Coeur Mining 2004 March 20th

Alexander Kimball

"So there's gold in them thar hills."

That earned me a polite laugh.

"But seriously we have confirmed that the Valentine islands on Mars are rich in gold."

"How rich?"

"Remember the California gold rush?"

There were a few nods.

"Bigger then that, and that isn't all, our people have found rubies, emeralds, opels, sapphires and diamonds. This is on all nine of the islands, and the trip from the World tree over here."

I pointed to the map.

"Isn't that long. People, these resources are not that hard to get, yes our personal would have to wear masks, and taxes are going to be a factor."

"How big a factor?"

I sighed.

"A tenth of the gold and other resources has to go into the biosphere fund and there's no ducking that. There's other taxes too, federal, and of course the fee to use the World tree but this is our projected worst case senaerio for profit."

I clipped the slide, and let peoples eyes widen.

"That's... that's more then triple what our company currently makes."

I nodded my head.

"Yes it is, affordable access to the solar system is a reality now and has been for years."

"But we can't breath the air there?"

I smiled at the man.

"Not yet, project Phoenix is currently on a hiring spree, but within 5 years we will be able to breath the atmopshere unaided, in 25 years the world will be terraformed. Look, we're actually being given a break on a lot of environmental regulations. The global... sorry solar economy has been hurting for decades."

I paused.

"But now, now there is a chance to really turn things around, we can't afford not to be on the ground floor of this, so who's with me?"

There was some polite clapping and an agreement to start mining, we left the meeting in high spirits. There was of course some lobbying to do, we had to make sure that the anti-space crowd changed their minds and didn't wreak all of our chances out of spite, but fortunately we knew quite a few of them.

I went to my office and smiled, the war was overall a bad thing but if we kept winning, if new worlds opened up to us... was this what people felt like when they heard about the New World? Maybe it was. There was an air of excitement in the air, the fundamental knowledge that you lived in important times. That the history books would write about you, that you existed in a pivotal moment of human history.

When I bought a yacht, I would make sure to name it 'Interesting Times' and of course enjoy all that profit.