, I had an M.A. in English, and I
figured, I could spot who really knew literature, and those who were only being pretentious.
Brandon was of that first category, and he seemed to have a near-encyclopedic knowledge of
literature. I had no idea how this skill would help on a space journey, or what position I’d give
him, on-board the ship, but I’d think of something. So I still needed a pilot, a medic, a mechanic,
and a few other key positions.
At any rate, Brandon and I stood there, marveling at the ship as the ramp was lowered.
“Let’s go check it out,” I said, amazed at the ability I had, to turn invisible straw into visible
gold, a modern-day Rumpelstiltskin. Making things happen had never been a strong suit of mine.
I was one of those people who attracted trouble, in all its myriad forms. But the sight of this
magnificent, hulking beast of a machine, glistening, ready for possibility, sure felt like victory to
me.
The year was 2027, and a lot had changed in the last ten years or so – mankind had
journeyed to other planets, and started expanding its knowledge of the universe. In addition to
the government-owned ships, an individual could buy one, if they were rich enough. But with
these personal ships running millions of dollars, few people had the funding necessary to have
one of their own. But if you’d bought cryptocurrency ten years ago, back when one Bitcoin
would only set you back a couple thousand dollars, you’d now be a millionaire several times
over.
That’s how I ended up pinning all my hopes and dreams on a shiny metal machine that
would blast me into space, and away from the bureaucracy that had taken hold here on Earth.
You see, I was a government employee once, tucked away in an office, typing away in a tiny
cubicle, until I uncovered corruption in the agency, and in the process of trying to expose it,
ended up an outlaw. That’s usually how it happened, these days. When I was a child, I never
thought the year 2027 would be quite like this. Weren’t we supposed to have moving sidewalks
by now, and world peace? Whatever happened to those things? What we ended up with instead,
was a government that had outgrown its usefulness, and grown even more corrupt than it was
before.
Part of me was scared, at the prospect of all the dangers of space. We still didn’t know
what strange species of plants or animals lived on those far-flung realms of the galaxy. But I was
even more afraid of staying here on Earth. A few years ago, they’d made microchipping of
humans mandatory. And now the government was silencing political dissidents by disabling their
chips. This sent an electrical signal to the brain of the victim, to also shut down. And the
government could just claim a malfunction, and thereby get that highly sought-after thing they
called plausible deniability.
And I’d had enough of all this bullshit. I’d managed thus far, to not get microchipped. I
wasn’t in the military, so it wasn’t mandatory. And I didn’t want or need the convenience of
paying for things by waving my hand. Thankfully, they hadn’t been phased-out like the non-
chipped debit cards of yesteryear. And even though the government had no use for paper bills,
the underground economy still used it as their primary medium of exchange. At any rate, I
decided that now was the time to cash in my chips against the game of possible future returns. So
I had ten million dollars to work with, and that would buy my ship, but just barely. That’s why I
decided to call it the Bitcoin Star-Chaser.
They let me come down and look at it, fresh off the assembly line. It sat there, glistening
in the sun, with decorative flames in metallic blue, on a bed of purple. I was starstruck. This was
the ship that I would captain, if I could just find a qualified pilot to come along on this journey
with me. Good riddance to my trials and tribulations – to working fast food jobs because the state
had blacklisted me – to trying to find a good man in a world of little boys who worshipped comic
books, to trying in vain to find others who weren’t scared of the state, whose courage would see
them through. People like that maybe existed in fairy tales. For so long, all I wanted was to leave
the difficulties of Earth behind, because those difficulties had caused my heart so much pain.
The vastness of space represented rebel territory, a land undiscovered and ripe for the
possibilities that flooded my heart. There, out there somewhere, I might find other black sheep,
on the run from the Empire. Where Earth represented only limitation to me, space was the
opposite. I walked toward my Bitcoin Star-Chaser, and smiled. “Hi there, baby,” I said. “This is
your captain, speaking.”
Then, sure as if I were the Oracle of Delphi, came exactly what I predicted – namely, the
throng of young onlookers who also wanted to leave Earth, and who waited for the captains to
come and claim their ships. These beggars came in many forms – the filthy, fresh off the streets,
with no prospects of a good job on Earth (and usually with no motivation either. So nope), the
professionally dressed (and eager to make their way up the corporate ladder, just waiting to hit
an Empire-run planet. Nope), and then there was that other category. And that was the category
of people I was looking for – the qualified, dedicated, but outcast from society because of their
virtues, ironically. How did you spot them? Well the theories varied, but I looked for those who
carried books with them, and by that I mean the old-school version, with pages and everything.
So far, I’d only found one, named Brandon. You see, I had an M.A. in English, and I
figured, I could spot who really knew literature, and those who were only being pretentious.
Brandon was of that first category, and he seemed to have a near-encyclopedic knowledge of
literature. I had no idea how this skill would help on a space journey, or what position I’d give
him, on-board the ship, but I’d think of something. So I still needed a pilot, a medic, a mechanic,
and a few other key positions.
At any rate, Brandon and I stood there, marveling at the ship as the ramp was lowered.
“Let’s go check it out,” I said, amazed at the ability I had, to turn invisible straw into visible
gold, a modern-day Rumpelstiltskin. Making things happen had never been a strong suit of mine.
I was one of those people who attracted trouble, in all its myriad forms. But the sight of this
magnificent, hulking beast of a machine, glistening, ready for possibility, sure felt like victory to
me.
Leslie D. Soule is a fantasy/sci-fi author from Sacramento, CA. She has an M.A. in English and is currently working on the final book of her fantasy series, The Fallenwood Chronicles.