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The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/tartnfartnpsyche on 2025-12-10 00:04:14+00:00.
Strange is the life that begins in a culture of poverty and proceeds to attain great wealth. You remember how you used to live, see other people still getting by that way, and feel like an anachronism.
That's the way I felt heading out to meet Fejula Noph, heiress to an ancient but dwindling family fortune and 626th richest person in The Market.
It was September, 3040 CE. My company, Terran Galactic Development, had completed Miss Noph's new house that June. Now I was invited to tour the habitat under the pretense of gratitude and expectation of pure business. She had a new job in mind and TGD would be fools to refuse. So I, as founder and CEO, departed in my yacht for Zardom.
The journey crossed 155 light years and took seven days to complete. My yacht's Gold Tier faster-than-light drive allowed for a direct route; no need to refuel or recalibrate at the stars between departure and destination. Such efficiency and intelligence was lacking in the Silver and Bronze Tiers.
Zardom is much like my home star Gliese 722. Both are G-types a bit less luminous than Sol, making them highly sought-after real estate. And at one time they both possessed an extensive asteroid belt, but Zardom's had been picked apart and reduced to a manicured reserve ring—as is Market procedure.
The Market is curious in that regard. On the one hand they are devoutly lassiaz faire and on the other quite strict regarding the few rules they set. Perhaps their night watchman government, deprived of the powers usually afforded states, craves any opportunity for exercise.
In any case, Zardom's asteroid reserve ring was a beautiful sight upon entering the system. Containing a quarter of an Earth's mass of material and composed mostly of oxygen, silicon, water, aluminum, carbon and iron, it was the perfect blend for construction. We at TGD took full advantage when building Miss Noph's new home.
It was a choice asteroid that we used, having all the material we needed save for one element. After a 52 day journey via Silver Tier drives, six of our work rigs entered the system in March of 3039 CE. Huge beasts those rigs. They bristled with terrawatt mining lasers, valley-sized collection funnels, stadium-sized fusion reactors and refineries large enough to support 21st century Earth. They could have been automated, but I preferred to give people an income. I was on one of the rigs too, watching primordial stone get turned into carbon allotrope beams and aluminum plating. The shell of an oblate spheroid came together.
Miss Noph had come to us the previous year with this ludicrous idea: make her home planet of Pokatan in miniature. We had to turn it into blueprints. The 1/1000 scale structure averaged 13 kilometers in diameter and had three layers: the previously mentioned outside shell strong enough to resist imploding all on its own, followed by a mantle of unrefined rock and, at the center of it all, a hollow core.
Now, if you know anything about space habitats alarm bells are going off. You're questioning why most of the interior volume was filled in. Were we not going to spin it up so that the interior surface—and why was there so little of that—would experience spin gravity? Ah, but you underestimate this design's extravagance.
Gravinium—A plentiful but extremely diffuse element that generates a gravitational field one billion times stronger than its mass would suggest; see also: dark matter.
Whether she hired a fleet of vessels to collect it nonstop or bought a naturally occuring source for a decent percentage of her fortune, Miss Noph had a supply of concentrated gravinium. Our project's portion arrived in December 3039 when the largest tug I've ever seen hopped in with an escort of eight corvettes wielding neutron cannons. The 100 meter diameter gravinium sphere was pushed down the project's 101 meter wide cylindrical access hatch and locked into the hollow core. Gravity source in place, we then began the final task—landscaping.
Pokatan is a water world with a 20 kilometer deep ocean and one single piece of land the size of Australia. Mini Pokatan is a water world with a 20 meter deep ocean and a piece of land the size of Manhattan.
I had performed dozens of inspection orbits upon the project's completion in June of 3040. Three months later and aboard my yacht, I repeated that inspection before landing. I breathed a sigh of relief both times because our company had never done anything like that.
Tau Ceti University handed me a Master's in Habitat Engineering in 2953 CE and I took off the next day for the then-frontier star of Zeta Tucanae. There I found a cylinder habitat, newly constructed and ran by hippies and given the lofty name of Human and Alien Peace Cooperative. The fact that it was colloquially known as HAP-C should tell you all you need to know.
