Altairan Dollar (History)

In the great and prosperous times before the collapse of the Galactic Economy, the Altair System was renowned for its riches and its complex, multi-layered social hierarchy. At the very top of this structure sat the High Altairan Court of Icons, whole sole function in life was to be looked up to by the rich and famous, revered by the upper classes, worshipped by the upper middle classes, adored by the middle classes, and prayed to by those too far down the social order to be bothered with.

Among the nobles of the High Altairan Court food and the etiquette involved in consuming it were the two most important facets of their lives, from using the right shade of saffron lemon to accompany the pre-entrée, to extending the thumb and little finger when toasting the arrival of the anti-post-après-dessert liqueurs. Indeed a typical fourteen course breakfast would require more than twenty different types of spoon.

These spoons and were so central to the members of the High Court's ability to function, that different metals and gemstones were used to differentiate the pea sporks from the cream ladles, until more than a quarter of the total wealth of the High Altairan Court was invested in cutlery, while the other three quarters were rumoured to have been invested in the food.

Of course, the nobles of the Court were so stinking rich they didn't even notice this, and their delegation of cutlery control to the lower orders was a disaster in the making. With such a complex system finding the right cutlery became a nightmare, as did keeping the kitchen staff, who would often last only a day before disappearing with a drawer-full of jewel-encrusted spoons, never to be seen again.

There came a time (later known as the Great Spoon Famine) when the demand for new cutlery exceeded the supply, and a shortage of spoons came to threaten the Altairan status quo. To the High Altairan Court the need to use the right spoon for the job was so great that having no spoon meant eating no food.

In less than a month the uncompromisingly obese Altairan nobility had, despite an overabundance of food and money, starved itself into extinction, their corpulent and fat-reliant bodies were completely unprepared for the sudden and terminal end to the intake of food.

The loss of an entire tier of Altairan Society unburdened the planet from many of its debts, but also resulted in money flooding back into the local economy, rather than paying for mineral mines and exotic food-farms on other planets. With so much currency around, the value of the Old Altairan Dollar slumped, and the planet spiralled into what was known as the Great Depression.

In order to survive, the rest of Altairan society was forced to use stolen cutlery as its principle currency. While this accelerated the Galaxy's move towards a moneyless system, the different types of spoon were officially recognised as the system's new currency. Thus Altair had at last recognised the true value of the spoon, and the New Altairan Dollar was born.

And herein lies the real reason that hitchhikers need to live on less than 30 Altairan Dollars per day. Any more than thirty spoon-shaped dollars carried on any given day would weigh them down so much, and would make finding the right change so difficult, that they'd be likely to find themselves a spoon too short to pay their bills.