Gold (Episode Five of Farther Than We Dreamed)
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EPISODE FIVE OF FARTHER THAN WE DREAMED
The Universe is impossibly vast. Even with warp drive, teleportation, & worm holes, there are places you could never go. But if you could broadcast a signal out across forever, you could tell the distant molecules and atoms to form new people on the other side, and send THEM off exploring......
Barely finding his feet amid a new reality in a new galaxy, Charlie Daemon must investigate the mystery of his planet and starship, the U.U.S. Shamballa, a crew made up of the greatest historical figures of the 22nd through 29th centuries, and discover if they are alone in the Universe.
Noah Mullette-Gillman
Noah Mullette-Gillman was born in Montclair, New Jersey. He spent his childhood there, as well as in the town of Manly, Australia, and the woods of Upstate New York. He earned a multidisciplinary degree in Philosophy and Creative Writing at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. His favorite color is blue. His favorite number is 8. His favorite song is currently Moment of Surrender. He thinks better and more clearly as the day goes on, arguably climbing to his intellectual summit in the middle of the night, when the world has gone to sleep and he can think without any interfering broadcasts from other brains.
Read more from Noah Mullette Gillman
Clay (Episode One of Farther Than We Dreamed) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCosmic Shag (Episode Four of Farther Than We Dreamed) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCrystal (Episode Three of Farther Than We Dreamed) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWaves (Episode Two of Farther Than We Dreamed) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
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Gold (Episode Five of Farther Than We Dreamed) - Noah Mullette-Gillman
GOLD
EPISODE FIVE OF FARTHER THAN WE DREAMED
BY
NOAH K MULLETTE-GILLMAN
SMASHWORDS EDITION
COPYRIGHT 2014 NOAH MULLETTE-GILLMAN
The moral right of the author is asserted.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
Cover art and design by Noah K. Mullette-Gillman
Edited by Michael Poirier
Twitter: Noahlot
www.fartherthanwedreamed.com
www.noahmullette-gillman.com
www.facebook.com/fartherthanwedreamed
Also by Noah K. Mullette-Gillman
THE WHITE HAIRS
THE SONG OF BALLAD AND CRESCENDO
LUMINOUS AND OMINOUS
MAGIC MAKES YOU STRANGE
THE CONFESSIONS OF ZEUSPATER
THE DEAD HAVE RULED EARTH FOR 200 YEARS
THE SECRETS OF THE UNIVERSE (EPISODES 1-4 OF FARTHER THAN WE DREAMED)
All available in paperback and for digital download.
www.noahmullette-gillman.com
THE CREW
CAPTAIN CHARLIE DAEMON
Born: 2030.
U.S. President, Rock Star.
QUEEN GLORYANNANA MELLIFLUOUS
Born: 2119
Monarch, Pop Star, Talk Show Host.
DOCTOR DAVID PETER AELFWYRD
Born: 2130
Scientist.
SALLY BRIGHTLY
Born: 2232
Starship Captain, Explorer, Pilot.
ALLAMBREE ALAWA
Born: 2259
Archeologist.
KALLIGENEIA ATHANOS
Born: 2362
Artist, Biologist.
VERONIKA ZAVADA
Born: 2414
Artist, Geologist
WU GWEI
Born: 2512
Warlord, Heavy Metal Guitarist.
AVRAAM FOCK
Born: 2549
Hero.
NAYARA BORGES
Born: 2604
Musician, Diplomat.
UMBRA FARRAH
Born: 2740
Physicist.
MEW TSE
Born: 2792
Artist.
FARTHER THAN WE DREAMED
BOOK ONE: THE SECRETS OF THE UNIVERSE
EPISODE ONE – CLAY
EPISODES TWO – WAVES
EPISODE THREE – CRYSTAL
EPISODE FOUR – COSMIC SHAG
BOOK TWO: RAGE OF THE COSMOS
EPISODE FIVE – GOLD
EPISODE SIX – SHAMBALLA
EPISODE SEVEN – THE LIONS OF MANY HANDS
EPISODE EIGHT – JOY
EPISODE FIVE
GOLD
You can always find a millionaire to shovel all that coal.
Tom Waits
The Universe is impossibly vast.
Even with warp drive, teleportation, & worm holes there are places you could never go.
But if you could broadcast a signal out across the forever, you could tell the distant molecules to form new people on the other side and send them off exploring…..
