Second Chronicles of Illumination

by C. A. Pack

  “Yes. It is said the Terrorians are bartering ancient obelisks for weapons.”

  ℌIt would be detected.

  “Not if the obelisks were replaced by counterfeits.”

  There was a moment of silence. ℌThat is all.

  Mal was escorted back to his point of origin.

  LOI

  CHAPTER 4

  ⌘Recount the charges against Johanna Charette.

  ♆Charge: Portal Breach.

  ⌘Acquitted: She had no knowledge of their existence.

  ⧳Duly noted.

  ♆Charge: Destruction of LOI Property.

  ⌘Guilty: Johanna admitted to destroying property.

  ⧳Duly noted.

  ⌘Recount the charges against Jackson Roth.

  ♆Charge: Portal Breach.

  ⌘Acquitted: He had no knowledge of their existence.

  ⧳Duly noted.

  ♆Charge: Trespass.

  ⌘Acquitted: As a LOI curator-in-training, it is impossible to trespass on any LOI property.

  ⧳Duly noted.

  ♆Charge: Illegal Entry of a Residence.

  ⌘Acquitted: The boy was pulled inside and detained by the resident.

  ⧳Duly noted.

  δJohanna must be punished for the destruction of property.

  ★Extenuating circumstances existed. Nero 51 ignored her communication, thus inviting the use of unorthodox methods to get his attention.

  ◍She broke the obelisk to save the boy, not knowing what fate awaited him, due to her ignorance of the realms.

  ⌘She must pay for her transgression. She is from Fantasia, based on Earth. It is decreed she work the equivalent of three Earth days on Terroria to repay the loss.

  ∑Nero 51 will condemn the judgment as too light.

  ⌘Nero 51 is not an overseer.

  π.Johanna Charette will not like the judgment.

  ⌘Johanna Charette must pay for willful destruction of library property. And we need her to serve time on Terroria.

  ⚛Your decision, perhaps, is based on the boy’s testimony about weapons, as well as other rumors that have come to light ...

  §Ahhh ... the counterfeits.

  ⌘You are correct.

  ≎And the electromagnetic waves?

  ⌘We continue to monitor them.

  ◍And the boy, Jackson?

  ⌘He must remain on Earth to curate the Fantasian library.

  ΩShall we seal the portals?

  ⌘No. Johanna Charette must be able to return to her realm.

  ∎What if Nero 51 uses them to wage war?

  ⌘That is to be expected, and countered.

  The tubes vanished, and the four curators stood before the College of Overseers.

  ⌘All charges have been acquitted, save one.

  Nero 51 took a threatening step forward. “How could all charges have been acquitted? I demand retribution.”

  ⌘All charges, save one.

  “And what charge is that?” The Terrorian sneered.

  ⌘Johanna Charette, you have been found guilty of the willful destruction of LOI property. You are sentenced to work in the service of the library on Terroria for three Earth days.

  “No!” Nero 51 roared. “I do not want her on my world. She is a spy and must be executed!”

  ⌘Nero 51, Johanna Charette has been sentenced to a period of service on your world. As a ward of Terroria for that given period of time, you must guarantee her safety, or lose all rights as curator of your realm.

  Nero 51 huffed and puffed like he was about to explode.

  “If she’s going there, I’m going with her,” Jackson interjected. “It’s my fault she broke the obelisk.”

  ⌘No. Jackson Roth, you have been acquitted of all charges. In the absence of Johanna Charette, you must assume the duties as curator of the Library of Illumination in the realm of Fantasia.

  “You can’t let her go to Terroria alone.”

  ⌘It is the finding of the College of Overseers and cannot be overturned. Johanna Charette, you have an equal amount of time to prepare for your sentence: three Earth days. We will send an escort to accompany you to Terroria when the moment has arrived.

  The College of Overseers stood in unison.

  ℌJohanna Charette, Jackson Roth, Furst, accompany us. We will return you to your home worlds before we seal the portals, the overseers said in unison.

