As I cruised the asteroids in search of precious metals much needed by our industrialised society based on depleted Earth I noticed one would flash with stunning brightness along with a burst of static on the near field radio. The flash was periodic. I observed over time and saw it had a pattern. It would blast out the light and static for a time then go quiet. Almost as though it had something to say but no one was listening. Being pressed for time to meet my quota I couldn't investigate but I did mark the asteroid in the spatial tank for later attention but didn't bother claiming it. The tank is a combination four dimensional map of near space with x, y and z coordinates with time as the fourth, communicator console, hologram display age personal recorder. I moved on following the faint whine of the metal detectors that stretched their fields out in front of my single ship.
Questing on and on it was several days before the detectors groaned with the tone that they'd found something interesting, a metal on their configured list of desirable elements. I turned on the Strebor analyser and spun the ship over its axis giving a quick blast on the drive both to slow me down and to hit the rock with charged particles for the Strebor to measure. Quickly spinning about again I aimed the Strebor probe towards the rock. As the blast hit home the Strebor did is thing. Call me mental but the thing always seemed somehow happy when there was a rain of particles to observe the dance. Squinting at the screens I read the information displaying with the spectral graph, a mixture of lithium, beryllium and mercury with some traces of other elements. This was a great one. This one would give me some serious pocket money.
Warming up the spatial tank I marked the rock and put in my claim to identify the rock as mine. Of course it takes a while for the claim to be transmitted, processed and received even at light speed. Once again I spun the ship and gave a longer blast on the drive to stop me alongside the rock while I waited. This is always a calculated gamble. Stopping in space relative to another object is costly in fuel. Sometimes more costly than the worth of the rock.
I grabbed a bite to eat and some coffee and pondered over the most recent news feed from Earth reporting on all the trivial problems back home. It was one of those problems that had me out here hurling through the void. I didn't want to be home. It was too easy to be found there. No privacy. How gratified would Orwell feel had he known his dream of 1984 was merely the beginning.
Finally I got a response from the tank. Unexpectedly there were two messages, one that congratulated me on my claim and told me which space dock to transport my rock to for processing and a priority 1 warning message. This was a little unusual, well ok, completely out of the ordinary, so much so it had never happened to me before.
I flipped my hand into the icon for the P1 and the message opened, it was from space command. The message was very terse and simply told me to not approach the object I had noticed earlier in the trip under penalty of no dock. No dock was essentially a death sentence, it meant you would be refused docking rights everywhere in known space. This seemed totally fucked up that I'd be warned off with such a harsh penalty over a rock I'd only marked not even claimed. Straight away I decided that I'd need to quietly take a look at that rock sometime. I'd always had a bit of a problem with authority. It was one of the other reasons I was out here alone.
I suited up and went outside into the jet black nothing of space and tethered the rock to my tow points. Job done I had time to pause and simply look at the stars and planets. I always did this, it made the hardness of the mining life worthwhile. Seeing just how small and insignificant we really are when compared to everything made being in the can of a ship bearable, because you couldn't see out. You could be happy in that small space simply because you couldn't see more.
Going back in I unsuited, carefully checking all the parts and stowing them neatly. You had to be neat in space or you'll quickly die. I scanned the board and seeing everything was ok I transferred the dock coordinates into the drive computer. I checked the promise given for the rock and saw there was a fast delivery bonus - enough to pay for heading there via overspace. I finished programming the drive and kicked it in the guts. The mind rending jerk marked the transition into overspace. This was the real reason there were no ports in my ship, in overspace there is nothing, lots and lots of nothing. It isn't possible for humans to experience nothing and not go insane.
Dragging my rock to the processing dock was uneventful. Just prior to arrival the drive dropped out of overspace near the dock. and I guided the ship to the arbiter that took the rock from my tow system freeing me to dock my ship and go inside for a little hard earned booze. No pilot was ever drunk in space, to much death to be had but in dock it's anything goes. My usual plan was booze, a meal that didn't come out of my shit hold, a bath then some nice young thing for a bit of fun.
After a few days I'd had about as much company as I could handle. I went back to the port and paid my fees. Entering my ship I checked that the store had loaded my usual order and that my fuels were full. Time to go. I headed out following a course that would take me back to the curious rock while passing right through the belt in search of more bounty. I found a few small rocks not worth towing in, I launched them to dock using the magnetic canon. They'd get there eventually. My launch computer plotted their trajectory and velocity into the tank so everyone else could avoid them. Ships drive always worked out their path to avoid the flying chunks.
All mining pilots knew how to kill the auto position reporting so we could move less than legal stuff around the system. I configured my agent to report I was stationary and smelting a rock then I went into overspace and visited the flasher. On arrival I dropped out of overspace and stopped alongside relative to the rock. The Strebor didn't find anything of interest and the computer couldn't make anything of the broadcasts. The interpreter simply labelled the transmission as meaningless noise.
To learn more I suited up and went outside, I flitted over to the rock towards the source of the transmission. Touching down I found a large box about the size of a small human with a transparent panel. There was a dessicated mummified woman inside. She looked like she was screaming even in stasis. There was a panel with a plaque. on the plaque was the sign of mental plague and here lies the body and forever personality of a social media troll.
Now I understood, before society learned how to fix mental issues, the extremely antisocial who did little but attack everyone around them always claiming it was the fault of others were packed into a life box and hurled into space. The life box would keep their body in stasis allowing their mind to be awake to experience the ultimate revenge of a society so sick of the self promoting attacking damaged individual. This one had managed to meet this rock on the way out of the system and come to grief. Checking this box showed that both the stasis and warning beacon were damaged but still working. This explained why the messages were just static. Her brain was still active, this was the source of the transmissions as that personality struggled to still get her message out to anyone. This must have been a particularly bad one to rate a P1 warning.
Once back inside the ship, I asked the drive to work out a trajectory into the sun and boosted her rock out of place to meet the brightest moment she'd ever have. In time she would be consumed and her torture ended. Not even a troll deserves forever torment. After the boost I moved back to where I'd been reporting I was and recommenced my quest for bounty.
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