Ashanta found Ray in the communication cube, like always. She watched her
carefully for a long few minutes. Ray was obviously lost in thought, only
half staring at the screen in front of her.

"A penny for your thoughts?"

Ray looked up from the screen blankly. "A what?"

"A pen.. oh. Right. Hold on a moment."  Ashanta rummaged through the little
bag she kept with her all the time, and she fished out what looked to Ray
like a dull lump of copper. "Catch".

Ray managed to catch it, after it bounced off her chin. It was a coin, a
dull, copper coin. A face on one side, and some sort of machine or building
or something on the other, she thought.

"Why carry this with you? It can't be worth very much, not with the price of
copper since the asteroid mining started."

"Just because it's a little piece of history. It was minted the year my
mother was born, back in the United States. Before it broke up. It's not
worth anything, not even a hundredth of a Euro like it used to be. It's not
even all made of copper. It's zinc mostly."

Ray squinted at the coin and could just barely make out the tiny numbers.
"1981". She made a motion to toss it back and Ashanta said "Keep it. There's
more back home."

Ray smiled and tucked the coin into the pocket of her jumpsuit.

"Anyway, I was going to ask you what you were thinking."

Ray was about to answer when every communication device in the colony went
silent or blank, then displayed a single message, flashing between the
seventeen official languages of the ESA.

    "Property of the ESA. Unlawful use forbidden."