The Golden Age

Completed 2019-03-23. Available releases:

This is what happens if you plate your entire space station in gold, because you don't understand that its present value derives largely from its scarcity.

In the future, humanity might construct colonies in space, perhaps hollowed from the insides of asteroids, which would supply volatiles (air, rocket propellant, organic substrates) and metals (building materials, infrastructure), among other resources.

Unlike on Earth, many so-called "precious" metals are abundant in space. Gold, for example, is currently highly prized for its combination of rarity and supposed^[1] beauty. Yet, it is highly plausible that an ordinary M-type asteroid could contain literal tonnes of gold.

Given the perceived value of gold coupled with the easy availability of it in space, early space colonies might coat just about everything in gold—creating a literal "golden age", until society eventually readjusts to recognize it as just another metal—perhaps decades later.

Here, we see a picture from one of these early colonies. The two figures are waiting at some kind of train station in an outer portion of an asteroid habitat where there's spin gravity (whether they're strangers or not is up to your interpretation). The power has gone out, although the battery-powered exit sign still lights up the room, revealing that just about every surface is plated in gold, in all the kitschy glory that creates. The light bounces around and lends a yellow sheen to everything from the figures' hair to the trash on the ground.

They're also using AR glasses, as the modern equivalent of today's smartphones (what do most people do when they have to wait somewhere? Pull it out and tune out). "The Golden Age" is thus also intended to have an alternate subtext depending on how you interpret this.

On the one hand, it can be ironic: what is a "golden age" where one does not speak to the people we are physically nearby? That, even as we become more-connected, we become more-distant? On the other hand, consider the wealth of information, knowledge, and human experience at the fingertips (eyeball-tips?) of such a person! They can learn, discover, and interact in ways impossible without this technology.

Artistically, I knew that drawing the humans was going to be somewhat beyond my skill level (even though I decided early-on to draw in silhouette). I feel like I did okay, but they're still obviously lacking. The proportions are noticeably incorrect, such as on the girl's leg. Her skirt is supposed to be shiny, not translucent as it seems to be here. The boy's hair is supposed to be black.

My scanner didn't pick out the colors very well either (in-particular, a lot of the yellow highlights appear white, and the red areas are over-saturated). The optics are semi-plausible; the main deficiency is that probably the exit sign would be green, which would give the whole picture an unpleasant greenish cast I intentionally decided to ignore.

^[1] I prefer the appearance of e.g. silver and especially copper myself.

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