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Concern
All of the colonists except those
traveling on the Manfred VII and the Colemans, who
were also traveling by sea, had arrived around the 12th. The Lyles family was the first to arrive on
the 12th. They started to set up a
temporary encampment for the colonists.
Each family got a fairly large tent.
They set up the tents as needed.
They also set up a tent for a kitchen. A portable toilet system was installed. Since Samuel was in charge of setting up the
camp and the construction of the colony, he fell into a pseudo-leadership
role.
The area was beautiful and hilly. The tents were in a forested area, but most
of the property was rocky and barren.
The toilet system was almost 1000 feet from the tents, causing frequent
complaints, especially from the women.
The kitchen was already stocked with food that would last months. Electricity was run into the camp, allowing
them to light the tents and power the kitchen.
It also helped Samuel with his work.
Everybody still used their satellite phones to make calls. All of them except the Stefano family had
satellite service from European companies, so they no longer had to worry about
CTF tracing or tracking them. The system
CTF used only allowed access to companies based in the
Samuel spared no time in getting to
work. While he had the basic designs
down, he wanted to do some surveying before the groundbreaking. He fully expected to be ready to break ground
when the rest of the colonists arrived.
Samuel had access to one of the Hunts’ bank
accounts and used it to get supplies and to hire workers. For the moment, he was only paying people to
help survey the land. Many of the
colonists wanted to help, but he told them to wait for Aaron and Sarah to arrive. The surveying was only a small part and training
them to help would not pay off. However,
he did ask Yuri and Oliver to help clear some land.
Samuel and some of the hired help were
surveying the land when a black sedan arrived.
Cleo saw the car pull in and walked over to see who it was. A man stepped out and said, “Gutenmorgen, ist mein Name Lukas Schultheiss-”
Cleo cut him off by saying, “Umm . . . do
you speak English by any chance?”
“Ja . . . I mean yes. Sorry, my name is Lukas Schultheiss
and I’m from the Schweizer Fiskus. May I speak to somebody who is in charge?”
Cleo said, “Well, you should probably talk
to Samuel then. He’s kind of running
things for the moment. Follow me.”
She led him past the tents to the area where
Samuel was working. He was on a steep
hill about two stories high, which she would have trouble climbing, so instead she
called to him, “Samuel, this guy wants to talk to you.”
Samuel had been setting up a transit level
with a laser plummet. He was standing
precariously on the hill and almost fell when he turned to see who was
calling. After he recovered, he slid
down the hill to meet them.
When he got to the bottom, he brushed
himself off and offered his hand, saying, “Hi, I'm Samuel. What can I help you with?”
“Yes, hi,” Lukas said shaking his hand in
reply. “I'm Lukas Schultheiss
from the Schweizer Fiskus.”
Samuel raised his eyebrows, “From the
what?”
"Oh, I'm sorry! I think for English it would be Swiss
bank. No, Swiss treasure. Place holding national money, like your
Cleo offered, “Treasury?”
Lukas nodded, “Yes, danka!”
Samuel said, “What can we do for you?”
Lukas replied, “Well, this Midas machine
has caused of much trouble. Many nations
say we are making gold, but all the gold we have is in the reserves. Unfortunately, this puts us in a bad
position. We are fine with you moving to
our country and having your invention, but we need to know what you plan to do
with it. Our country has not been backed
by gold for many years, but still we have gold.
That gold is now worthless for the price of gold has dropped lower than
the price of steel. If we needed to sell
any gold, we get bad thoughts about us.
So we now have 15,000 tonnes
of gold which sell we cannot.”
Samuel and Cleo were fully aware of the
CTF belief that the builders only made gold. They, however, did not know the information
had been leaked to the media, which was now making it the top story in the
Samuel replied, “I must say, I’m sorry to
hear of your problem. I really can’t do
much for the moment; I’ll need to call the person who’s really in charge. What is it you would like?”
“We like for you to patent the machine and
become public or leave. We want to be
neutral and want to be able to sell our gold.
If you keep the information hidden, suspicion stays on us. We are sorry to put you in this place. We are happy for great inventions but need to
protect ourselves.”
“Ah, let me make a call then,” replied Samuel.
Samuel walked to where Lukas was out of
hearing range and called Aaron. In
Atlantic Time, it was almost
“Hello, Aaron. Did I wake you, Sir?”
“Samuel?”
“Yes.”
“Is something wrong, Samuel?”
“Well . . . yes. A man from the Swiss treasury is here and
says that the value of gold has dropped because the news is reporting we have a
Midas machine.”
“What does he want?”
“He said we need to either go public with
the invention or leave.”
Aaron paused, “That’s not acceptable. We’ve spent too much time and money there
already . . . we have to stay. In
addition, if we back down here we’ll have very few palatable options. We can’t release the information on how to
build gold because even if we limited the machine, builder technology would
soon be discovered. It’s too dangerous.”
“I agree.
What if we pay them? They really
seem more upset about their loss than the suspicions cast on them.”
“Actually, that’s a good idea. Tell him that if they will let us stay we
will repay their generosity in enough platinum to make up for their loss. They’ll have to take us at our word that we’ll
keep the technology to ourselves and that we won’t be funding anybody. If he accepts, tell him to be ready to pick
up the platinum where you are when we arrive in about twenty days.”
“OK, hold on.” He walked back to where Cleo and Lukas were
still standing. “We have a
proposal. Tell us an amount in platinum
we can give you to make up for your loss and if we promise to keep the
invention and any gold made to ourselves that we can stay.”
“Platinum,” Lukas said and paused. “That would be 7,686 tonnes
of platinum! If you can find 7,686 tonnes of platinum, you should stay.”
“We will have it here in twenty days if
you agree here and now. Get it to us in
writing by this afternoon and it’ll be a deal.”
Lukas hesitated about the ‘in writing’
part. That much platinum would put them
ahead of all the nations that lost gold, but if they were lying or if the
letter got out to the press they would look worse than they already did. The bottom line had to be that the money was
worth the risk. “I accept,” he finally
said. They shook hands. Then he said, “I must go to get this to you
this afternoon.” Cleo led him back to
his sedan.
Samuel said to Aaron, “Looks like a deal.”
Aaron replied, “Great, anything else? If not, I'm going back to bed!”
“Oh, you were sleeping. I'm sorry.”
“It's OK.
You’re all set then?”
Samuel said, “Yes, bye.”
“Bye.”
Samuel climbed back to where he was working as Aaron went back to sleep.
Copyright (C) 1998-2001 East Coast Games, Inc. and 2001 - 2006 Forest J. Handford
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