NaNoWriMo Day 18

He went downstairs to the first floor, where the academic secretaries had their offices.  They’d been moved down from the third floor about five years ago because it had been noted that the students were too lazy to go up to the third floor much of the time, so small academic matters that should have been easy to sort out kept ballooning into larger problems that took up much more time and effort.  Ideally they’d have moved to the ground floor, but the secretaries were reluctant to be too close because they didn’t want to be interrupted all the time either.  Two of the doors were closed, indicating that their secretaries were out, but Sheila’s was open and she was sitting at her desk in front of a computer, scowling at the screen.

“Hi Sheila.”

“Oh, hi Josh,” she said.  “You don’t know anything about Excel do you?”

“Not a lot,” he said.  “I can do graphs in it.”

“No, I’m trying to reconcile columns across multiple workbooks,” she said.  “It’s part of the Dean’s budget strategy, and he wants it done this afternoon.”  Seeing that Joshua’s face had gone blank she turned away from it.  “Never mind, how I can help you?”

Joshua held the journal out, open at the page with the contact information.  “I’ve got this paper,” he said, “and the guy who wrote it worked here.  It’s probably about a hundred years ago, but I was wondering if there’s be any collection of his stuff, things he left behind, or research papers or anything.  What happens when someone leaves here?”

“Depends,” said Sheila.  “If they retire or go to another job then they usually take their stuff with them, and we bin anything they leave behind.  Or donate it to the library if it’s in good condition and they want it.  If they die, then I think we bin their stuff or donate it unless the family say they want it.”

“So if there’s anything it’ll be over in the library?”

“Probably,” said Sheila.  “Hang on, let me see if I’ve got anything in the filing cabinets on him.”  She stood up and went to a couple of grey steel filing cabinets stood neatly in a corner.  Sorting through files in the middle drawer of the first one she suddenly smiled.

“Hah, I thought I’d seen that name before!”  She pulled the file out and look at it; there were just a couple of sheets of paper in there, yellowed and hand-written.  “Well,” she said.  “That’s a bit odd.”

“What is?”

“According to this, his office was moved to Robin Hood Tower,” she said.  “Room 301.”

“Robin Hood Tower?”

“It’s the smaller of the towers,” she said.  “I don’t know much about it, just that it’s used for storage.  But it looks like he might have some stuff left behind after all.  You’ll probably have to go and ask Security about getting to see it though, it’s not part of the Mathematics department.”

“Oh great,” said Joshua, his spirits sinking a little.  “My favourite people.”

“They’re alright, really,” said Sheila.  “Just wait till you need them.”

“They let a crank in to see me this morning!” said Joshua, and when she looked at him quizzically told her all about Venkat and his desire to help.

“Well, he sounds harmless enough,” she said at the end.  “Just let Security know that he shouldn’t be allowed back in.”

“That’s a good idea,” he said slowly.  “Oh well, it looks like I’m going to go and talk to them after all then!”

Joshua started walking back to his office, and then he looked down at the journal in his hand.  “I suppose there’s no time like the present,” he said to himself, and looked up to check that no-one had heard him.  The corridor was empty, though he noticed that one of the other secretaries had arrived now and her door was slightly ajar as well.  He tightened his grip on the journal and told himself that Security were just people with jobs to do as well, and headed for the staircase.

He saw no-one else as he descended to their subterranean bunker, and no sooner had he stepped into the bare concrete anteroom than the concealed door in the wall opened and the woman he was growing used to seeing appeared in the doorway.

“Come in, Mr. Greene,” she said, he tone not entirely unfriendly.  “We seem to be meeting a lot at the moment.”

“Uh, do you have a name?” asked Joshua as he followed her.  The door closed silently behind them; he looked over his shoulder to check.  “Right now I just think of you as Security.”

“You can call me Lieutenant Georges,” she said, turning right and holding open the door to a little office.  “Though not too often.”

