In God We Trust

No one knows where they came from. There are endless theories. A once in an eon weather anomaly that defies all known science. A meteor that broke apart in the upper atmosphere. Aliens. A plane that lost its cargo. Some storm that carried them all from one place to another. Then the carry theory has its own handful of sub-theories about where they were picked up from. A mine on the opposite side of the world, a store in a nearby town, maybe a vehicle carrying them all. For any of those more practical theories, there would need to be a point of origin. But no potential source was ever identified. No meteor was detected approaching Earth then. No companies were able to verify missing inventory. Everyone has just agreed that it was an unexplained weather anomaly. But then that leaves another question: why just our town? It didn’t go an inch past city limits. As if our town was chosen by something. I’m not religious, but I don’t hesitate to call it an act of God.

I’m sure a lot of people have far more interesting stories than I do about the day it happened. Driving, doing something outside, whatever. I was just at home. They say it started around a quarter to 6 in the evening. I wasn’t paying attention to the clock. I was caught up with work, putting in a little overtime to make a deadline. Come to think of it, I don't even remember what I did at that job anymore.

I heard it start to hail outside. Not something that happens every day, but I didn’t think much of it. I took a peek and saw some hail landing on the small balcony of my apartment unit, then went back to work. It didn’t even occur to me that it was June, and over 70 degrees out. Not the type of weather that forms hail.

It was maybe an hour or two later that I finally started to sense something weird was going on. While eating dinner, I heard some bustling outside, which did catch my attention as weird, but I didn’t investigate it. Then when I was washing dishes, my friend group chat starting going off like crazy. By the time I dried my hands, there were 35 texts in a group of 7 people. I thought someone got engaged or I missed a birthday or something, but I never in a thousand years would’ve guessed what was actually going on. When I read it, I thought it was some weird joke. Maybe a reference to a show I missed, or a viral video I never watched. But curiosity got the best of me. I thought, “What if it isn’t a joke?”

So I opened the door to my balcony and picked up one of the pieces of “hail.” They were maybe half the size of a dime with some variance. As I returned to my kitchen sink, I turned the crystalline object around in my hand, observing it. It wasn’t cold. It wasn’t melting. It had some surprisingly sharp edges. It definitely wasn’t ice. I turned the sink to hot and held it under the water but that didn’t do anything at all. So I gave it a lick. I know that may not be the smartest idea, but I remember a geology teacher saying once that lick is a way to identify rocks. Tasteless. So I knew it wasn’t salt. That meant that it might be true. The thing in my hand and covering my apartment balcony were raw diamonds!

As soon as I realized that, I grabbed a plastic shopping bag and scrambled back to my balcony. While filling the bag, I took notice of the street below. People swarmed about, collecting their treasures from the ground. I was a little surprised there weren’t more broken car windows. There were a few in town, but it was pretty rare. I would’ve guessed just one diamond falling at terminal velocity would shatter a window, but I guessed wrong. Same goes for human injuries. With very few exceptions, there weren’t many injuries other than some minor bruises.

My balcony isn’t big, but it was big enough that the diamonds ripped a hole in the plastic bag while I was gathering, so I had to swap it out for a canvas shopping bag. I think I had over five pounds worth of diamonds after clearing my balcony.

Here’s the thing about selling diamonds: they don’t price per pound, they price per diamond. So when I Googled how much five pounds of diamonds is worth, I couldn’t find a direct answer. But I’ll say this: just one of those diamonds, which weighed a few grams, was potentially worth several thousand dollars.

Suffice to say, most people in town had well over a million dollars-worth of diamonds.

Naturally everyone flocked to the local jewelry stores to sell the stones for cash. A handful also had some converted to jewelry for themselves or loved ones. I think I heard a rumor that engagements in town were up around 200% that year because no one had to worry about the cost of a ring. Anyway, the jewelry stores already collected some diamonds for themselves, so they weren’t in the market to buy rough diamonds. So people brought them to the pawn shop, who didn’t want them either because—you guessed it—they already had their own. Then people went to neighboring towns to exchange the diamonds. Those pawn shops and jewelry stores quickly reached their maximum, so people had to travel even further. I never got around to bringing my diamonds in to a store.

Someone coined the term “God’s Lament” to refer to the day diamonds rained down from the sky. The term derived from some people calling the diamonds "God’s tears." The naming feels a lot more fitting in hindsight. The Sunday after God’s Lament, I hear churches in town were at capacity. Makes sense.

Tourism skyrocketed that year. The town is’t tiny, but it isn’t big either. The population was about 10,000 at the time, and I want to say the land area is less than ten square miles. We only had a few hotels, and there aren’t really any tourist attractions. There was a diamond on display touted as the largest of God’s tears, about 2 inches in diameter. They say it’s the 5th largest diamond in the world, somewhere over 1,000 carats. I wonder who gave it up. They probably got to the point where they had no other choice than to sell it.

