by Mark Wandrey
She gave the loose piece of wood a gentle pull, just to see how much repair it would take, and the entire drawer fell apart. “You have got to be kidding me,” she cried in dismay as wood tumbled from her grasp and rained down on the floor. “Damn it, I’m a Chosen, not a carpenter!” she smiled at her own jest, then frowned when she remembered the man most able to appreciate it was in a coma. So with a sigh she got on her hands and knees to begin reassembling the puzzle. She’d nearly finished it when she realized she had an extra bottom piece. And it was also when she noticed the fair amount of paper debris, four more paperclips, and finally the computer chip.
“A secret stash,” she realized aloud as she moved some of the paper bits around on the floor. During a week long stint in the Chosen records department she’d seen some old paper storage. This sort of left overs was common from paper files, and she knew right away by the amount here that this hidden place once held more than a couple pages. Now only the debris and paperclips spoke of what was once here. There was some dust too. No one had accessed this little hidey hole for a long, long time. She had the computer chip in one hand, turning it over and over for almost a minute before a cold feeling crept up her spine. If no one had been in this space for so long, how was there a computer chip inside? It was a modern moliplas chip of Concordia design. They were first seen on Bellatrix a little over a hundred years ago, when the Tog returned and introduced humanity to the galaxy.
She left the partially reassembled drawer where it lay and retrieved one of her half dozen tablets from her desk across the bedroom. The chip went into the tablet and glowed slightly to acknowledge that it was being accessed. A file menu appeared in English. There was only one entry titled “Astronomical Observations”. She opened the file and found hundreds of dated entries, each followed by complex symbols and computations, all of which meant exactly squat to her. Astronomy was something she did not have in common with Mindy Harper. Was this the long lost astronomy diaries of Mindy Harper? And if so, who had taken the time to have them scanned into a modern computer chip? It had to be her dad, but the drawer spoke of many years since it was last opened. On their trips to this island as a young child Minu remembered her father never used this dresser, instead just keeping some clothes in a bag. She checked the file logs on the chip, but unlike human operating systems that automatically recorded date/time details, Concordia made systems only did that if you requested it. Whoever had made this chip had not done so.
Minu copied the files, almost without thought, then slipped the chip into her little dualloy secure chip safe, the same one she used to keep the pilfered files Pip had stolen from the Tog database. She made a mental note to look into the chip further and perhaps send a copy to the Plateau Historical Society
The drawer was repaired and put back in place. She even fixed up the secret compartment. Who knows, it could prove useful someday. As the brisk winter evening came upon her she took a cup of tea out onto the little porch and sat in an ancient chair also made by her ancestor and watched the stars come out. A couple howlers were barking at each other across the water, a rare thing that time of the year. There on the family ancestral island the worries of the Concordian and Chosen seemed so far away. It was probably the best place on the world humanity called home. Like Mindy once did on the same porch, she looked up into the sky facing where a star would be visible that night, a star two hundred forty eight light years away that once gave birth to her species. That was where Mindy Harper was born. She looked over to a location a few dozen meters away where a short line of graves with simple markers sat. Mindy, Billy and all except one of their children rested there. Maybe she’d join them there one day. It would be appropriate that the last of the line to live and die on Bellatrix should join the first.
On the horizon green Remus was just beginning to rise. Romulus would only appear late that evening, after its little brother had already made two sweeps across the great sky of its home. A thousand million stars twinkled, and still her gaze was drawn to where one was. “So what comes next?” she asked the stars. Only the howlers answered her.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mark Wandrey has been an avid science fiction fan since the first time he picked up a Heinlein book in grade school (The Rolling Stones). Shortly later he decided he wanted to be an author and over the intervening decades had doggedly refused to stop writing. Sonata in Orionis is the 2nd book in the Earth Song saga and will be followed shortly by The Lost Aria.
Mark lives in rural Tennessee with his wife, son, and an undisclosed number of barnyard fowl, canines, and felines.
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