Both of his legs were broken. He struggled in vain to free himself from the rocks and sand that had crushed them. He didn’t lose consciousness. If he had, the pain would go away, but he would die before waking.
“That didn’t work like it was supposed to,” he mumbled. “The charge was supposed to just loosen the rocks, not bring them all down on me.”
The pain pushed him towards a blackout. He sensed that and stopped moving. He stopped breathing for a moment as the motion of his lungs pushing his back brought pain.
“Don’t talk anymore stupid,” he thought. “Just think, just think, but quick.”
He looked up and forward. “Never saw anything like this in my life,” he thought. “At least I’m alive to see it. Got to get the video of all this back to the others. Once they see it, they’ll come, they’ll know this is too important not to come.”
He tried to move his chest enough so that his torso-mounted video sensor would point at what his eyes saw. “Stupid head-mounted sensor,” he thought. “Had to fall off when the cave’s roof collapsed. Don’t make ‘em like they used to.”
At that thought he chuckled once. The pain was too much. He stopped himself from doing it again. “No more jokes, stupid,” he thought. “Just get the sensor pointed in the right direction.”
He jerked his body just slightly, but that was enough to have the sensor directed as needed. It was also enough of a move to send lightning bolts of pain up his spine.
“Okay,” he thought. “Now, just push the activate button and pray that the battery and transmitter aren’t crushed. Then I can take a nap and stop hurting. They’ll get here soon enough to wake me in time. I’ll be okay if I can just push the button.”
He moved his right hand towards a small button on the center of his chest. Each inch of movement hurt more than the last.
“There,” he whispered. “I got it, at least I think I got it. They’ll see the video and come for me, for this, they can’t bypass this, it is too important.”
With that, he closed his eyes, the pain vanished, and he died.
“Couldn’t we have landed closer to the place?” asked Amelia as she blew dust from her face and looked up at Conrad a few steps ahead.
“Not safe,” said Conrad.
“And this is safe?” asked Amelia. “Slipping and tripping our way up the side of this mountain?”
“Can you imagine how the shuttle would slip off the side of this mountain?” said Conrad. “This, this ‘sandstone’ isn’t stable. The shuttle might be okay, but that is too risky.”
“And so when will we reach where he was, the place he sent the transmission to us?” asked Amelia.
Conrad turned away from Amelia and looked up and ahead. “That would be…” An opening caught his attention. He pointed to it with his face so he could maintain his hold on the mountain side with both hands. “Right there,” he concluded.
Ten minutes later the two stood a few paces from the feet of their dead colleague.
“What happened to him?” asked Conrad. “He knew what he was doing or at least he seemed to know.”
“Careless,” answered Amelia as she studied the roof of the opening above them. “Let’s not be that way.”
“But he was,” started Conrad.
“I know,” finished Amelia. “He was the best. He had the idea that this area held something. He arranged the expedition, convinced the seniors to finance it, studied the terrain and geology, everything. He knew more about everything than everyone.”
“How’d he end up like this?” asked Conrad.
“He thought he knew everything, but he didn’t know explosives,” said Amelia.
“Okay,” said Conrad. “So what did he find? His head-mounted sensor broke with the cave-in that killed him. He activated his chest-mounted sensor, but it went black, I guess when he collapsed for the final time. He transmitted long enough for us to get his position. So what what is it?”
“That,” said Amelia as she pointed by walking into the cave.
Conrad turned to follow her walk with his eyes. He stopped breathing to take it in.
“He found it, didn’t he?” asked Conrad.
Amelia didn’t answer. She stopped walking and stared into the cave that seemed to go on forever into the mountain. The structure was man-made, straight lines, parallel lines, right angles, all perfectly arranged.
“Yes,” whispered Amelia. “He did.”
Conrad walked to Amelia’s side. He said one word, “Books.”
Time disappeared. Amelia and Conrad walked back and forth through the shelves of books. They didn’t have any systematic approach; their exploration was random.
Their trance was broken by a radio call, “What are you doing? What did you find? How is he? What is happening? Are you alive?”
Amelia blinked and shook her head to try to clear the stupor. “We’re okay. He’s dead. Cave in got him.”
“What are you doing?” asked the voice on the radio.
“Exploring,” answered Conrad. “Exploring what he found.”
“You’ve been blacked out,” said the voice on the radio. “We haven’t seen anything from your sensors for four hours. Come out into the open where your transmission is clear.”
Amelia and Conrad looked at one another. They turned away and both did the same thing. Each walked to a bookshelf, pulled a small book from the shelf, and placed the book inside their shirt.