1
Tertius-17 was frozen and green. Average temperatures ranged from -30 to -60 Fahrenheit. Traveling along the surface of the planet was a little like what visiting Earth’s polar regions would have been like before the thaw, except the colors were all wrong. Nothing was white. Instead, every shade of green dominated the panorama. Locked inside the captured wasteland, the darkest and lushest of emeralds, the brightest greens from the shades of spring shoots and the skins of Amazonian frogs colored the ice and the snow and the mega-glaciers. Once the shuttle set the crew down, it became apparent that there were patterns inside of the freezing. In places it looked like they could see whole and unbroken forests protected and immortalized inside of the ice. In many others the vegetation looked like it had been cut at sharp angles and all mixed together like jumbled arboreal jigsaw puzzles.
Tertius-17 had once been a warm world filled with deep noisy forests which went on unbroken for thousands of miles at a time. Then the orbit of the planet had changed suddenly and moved the world farther out from her sun. Most of the life had died during the freezing, however as Kalligeneia explained, a few of the plant species had evolved to live inside of the ice. They breathed, multiplied, grew, and traveled inside of the creeping glaciers now. It was their natural way of living, and had been so for over seven million years.
As Charlie and the landing party exited the shuttle and prepared their gear, he noticed it was snowing, and even the snowflakes looked like tiny shamrocks dropping from Heaven.
But the Shamballa was there for gold.
Veronika Zavada had been the first human being in history to design and print a stable planet. In the 25th century her knowledge of geology was seen by her peers as bordering on the miraculous. She had been accused of being autistic, of being a cyborg, and of simply defrauding the Universe and only pretending to create worlds which impossibly managed to neither implode nor explode. But she hadn’t done or been any of those things. She simply understood the rocks, the metals, the water, the nervous systems of lava and magma, and the epidermis of polar magnetism which held it all together.
She had announced that although the gold reserves on The Shamballa might be substantial, they were limited. She had chosen this world based upon Nayara’s notes and her own calculations. And she told Captain Daemon that if they traveled a half mile forward and then down into the volcanic crevasses, they would find gold reserves like nothing any Aztec or Conquistador on Earth had ever dreamt of.
Still, Charlie didn’t get the impression she liked him very much. She didn’t want to talk about it, but she knew him better than he knew her. There was a skepticism to her every time he opened his mouth. Either she had dated a previous version of the captain, or he had made a fool of himself, or she had simply known him a long time and become familiar in a very negative way with his every failing. If he was honest with himself, he did think she was the prettiest of all the women on the ship, though he wasn’t looking for anyone to date. Not yet. The Czech scientist had dark hair, full lips, and an enchantment to her. She looked like a Russian princess who had just walked out of a fairy tale. Her body was shapely and muscular. She could have been a model, an actress, or an athlete. Or she could have just charged rich men for the pleasure of talking with her.
Veronika, Captain Daemon, Wu Gwei, Kalligeneia Athanas, and Umbra Farrah were all suited up and out on the minty snow. Sally Brightly took the ship up above the weather again, where she could monitor the away team, without risking damage to their escape route. Charlie activated the force field covering to his suit and it instantly warmed him up. It was cozy.
Umbra didn’t bother with her force field. In fact, she didn’t even wear a hat. She loved the cold weather, relished the feeling of the wind ripping through her long white hair. In her previous life, she had been designed for life on a planet even colder than this one. The frozen little shamrocks caught in between the lush white hairs on her head, they gathered in the curve of her golden horns. Her metallic eyes seemed to sparkle in the cold, like a child on Christmas Eve.
Charlie found himself wondering if they still had Christmas in the 28th century, where Umbra came from. And then he imagined Sting singing a song about the shame that post-humans in the far flung future might not even know it was Christmas time at all…
He laughed, secured his pack, and approached his team.
Kalligeneia was melting a handful of snow in her palm. They’re spores. Every single flake is ready to grow. They must be so hardy, so strong.
The ground crackled beneath Charlie’s feet. The snow crunched. He couldn’t decide if the ghostly shapes in the ice beneath him reminded him more of the great Norse Yggdrasil or a long pistachio sea serpent.
Take off your mask, Charlie, just for a minute,
Umbra spoke in a loud whisper, nearer to his ear than he had realized she was.
I’d probably lose my nose and eyelids.
Not if you’re quick. It will wake you up. It’s like nothing you’ve ever felt.
"Maybe on the way home, if the shields don’t give and we