Impossible Possibilities

7. The Attack

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I took a step, gold plated—everything was gold plated.  It was the museum of wealth and it was filled with what it was like to be in a country with money.  The museum had strange a goal of finding the most ridiculously expensive things to exhibit just to rub into the faces of the rest of the world that we were better than them.  And to think, I was one of the much honored guides to the museum.  With a salary of a million a year I knew everything about the wealthy from the life style to the extravagant needs of those who had money.

I admired the main gallery before my shift started.  The trimming between the walls and the floor was gold plated with silver lining.  The marble floor was polished every night with two-hundred-dollar-an-ounce polish, a process that took almost four hours.  Each item on the observation deck had podiums of pure gold filled with gems and diamonds of many sizes—rule of thumb was that if it wasn’t worth more than the podium it didn’t get displayed. 

The podium’s themselves, well they were ranged from a million each to sixty million.  The precious items on observation ranged from a two carat gold ring with a massive diamond that was worn by several religious figures over the past two hundred years; a price tag of sixteen million, to a miniature sailboat crafted entirely out of diamond and other precious stones; a price tag of nine hundred million, and right up to the entire original copy of the bible with a casing hand crafted by; some say God himself; that cost just over a billion. 

Now there were of course more things of higher value on observation but my line of knowledge only went up to those items worth one and a half billion or less.  The most expensive items in the museum went as high as a trillion each, and there were six of them.  The net value of the museum from the structure to the items in it was approximately thirty-five trillion.  And that was paid for by the spare change donated by the wealthy or the country itself.  We were in no way a malnourished country.  Even our bums wipe their asses with thousands of dollars.

I admired my own dress.  Black leather shoes with ruby lined laces, silk pants fastened with sparkling diamonds, a neat white under shirt covered with a blue and black striped suit.  I had a gold chain hanging out of one pocket. On the end of that chain was a golden key ring and a broken pocket watch that Vinci himself owned. 

My fingers had a total of six rings, most just gold or silver bands, but one of them, my wedding ring, had a large flat ruby instead of a diamond held tightly in place by white gold brackets. My glasses, which I only wore for show, had various gems embedded in the sides—blue, yellow, green, teal, and orange respectively.  I had various pins attached to my suit—most of them expensive gems, but I changed those so regularly it was hard to keep track of them.

  Today I had mostly blue on, I couldn’t even remember the names of all the gems—which was bad for my position, but if needed I could just make things up, the people who ask were usually so mesmerized by the museum they won’t care if the answers are legit or complete bullshit.

I waited patiently at my post.  A light bell buzzed, the first group of tourist entered, they were the exclusives, those out-of-country tourists who paid a little extra to get in before the crowd. Today my crowd had five people, a family of three and a young couple.  They went right for the exhibits and I followed behind, putting forth my commentary if required on whenever we approached, something I felt I had inside stories or knowledge about.  We slowly moved into the more expensive region of the museum. 

Though not my expertise, I still knew a thing or two about the exhibits in the gallery. One that caught my attention was the Black Hole Gibbens, created about six years ago in a lab the black hole was ninety-eight percent in a parallel universe. Only two percent was in our universe—and that two percent was so small it only sucked up the occasional dust partial.  It would take two hundred billion years to suck up even the glass case surrounding it. 

But its split-universe creation caused a bright white light, yes, in contrast to the stereotypical black described in common art or drawings of one the black hole was very white.  Gibbens has a net value of one point two trillion, most of that value being in its ‘dooms day’ capabilities—something about how it could be modified to actually work in this universe for a few minutes and suck up entire countries, or cities, or even the planet.

Three hours and full of sugary sweets bought at the candy store we have in the middle of the museum later, and the small group was setting off for the exit.  The content that they just saw up close was some of the most expensive things on the planet, for a small six-hundred dollar a head fee of course, we got to make our money somehow!  Donations can’t be everything.

A loud siren snapped me alert, feet shuffled around the ship—was it time for the next raid?  “Raiders! Raiders!” Vex said over the intercom.  Wait, I thought we were the raiders.

The siren continued as the ship jolted to the left then to the right before something hit it in the backside.  The ship took a ninety degree turn and went straight down pushing my hard against the chair, only to pull up in the last second, “We’re going down! Evacuate the ship on crash landing, scatter formation!” the voice spat over the intercom as the ship slammed into the ground, bounced, and slammed into it a second time.  I held on to the chair of dear life and was damn glad no lose objects flew at me. 

A very rough slide across the dirt later it came to a stop.  I did what Vex said and ran down the not-as-damaged-as-I-expected halls of the ship heading for the exit.  Several things could be heard bouncing off the top of the ship and crawling around on the metal. I could hear drilling and screams from loading bay.  I didn’t worry about that as I jumped out of the already opened exit door.  The ground was further away than expected and I crashed into it, my feet buckling.  Without waiting to check for damage I stood up and ran blindly away from the wreckage.

Hissing and growling came from behind me and I heard someone scream then the sound get cut off by a slimy ripping sound and something crunching on what probably was bone.  I sprinted as fast as I could, partly glad I couldn’t see whatever horrible creatures just attacked the ship and partly angered at not being able to see where the hell I was going.  A minute passed, another passed—I kept running on the flat ground, intrigued that I didn’t hit anything yet. Suddenly the ground gave out below me.  I fell. Air rushed passed my body—then I hit something solid.  Darkness.