A town hall meeting was held the week after God’s Lament. It was the first one I’d been to after living there for six years. Just like the churches, it was the highest attendance in history, and everyone had the same question on their mind. There were some standard topics on the schedule before, but I don’t remember what they were—no one was paying attention. Then they finally got to the issue of the newfound riches, and everybody gave their two cents. Ideas for converting them to United States dollars, for donating portions to the town government, the different programs that could be created with the wealth. And for each idea there was a barrage of questions. How do we know we’re getting an accurate conversion? Should portions given to the government be exact numbers or percentages? If it’s percentages, should they be tiered like taxes? What kind of programs would be set up? Who would the programs help? Wouldn’t the diamonds need be exchanged for currency before they’re spent?

The idea that came out on top (and later approved as law in an emergency town vote) was the idea to have diamonds set up as a secondary currency in town. A lot of us didn’t even know that’s legal, but apparently there have been a few instances in U.S. history where towns or businesses have made their own local currency, which are known as scrips. The most significant concern about the scrip idea was that diamonds were worth thousands of dollars. The scaling made no sense. You wouldn’t want to use a diamond worth $5,000 to pay for a tank of gas. Sure gas prices are high, but they aren’t that high. And then there’s the whole concern about each stone being of drastically different value. One may be worth $15,000 from an appraisal, and another could possibly be worthless. But with the exception of a few experts, the average person in town couldn’t look at a gem and determine its worth.

After some time, based on a random sample of 500 diamonds that local appraisers assessed, it was decided for the scrip system that each diamond would be defaulted to a value of about $8,000. The diamonds could be used for any purchase less than or equal to that average. If it was a purchase less than that, change would not be provided by a merchant. No business could restrict purchases to diamonds only. There was an option to exchange the diamonds for cash at the local banks, who would pass them on to a new local government program, which took care of selling the diamonds. They named the program the Diamond-Tender Exchange, or DTE. The exchange process was where they took taxes out, keeping any amount above the average of $8,000 per diamond. I heard that made up a significant portion of exchanges, so the government made a killing. Some of that cut went toward the DTE for handling the sale of the diamonds. The rest of the money went toward improving the town. Infrastructure, schools, library, a new trolley system, emergency services, etc. At some point we had so much excess that we donated to the neighboring cities.

For a time everything was great. We had a lot of tourists hoping they’d witness a second Lament, which was mildly annoying, but that’s the worst I can say about then. I think that first month or two was probably the closest any city has ever come to a utopia in human history. No one was hungry, homeless, lacking medical care, or experiencing any other money-related struggle. The city had more funds than it knew what to do with, so there was virtually no government project that was turned down.

But then the big corporations flooded into town. At first we were excited. New business meant we were on the map, and it had the possibility to bring more people in. The town was expanding. The wealthiest town in the world, and every national and international business wanted in. They were the snake, and we ate their apple. Due to the town being so small, we didn’t have space for every company that wanted a plot. So they bought up all the locally owned stores they could. The companies paid a hefty sum, which the small business owners took graciously, and moved to a nearby city or retired with their fortune. After there weren’t anymore retail spaces willing to sell, the conglomerates bought up as many residential buildings as they could. A lot of people were happy to sell too. With their new fortune, they could build their dream house wherever they wanted. The housing that remained got taken over by real estate companies. The housing that was demolished got converted into warehouses, offices, megastores, or massive apartment complexes.

Naturally, these big companies only had one goal in mind: profit. They knew the locals were all millionaires, so they gradually upped their prices. We didn’t notice at first, but at one point my friends and I realized we were paying triple the price for groceries compared to before God’s Lament. Same thing went for everything in town, except the local joints that still remained. They raised their prices some, but nowhere near the big businesses. My apartment building was bought up by some international real estate company, so when my lease was up for the year, they wanted to raise my rent about ten times the previous cost. I pushed back, asking why the outrageous increase in price, and they made up some lame excuses, like operating costs or taxes or whatever. I asked if any of the money would go toward remodeling the building, since it was on the older side, but they said they couldn’t afford renovations. Sure.

That’s when I decided to move. I had my own fortune, so I moved to where I’ve always wanted to live, and bought the house of my dreams. I still work. I changed careers though, because money isn’t an issue, so I could just do a job I like without having to worry about how much I’m taking home. A few of my friends live in the area too. I still have one friend that didn't leave, who I get updates from.

Now the town is nothing special. In fact, I’d say it's worse off than before. The cost of living there has gone down some, since the skyrocketing prices drove everyone out. It became a small town with the issues of a big city. Then after the residents left, business went down everywhere, so the businesses followed suit. It’s essentially a ghost town now. It’s crazy to think all that happened in the span of three years. The first year was when the businesses were buying up land, then the second year was the soaring prices, and the third year was the exodus.

My friends and I frequently think back to that two month period after God’s Lament. I guess the name was a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. It started out as just a cheeky name for diamonds falling from the sky, but now it really feels like I’m looking back and grieving a lost utopia. Don’t get me wrong—I still have an easier life than most, but living in the town where everyone was happy and taken care of is indescribable. I guess we were living in our own bubble though. I try to give back: donate to local charities and volunteer frequently. But it’s not the same as a whole town having the means to uplift itself. Now I just feel like a drop in the ocean.

Every once in while when I think about it all, I wonder what would’ve happened if the diamonds fell on all the country. Would the same thing have happened, but just on a bigger scale? Or what if it happened across the world? Like I said before, I’m an atheist, but every so often I wonder if it was all some test from God—an attempt to erase economic class, to reset everybody to the same level—but as a species we failed.