When they returned their glance to one another, they walked together towards the opening of the cave.
“Okay,” said the voice on the radio. “Got you now, receiving all your sensors. Report.”
“Report what?” asked Amelia.
“Wake up the two of you,” shouted the voice on the radio. “You know the procedure. You’ve walked into an accident situation. Report the details. What happened? What do you see? Take some imagery with your sensors and then move into the open and transmit. Store and forward. You know the procedure, let’s get with it.”
Amelia and Conrad looked at one another and followed “the procedure.” Within fifteen minutes, four men were air-lifted to the mouth of the cave. They descended from an aerial craft on ropes, uncovered the dead body, placed it in a bag, and air-lifted it back to the forward deployment base.
A half-hour later, a team of a dozen men and women arrived. They had walked up the side of the mountain just as Amelia and Conrad had. They placed a communications relay at the mouth of the cave so that all the data from everyone’s sensors would be sent to the forward deployment base. There would be no more blackout periods and no privacy.
Amelia and Conrad joined four others who spent the next week in the cave. They slept in temporary shelters inside the cave. Except for six restless hours of sleep each day, they explored the cave, cavern to be more exact, with their sensors recording everything.
As Conrad had said, they had found books. They had all been reading all their lives, but none of them had read from any books in codex form, individual pieces of paper bound together between covers. This massive collection of books were from the past, something that even their grandparents had not seen.
They weren’t analysts or historians. They were field workers who explored historic sites looking for things that might be of interest or perhaps even useful. They brought back items to the historians for study.
This time was different. This time they had found something that was preserved almost perfectly in a cool, dark, dry place. Someone knew what destroyed paper and what preserved it better. Someone moved a massive collection of books and shelves and something called “card catalogues” into a cavern in a dry climate. That someone had done this at least 200 years ago as that was the newest book they had found.
“Don’t read, don’t read,” were the constant instructions that were radioed every hour. “Keep looking, keep looking, find the end. Find anything else of interest,” were the rest of the instructions.
No one would or could tell them what else they were to find. This was the biggest historic discovery in a generation. Wasn’t it enough?
And then their were the digging tools. They always shipped in digging tools that would allow them to unearth artifacts without destroying what was buried.
Conrad, Amelia, and the others didn’t touch the digging tools as the tools weren’t needed. Everything was right in front of them. This was how a “library” was arranged in the old times. A few books were dusty, but that was the extent of their archeological “digging.”
Conrad had found “the end” of the library. He started at the mouth of the cavern and walked straight down one major aisle of bookshelves. He reached the far wall after four hours of walking. The next day he turned left and found a side wall in two hours. The best estimate was that the library was four-hours-walk square. The sensors confirmed that it was eight miles by eight miles. If the sensors had not confirmed that, no one would have believed the team’s report.
Now the “someone” who put everything here became the real quest. Conrad and Amelia, however, didn’t care. That was a question for someone else to ponder for years. Whatever the answer would be would not affect them or their paycheck.
The week ended and the field team was replaced by a small army of people whose specialities were unpronounceable by Conrad and Amelia. What is more, they could care less about those people, their specialties, and their careers which were about to take a leap because they would find something and write a report and be credited with something else that was important to some senior.
Their leader, the man who died opening the entrance, was already forgotten.
A week after leaving the cavern and its library, Conrad and Amelia were debriefed and relieved. They rejoined the cadre of under-employed field workers who ate, slept, and daydreamed until another assignment came from the Department of Old-Times History.
What was most important to them was that they shed their suits that were full of sensors. Privacy came one evening when they were able to take a walk “outside,” a privilege only field workers were allowed so they would be acclimated whenever they were sent out of the enclosure on an assignment.
The two of them looked at each other. Neither had to say anything as they both realized they were free to talk.
“Well,” started Amelia. “What do you think?”
“About what?” answered Conrad.
“Please,” said Amelia. “We don’t have enough time for that. You know. Don’t tell me this hasn’t been burning a hole in you all this time.”
“Okay,” answered Conrad. “Of course I know, of course I feel it as well. This wasn’t the usual dig up of some plastic stuff that used to be shiney and showed us how people in the old times combed their hair. This was different.”
“You’re the master of understatement,” said Amelia. “Of course it was different. This one will change everything.”
“This one will change nothing,” said Conrad.
“You can’t say that,” said Amelia.
“Sure I can,” said Conrad. “Do you think they will show everyone a video of this? Do you think they will tell anyone about it? Tell the whole truth?”
“Like what?” asked Amelia.