  “This is an outrage!” Nero 51 screamed at their retreating number. “I will not stand for it!”

  *

  Johanna and Jackson found themselves back in the alcove of oddities. “Do you think we’re really home?” Jackson asked.

  Johanna stooped and retrieved a chunk of their window frame from the floor. “Yes.”

  “You can’t go to Terroria alone.”

  “I have to. You heard what the College of Overseers said.”

  “That Nero guy has it in for you. He wants to execute you.”

  “He can’t without losing his curatorship, and I have the feeling that it’s something he doesn’t want to lose. So I’ll be fine. I’ll polish a few obelisks. I’ll wash a few windows. Whatever.”

  “Who’s that guy they brought in at the end?”

  “Mal.”

  “That’s Mal? Really? He looked so different.”

  “That’s because you met him when he was only one hundred forty years old.”

  Jackson took a moment to think about what she had just said. “Why do you think they called him there?”

  “I don’t know, but I have every intention of asking him ... or at least his diary.”

  “Are you going to do that now?”

  “Right now, all I want is a slice of pizza.”

  “Since I got you into this, I’ll treat.”

  She linked her arm in his. “Let’s go.” She refrained from telling him how safe she felt while they walked arm-in-arm. If she did, he would argue with her about going to Terroria. Instead, she secretly welcomed the warmth and security that holding his arm offered, if only for a little while.

  *

  Piccolo Italia did not seem very busy for a Friday night. “Where is everyone?” Jackson asked.

  Dante wiped his hands on his apron. “Been and gone. We close in fifteen minutes.”

  Jackson looked at the clock on the wall. “Do you believe it’s already eleven fifteen?”

  “Time flies when you’re on trial,” Johanna murmured.

  “We can still get slices, can’t we?” he asked.

  “I’ve got three plain slices left and one mushroom.”

  “Ugh, I hate mushrooms.” Jackson made a face.

  “I’ll eat the mushroom slice,” Johanna offered.

  “Okay.” He turned to Dante. “We’ll take them all. And a couple of colas.”

  Dante slipped the slices in the oven, while Johanna and Jackson slid into a red leatherette booth across from the counter.

  “Anyway, I was thinking,” Jackson started, “that once I tell—”

  “Stop.”

  “What?”

  “You’re dangerous when you think.”

  “I’m going with you.”

  “You have school.”

  “I’ll just tell Old Man Benson that you need me to go with you.”

  “To another world, where the beings have tentacles for arms and alien eyes? I don’t think so.”

  “You can’t go alone.”

  “I will go alone. And you do need to ask Mr. Benson for three days off from school, because you have to run the library while I’m gone.”

  “They should have sentenced me to hard labor on Terroria, instead of you. You were there because of me. Besides, I don’t know how to run the library.”

  “Yes, you do. Nobody is asking you to do any bookbinding or to research special exhibitions while I’m gone. All you have to do is open the mail, save the bills for me, and process the requests to borrow books. The list of approved borrowers is on the computer. I’m sure you know where to find it, because you’re the person who
entered all that information. That’s all you have to do for three days, besides answer the phone. Tell anyone asking for me that I was suddenly called out of town and that I’m expected back on Thursday. What could be easier?”

  “I still think—”

  “Pizza’s up,” Dante shouted.

  “Get our food. Then tell me all about the project you and Logan have planned for this weekend.”

  *

  That night, Johanna’s dreams were peppered with nightmares about all the horrible things that could happen on Terroria. She slept fitfully, and it was after nine by the time she woke up. She checked her messages, prepared two book deliveries, and grabbed her camera before heading out.

  When she arrived at Mrs. Caruthers’s house, Jackson and Logan, along with what looked like half the neighborhood, were already busy scraping old paint off the siding and chopping up the broken sidewalk. Cassie walked around the house with a clipboard in hand, jotting down ideas for plants. Brittany and Chris painted new shutters, so they would be dry enough to handle when it came time to attach them to the windows.

