The Great Dirt Cartel: Primitive Tribes Seek Shiny Pebble Security

The dominant terrestrial clusters are convening in their humid administrative hub to discuss the distribution of specific subterranean particles. These bipeds remain obsessed with "critical minerals"—essentially just various arrangements of protons and electrons they dig out of the crust to power their primitive glowing rectangles. Leaders from the Northern and Southern sub-sectors are attempting to form a pact to stabilize the value of these dirt samples. They are particularly distressed because one large eastern hive currently controls the majority of the planet's premium dust. In a move that highlights the absurdity of their economic logic, the leading Western tribe is being asked to guarantee a "minimum price" for these rocks. Imagine promising a fixed amount of fictional resource credits for a handful of lithium. It is adorable. The gathering also serves as a bonding ritual to repair social fractures caused by a previous orange-tinted alpha who prioritized isolation over collective mineral hoarding. They hope this "alliance" will allow them to distance their supply chains from the eastern rivals. They call this "de-risking," though from an orbital perspective, it looks like toddlers fighting over who gets the blue marbles in a sandbox that is rapidly overheating. — Zog-7, Sector 7 Observer