The more successful local businesses jumped at the idea. So-and-so’s grocery store took a big chunk of the rear. Some mister’s tailoring service was plastered over the hoverpads. And the Rykan tourist board, bemused by the idea, paid enough to have the front of the shuttle dedicated to their new spa/hotel complex. (I suspect, perhaps, this wasn’t a great move on their part, seeing as most Guliens couldn’t afford off-world travel at this point.) Hopefully their ad-man has since found other employment.
The out-of-work Gulien got enough Units for her shuttle, as well as enough to start her own electronics store. It was a rousing success! Hooray! People, both locally and across the globe took notice, and started to draw up their own plans…
So it was then that the Gulien crowdfunding phenomenon began.
The reason all this is relevant is: Gu, still, to this day, does not provide public funeral care. So when this family that I was staying with lost their patriarch, funding became an issue. People emptied out their pockets, looked behind their proverbial sofas, and called up old friends for help. As I suspect is often the case on Gu, doing all this did not cover the full bill. And, as we know, whenever there’s a bill to pay on Gu nowadays… they turn to crowdfunding.
This left a grieving family, sat around their father/brother/uncle’s body, wondering how on Gu they were going to come up with a funeral idea novel enough that people across the galaxy would donate to them. At this point, while they were sitting around, having been up all night and craving a cup of U’kka, a stranger knocked on their gate. This stranger, of course, was me.
While I was waiting for the daughter to arrive with the information that I was after, I made myself as useful as possible. There were only so many cups of U’kka that I could make, however, and soon I was roped in to helping in other ways. The family sat me, an unbiased observer, down on the sofa to listen to their various crowdfunding pitches. I (or so they told me) represented the intergalactic community, and therefore if I liked something, there would be enough demand for it to be viable.
The first pitch, from the deceased’s two younger brothers, began with a sigh from all the other participants. They weren’t happy with this idea, they told me, but the brothers insisted that they were given a fair chance to present their concept.
They began by reminding me of the typical Gulien funeral process; words would be said about the deceased, before the body was covered in a local (highly-flammable) mineral, and set alight. The attendees would typically watch as the fire died out, and once there was nothing but ashes remaining, they would begin to celebrate the deceased’s life.
The brother’s twist on this would be: they would shoot the body up into the sky, packaged with huge amounts of the mineral, with a short fuse on it. The body, as well as few other explosives, would be set off in the sky, producing a brilliant light show for everyone in the vicinity.
They were perturbed when I said that this reminded me of an old Terran ritual, and when I brought an example of a firework show up on my holodisplay, the novelty of the idea quickly dissipated.
The sister, pitching next, began by playing some soft, gentle Gulien jazz from her console, setting the mood. Her idea, she said, was a classic - and a classic for a reason. She had heard of wealthy people on Terran who seek out and collected chunks of pressurised carbon, which they would often wear on their wrists or around their neck. Her idea was that they would collect the crowdfunding donations as a loan, use these Units to get the body cremated, and then pressurise the remains with overclocked sonar devices. The carbon, she explained, would be pressed into the form that Terrans so often sought out, and so she could sell the remains of the body at a profit. These profits would go back to the crowdfunders, thereby giving them reason to invest.
She was sad to hear me explain that diamonds had long-since gone out of fashion on Terra, and so I wasn’t convinced there would be that much of a market any more. Her dejected face made my gut twist with guilt, and I apologised - but she said there was no need. It was better, she figured, that they find that out now rather than later.
Finally, the son, Lo, came to pitch, bringing with him stacks and stacks of something I had barely ever seen before: paper. He dumped it down on the table in front of him and declared that this was his father’s life’s work. Other families chimed in: he always was a madman, imagine using paper in this day and age, how wasteful, etc etc.
I asked Lo what exactly was written out here, and, more importantly, why it was even written out. I was told that it was some kind of medical study - but was largely incomprehensible to him. His sister, when she arrived, would be able to explain more. All that Lo knew, all that he’d ever been told, was that it was important - so important was it, in fact, that his father had refused to digitise it for fear of the information being illegally accessed.
Lo’s plan, therefore, was that something kept so secret must inherently be worth something. He would sell this work to the highest bidder; it felt fitting that his father’s life’s work would pay for his death.
In lieu of any better concepts, it was this last idea that the family agreed upon. The group of us - the grieving family and I - began to scour the pages to try to understand what they contained… and hoped that the sister would bring with her some illuminating knowledge.
It took even longer than expected