Jokes aside, consider the kind of transactions someone at the edge of civilization can make. I took full advantage, renting out my expertise in exchange for "tokens of friendship."
People aboard HAP-C had me design gardens and tea room expansions. Solward, people had me design a permit-skirting toroidal habitat. The former gave me baskets of fruit. The latter fed me information straight from the Survey Corps.
The juiciest gossip came on October 25th, 2957 when I learned that, just three weeks prior, humanity had made first contact. I was thrilled.
I was practically salivating when I found out that it wasn't just one species, but hundreds of species confederated into a capitalistic minarchist state known as The Market.
Suddenly my species, with its communistic attitude toward all things, wasn't the only player on the block. Now there was a market, The Market, where quadrillions of individuals competed for supremacy. And to get in on the action, all you had to do was register a business.
So in 2960 CE I registered as Terran Galactic Engineering with The Market. Despite the impressive name it was still just me, a 31-year-old man pumping out designs from his picturesque four room cottage aboard HAP-C.
The hippies found out. Not just about the registry, but also all the bribes I'd been taking over the past seven years. So envious were they of my profiting from my stay that they asked me to leave—though not before poaching my nest egg.
After that came my first experience with the giant alien transports called "slum movers." One tenth the cost of a regular interstellar transport with none of the comforts. 10,000 people is the official capacity but I know from experience that 20,000 are found inside one at any time. I would ride them a hundred times during the 2970s on my way to and from job sites. Not until I got the contract for a cylinder in 2982 could I afford to travel the stars in the manner my skill warranted.
I settled down around Gliese 722 in 2985 CE. There I set up permanent shop in a torus habitat of my own design, hired a few extra brains to do the engineering and took on more of a customer relations role.
In 2990 I hired a few hundred hands to do the construction as well and changed our company's name to Terran Galactic Development. It was a rough transition but we were never out of work and by the turn of the millennium I'd hired a few thousand more. After that we received one big contract after another: The Market's trade torus in 82 Eridani, the Hyades Bishop Ring and an entire subdivision of cylinder habitats around 61 Virginis.
Needless to say, the stock was hopping as much as our ships. My portion of Terran Galactic Development was worth a billion Market Credits in 3001 CE. In 3029, days before my 100th birthday, my stock made me a trillionaire.
I thought about my meteoric rise—TGD's meteoric rise—as my yacht touched down. Oh, how much more we had risen thanks to the high profile construction of this ludicrous little world, the newest addition to Miss Noph's menagerie of homes. Did she think I owed her for that? Did I think I owed her? If I owed her then I owed every dispenser of funds. What next, I owed every person I'd ever employed?
My yacht rested on the landing pad like a dragon on a lilly. I stepped out in a 50,000 Credit suit and filled my lungs with the super oxygenated air. Cyan blue water surrounded me as far as the eye could see, but the eye couldn't see very far as the horizon was just 161 meters away. Further transportation came in the form of an electric motorboat, automatically piloted and with heading locked for the only piece of land.
The transoceanic trip gave me ten whole minutes to reflect on the atmosphere we'd developed. Though the gravity was 1.01 gees, the planet's tiny surface area allowed gas to easily slip away into space. The semitransparent membrane we'd installed as a kind of roof was keeping the atmosphere in, but I still thought it was a clunky solution. My arrival at the membrane-scraping shield volcano only strengthened my disdain for the roof.
It wasn't a working shield volcano. In fact it wasn't even made of rock but just another carbon allotrope frame with aluminum plating and a thin layer of basalt—a miniature example of the technique used to build the already miniature planet. More to the point, Miss Noph resided inside.
I stepped through one of the three main doors arranged at 120 degrees to each other. It didn't matter which you went through as they contained identical passages. First was the great hall lit by enormous wall sconces. Next came a sitting room with food dispensers catering to one of the three ma...
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