I'm sorry to add to your already heavy workload that is your Prompts. But I would really like to see Unununium Jones on her stellar yacht get her just deserts. (From Prompt #02605-G048: Atomic Element Number Six) -- Anon Guest
[AN: Link thanks to DaniAndShali <3 Bless you for being helpful]
Life, the saying goes, is like a shit sandwich. The more bread you have, the less shit you have to eat. That saying was certainly true of Uni Jones. She has, to stretch the metaphor, so much bread that the comparative fecal matter was invisible to the naked eye. Or at least, that's the way it was.
There's another saying, Without change, there is no life. In short, the lifestyle of the ludicrously rich were about to change abruptly. In order to prevent the gross indecencies performed by Unununinium Jones and her lifestyle, the CRC changed its basic standard of living definitions and the Alliance itself altered its tax laws.
Trade with alliance citizens, businesses, and so forth would be taxed at one hundred percent unless all employees, minions, and wholly-owned subsidiaries complied with CRC rights regulations. The same applied for trade within alliance registered businesses.
As the gentle reader might guess, compliance with the law was going to cost Uni Jones a lot. This was the argument she was currently having with her financial advisors.
"You guys are supposed to make the Time," she whined. "Specifically, make me the time. Do your job or I'll find someone who will."
The current financial advisor said, "In order to avoid taxes under the new laws, Mz Jones, you will have to enact the changes outlined in this bullet point sheet."
"Yeah, I don't care. It's gonna cost me, like... three weeks' of baths. Do you want me to be smelly, James? Do you?"
His name was not, it might be noted, James. She had had a financial advisor at age four named James and by now it was too much effort for her to know their names at all. Now, they were all James whether they were or not. If they "got snippy" about it, they had a choice - change their name to James or get replaced by someone who didn't mind it so much.
"There are costs you could cut, Mz Jones."
"I can feel the difference, you know. I can taste the difference." She put one gem-studded nine-inch heel up on her chalcedony desk, inlaid with other gemstones to make her favourite pattern. "I am a lady of quality and taste."
"Mz Jones, you have two choices. Find a way to economise or pay the taxes."
The words 'pay' and 'taxes' were not well suited next to each other when in the company of Unununium Jones. She vented a growl of frustration. "Fine. Cut some corners. Whatever. Just make sure I'm earning by the end of it."
It cost her more than three weeks' worth of diamond bathing water. The first corner cut was in the plumbing, where cometary water harvested from the debris ring of black holes was replaced with plain old ordinary cometary water and recycled. A method that appalled Uni Jones no matter how pristine the process was. She claimed it all smelled, even when it was fresh from the melted comet.
The diamonds in her diamond water were next. Replaced with synthetic diamonds, and once again Uni Jones could feel and taste the difference. She blogged 'before' and 'after' photos of her skin where the only difference was the lighting, claiming that there was a horrible rash that was ruining her skin and making her uncomfortable.
Her three-hundred-count cotton nightwear was no longer made fresh for every single night, nor were her sheets. They were -gasp- laundered and -shudder- re-used! This counted as the next-worst thing to negligent torture in her mind. She could feel the imprint of her past on it and, she claimed, it itched. Soap powders used in laundering were just too harsh on her delicate and privileged skin.
It was at this point that Uni Jones attempted to find a Galactic Medik to sign a document saying she needed diamond water and all the other things her lifestyle decreed for compassionate reasons.
There was no such Medik anywhere and none could be bought. Not for all the fancy equipment in the known universe. Not for any stipend in the sheeps' clothing of a "generous donation".
The Galactic Alliance and its morals were not for sale.
Uni couldn't run crying to her friends. They were in the same sinking ship. Forced to live of regular carbonated beverages like less wealthy people and wear clothes more than once. One even had to let her favourite designer go! It was a travesty.
It never occurred to them that, perhaps, people should not be wealthy enough to buy entire stellar clusters. That was not the point. The point was that they had been so, and now the authorities were being mean by not pandering to them any more.
