Once the Singularity occurred, coupled with practical FTL, most objects and materials that had previously been valued by human society rapidly lost value. There is little point in valuing something like gold or a particular make of air car when the ability to produce both is readily available to the general public.
This change to a true information economy was the most profound side effect of the Singularity. This is sometimes referred to as a "Post-Scarcity" economy, but we of the Guild do not prefer this term. The implication of "Post-Scarcity" as a term is that there is no commodity valued by society. We know that this is simply untrue.
The one commodity that retains value—and will always retain value—is information, or more accurately, Intellectual Property. The ability to control intellectual property and other types of information forms the basis of the post-Singularity economy. We refer to this as the "Information Economy," and it is the purpose of the Data Trader's Guild to help manage and regulate this economy.
{{Meta Tag: "Post-Scarcity Societies"}}
Excerpted with permission from the Data Trader's Handbook
© 3250, Interstellar Data Trader Guild
Cutting its FTL drives, the cutter dropped into normal space above the plane of ecliptic for U-I. Activating the gravimetric drives, Leo shaped a course for the six buoy. They were on time. There was enough time to dock with the buoy, do the full diagnostic and manual inspection, and still get back into position to rendezvous with the Reggie before she passed in-system of buoy six.
Ramona was manning the sensor suite. He had set her the exercise of scanning the buoy remotely—mostly to test her out on the sensor console, rather than because he thought she would find anything.
"Leo, I'm picking up a drive flare about ten gigs away from the buoy."
He was about to ask why she was scanning ten gigameters beyond the buoy when she continued,
"Ship is on a reciprocal course from buoy six. Estimate 99% probability that they are burning away from a close rendezvous based on current heading and speed."
While it was unusual for ships to visit a Guild buoy in deep space, it wasn't completely unheard of. The buoys also acted as emergency stations of sorts. Ships having issues with environmental systems could dock and make repairs. For this reason, they were stocked with consumables, and this meant occasional restocking missions for systems that were infrequently visited, like this one.
So, this might be a coincidence. But then again...
"See if you can hail her. It might be a resupply mission from the local polity."
Ramona brought up the comms system. With a distance to target of 30 gigameters, the light propagation delay was already 90 seconds—and this would only increase as the ship continued to accelerate away. They would have hard dock with the buoy in two minutes. Not enough time for the hail to reach them and the answer to come back.
Leo instructed the ship to begin docking procedures.
"Don't you think we should wait until the outbound ship has responded?"
Ramona didn't look concerned so much as puzzled. To her, a ship was a threat until proven otherwise. To Leo, a ship was a potential trading customer until proven otherwise. Very different life experiences led them to look at the world differently.
"I'm sure they will just tell us they were doing resupply. Besides, we're not going to hunt them down in an unarmed cutter. If we're not happy with the answer, we'll tell the Reggie when she arrives and let the locals deal with it."
There was a loud CLANG as the cutter made hard dock with the station.
Leo and Ramona floated back into crew quarters and got their hard suits on. In theory, the interior of the buoy should be fully pressurized. One thing that Leo and Ramona's life experiences completely agreed on was that "in theory" and "bet your life on" are not the same thing at all.
Leo wondered what Ramona would do with the handgun she had left drifting nearby as she suited up. Then he learned what a "zero-g harness" was as she affixed first the harness to her suit's hard-points and then the gun to the harness. Ramona pushed a button on the side of the weapon and then put her gloves on.
The little weapon changed shape—the grip grew, and the trigger guard re-formed. Leo was puzzled for a moment and then nodded. The pistol would have to be a different shape to use with gloves than with bare hands. A very clever design indeed. The only time Leo had trained with weapons while suited up, they had used special weapons designed for gloved use.
"Leo, the station is registering five degrees warmer than nominal. The last ship through did not report any issues. There could be a problem onboard."
She was referring to a display inset into the arm of her hard suit. It was repeating the diagnostics running on the main console.
To Leo, "problem" meant mechanical problem. That's not what Ramona meant—but he didn't realize that until later.
"OK, let's check it out."
He cycled the lock open and started to enter the station.
"Leo, wait!"
Ramona had been looking down and didn't realize he was about to open the door. Now she was positioned behind Leo. Suddenly, she reached out to the grab bar she was floating next to and compressed her legs. Then she gave a powerful thrust and flew across the airlock, right at Leo.
"Wuf!"
The collision knocked the air out of Leo's lungs and sent them both tumbling into the main area of the buoy. As they twisted, he could see two armed and armored spacers standing to each side of the airlock. Not visible to anyone inside the airlock, they were perfectly positioned to ambush anyone coming through.
The unorthodox entry must have surprised them, however, because they did not have their weapons pointed toward the tumbling pair.
Ramona twisted and threw Leo away from her. This stopped her spin and canceled much of her forward momentum. Pulling her pistol, she barked at them through the external speakers of her suit.
"Toss your weapons! No sudden moves, or I shoot!"
The two men were either very brave, stupid, or both. She clearly had them zeroed. However, each leveled their weapons. Rather, they attempted to.
In the time it took them to aim, Ramona had fired four times in rapid succession. Two hits on the first suited figure and one on the second. The recoil had shoved her backward into the far wall of the room, but she maintained her aim point on the second opponent.
The first one wasn't going anywhere. The projectiles had apparently been set for "penetration" because they had punched a hole clean through the face shield, through the man's head, through the back of the armored helmet, and then torn a chunk out of the very thick armored casing of the airlock.
The other was badly injured and most likely to lose a leg if not immediately treated. He released his weapon, and it floated away toward the middle of the room.
Meanwhile, Leo had flown across the room like a sack of potatoes. He hit the far wall, taking another blow to the back as he bounced off. Gathering his wits, he was able to bend his body enough to cancel the spin, and the second impact was soft enough that he was able to regain control and take a handhold.
By the time he righted himself, the fight was over—with one man dead and another seriously wounded.
Leo himself was no slouch in zero-g. He had competed in school in gee-ball and thought he was pretty good. However, Ramona's circus stunt of using Leo's greater mass to cancel her spin and negate her velocity was something he had never seen anyone do.
He had heard that militia training on Raeburn's World was very good, but this was beyond his wildest imagination.
Ramona had attached herself to one wall but still had the second would-be ambusher under her gun. Based on what she had just accomplished, no sane person could think she would miss from that position.
"Leo, you OK?"
He gave her a thumbs-up. Shaky, but definitely OK.
"Grab the emergency locker over there."