Moonliner: No Stone Unturned (33 page)

Moonliner
5:13

A few minutes early, Cedric stands just outside of the library entrance.  The building is nautilus shaped with a courtyard tucked within its curved outer shell.  People are sitting at small tables, having coffee, chatting, and reading in the mid-morning calm.  Barring the poor air quality, it’s a decent day.

Chara and Oriona walk into the courtyard right on time, smiling warmly.  They each hug Cedric briefly, then exchange greetings.

              “Now is this about the biography you’re putting together?” Chara asks.

              “Not as much,” Cedric answers; “it’s more for my personal journals.”

              “It’s just that it seems really important to you, that’s all,” Chara says, not wanting to be nosy.

              “I guess I get a little weird about my journals, especially with info on Nikki.  It’s the perfectionist in me,” Cedric tells her; “I look at is as history and I don’t like to lose it.”

              “That’s not so weird,” Oriona adds; “I can understand that.”

              “Thanks,” Cedric responds.

The three walk swiftly into the entrance, knowing how little time Chara and Oriona have to waste today. 

              “Try to remember everything you guys did,” Cedric tells them as they approach the door.  They enter and walk toward the elevators.

              “I remember riding the elevator with Nikki,” Chara says; “she uplinked to her library while on the elevator.”

              “Which elevator?” Cedric asks as they get closer to them. 

              “The one on the right; the one closer to the entrance,” Oriona says with confidence.  Chara nods in agreement. 

They hit the down button and the doors to the other elevator, the one further from the entrance, open.  Cedric steps into it and pushes the button to the top floor.  He quickly steps out and lets the doors close, letting it go, then hits the down button again on the wall.  Within a few seconds, the elevator he wants to ride arrives.  The two women look at each other and smile, thinking it a little odd but both knowing how eccentric Cedric can be.  They all take the elevator down to the stacks.  Cedric takes pictures of the panel before getting off.

              “This wouldn’t have anything to do with your work?” Chara asks.

              “What work are you talking about?” Cedric asks.

              “Your thesis work at the University,” she answers, taking Cedric a little by surprise.

              “No,” Cedric answers; “this is separate from my thesis.”

              “Sorry, it’s the investigative journalist in me,” Chara adds.

              “You remind me of Nikki,” Cedric says.  “Tell me.  Has Nikki mentioned anything to you about my thesis work?” he asks.  The women look at each other and shrug a little.

              “Not much,” Oriona says; “she said you were trying to send things faster than light, or something like that.”

              “She really didn’t tell us much,” Chara adds; “sorry.”

              “That’s okay,” Cedric says; “I’m just asking.”

The three have to sign in at a desk with a librarian guarding the stacks.  She’s the keeper of the stacks.  Cedric doesn’t have the necessary credentials, but Chara smooths the situation over, presenting him as her interviewee.  He’s immediately given a DOT-5 guest pass and all of them sign in with a bio scan.

The view inside is unreal.  There are walls after walls of books, something you seen more in old movies than in real life 2069.  It’s a maze.  Cedric wonders how they’re ever going to find any books that Nikki viewed, especially given the short window of time.  Chara and Oriona, however, are highly resourceful news women, both with an eye for detail. 

Within seconds, the three find themselves standing directly in front of a section of books on the moon.  Chara had taken them right to the place.  She quickly slides her thumb down the row of books on the far right side of a center shelf, right next to an aisle.  Within a few more seconds she has a book in her hands.

              “Here it is,” she says; “she looked at this one,” she adds, holding a book titled
Lunar Rendezvous
.

              “Are you sure?” Cedric asks.

              “I’m pretty sure,” Chara answers as she looks carefully through it. 

Cedric watches Chara’s face closely, but page by page the book looks less and less familiar to her.  She finally puts it back and keeps looking down the line.  Finding nothing, she moves to the next shelf down and does the same.  The further she goes the less familiar any of it looks. 

              “You went right for the middle shelf when you walked into this room,” Cedric says; “is that where you remember the book?”

              “Yes,” she answers; “but books can shift over time.”

              “True, but not likely this soon,” Cedric points out.

              “I think it was this book,” Oriona says, holding up a book with the title
To the Moon
.

              “No, it wasn’t that simple,” Chara says; “I remember there being maps and charts in the center of the book.”

              “This one has maps,” Oriona says.  

Chara doesn’t listen to Oriona.  Instead, she keeps scanning the shelves, book by book.  Cedric just observes, hoping to soon move along.  He can see that Chara and Oriona are enjoying the memory challenge, and thinking themselves helpful but the fact of the matter is that these stacks are primitive relics of an analog era.  There isn’t much chance of transmitting a message to Nikki down here.

Chara once again goes back to the point of her search’s origin, both running out of break time and patience, yet too determined to give in.  She comes across
To the Moon
.  She picks it up and starts thumbing through its pages. 

              “Wait, this might be it,” she says with a look of familiarity on her face.

              “That’s the same book I just asked you about,” Oriona tells her.

              “It is?  I’m sorry, I was so absorbed in my search,” Chara replies; “I can be so stupid sometimes.”  They laugh.

Chara flips to the center of the book.  Sure enough, there’s a section of images.  She peruses each page, each picture, and every caption.  Her face suddenly lights up when she comes across a copy of an anonymously made, ancient, Italian, maritime map of the moon.

“This is it,” Chara says excitedly; “this is the one!  This is the map that Nikki looked at that day we were in the library.”

“It is,” Oriona recalls; “I remember it too.  Nikki found it and showed it to us.  She stared at it for a while, I remember.”

Cedric snaps pictures of the map, the book cover and the cover page, which are almost identical.  He’s careful to remain undetected, having read a
NO photography in stacks
sign on the front desk when they signed in.

Suddenly deja vu hits Cedric as the three of them stand there in the stacks. 

              “I’ve been here before,” he tells them.

              “In the stacks,” Oriona asks.

              “No, in this situation,” Cedric answers, looking around the room; “or was it the dream?” he asks aloud, looking at the clock on the wall.  Chara and Oriona look a little surprised but don’t really think much of it.  Within a few brief seconds, it wears off.

The three return to the main floor of the library, where they stand around for a few minutes.  Cedric can see that both of them are out of memories.  He doesn’t want to press them anymore.

              “I had better let you both get back to work,” he tells them.  They look at each other, then check the time.

              “Yeah,” Oriona says. 

              “We really are busy today,” Chara adds.

              “I know you are and I’m really thrilled that you could help me out,” Cedric says.  “Thank you both so much.”

              “Thank you,” Chara says.

              “It was fun,” Oriona adds.

They wave goodbye and walk out to Robson Street, smiling as they go.  Cedric watches them walk away, giving them one more wave as they make their way down the street.  Cedric sits in the atrium, feeling defeated and somewhat stupid.  On a whim, he’d followed a dream to nowhere, and wasted their time in the process.

Then it hits him like a typhoon.  How could he have missed it the first time?  The solution couldn’t be simpler; it’s right in front of him.  He smiles a huge smile of relief, then laughs to himself, trying to keep it in.  He unwittingly stops dead in his tracks to think.  Library patrons have to walk around him.  He sits down at an empty table inside the atrium to keep from dropping to his knees; he needs every iota of energy to fuel his racing mind.

              “Could it be so easy?” he mumbles to himself, then laughs again, shaking his head.

Moonliner
5:14

Cedric buzzes Lennox’s condo.  After several seconds of waiting, he hits the buzzer again.