The Efficacy of Investigative Reporting by Dan Bieger

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SUMMARY: Entry into August Flash Fiction Contest.

Harry just wanted to report the facts as he found them. Wondering about what the facts might mean was somebody else's problem; not Harry's. At least, that's how Harry preferred the universe to operate. He was always astonished when the universe refused to work that way.
Harry was currently running free-lance. His last employer had let him go in the aftermath of the sex scandal he'd uncovered in the highest echelons of the Lower House of the Upper Triad of the Republic of Freedom-for-Everybody. Harry had documented the facts that no one in the Lower House seemed able to keep it in or out of his or her pants. Shocking? Well, no, not really. Still, the reporting had brought the Lower House down and the aftermath had been expensive and time consuming for the Republic. Replacing all those sinful Representatives had not happened smoothly. The Middle and Upper Houses of the Triad had not looked favorably on Harry's news agency. They had also let it be known that they would look even less favorably should the scandal spread to their demesnes. Harry's employers decided the only way to prevent the scandal spreading was to fire Harry.
So, Harry had traveled to the central mountains of After Cannes, a planet owing its name to its location as the fifth of 14 planets in the Hollywood star system. The fourth planet was named Cannes.
What brought Harry here was the rumor that these mountains were the prime source for Orgasmine, the drug of choice for this sector of the galaxy. Orgie, as it was known colloquially, was derived from a flowering plant native to these valleys, a datum universally known and accepted by every law enforcement agency operating in this sector. These essential facts were common knowledge and not much of a story, certainly not enough of a story for a free-lance reporter to make a profit from. But, Harry had a nose for stories and he suspected there was more to the known facts than met the eye. The fact that Immigration had allowed him on planet without batting an eye produced no second thoughts for Harry. He just assumed that whatever was going on had been going on for so long that no one on-planet thought it worth protecting.
Harry spent his first week interviewing the appropriate officials in the planetary capitol. To a man and/or woman, these officials acknowledged the problem but steadfastly maintained that there was nothing to be done. If they were to remove the Orgie plants from the mountains, the natives would have no source of income. No other crop paid as well as Orgie flowers and they didn't pay much. If you modeled the price of Orgie on the street as 1 credit/gram, then the After Cannes farmers received 1 millicredit/gram. If they could produce a thousand kilograms of Orgie, they'd earn a thousand credits. Not much of a living but still better than any other crop would earn for them.
Where did the rest of the money go? That was the story Harry decided to go after. He sought and received permission to go out to the central mountains to talk to the farmers, easier contemplated than accomplished.