Chapter 360: First Livestream Ends (Bonus - 1/4)

The silence that followed Liam’s final words hung in the digital space for exactly three seconds. Then reality crashed back in.

On Earth, 785 million people simultaneously tried to process what they’d just heard.

"The age of scarcity is ending."

In Times Square, the crowd stood motionless, thousands of faces tilted upward toward the massive screens. Tokyo’s Shibuya Crossing had gone eerily quiet, the usual chaos replaced by stunned contemplation.

Then the comments exploded.

"HE JUST CASUALLY ENDED CAPITALISM"

"Every economist on Earth just had a heart attack"

"$10,000 QUADRILLION. That number doesn’t even make sense."

"The entire global economy is worth maybe $100 trillion. This ONE ROCK is 100,000 times that."

"Governments are watching this and realizing they’re obsolete"

"Mining companies’ stock just became worthless. ALL of them."

"He’s not showing off. He’s making a statement. ’Your economic systems are about to mean nothing.’"

"We are already aware of this but somehow, hearing it from the CEO of Nova Technologies... It feels so much different."

On CNN, the host finally found her voice. "I... we need economists. We need someone who can explain what this means for—" She stopped, laughed helplessly. "I don’t even know what to ask anymore."

The financial analyst they’d brought on had been silent for the past ten minutes, just staring at the screen. "Everything we know about resource economics just became theoretical," he said quietly. "Supply and demand curves don’t work when supply approaches infinity."

***

Floating among the digital avatars near 16 Psyche, Liam ran his gloved hand along the metallic surface one more time. The asteroid was cold, ancient, valuable beyond any Earth-bound measure of worth. Around him, hundreds of Lucid users drifted in contemplative silence, still absorbing the magnitude of what they were experiencing.

"These asteroids," Liam continued, his voice drawing their attention back, "represent more than just wealth. They’re building blocks. Raw materials for space stations, habitats, spacecraft—everything humanity needs to expand beyond Earth."

He pushed off gently from 16 Psyche, rotating to face a cluster of smaller asteroids drifting nearby.

"That one—" he pointed to a dark, carbonaceous rock about the size of a bus, "—contains water ice. Enough to sustain a crew of fifty for years. Break it down and you get drinking water, oxygen, hydrogen for fuel. Everything a space station needs, just floating here waiting."

Comments scrolled past:

"Water in space. He’s talking about LIVING in space."

"This isn’t exploration. This is colonization prep."

Liam drifted toward another asteroid, this one smaller and more irregular. "This one’s mostly silicates—basically glass and rock. Perfect for radiation shielding. Melt it down, form it into plates, and you’ve got protection from cosmic rays."

He moved from rock to rock, his enthusiasm evident despite the voice modulation. Each asteroid became a lecture on potential uses, on the resources humanity had ignored simply because they were inconveniently located a few hundred million kilometers away.

"The iron-nickel ones are structural material. The carbonaceous types contain organic compounds—building blocks for plastics, polymers, even food production with the right processing. And the metallic asteroids?" He gestured broadly at 16 Psyche behind them. "Enough precious metals to make everyone on Earth a billionaire and still have resources left over."

"But he’s the only one who can ACCESS them," someone commented.

"For now. But he’s showing us it’s possible. That changes everything."

One of the Lucid users—an avatar moving with the awkward grace of someone still learning zero-G navigation—drifted closer to Liam. "How long did it take you to build all this? The ship, the technology, the infrastructure?"

Liam was quiet for a moment. "Longer than you’d think. Less than you’d imagine. Time is... relative when you’re working at this scale."

The non-answer only fueled more speculation in the comments.

"He’s being deliberately vague about timeline"

"Nova Tech launched ONE MONTH AGO. This ship is YEARS of development minimum."

"Secret government project that went private?"

"Or he’s not human and this is first contact wrapped in corporate branding"

Liam ignored the spiraling theories, instead turning his attention to a particularly interesting specimen—a small asteroid with visible veins of bright material running through darker rock.

"This one’s special," he said, approaching it carefully. "See those lighter streaks? That’s likely platinum-group metals. On Earth, you’d need to process tons of ore to extract grams of this material. Here, it’s concentrated by natural geological processes that took millions of years."

He gripped the asteroid, his exosuit’s fingers finding purchase on the uneven surface. With a gentle tug, he broke off a small piece—no larger than a golf ball—and held it up to the camera.

"Proof of concept," he said simply. "What took humanity decades to barely reach, we can now manipulate directly."

The action seemed simple, casual even. But its implications rippled through the millions watching. He’d just broken off a piece of an asteroid with his bare hands. The technology in that suit alone was decades ahead of anything public.

