| That is similar to the answer I came up with in high school, about 40 years ago. Artwork, objects of note, curiosities with provenances, tourists, off the grid information that needs to remain _really_ secure, spies, traitors, patriots, displaced peoples, artefacts bound to a religious, gifts, bodies, deceased bodies, prenatal bodies, slaves, sex objects, objects of devotion, objects of derision, pariahs. I actually wrote a short story about a trade empire that was built by a race of aliens (they looked like lizards) that had odd religious beliefs that required them to build monasteries all over the galaxy, and staff them with praying monks. The monk's duties were very simple, each day they had to silently read from a small paper prayer, then burn the strip of paper over a candle. The rest of the day they partied, got drunk, had sex (monks could be of either gender), or wrote non-prayer literature. Writing prayers was an unforgivable sin, the prayers had to come from the home planet. There was a huge fleet of trade ships created to deliver the paper prayer strips in bulk. In return for the land for the monasteries, the alien lizards would give rides on their space fleet. They had single use vouchers that went from point to point, and they had travel passes which allowed general travel. Basically a bus pass for the galaxy. And since they had a monopoly on FTL ships, they delivered mail. One day the prayer ships stopped coming. Everybody goes bananas. Nobody travels. Economies collapse. Plus somebody has to feed the monks, and keep them entertained or else they go on party binges. Can't let them starve, because the ships might start coming again. A generation later the ships start showing up again. No explanation given, and it's impolite to ask. The kind of impolite that gets you cut out of the prayer circuit. That was all backstory, the actual story starts with an undercover agent from Earth getting sent to the lizard homeworld to try and find out WTF. He only has partial passage and a small consignment of trade goods. The backstory got backfilled as the agent wheeled and dealed his way towards the home world. I did have an ending, but I think I'll not spoil it in case I ever want to try and rewrite the story. My 17 year old prose stank, unsurprisingly; even at that tender age I could smell it. Not sure I can do better now, but who knows. |