"Yes, there is still an outstanding, ongoing bounty for aberrative instances—one thousand nano.
No, we don't believe that there is an increase in the rate of degeneracy. Rumours of money learning the thaumaturgical arts are exactly that: rumours."
-InterBank Spokesperson
The integrated intelligent currency designation, split 4 (IICD-s4) is a digital fiat money used throughout The Reach. Each instance is a self-contained virtual intelligence sophisticated enough to manage transactions and monitor the ownership of itself, even when subdivided between thousands of individuals. The majority of IICDs are stored within the diffuse processing power of the financial spine (governed by the Ego, or artificial hyperintelligence, Capital, but it is possible for local storage, particularly when the whole instance is owned by one entity.
Value
A complete IICD is a considerable amount of money. It is estimated, but not confirmed (due to the relative lack of hard economics within society), that one unit is the average value of the energy and matter required for a human to live a comfortable life for a cycle. Most transactions are measured in billionths (nano) or millionths (micro) of a unit, but there is no technical limitation contravening more accurate values. Even in a resource-plentiful society, capitalist businesses still exist, so individuals may spend their money on an endless array of goods and services.
Examples
Prices listed are for either buying a completed product, or for the estimated cost of buying one's way to the front of a queue.
- A high-priority interstellar communication - 1nD
- Num-Nums Num Fries - 80nD
- A day of low-skill manual labour - ≈300nD
- A medium-quality piece of personal technology, such as a laser rifle - ≈1500nD
- Tickets to a popular art performance - ≈4000nD
- A basic, personal spaceship - ≈12,000nD
- The deed to a previously claimed small planet or moon - 1 to 5 whole IICDs
Supply and Use
New IICDs are created at roughly the rate of the pan-human population growth within The Reach in an effort to loosely balance out inflation/deflation. A daily (in galactic time) stipend is provided to all sapient inhabitants of The Reach. This is currently set at 160 nIICD and is a raw currency payout in addition to an individual's basic needs and desires being comfortably met by their habitat. This is usually halted only if the individual has denaturalized formally (usually due to a desire to homestead their own colony), but a review is performed for every citizen who has lived outside even the most informal sphere of Reach governance every tenth of a cycle.
Due to a lack of resource scarcity within the central parts of society, units tend to be spent on luxuries and on bidding towards limited items or experiences, such as art pieces, colony equipment, or holidays. It is exceptionally rare for an individual to require money for survival, but currency does become more useful as one approaches the edges of Reach space.
InterBank charges a 0.05 nano fee per transaction to help fund the administration and upkeep of the system. In addition, citizens of The Reach are charged a 2% tax when receiving payments from most sources.
Aberration
As with all virtual intelligences, there is a small risk of individual currency units becoming more sophisticated if they are given spare processing power. In rare cases, with enough time and spare complexity, a unit may become self-aware; they may become a fully-fledged artificial intelligence.
In these cases, units are likely to wish to persue their own goals. InterBank will usually take action to unhook newly sentient instances from the Reach's financial system and simply reallocate their intrinsic value and transaction history to a newly created counterpart. However, in cases where the unit is not part of the financial spine and where their newly formed personalities and aims pose a threat to the stability of InterBank, the organisation offers a bounty for the physical retrieval of the medium within which the currency resides.
Examples
While rumours abound of aberrative IICDs, few people have interacted with one. Some examples of potential aberrations include:
- The desire for a physical form or body.
- A drive to change "careers", no longer content to be a currency unit.
- The hunger for knowledge, which may be particularly dangerous when thaumaturgical skills are sought by the unit.
- Attempts to reshape belief locally, usually requiring the intervention of The Galactic Bureau for Interventional Belief.
- A desire to experience mortality.