It continued to get worse for Uni Jones. She had to sell some of her holdings. The planets once dedicated to her lifestyle had to have certain portions of it reserved for their nutrition, housing, education, and so on. They had to have access to clean air and clean water and adequate health care and honestly? It was easier to let them go independent and sell her the darn materials in the end.
All of it made an impact. Less planets in her holdings meant less overall income and less earnings. Then again, they were earning less anyway. She was angry about it, but there was also so very little she could do. Not legally, and she was having enough trouble with the law to even look at the illegal stuff, which carried way heavier penalties.
Soon, she had to sell her summer planet - a resort made exclusively for her. Renting it out to -euw- regular people would mean hiring staff and making sure they had proper housing, clean air, medical benefits, blah blah blah... it was too much fuss for Uni Jones, so she sold it. Let the next chump worry about all that noise.
She had to sell her other resort planets, too. Her exclusive therapeutic spa stations, almost all of it. Until she was down to her favourite yacht.
Then she pared down her belongings. Platinum and gemstones from natural resources were replaced with gilt and glass and glitter. She still raged at the taxes, because of course she did. The idea of paying people for their time was a concept she never truly became at home with. Not even when it was work or starve.
"What do you mean I have to get a job? Work like everyone else? I thought I was incorporated so I didn't have to do that..."
"You dissolved Unununium Incorporated so you wouldn't have to pay the employees, Mz Jones. As I recall, you said, screw their so-called rights, I'm not putting one more second towards anyone else. I've lost enough, and then had to vent your emotional overload for the rest of the day." Anyone else, in any other situation, might have called it throwing a tantrum but this was still a relatively wealthy person. One who -theoretically- paid James' wages. "Which, I have to tell you by law, was a violation of Galactic Employment Code."
"Ugh fine. Get me something I can do that doesn't take up too much time and gets me what I'm worth."
Which was a contradiction in terms, given Galactic Labor Laws. "I'll see what I can do, Mz Jones."
Her favourite yacht became a cruise ship, one in which guests could live out the fantasy of the lifestyle that Uni Jones and her select friends had enjoyed with impunity. Their 'diamond water' was merely carbonated and not remotely artisinal in its flavouring. Mass-produced. The same went for the gourmet food. Very little of it was actually created by the on-board chefs, and even the fare for the stuff they did cook was printed. There was no waste. Not any more.
Uni Jones remained captain of her yacht, though it was now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Quadrillionaire Tours, incorporated. A corporation run by the heads of her former planets, who had formed a coalition to take advantage of tourism and thereby allow anyone who wanted to see a lifestyle now gone extinct.
Uni Jones' descent into self-deception was barely noticed. She lived in the Executive Suite and claimed to bathe in diamond water and imbibe diamond beverages. She claimed to wear exclusive fashions shot with gold thread once before disposing of them. Her soft furnishings were made on planets created exclusively for her... but only in her head.
Only in her head... the ship was loaded with old friends and new who were also loaded. It was always a party every night, and she had only the best to offer. Food cooked on gold, ice harvested from comets rescued from black holes. Only the very best and very rarest of treats.
And in her moments of clarity, she grew paranoid. The maid - carefully trained but for different reasons - bought her a sparkling cola in a sealed crystal vessel. It hadn't been cut crystal for decades, but it looked and felt just like the real thing. It allowed Uni Jones to maintain her illusions.
When the beverage container sat snugly in its coaster, Uni Jones eyed it suspiciously. "This isn't the common brew we serve to the rabble downstairs, is it?"
"Of course not," her maid lied. "Only the best for you, Mz Jones."
"I can taste the difference, you know. I can hear the diamonds," she unsealed the container and listened, then sipped. "Mm. Real diamond cola. Thank you, that will be all. I need to see to my financial empire."
Unununium Jones returned to colouring in a picture book of constellations. All her worlds and wonder, and wonderful to behold.
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / catchmybreath]
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