Selling Starlight

          A dropped pin? Never mind that, you could have heard the whispering of the polar aurorae outside the quintuple-glazed window.
          Clarkwell made a great show of massaging his face while his subordinates shifted awkwardly in their seats. He released a long sigh; it was the sound of a man resigned to his fate. He had tried, so damn hard for so damn long, but Moriburden would never get a clue. Clarkwell could threaten him all he liked but in the end, he always got the same pathetic spiel about 'research costs' and 'red tape delays'. Well this time he was going to put his foot down.
          "Doctor Moriburden, you know exactly what I'm going to say and you know exactly why I'm going to say it." The doctor lowered his head, conceding that his pleas were ineffective. "This is the eighth time I've poured my hard-earned monetary clout into your lousy R&D outfit, and for the eighth time you've come to me after four months without a single bloody thing to show for it."
          "Oh please Mr Clarkwell, you know I'm on the verge of a major breakthrough here! I've shown you my data, my evidence, my statistical analysis, my lon-"
          "Enough!" roared the business mogul. "I'll give you my own sodding statistical analysis - you have procured more than fifty-six million dollarias from my bank accounts, across three planetary systems, and so far I've earned nothing in return, because your projects never amount to anything!"
          "But what about my ideas to eradicate rock-worm from Mars? To exploit the regenerative properties of quasiorganic crystals from Enceladus? I was practically patenting my vaccine against interlobular nervous dysplasia when you pulled the plug on that particular venture!"
          Clarkwell snorted. "That total non-syndrome they refer to as the 'Jupiter dizziness'?" He suddenly looked deadly serious. "Look out the window, doctor. You see the vast plains of nitrogen-methane ice that blanket the south pole here. Look up; you see the northern hemisphere of Neptune, less than 300,000 kilometres away." The doctor subconsciously flinched as the imposing figure lecturing him suddenly leaned forwards. "Within a few decades, Triton's orbit will have decayed so much that Neptune will find itself one moon short. This building won't be here anymore." He gestured at Neptune's north pole, blazing away under a curtain of aurorae high above the frozen plateau surrounding the building. "Nor will that view. Your latest ridiculous proposition involving more permanent facilities on Triton are utterly delusional and fiscally futile."
          "You will regret this, Mr Clarkwell," the doctor whispered.
          "What was that?" The suit shook his head. "Actually never mind, I never want to hear you or any of your ideas ever again. I'm willing to let the money I've lost through you slide, and write it off as my own fault; a misjudged and ill-informed investment plan." He clicked his fingers and the room's double doors slid open. "Good day, Doctor Moriburden."
          The doctor was barely out of the facility before he was laughing. His cheap spacesuit's visor fogged up, unable to cope with the rapid exhalations. "Oh you damned fool Clarkwell. If only you knew!" He punctuated the last word with a jump that, thanks to Triton's miserable gravity, carried him to the top of his personal SpaiceHoppah. The craft roared into life and whisked the doctor away from the Neptunian system altogether.
          Earth's desolation was the perfect cover. No-one had officially lived on the world for well over three billion years. Couldn't blame them really; thanks to spectacular resource mismanagement, combined with catastrophic short-sightedness on the part of policymakers, the planet had been effectively reduced to a larger clone of its sister Venus. The thick yellow atmosphere and acidic rain actually made Earth, ironically, the least hospitable world in the Solar System.
          Uninhabited and ungoverned, it was the perfect hideaway.
          Using permanent space-time tunnelways, Doctor Moriburden was soon standing on the desiccated 'shore' of what used to be one of Earth's great oceans. His covert laboratory loomed out of the constant haze.
          His various interplanetary communication devices were alight with joyful replies from various pharmaceutical companies, all struggling financially in this day and age of routine genetic self-rectification and nanobot immune support. They were all very interested in this reclusive doctor's magnum opus, the project into which all of the gullible Mr Clarkwell's invested 'clout' had really gone. Martian rock-worm? Enceladean crystals? Pfft, those were distractions that sounded convincing enough for Clarkwell to part with his money.
          He never would have agreed to fund this if he'd known the truth.
          He was too moral. Too enamoured by concepts of humans sticking to their rightful place in nature, blah blah blah.
          Moriburden carefully unsealed the metallic crate marked Starlight. Soon the stylised font would be emblazoned on packaging in every pharmacy and hospital from Mercury to the Oort Cloud.
        He scrutinised the frothy black solution. Soon it would roll off production lines across the heavens and be ingested by everyone who ever wished they could be a bit smarter or stronger. This chemical was designed to subtly rewire the brains of its consumers, bringing on hallucinations of the impossible: that they actually were getting smarter or stronger.
          And all the while their brains would slowly lose the ability to reason or make sensible decisions. They would become gibbering shells of true life, limited in ambition to acquiring more of the ecstasy that was Starlight.
          It hadn't taken the doctor long to work out what the 320 billion humans in existence craved: the granting of their vain carnal wishes. Nor had it taken him long to devise the perfect name for the miracle drug to fulfil those wishes, at least ostensibly. He muttered the ancient rhyme, older than any current human culture, as he beeped and clicked his way through the hungry cries of the pharmaceutical industry.
          "Starlight, star bright, first star I see tonight..." Beep, click. "I wish I may, I wish I might..." Click, beep.
          "Have this wish I wish... tonight!"