As Bain and Shi Xin wait for Hunter their intermittent conversations ripple across the mouth of the cavern where they shelter from the heat of the slow-drowning Barnard’s Star dipped now below the horizon. Artefacts of light stretch across the rocky landscape as Bain stands with his back to the reclining Shi Xin whose closed eyelids flicker with the keenness of her training. Bain has found a small coin in his tunic and thumbs it into the air, and watches the reflections bounce from the coin to the distressed metal of his arm and on to the coffee cart that sits by the ever-alert service-bot.
The time does not matter, nor the year.
Shi Xin: That’s a hundred flicks.
Bain: What?
Shi Xin: It’s a record.
Bain: Ah, you noticed!
Shi Xin: Not much else happening.
Bain fumbles and catches the coin in his other hand: I suppose I could gamble it with our friends at the back there.
Shi Xin turns to look: I don’t think they’re ready to start again. You took advantage of their drunkenness last time. Perhaps they’re not stupid enough to allow you to do it again.
Bain: Hah. I bet I could persuade them.
Shi Xin: Don’t.
Bain: Why Not?
Shi Xin: It’s not right. You should not take advantage of their weakness.
Bain: Come on! That’s how the world works!
Shi Xin: Perhaps yours.
Bain: But we’re from the same planet!
Shi Xin: Sometimes I wonder.
Bain: Don’t be like that. I was very gentle with them.
Shi Xin: You mean you outsmarted them, but they didn’t know it.
Bain: That’s the trick with money.
Shi Xin: That doesn’t make it right. Money seems to make you behave badly.
Bain: No, no, it’s the lack of money that does that. Not that I’ve needed to do anything since I’ve been with Hunter, too much excitement and exhaustion these days.
Shi Xin: So you don’t need money any more?
Bain: Yep. Although I miss it. Watch it spin, lovely isn’t it!
Shi Xin: Don’t be silly, it’s just an old metal disk.
Bain: I know, but everywhere we’ve gone, on all the human colonies, back and forth in time, alien civilisations, anywhere there’s trade, there’s coin. Even the most advanced societies, with their neural payment systems, somewhere there’s a market trading where ancient coins can be used.
Shi Xin shrugs: That does’t make them good, just, well, inevitable.
Bain: Well, I gave in to that inevitability long ago.
Shi Xin: But has it made you happy?
Bain, stretching his chest: Oh yes, the nights I’ve had, the things I’ve seen!
Shi Xin: Then what, you crash and burn, then try to re-capture the sensation again?
Bain: Ah, yes, but it seems worth it at the time. For a while I’m fulfilled, powerful, confident – everybody loves you when you have money.
Shi Xin: But not when it’s gone. The money is the power, not the person with it. The power is transferred to someone else. Or when you go somewhere else the money is worthless if it’s not the right money.
Bain: Yes, so its best to stay where it works.
Shi Xin: So it imprisons you.
Bain: That’s going a bit far.
Shi Xin: Well, it seems to hypnotise you, energise you, then when you don’t have it you suffer the loss and try to find it again. It’s a drug, you must have it to feel good.
Bain: Hm, certainly it does make me feel good, and when I don’t have it I dream of what I don’t have. I don’t think that makes me a bad person.
Shi Xin: No, but it does make you a slave. If you need money, your life revolves around the desire for it, and what it can do for you.
Bain: So you prefer the exchange of goods, or work, no system of money.
Shi Xin: Actually I do, it’s more honest, more transparent.
Bain: But there’d be no technology, no medicine, no travel, we humans would never have left Old Earth to travel the stars.
Shi Xin: Oh, but we wouldn’t have destroyed the planet, making it necessary to leave.
Bain: That’s a fair point, but that doesn’t make money bad of itself.
Shi Xin: True, but it’s very existence creates poverty, illness, injustice. If you don’t have it, or are denied it, if people are not as devious or as strong-willed as you…
Bain: Charming.
Shi Xin: …they’re at the mercy of someone else’s dreams and desires, they’re slaves to someone else’s slavery.
Bain: But if you benefit from it, then money is good for you.
Shi Xin: But does that make it good? Is selfishness good?
Bain: Well, selfishness is obviously to do with the person themselves, it’s what it can do for that person, not what it doesn’t do for other people.
Shi Xin: But the consequences, unintended or not, and certainly these are known, are clearly wrong.
Bain: But we don’t always see the consequences.
Shi Xin: Or we close our eyes to them, decide not to look. If you benefit then you don’t want to look.
Bain: I don’t think it’s as active as that. Most people would be ashamed if they knew the consequences.
Shi Xin: I’m not sure humans are like that. As a species we’re very good at ‘turning the blind eye’, as you might say. Passive acceptance of something you know to be wrong, is to be complicit in that wrong.
Bain: But that undermines everything money can do, the good it can deliver, the advances it creates, the opportunities.
Shi Xin: But only for those who have it.
Bain: For those who have scrapped and fought for it, those who spend all their days working for it, hunting it, reaching for it. They deserve it when it comes
Shi Xin: Does the benefit to one individual outweigh the loss for another?
Bain: I suppose it depends how competitive you are. If someone works hard for something, but another doesn’t, surely the reward for the one is fair, if not good.
Shi Xin: So money is fair?
Bain: I’m not sure that’s quite right. It’s not anything, it’s only as good as whatever it can buy. It’s neutral at best.
Shi Xin: Perhaps it’s best to say it has power; it facilitates, it accumulates, it enslaves.
Bain: Look, I don’t like that word.
Bain thumbs the coin into the air again, and begins the silent count, determined to beat his best score. He watches the coin spin, and is held by the reflections locked into its curves and dents. Shi Xin smiles ruefully, watching the coin gaze at Bain, holding him in its thrall, feeding on his desires and his dreams. She wonders at his lack of perception, that even though he acknowledges his bondage, he does not seek to free himself from it, a willing victim of an object invented by humankind, which came to dominate it. She glances across at the service robot, and wonders how long it will take his kind to do the same.
Links
- What is the Point of Talking?
- What is Art?
- Is Hypocrisy Necessary?
- Philosophical Dialogue: Is Free Will Good?
- If We Live Forever, Is Life Meaningless?
- Dialogue: Should we Fear Death?
- Is this all a Dream?
- Another Dialogue: Why do we need Names?
- And one more: Who is Responsible for an Accidental Death?
- More concepts on These Fantastic Worlds
- More about the SF Fantasy fiction of Jake Jackson
- Some of these Dialogues can also be found on the long-form social media platform Medium