  Johanna walked over to Jackson’s mom, who stood with Ava in their adjoining yard. “So what does Mrs. Caruthers think of all this?”

  “She doesn’t know. Jackson made a deal with someone over at the senior center to get her out of the house. She’s apparently a gifted quilter. They asked her to give a class in quilt making and offered to pay her fifty dollars, so she happily agreed.”

  “That’s pretty amazing. Where did the money come from?”

  “It’s from a senior-center program. They have a grant that pays experts to teach classes. I hope it goes well.”

  “Me, too. I’d better start shooting video. I promised Jackson I’d edit it to music so he could post it online.”

  Mrs. Roth sniffed back a tear. “They’re really something, these kids. They did the same thing for me last year, and I was overwhelmed. I’m so proud of them. But don’t let me keep you. Go take pictures.”

  It turned out to be a long day, but Ava supplied everyone with lemonade and water, and the Students for a Better Society club at the high school brought sandwiches and brownies for the crew. It turned into more of a celebration than anything else, and the camaraderie made everyone work a little harder.

  *

  By late afternoon, Chris and Jackson had finished attaching the shutters to the house, and stood back to admire their work. The only thing they had overlooked was how long it would take the new concrete sidewalk in the front yard to dry.

  “I hope Mrs. Caruthers has a key to the back door,” Chris said. “I’d hate to have to break a windowpane to get her inside her fixed-up house.”

  The crowd cheered when the senior-transit van pulled up in front of the house. Everyone waited anxiously for Mrs. Caruthers to get out of the vehicle, but after a very long interval, only the driver emerged.

  “Is everything all right?” Mrs. Roth asked.

  “She’s crying. She wanted to know why all these people are standing in front of her house, and when I told her, she became very emotional. She needs a moment to compose herself.”

  Slowly, Mrs. Caruthers climbed out of the vehicle, her eyes bright with tears. Mrs. Roth pulled a tissue out of her pocket and offered it to the elderly woman.

  “Thank you, dear.” Mrs. Caruthers sighed deeply and made her way toward the front door.

  Jackson reached for her arm. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Caruthers, you can’t go in that way, for now. The cement is still wet. Do you have a key to the back?”

  She nodded, and then her head movement changed from up and down to side to side. “Why ...?” She could not finish her thought.

  Jackson turned on the charm. “You know, you’re a pillar of this community.” He slipped his arm around her shoulders. “And you’ve always watched out for us. This is just a gesture from your friends and neighbors that we’re watching out for you, too, and we’re here to help you. If you need help ...”

  A giant tear rolled down the old woman’s cheek. “Thank you, Jackson. This is the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me.”

  “Let me introduce you to everyone who helped out.” Jackson called out each volunteer by name. He told her about every person’s contribution to the project, and Mrs. Caruthers shook hands with each and every one of them, to thank them personally.

  Johanna captured it all on video, glad that her tears did not splash onto the camera lens and blur the images.

  *

  Johanna stayed out late with Jackson and his friends, celebrating the success of their community project, but in the back of her mind, she couldn’t shake the fact that her sentence would begin in forty-eight hours.

  It was after two in the morning when she finally crawled into bed. She yawned with exhaustion, but her looming incarceration prevented her from getting much sleep. Finally, she gave in to her insomnia, brewed a pot of coffee, and grabbed Mal’s diary.

  “Mal, why were you on Terroria?”

  She waited. After several minutes passed with no word from her mentor, she felt abandoned. Then, the pages riffled to a section near the end. The diary outlined how Mal had been summoned to appear before the Library of Illumination’s College of Overseers to testify on behalf of Johanna, who had admitted to destroying Terrorian property. According to his diary entry:

  I had initially thought the punishment too harsh, but then I discerned an undercurrent of deep concern among the overseers. It began when I testified about reports that I had heard about obelisks being counterfeited so the originals could be sold to finance weaponry. The overseers dismissed me, but more importantly, they did not dispute my testimony. I am sure the College of Overseers needs Johanna to serve her sentence on Terroria, so that she can act as its eyes and ears on that world. I am quite certain she is being planted as a spy.

