Here's an idea for an aspiring cottage industry mogul: figure out how to harvest and ship tons of those little round Martian rocks, the ones they're calling blueberry muffins. The pictures suggest lots of artsy possibilities and who knows what they'd look like broken in two or sliced. Selling the jewelry alone - buyers would be easy to find - should assure some auction site (think eBay) as a major anchor in the future of 'Net-based commerce. I can see it now ...
Erma closed her eyes and stretched.
"Thanks for taking care of the boys," she called. "I really needed to catch up on email!" She focused resolutely on the chaos she could see in the sunny yellow-and-orange kitchen as she pushed her gloves off and popped the earmic out, dropping them both on the coffee table in front of her.
The images on the 50" plasma HDTVPC/Mac, her favorite possession, faded to a sepia-toned picture-album show staring many scenes from Erma's childhood home in Kentucky. She'd snagged the display from a virgin seller at the bargain basement price of $586, including shipping, then worried until the big box arrived. It had been listed as a "thin monater PC/Mac-complient." The accompanying description had also been misspelled, and the category it was listed under was obscure. The seller would have done much better to have simply advertised it under "TV." He would learn, if he continued selling through online venues. Meanwhile, someone profited. Someone always profited - Erma liked being that someone.
Jackie, Erma's good friend and fellow jewelry maker, stepped out of the bright, noisy kitchen into the cool forest greens of the den.
"You've got mine Sunday afternoon," Jackie said. "Don't forget! Did you find any more of those rosewood beads? They look great on Katherine's mesh bags."
Erma rubbed her face. She always felt just a little motion sick after spending a big chunk of time online. It couldn't be helped, though; her special set of skills made her the buyer for their little cottage industry krew. Erma had a knack for spotting and capturing bargains, even if they didn't seem like bargains at the time.
"I found something that might be even better," she said. Jackie's raised eyebrows and pursed mouth silently asked "oh?" and invited enlightenment as she sank to perch on the couch beside Erma.
"Yeah, uh, they're supposed to be Martian rocks, with signed certificates of authenticity. They're not going to come cheap." Erma leaned back and watched the other woman's face. Jackie sat back.
"Oh, my," she said. She looked around and pursed her lips. "Not cheap." Erma shrugged. Jackie bit her lip and looked at Erma as though she were trying to read tea leaves in a cup. "How, how do you know they're for real? How are they for real?"
"The agent who is selling the rocks has a near-perfect rating. He says that they're some pea-gravel that came back with the most recent Mars workers."
"Back from Mars? I sort of remember people coming back from Mars, I think."
"Well, the seller said a few of those rounded rocks have been coming back with workers ever since the beginning, and those few who brought them back made pretty good money off of them. The Mars Consortium finally saw reality and agreed to let workers bring back three ounces apiece, over personal weight, of soil or rock from up there. The workers union got the Consortium to agree to allocate personal weight from the trip out, so that a worker could lose a bit of body weight while there, then carry enough rock back to make up the difference. Plus the allocated three ounces."
"He said these are fairly uniform, all taken with a sieve and three to eight millimeters thick." She paused. "If all else failed, we could package some for novelty. Mars is a good reference." She motioned toward the earmic and gloves. "There are perhaps a couple thousand of mostly large ones loose in the entire earth population. Check out some of the prices. This is the first time they've been available in any amount at all, and no one knows what you can do with them."
"Why do you think we would have enough money to buy them?"
"I'm not sure we do, but bidding isn't as vigorous as you'd think. It's a small amount of goods, not really worth it for the big guys. Maybe people aren't sure they want to figure out how to craft these things, much less package and distribute. There's enough here to keep us all busy for a few years, but we're going to have to figure out how to use them. It would be a pain to have to cage them, but I don't know how hard they'd be to drill or how they respond to glue." She shrugged again.
"Maybe everyone's waiting to see how it goes. Maybe everyone believes this is out of their league. Maybe some real rich playboy will decide he wants them for his aquarium." Erma watched Sam and Josh carry their glasses and plates toward the kitchen sink. "It's interesting, is all."
Jackie nodded. Their home-based concern was much too small to buy or store big batches of supplies, so they had done the same as many small crafters, purchasing beads, wire, and other necessities in manageable quantity from resellers or others who treasured them and their small-lot-buying compatriots across the globe.
Every now and then, they came across real treasures, for example, the one-time sellout by the heirs of a small, privately owned diamond mine in Colorado. Although not of particular quality, the gems made their homemade items sparkle and sparked interest - and they'd came cheap enough to make it profitable. Flawed diamonds from America held an odd worldwide appeal, who knew? Erma had found the diamonds "interesting," too.
The profit from that buy allowed the craft cooperative's members to take a giant step forward and assured Erma's position as chief purchasing agent. The krew had to agree before she made a buy as large as this one could be, though.
Want to hear more? Send email to lightningstruckfirewood at mindspring dot com; remove all spaces, replace at with the @ symbol and dot with a period. Sorry to make you work, but I hate spam. I will never sell or give away your email address.
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