John Jones's Dollar

John Jones's Dollar is by Harry Stephen Keeler. The opening lines ask the reader to take a board with 64 squares, put a grain of wheat on the first square, and keep doubling, and add that there isn't enough wheat in the world to fill the sixty-fourth square. On the 201st day of the year 3221 A.D., the professor of history at the University of Terra seats himself in front of the Visaphone to deliver the daily lecture to his class.

The professor says his lecture will be an exposition of the effects of the John Jones Dollar, originally deposited in the dawn of civilization, in the year of 1921. The lecture mentions a so-called scientist called Metchnikoff, who promulgated a theory about old age. The lecture says that Mr. J664M42721Male, the thirty-ninth descendant of the original John Jones, had a lover's quarrel with Miss T246M42652Female, and that he died in 2946 A.D., as it was claimed of a broken heart, single and childless. The lecture says that there was no one to turn the Solar System over to, and the Interplanetary Government stepped in and took possession of it.