Ompa's once vibrant and expanding global commodities market went into meltdown just a few days ago, undermined by, of all things, a sudden drop in demand for Tubi bulbs. For those of you who do not know, Tubis are flowers - 
very pretty flowers, but flowers all the same. Originally, there were only three varieties: mauve, white, and a variegated mauve and white - the result of natural cross-fertilization.
Enter Agir Elpha, a talented, amateur, horticulturalist. Over a lifetime, he had carefully selected donor plants, pollinated them with a small makeup brush he purchased with some embarrassment from a downtown beauty salon, and wound up able to consistently produce a brand new blue variety. That first aberration was something like twenty-seven nekrahs [years] ago. Since then Elpha has gone on to produce 'purples', 'purple and whites' and even 'dark blues'.
Quite unexpectedly, this achievement caused a flurry of commercial activity almost immediately Elpha sold his first bulbs, after a close friend mentioned their existence to a business partner who was also a keen gardener. The rest, as they say, is history. Such was the demand for Elpha's Tubi bulbs that dealers started to keep a percentage of their stock in their wrappers rather than selling them on. In a little under ten years, Tubi bulbs had become the fourth largest sector in Ompa's already diverse markets, after metal ores, fuel and natural gas, and sangwia [coffee]. Company after company ploughed huge sums into researching methods of making Tubi bulbs even more exotic. Three years ago, a box of twenty-two bulbs, the owner claimed were ' red ones', sold for eight thousand hips [acres] of prime farming land in Sunnivail, deep in Ompa's grain belt, sixteen prize male faspers [a cow like animal], two fourteen roomed split level bungalows in up market Parsavil and three gold wristclocks. The desperate buyer was rumored to have offered his three wives, too, if the bid wasn't enough.
"What about an orange one?" Gutsa Inway, chairman of Inway BioTech, was heard to ask at his company's annual shareholder meeting just a month after that record breaking price was paid. A resounding "Yes" came back from the floor and twenty percent of that year's development budget was diverted to make the dream come true. Two weeks ago, Inway BioTech announced their 'orange' was ready; but too late, the market was finally saturated and consumers were moving onto the next craze. Dreams of limitless revenues and skyrocket share prices now lie in tatters on the floors of fourteen commodities trading rooms across Ompa. Market makers are laying off dealers in their hundreds.
And what of Agir Elpha? He sadly passed away last month, before Inway released their new bloom. We kind of think he would have approved of it though.