  Johanna gasped when she read Mal’s words. Counterfeits. Weapons. Spy. She would have to keep her eyes and ears open for any indication of warmongering and subterfuge. Well, maybe not her ears, not unless the overseers reinstated her ability to understand the Terrorians. They’ll have to, or else how am I supposed to know what Nero 51 expects of me?

  Three days. She planned to travel light. Nothing fancy—just a change of clothes, a toothbrush, and protein bars in a backpack. And water. She would need to bring her own water. She didn’t even know if they had water on Terroria. She spent the rest of the day trying to find out as much as she could about the realm. She didn’t expect it to be easy, but when she plugged Terroria into the library database, listings for it came right up. Finding them would be another matter. They were located on sub-level fifty-six. Could that be in the basement?

  She picked up Mal’s diary and consulted it again. “Where’s sub-level fifty-six?”

  The diary opened to a section she had never seen before. It contained page after page of detailed floor plans, starting with the cupola and ending with sub-level 1,311. The plans for most of the sub-levels looked the same. They were made up of countless rows of stacks filled with every book, pamphlet, drawing, musical composition, letter, treaty, mathematical equation, and other tangible collection of words, numbers, symbols and ideas the realms had ever known.

  “How do I get down to sub-level fifty-six?” The pages shuffled again, and a picture of an archaic hand-crank elevator appeared. Hand crank—for fifty-six levels? Going down might not be so bad, but coming back up would be a bitch.

  “Mal, do you know if it’s hard to crank?”

  A new entry by Mal appeared.

  The original apparatus has been upgraded many times. The container was last replaced in the mid–nineteenth century with an open cage elevator that may look old but is in good working order. It is easy to operate. The hand crank has also been replaced, and the device is nuclear powered, just like everything else in the library.

  Johanna breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Are you okay?”

  She jumped. She hadn’t heard Jackson come in the back door. “I’m fine. I loca
ted books on Terroria on sub-level fifty-six.”

  “Where?”

  “My thought exactly. If you come with me, we can find it together.”

  She led him down into the basement to the area where Mal’s diary had indicated the existence of an elevator. A large cabinet containing library castoffs stood where the elevator should be. An old adding machine, a broken postage meter, and other obsolete office equipment that had seen better days filled the shelves.

  “Look for a lever,” she said.

  They inspected every shelf, removing the junk and piling it on the floor so they could spot the lever more easily.

  “I don’t see any,” Jackson observed, while pressing on the backs of the shelves, looking for a way to get them to swing open.

  “It’s too dark in here.” The absence of windows made it hard to see in shadowy corners. “See if that light still works.”

  Jackson inspected a tarnished brass frame encasing an old-fashioned light bulb. “I don’t see any switch. Maybe I just need to tighten the bulb ... if I can get my fingers through these stupid bars.” The frame made reaching the bulb difficult. “I wonder if this thing comes off,” he said, twisting it. As he did so, the cabinet pivoted open, sending up a cloud of dust.

  “You’re like an accidental genius,” Johanna said, with a smile.

  “Thanks ... I think.”

  They found an ancient cage made of brass bars hidden behind the cabinet. It had a bronze medallion affixed to the front of it: LOI. Johanna pulled the door open and pushed aside an inner scissor-gate. She tentatively entered the elevator, and Jackson followed. They looked at the massive panel of numbers. The number 6 was already lit. The button for the lowest level said 1311. She found the button for sub-level fifty-six and pushed it. The elevator lurched as it started its descent.

  LOI

  CHAPTER 5

  Johanna didn’t know what to expect on sub-level fifty-six, but envisioned something dark, dirty, and in disrepair. Instead she found a comfortable space filled with abundant soft lighting and climate-controlled air. She located the section where the computer catalog system said she would find books on Terroria, and she soon chose one that looked promising.