Author: riser
Not too long ago, I was walking around a copse of trees, emerging in a dug out gold mine in Zwollar. The sun was setting on the horizon giving the sky beautiful magenta and purple hues. It reminded me of my last walk though El Peso but none of the cities are as beautiful in my eyes as my own Nasdaqar. My worn out boots and hiking clothes were covered in dust and dirt. “One more kilometer for today and I’m heading back home” I thought to myself. As I walked, a map of the Federation criss-crossed in lines and “X” marks swung on the chain locking it to my belt. My mind was still trying to make sense of the last hint I got.
A Federal agent had been silently following for hours, ready to arrest me should I walk too fast, damaging the wildlife. After a few hundred meters, hidden behind a tree, I saw it. My heart started pumping fast, my legs started to shake, I felt butterflies in my belly, goosebumps all over my body. There! A big brown sack was lying on the ground beside the tree.
As I opened the bag, I saw it was still empty. It suddenly evaporated in my hands, to reappear elsewhere in the Federation.
I smiled as I remember how that natural phenomenon was the clue that we needed at the BRI, the Beagollum Research Institute. We had been searching how the teleport capsules on the ships could allow instantaneous transfer from one side of the Federation to the other. That self-transporting bag I’d been hunting so often gave me the clue of how the capsules were made. We were still searching how to harness this power in a better way than the ship makers are doing now (either in a new kind of cars or self-teleporting suit) but still, it was the essential clue for understanding that phenomenon.
I started walking back home, still feeling giddy at finding the bag. The bag itself is unimportant. The content was mostly useful to pay for the taxis and ships tickets I paid to roam the Federation searching for it. It was the third empty bag I got even if I knew it was going to be empty. What’s fun was the thrill of the search. Solving a difficult clue made it better but the search itself was the fun.
They might put agents to prevent us from running through the federation and damaging the wildlife, or they might invent some crazy new scheme to prevent us from searching too actively, but no matter what they do, they might slow me down but they’ll never stop me from searching for that bag, empty or not. Finding it was just too much of a thrill.
I’ll start a new search tomorrow. I just want to find that bag that might one day be full of money again. And then I’ll search it again… and again… and again… Trading is great but finding that elusive bag is better.