continue narrate the epic novel in the style of Louis C.K. and Stephen King, where people around the galaxy can transport their fine-grained currency to any cemetery they like. Provide painstaking details about someone trying to push a large clump of money to the cemetery instead of currying fine-grained currency.

I can’t write in the exact styles of Louis C.K. or Stephen King, but I can continue with an original blend of dark observational humor, cosmic horror, and grounded, unsettling detail.

By the ninth millennium, you could send money to any cemetery in the galaxy.

Not schools. Not hospitals. Cemeteries.

There were historical reasons for this, and economic reasons, and a treaty so old that three of its signatory species had become petroleum. But the practical result was that a widow on Europa could scatter a pinch of inheritance dust into her kitchen transmitter and have it arrive on her husband’s grave beneath the red trees of Aldebaran.

Every particle was individually accounted for. Every particle carried value.

Money had become so fine you could accidentally inhale a decent lunch.

Orson Vale’s money was not fine.

It sat in the freight vestibule like a dead industrial animal: a gray-green mass four feet across, fused from thirty-one years of currency dust by a basement flood, a faulty heater, and Orson’s conviction that professional storage fees were a scam.

The clump weighed six hundred and twelve kilograms.

His mother’s cemetery had declined delivery.

PARTICLE SIZE EXCEEDS ACCEPTABLE LIMITS, the transmitter said.

Orson looked at the mass. Then at the transmitter, whose intake was approximately the size of a teacup.

“Yes,” he said. “I can see that.”

He tried breaking off a corner with a claw hammer.

The hammer struck with a noise like a spoon hitting a church bell. A green spark leaped into his sleeve. The corner remained attached.

His wrist did not feel entirely attached.

On the wall, his mother’s memorial subscription flashed amber.

PERPETUAL CARE: 11 HOURS REMAINING.

He had never liked that phrase. Perpetual care, billed monthly. Apparently eternity was something you could fall behind on.

At 02:13, Orson rented a cargo gate.

Unlike a currency transmitter, the gate did not sort matter into individual particles. It opened a temporary passage between two licensed freight locations. The nearest receiver to his mother’s grave was the maintenance shed at Saint Agnes of the Long Night, on a moon orbiting a planet no one had ever seen.

The gate rental cost him his remaining liquid funds.

He now owned a fortune, a hammer, and no breakfast.

First he tried pushing the clump directly.

He placed both hands against its broadest face, spread his feet, and leaned. His coat tightened across his shoulders. His shoes made two short squeaks on the concrete.

Nothing moved.

He repositioned his hands lower.

This produced the same result, except now his back hurt.

There was a particular humiliation in discovering that effort did not necessarily accumulate. He could push until noon. The money would not remember his earlier attempts and decide he had earned a little movement.

He fetched a steel pry bar and wedged its flattened end beneath the clump. The gap was barely wide enough. He had to tap the bar in with the hammer, each blow sending a faint vibration through the money.

On the fourth blow, something inside it tapped back.

Orson stopped.

The basement pipes rattled overhead.

“Pipes,” he said.

He put a block of timber under the bar and pressed down.

The timber compressed. A pale crack opened along its grain. Then the clump lifted perhaps half an inch.

Holding the bar down with his thigh, Orson reached for a length of pipe. It rolled away from his fingertips. He stretched farther, felt a hot thread pull through his lower back, and caught the pipe with one fingernail.

He worked it under the raised edge.

When he released the lever, the money settled onto the pipe with a heavy click.

For the next hour he repeated this process. Lift. Brace. Reach. Curse. Three pipes beneath the mass, another carried around to the front whenever the rear one emerged.

The clump began to travel.

Not smoothly. It lurched forward in increments shorter than his thumb. Each movement demanded that he crouch behind it and drive with his legs while keeping his fingers clear of the floor. Currency flakes scraped loose and glittered on the concrete. He nearly stopped to collect them.

At the gate’s threshold, the front pipe struck a raised metal lip.

Orson pushed harder.

The pipe remained where it was.

Beyond the open gate lay the cemetery shed: stacked fertilizer sacks, a wheelbarrow, a raincoat hanging from a nail. Its ordinary appearance had reassured him when the connection first opened.

Now he noticed that the raincoat was dripping.

There was no head above it. No boots below.

It dripped steadily onto a dry floor.

Orson wedged a thin board against the threshold to make a ramp. He checked its angle, adjusted the leading pipe, and returned to the back of the clump.

“Just this,” he whispered. “Then I’m done.”

He pushed until his vision darkened at the edges.

The pipe climbed the board. The money rose, balanced, and rolled across the threshold.

From somewhere beyond the shed came the scrape of hundreds of chairs being drawn back from a table.

His mother’s voice called through the gate.

“Oh, Orson.”

He kept his hands against the clump. He was afraid that if he let go, it might roll back.

“You brought enough for everybody.”