The Little Dream

By Dana Wellman

In a distant future a young orphan girl is stranded on
a trading planet where she must use her creativity
and resourcefulness to try and find a means of
survival, she finds hope in tales of a paradise that she
remembers from her mother's old book.
As she struggles to escape she learns that hope is
more precious than she had ever imagined.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Oct 22, 2021
• ISBN: 9781794863569

Book preview

The Little Dream

By Dana Wellman.

2020

.. For Mum.

Who knows how these places come into existence, like when a shortcut is walked by many different people and over time, a worn path eventually emerges. They call this phenomenon a ‘Wandering’. No one built it, no one conceived it or planned it but there it is. It exists as an artefact of necessity. It’s in this same way that a place like Hermesium would come into existence, the trading and merchant hub of the interstellar sectional convergence.

No founders, no mayor and no council but here it stands, an artefact of necessity. In the earth year 6530 it exists and thrives as a bustling monument to trade, commerce and the almighty marker. In stark contrast to its consumerist glow however Hermesium was also, as anyone who has been here will tell you, a cesspool of corruption, thievery and greed.

For the nearly one hundred species of sentient life that frequent this market, it is a place where one can acquire goods found not easily or conveniently elsewhere, in many cases illegal goods. It is a curiosity in itself that although there are so many different types and styles of consciousness here, so many forms of intelligence with completely separate origins to one and other, they still converge here for the same age–old rituals of buying, selling and trading. But still this might also explain why despite the vast differences in culture and thought itself even, they still have it in common to engage in the even older more clandestine traditions of thievery, dishonesty and murder. Who can be sure if it is a characteristic of all sentient life to exhibit these traits, or if it is this place that by its very nature fosters these activities.

Of all these races and forms of life organic or technological, the lowest of the low is to be a human.

Although a very rare sight now days, Humans were still considered to be a blight on the intergalactic fraternity of worlds, a race that couldn’t even help themselves, destroying their own world through war, waste and apathy.

Even worse and more unwanted is to be a human girl child...

Even worse still is to be an orphan human girl child...

A girl child named Eden.

On Hermesium there are no places for little girls, or little ones of any kind for that matter. No place other than on the busy streets of the market, trying to make some small pittance of a living from selling hand–made trinkets or various scavenged items from the outskirts.

Gifts for your little ones back home sir? Eden inquired to a large hairy man of simian proportions, no doubt cargo security or some form of shipping worker on his way through the street. Gift to take home for your children sir? Eden persisted, the man looked around at eye level for the source of this irritation then looked down to see the little human girl child, arm extended shakily holding out a small plaited wristband, twisted and woven out of different coloured electrical wire. For a brief second he looked her in the eyes, the only place to look at on someones face here on Hermesium since they were both wearing atmosphere mitigators. Aaah haaaa!! The huge man roared with a cruel laughter swiping her down with the back of his strange hand. Eden fell onto the grimy street, her tray of multicoloured trinkets spilling into the walkway. #@$%&¥₩! The putrid hominid exclaimed in an unknown dialect as he continued on his way about the bustling street. The language that the man spoke was one of the less common dialects heard here, but still from hearing certain phrases more often than others, Eden was able to recognise the words ‘Human’ and ‘Pathetic’. Gathering up her wares from the cold wet street scraping her nails on the rough asphalt, she straightened up and continued undeterred. After all she had grown accustomed to this kind of treatment since her arrival here two earth years ago. As far as she could tell by the time zone displays on the holo-panels, she must be around the age of six or so, although she has no idea when her birthday might be. She knew that she was about four years old when her Mother smuggled her out of the factory camps of Earth. One day we will go to paradise little one.  Mother would always say to her. Eden remembered the time that she had with Mother back in the factory camps on Earth. In their small tattered tent at night, she would listen to stories from Mother’s old book by the warm yellow light of their small candle. Those times might be the only happy times that Eden could remember...

Before..

Working and living in desperate poverty and being totally beholden to your employer, well, that is no different to being a slave. all who remained on what was left of Earth lived in this way, as slaves in the factory camps. The rest of the planet was nothing but baron desert and the ruins of the old world. A factory camp was no place to have a child, the only way that Mother’s supervisors would allow her to keep baby Eden was if she continued to make sure she was quiet and out of sight, teach her how to work the lines and put her straight in to rotation when she came of age. Of course she was never going to let that happen to her only daughter, the supervisors would patrol the lines in the day making sure your hands were worked to the bone, scolding or beating anyone who fell behind their rhythm. At night they would patrol the tents making sure no one ventured outside, who knows when they slept, or if they slept at all? Their large grey eyes cold and dead, never seemed to close, no one knew exactly what they were, however they did have one familiar sickness, for human women..

In the camps at night, they could do whatever they wanted, no one would stop them, because no one cared. That was all that Mother had ever known, work, torture and loneliness. She had nothing to her name save for a tattered blanket, a candle and the hope in her chest. That kind of hope that every living creature has, the one that dances like a flame in your heart, against all odds.

The cargo vessels were loaded up every week for shipment to the outer posts, mining and agricultural machinery parts for other planets, such a mundane and inadequate cause for all this suffering and toil. From her tent at night Mother could see only one of these vessels as it would approach the bay for loading each week, through the barricades she would watch it come and go, dreaming of all the places it could possibly take her if she could just manage to somehow get on board. After seeing what they had done to other slaves for less, she could only imagine what kind of punishment would await