PLANET OF GOLD part 5

Copyright (c) 2018 by Randall R. Peterson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED This is a work of fiction. All persons, locations and actions are from the author's imagination or have been used in a fictitious manner.

Keeper and the

PLANET OF GOLD

Part 5

By R. Peterson

          As though being held hostage on a Gorwat ship wasn’t bad enough,  Viridian invaders now swarmed the vessel. I left Leika to attend to her mother, the plantae-mutated queen of Promo 4, and started a desperate search for an inter-dimensional particle-detonator. Unbeknown to it’s crew, the device had been secretly attached to the Gorwat command ship and was set to destroy Diona and at least a thousand other star systems in the center of the Viridian galaxy.

            Super-fast growing rhizomes had taken over the ships navigation and weapon systems. I had to step over leafy stems covering almost all the corridor walls and floors on my way through the various levels. If I was going to find the detonator, I’d have to start thinking like a reptile. The High Council of  Gorwat didn’t want their ship commander to know he was carrying the deadly bomb. He might be a fool when it came to his romantic infatuation with Leika … but I don’t think he was suicidal.

            The Gorwat all appeared to be suspended in a kind of plant-induced hibernation. Two guards stood like statues next to the inner-ship transporter. Rhizomes entwined them like rope and stems grew into their gaping mouths. I found Gordo Ventbong in his quarters and he also appeared to be asleep. He was entwined with stems and a large yellow flower spread its petals inches from his mouth.  It looked as if he might have been kissing it.

On a bookshelf was a small hologram showing a naked Ventbong basking on a warm rock … probably his last vacation. A fuming bowl of half-eaten Gormeed worms burned my nose. There was a bouquet of fresh Venusian orchids on a table along with a bottle of Jotimo nectar and a childish unfinished note printed with Tanesian silk-fibers and addressed to Leika. It was a poem that Ventbong must have written to the exotic Porosities … as he fell asleep. No doubt he would have a multitude of tail-thrashing lizard-like wet dreams while he was in hibernation.

            Your Eyes are like Nebula-rings shining like stars.

            Your legs are like spore-stems cultured on Mars.

            You r lips are like Hair springs found inside a trap.

            I want to qwodu umacoo beoga  you … and then we’ll take a Nap.

Ventbong’s grammar and writing skills left much to be desired, but something about his attempt at a romantic encounter sparked my interest. I think it was the fresh flowers. In order for Ventbong to have acquired them, the Gorwat must have a bio-sphere on board capable of growing things. If you wanted to hide a super bomb from the Viridians what better place to hide it than in a place filled with their own species!

The holographic display that dissolved walls, floors and ceilings on the vessel was still activated and the Gorwat command ship appeared to be accelerating as it moved toward Diona, the Viridian capital. A swarm of Carriers, enormous bee-like creatures made of super strong metallic alloys escorted us as we moved through an interstellar garden of sights, sounds and stimulations.

Flowers, many light-years in diameter, whose root-structures spread across nutrient-rich nebula clouds created exotic garden pathways between worlds. We were traveling toward a continent-sized peach-yellow blossom that even from a thousand light years distance looked like a rare and beautiful Anoectochilus or orchid.

I stumbled on the Gorwat biosphere by accident … I smelled it. Tiny floating spores seemed to come from the ventilation system. I could hear Leika’s thoughts in my head. Follow the scent of warm, moist soil and sunlight. The riches of the universe lie in life … and not in precious metals. Down a long corridor with two turns to the left and one to the right I found myself walking through a black light and transporting into a Cretaceous swamp … complete with flying reptiles and Gorwat ancestors. Wave-littered beaches led to oceans that met a blue sky on the horizon. A transparent dome many miles above would no doubt show the stars at night. The Gorwat bio-spheres were not that different from those created by humans. If you wanted to survive long space voyages you had to take a world with you. It was a place of dreams … and of dangers.

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I had no idea where to look as I wandered along the beaches. There were hundreds of square miles of jungles, mountains and oceans. The inter-dimensional particle-detonator could be anywhere. I struggled to remember what Teuth had said the device would look like. Dark matter is the unseen elements in the universe … the magic in all worlds. If the device was unseen, how would I ever find it? The tiny spores were surrounding me again … buzzing around my mouth and eyes like tiny gnats. Connect to this world. It was Leika’s voice once again entering my thoughts. Ask the force of life to help you!