Matt’s voice suddenly cut through the ambient chatter of floating Lucid users, carrying the enthusiasm of someone who’d completely surrendered to the experience. "Can I—can I keep a piece?"

Liam turned toward the speaker—an avatar with a blurred face, one hand outstretched toward a small asteroid tumbling slowly past. The body language was unmistakably eager, almost childlike.

"Keep it?" Liam’s modulated voice carried clear amusement.

"I know it’s not real, but—" Matt gestured helplessly at the rock. "I just want... something. To remember this."

Liam was quiet for a moment, considering. Then he reached out and plucked the asteroid Matt had indicated from its trajectory. The rock was roughly fist-sized, its surface pitted with microcraters, gleaming with metallic inclusions that caught the distant sunlight.

"You’re right that you can’t take the physical object," Liam said slowly, turning the rock in his gloved hands. "But who says physical is the only thing that matters?"

He held the asteroid up, letting it catch the light. "What if I gave you a perfect digital twin? Complete atomic composition, isotopic ratios, crystal lattice structure, magnetic signature, estimated age, every microfracture mapped. With provenance—the exact orbital path, timestamped extraction location, verification hash tied to the Voyager’s logs."

Matt’s avatar had gone very still, listening.

"All the metadata," Liam continued. "Exact UTC timestamp, the Voyager’s position, precise solar system coordinates. Interactive—you can zoom to atomic level, rotate it, analyze any aspect. And it’s yours. Locally stored on your device, shareable for display but only you have the complete dataset."

The pause that followed was absolute. Then Matt’s avatar did a slow, zero-gravity backflip, arms spread wide.

"YES! Oh my God, YES!"

The reaction was instant and explosive.

"WAIT HE’S GIVING OUT CERTIFIED SPACE ROCKS???"

"DIGITAL ARTIFACTS FROM ACTUAL SPACE"

"That’s going to be worth MILLIONS. Provable scarcity from the first commercial space mission."

"I need one. I NEED ONE."

"This is the future of collectibles. Verified, timestamped, impossible to fake."

"NFTs but actually cool and backed by real exploration data"

Other Lucid users surged forward, their avatars clustering around Liam in a chaotic swarm of blurred faces and eager gestures.

"Can I get one too?"

"Please, I’ll never ask for anything again—"

"My daughter would lose her mind over this!"

Liam raised both hands, and somehow the gesture carried enough authority that the digital crowd settled slightly.

"I’ll grant a small number of requests," he said carefully. "Based on intent. Tell me why you want one. What it means to you. Make it count."

The comments section became incomprehensible, millions of people simultaneously begging for consideration despite not even being in the immersive experience.

Around Liam, the Lucid users began making their cases. Some were eloquent, others stammering, a few brutally honest about just wanting something cool. Matt floated nearby, his avatar’s body language radiating smug satisfaction.

Liam listened to several requests, his helmeted head tilting thoughtfully at each one. He pointed to a few users, marking them somehow in the system, promising their digital specimens would be delivered after the stream ended.

But something had shifted in the atmosphere. The awe was still there, but now it was mixed with something else—a hunger, a desperate desire to possess even a small piece of this experience. The line between sharing and gatekeeping had become uncomfortably visible.

Liam seemed to sense it. He turned back toward the camera, toward the hundreds of millions watching through standard screens who couldn’t participate in this moment at all.

"The livestream is ending soon," he said quietly. "Thank you for joining me today. For witnessing this first step."

He paused, floating among the asteroids and the digital avatars, a lone figure in a black exosuit surrounded by humanity’s scattered representatives.

"We’ll do this again. There’s more to show you. Jupiter’s waiting. So is Saturn. The outer system. Places humanity has only glimpsed through telescopes."

His tone shifted, became almost intimate despite the modulation. "The age of watching from a distance is over. The age of participation is beginning. And it’s going to be extraordinary."

The Voyager appeared in the distance, its massive form silhouetted against the star field, engines glowing softly as it maintained position.

"End of transmission," Liam said. "See you among the stars."

The feed cut to black.

For exactly five seconds, 785 million screens showed nothing but darkness. Then they reverted to LucidNet’s standard interface, the livestream officially over.

But the reactions were just beginning.

Within minutes, #SpaceRock was trending globally. Artists were already creating speculative designs of what the digital artifacts might look like. Secondary markets were forming, with people offering absurd amounts of money for the chance to purchase one if the recipients ever chose to sell.

Financial analysts scrambled to categorize what had just happened. News networks extended their coverage indefinitely. Government officials convened emergency meetings.

And aboard the Voyager, floating in the darkness between worlds, Liam smiled behind his helmet. The first livestream had exceeded every expectation.

The world would never be the same.