All the Money in the World

I had done it.

Many had tried it before, but I had actually done it.

You would think that the hard part would be achieving staggering wealth, but the real work as always comes down to the details. Anyone can become a billionaire, well not anyone if we are concerned about how far we’re stretching credulity, but the point being that it at least seems like an achievable goal. Frankly, it’s one of the little fictions that allow any of them to exist in the first place. Having a trillion dollars seems to be at least conceptually possible, but when you start talking about having all of the money in the world you begin to run into some pretty tough logistical issues.

Do you know how many pennies, or penny equivalents, there are in the world?

How about nickels? Damn, I hate nickels.

If you want to have ALL of the money in the world, you are talking about mason jars of change. Dimes that have found their way into an old coffee can full of nuts and bolts. You are talking about people who have tacky little cardboard displays of all fifty state quarters. You have to consider scouring the ocean floor for sunken pirate treasure, and gold coins sitting behind glass in museums. Dragging the bottom of wishing wells, digging between the cushions of every coach on the planet.

Do you actually know how many different types of currency there are in the world?

At least I don’t have to worry about crypto, that stuff is clearly fake.

The whole thing is an enormous undertaking, but do you know what clears up most of those complications? That’s right, money. It’s also made significantly easier when you realize that once you have taken control of most of the larger chunks of cash that you are essentially paying yourself for everything that you buy.

Ironically, for the last decade, the largest economic driver in the world was actually my own search to complete my collection of the world’s currency. Fully one quarter of the entire population of the planet was employed by me in this task in one way of another. From people walking the sides of roads and parking lots scrounging for change and others scouring the globe with metal detectors to deep sea divers on the ocean’s floor.

Like many of the world’s richest men prior to me, peasants by comparison of course, I am not satisfied merely with the accumulation of wealth. I am an adventurer at heart and have been employing some of the greatest scientists and engineers in the world in the construction of the largest, most luxurious spacecraft ever constructed. I am going to explore the galaxy and deliver the stars to our planet in a way that it’s governments have never had the will to do.

I will also be taking every last scrap of my money with me.

I’m not foolish enough to think that I can trust the rest of you not to spread it around again while I’m not looking.

Today was the day. I broke atmosphere a few hours ago in the fastest, most advanced piece of technology that humanity has ever conceived of. My course has been plotted and laid in by my crew, and I am off to places that no human being has ever seen before. All I have to do is kick back and wait.

The view screen shows me the Earth disappearing behind me, transformed by distance into a shimmering blue dot, and with the Earth behind me I can only look forward.

The glowing disc of the sun starts to burn on the screen.

It is growing larger.

And larger.

Filling the view screen.

Nothing but a roiling angry sheet of fire.

Oh shit.