There were sea-shells scattered in the sand. I picked one up that a foamy wave left exposed as it returned to the sea. Rainbow colors curved like a bloated French horn. On impulse I held it to my ear to listen to the ocean. It was alive … and I rode it through time.

I stood on a pile of rocks covering a septic tank and felt wonderful. I was six years old and living on a farm four miles from Cloverdale. My mother stepped from a tiny white house onto a porch made of cinder blocks and called to me and my older brother. She wanted wires to create fake flowers for a funeral. To the west lay an old horse drawn hay-wagon half buried in a clump of weeds. We played there often and pretended that an old wooden-spoke wheel suspended two inches from the ground was the steering part of an old sailing ship. Nearby was the remains of an old rail fence and a bush sized ball of wire. The wire was rusty and easy to break with a little twisting. Another voice sounded much farther away. I knew if I didn’t listen I could stay here forever and grow up again … but the voice called … and I answered.

Leika was once again in my thoughts. I dropped the shell and walked toward the jungle. Vines became snakes and snakes became vines everything moved in and out of existence. I was directed to a large fig plant and placed my fingers on the leaves. I was with Leika and her mother and we were floating, spinning on seed-pods toward Diona. You must find the bomb … or all beauty will vanish!

I removed my fingers from the leaves and turned but I was directed back. This time I placed my fingers on the plant’s leaves and tried to remember Teuth’s technical explanation for an IDPD, a bomb idea that had never been tested outside of physics theory. I could almost hear his bubbly-voice and see his tentacles swaying in the onboard Centurion classroom.

“Subatomic particles traveling at velocities exceeding the speed of light and moving through up to sixty-four different dimensional-plates inside the nucleus of Meitnerium atoms, are un-bound by transactinide-elimination and form a black hole inside a neighboring dimension … thus creating a Big-Bang in ours.

An inter-dimensional particle-detonation is essentially a new universe forming inside our own. The tremendous release of energy-turning-matter vaporizes everything as it expands outward at the speed of light. But since everything in our universe is already expanding at that exact same velocity … the only star systems theoretically affected are the ones closest to the initial unbinding.”

What did the bomb look like? Meitnerium was one of the heaviest and most radio-active metals in the universe with a half-life of only seconds. Supposedly incased in dark matter that propelled sunlight, the device would appear as a translucent black globe growing as the binding was released … with the smallest of all things becoming the largest.

We were becoming one as I rode with Leika and her mother toward the center of Diona. I was there but I was also everywhere. You must find it! The voice was Leika’s.

All things serve the life force! The voice was unknown to me but familiar. It was the origin and the end of all life. The heaviest of all metals would sink to the lowest of places. I stared toward the water. We need a traveler … someone to send to other worlds with the end of this one.

The unbinding was happening … I could feel it. A shadow rolled like a ball beneath the waves and I dove toward it. It found me when I found it. I was a moon sized rock hurtling toward Earth, becoming smaller as the world became larger. I carried the seed of destruction with me and it was growing.

Expansion happened at the rate of ten just as I entered the Earth’s atmosphere. I was inside a semi-dark translucent sphere suddenly larger than a planet then larger than a star system. Larger than ten star systems then a hundred. A thousand – ten thousand and a hundred thousand. A million and ten million. A hundred million and a billion. Ten billion and an entire galaxy. Ever growing consuming the universe. I was unbelievably large and still growing. A trillion galaxies then a hundred trillion then a zillion … to the edge of infinity!

It was near the end that I realized that I hadn’t been growing at all … size like all things travels the road of eternity. I was shrinking – compacting - becoming a black hole with unimaginable mass. A billion minds from the plant world of Diona willed me to carry the seed of destruction beyond … to a universe no longer bordering this one. I was at the place where all things become as one and singularity becomes everything. It was the end of all things. It was darkness and I slipped through the fabric of time … just before the largest explosion possible … and the beginning of all things.

TO BE CONTINUED …