I invented the diamond, right, and I don’t get any praise from anyone. I’m not interested in financial rewards or anything, I’ve got enough food on my plate and there’s company and the occasional drink – I really don’t care for anything more than that. But I sometimes just want people to appreciate that if it wasn’t for me, they wouldn’t still be picking those shiny little blighters out of those tubes of Kimberlite I cast in to the Earth millennia ago.
So to the problem.
It’s not so much an issue of auditability, I have everything I would need – paperwork etc. to prove it was my idea, I led the team that put everything where it was, finding the right types of strata in which to insert our veins and then pressurise them in-situ over the course of many more years to give us those tiny and beautiful little gems that people get so worked up over. I’ve got an issue in actually getting the paperwork, sure. I think I left it in a locker in the sub-surface of Mars last time me and the boys were over there. But it’s there, for anyone to see at any time they so choose.
Admittedly I have some difficulty explaining to people how we fused the atoms together in the centre of the sun until we had the right consistency of material, how we cooled it at the right rate and how we transported it over to the world on the back of those giant space creatures that just so happened to be passing through the system at the time. We had to make sure it entered the atmosphere at the correct speed so as not break apart, losing all our material in a fine, hot dust. I could explain how I had strapped a huge parachute to my back, and wrapped the falling rock mass in my coat as we descended gently, but would they really believe me? I get looked at a bit funny when I try and explain how the Diplodocus powered earth-splitter enabled us to open up the crust enough to drive the material down, but at the time it seemed about the best option.
And they ask me why I don’t know where they all are now, why can’t I take them to a new vein, to make them (and me) rich? I try and explain to them that they don’t want to get involved – the nice ones I will go on to tell them how there is the motherlode of all diamond reserves directly beneath the footings of this pub – The Golden Arches – where I have coming for the last two hundred and fifty years. That is normally the point they give up, and walk away. But if I’m lucky, they’ll buy me a pint or a pack of crisps and thank me for entertaining them. If I’m unlucky, they’ll call me names, get violent and might get thrown out by the landlord.
It’s at that point I normally weigh up the perils of fame in this world. I feel quietly happy that of all the people in the pub at that moment in time, I might have achieved the most, but at least no-one wants anything from me anymore. I look up through the roof of the pub – to the stars. I carry on waiting for the human race to leave me in peace, so I can go exploring once more.