“Like in the old times there were people who could do great big things like that and collect all that and move it to just the right place and everything. Do you understand how big a job that was? Do you understand the resources required for that?”
“Of course it was big,” said Amelia.
“Big? Big isn’t the word,” said Conrad. “We’ve found big things before, but nothing like this. This thing shows that we’ve been told lies about the old times. People in the old times did things that we couldn’t do today. They were ahead of us. They were rich beyond anything we know.”
“You’re in the wrong place,” said Amelia.
“Wrong place?” asked Conrad. “What does that mean?”
“You’re thinking of conspiracy and history and political power,” said Amelia.
“There is something else?” asked Conrad.
“Yes,” said Amelia. “Move in closer. Get back to the details. Don’t you remember?”
Conrad shrugged.
“Remember when we first entered the library?” asked Amelia. “Remember how we walked inside, far enough inside so that transmissions were blocked?”
“I guess so,” said Conrad. “What about it?”
“We lost time,” said Amelia. “The field base woke us up yelling at us on the radio.”
“They weren’t happy,” said Conrad. “Is that it?”
“No,” said Amelia. “We had been out of contact for four hours. Do you remember those four hours?”
Conrad shrugged again.
“That’s exactly the point,” said Amelia. “We were lost in time.”
“You’ll have to explain it to me,” said Conrad. “But hurry up as someone will come out here and ask what we’re doing.”
Amelia continued. “Do you remember how it felt to walk around in there with all those shelves of books? You couldn’t find anything, but that didn’t matter. It was terribly inefficient, but that didn’t matter. I was lost there, it was wonderful.”
“I’m starting to remember,” said Conrad. “But how is being lost in a cavern wonderful?”
“It was the wonder of the unexpected,” said Amelia. “I didn’t know what would be in front of me next. I loved that feeling. Where else have you felt that? Where else in your life have you felt that you weren’t given a specific assignment that you had to be efficient and smart and directed at a specific goal?”
“You’re losing me again,” said Conrad.
“I’m sorry,” said Amelia. “It is so much, so different, I don’t know how to explain it. But we spent half a day in a library just wandering around. Something interesting was in front of me. I thumbed through it, literally used my thumbs to go through it. Then I put the book on the shelf, took a few steps, found something else, and thumbed through it.”
Conrad gave her another blank look in response.
“This is how people lived in the old times,” said Amelia. “They had the time and luxury of bumping into knowledge, of expanding their lives. They didn’t have to be efficient all the time everyday. That is how they were rich. That is how all of them were rich beyond our dreams. They stumbled upon the knowledge of the ages.”
Conrad paused. “I think I get you,” he said. “And I think you have agreed with me about this, about the big find and how the seniors won’t tell anyone. They won’t tell anyone how people in the old times were richer than us today. That goes against everything.”
The two walked along quietly for a few moments. Each contemplated the chance that the seniors would “let” them have an accident on a future field assignment so that they wouldn’t tell anyone about the library in the cavern and what it meant.
Amelia broke the silence, “What did you pull off the shelf?”
“What do you mean?” asked Conrad.
“You know,” said Amelia. “I saw you pull something off the shelf and hide it in your suit. You saw me do the same. You still have it, don’t you? What was it?”
Conrad exhaled and looked around to ensure that no one could hear. He covered his mouth so no one could read his lips.
“It was a small, black book,” said Conrad. “The inside of it had a page with some writing. It said ‘New Testament, American Standard Version, vest pocket edition, 1958.’ You?”
Amelia mimicked Conrad’s quest for secrecy. “Mine read, ‘The Elements of Style, William Strunk, Jr., E.B. White, 1959.’”
“What did you do with yours?” asked Amelia.
“Read it, several times,” answered Conrad.
“Do they know that?” asked Amelia.
“No,” answered Conrad. “I don’t think so. I’m pretty sure I hid it. You know how the sensors aren’t as complete as they tell us.”
“Me, too,” said Amelia. “I did the same.”
They looked at one another and saw the question in each other’s expression.
“Okay,” said Conrad. “Let’s trade for a while, a few days, long enough to read and re-read a few times.”
“Don’t you love it?” asked Amelia. “Don’t you love holding a ‘book’ in your hand, moving the pages?”
Conrad’s smile answered her question.
“We have to be careful, you know,” said Conrad.
Amelia nodded. “People in the old times were killed for having certain books. Do you think we’ve returned to those times?”
The two of them looked past each other. Their eyes widened. Men were standing in the near distance. Large men without expressions, but with weapons.
The End