NaNoWriMo Day 17

Sitting back down at his desk Joshua looked up at the door, wondering if someone else would now knock on it.  After thirty seconds, when it remained un-knocked-on he allowed himself to relax and a little, and looked at his desk.  The Macbook was now fully charged and was showing a little green light on the power cable, and the journal that had caused all these recent problems was still sitting there, with its bookmark in place.  Curious, he picked it up and opened it again, and started to re-read the first couple of pages, wondering if he’d missed a statement of where these notes that the paper claimed to be analysing had come from.

There was a brief paragraph headed Provenance of the notes that discussed their finding in the attic of a house somewhere, but the location of the house wasn’t given:

I had been spending some days with my invalid mother and had taken the opportunity afforded by her afternoon sleep to wander through the house.  With her condition deteriorating before my eyes, it occurred to me that I might soon be called upon to dispose of the possessions here, and I was curious as to whether this would be a chore or a tragedy.  The rooms I walked through were small and cluttered, and it seemed to my eyes that much of what she had accumulated over her life was junk.  I resolved immediately upon my return home to review my own possessions and to discard those that served no obvious purpose, or which had sat untended for a period longer than six months.  Then I came upon the attic stair, whose door was locked at the bottom, and decided to see what was up there.  I was pessimistic, given the remainder of the house, and the tendency of things unwanted to migrate up to the attic where they could be forgotten in silence, but when I stood there I could see that there was but a cot, made up ready for a visitor, a small square of carpet on the otherwise bare floorboards, and a writing bureau and chair that my mother could surely not have brought up the stairs by herself.

I sat myself at the bureau and opened it, wondering if was at all used.  To my astonishment I found these notes, written in a scrawled hand that appeared to have learned its letter ill, and dated but three months earlier.  I started to read them, and though they were strange and used odd symbology, I recognised that they were mathematical in nature.  At that moment my mother roused herself and called for me, her voice still as strident in her illness as it had been when I was but a naughty child to be chastised.  I gathered up the notes and took them with me, intending to ask her about them, but when I descended to her room she was vomiting noisomely and as I went about cleaning up my discovery was forgotten for the nonce.

She died three days hence, and with her my chance to determine whence these notes had come.

Venkat had suggested Oakvell, but for all Joshua knew the man was just trying to lure him to some place for reasons of his own.  He shivered, wondering if he’d been in any danger in talking to him.  At least they’d been in the coffee lounge and there’d been other people around.

He looked at the Macbook and opened up a browser in which to load google maps.  When he typed Oakvell in the search bar it responded almost immediately, producing a collections of streets and a couple of paid-for adverts for businesses.  He zoomed out slowly until he could see the general area better, and realised that it was about fifty miles south-west of the university campus.  In the zoomed-out view he could easily see that it was a tiny little place, probably the kind of place that you could drive straight through without realising that it was there.  If you drove, which he didn’t.

He went back to the journal, skimming through the article to see if there was anything further on that he might have missed, or not yet read thoroughly.  There was nothing, and he was about to close the journal and forget all about it when the correspondence address for the author, right at the end of the article, caught his eye.

It was Sherwood University.

NaNoWriMo Day 16

Joshua hadn’t actually managed the four steps back to his desk before another knock sounded at his door.  Puzzled, expecting Security to have returned, he opened it.

“Joshua,” said Dr. Hawne walking in and forcing him to walk backwards.  “I’m so glad I caught you this morning; I’m out all afternoon.  There’s a Royal Society meeting that I want to go to, and the trains to London really aren’t as fast as they lead you to believe.”

“Dr. Hawne,” said Joshua, trying to smile and remember his excuse.

“You were going to show me your plan for the seminar,” she said, still advancing.  Joshua darted behind his desk and sat down.  He turned the Macbook’s screen so that she could see it.

“I’ve only just received your email,” he said, pointing at the unread messages in the mail-client.  “I’m sorry, you must have sent it after I left the office last night.”

“I wasn’t working that late.”  Her eyes narrowed, and Joshua decided to abandon that tactic.

“Well,” he said.  “As it happens I have a result to show you, and that will be main thrust of the seminar.  The overall plan for the talk is to simply lead up to this result, present it, tell people where it will be published, and then open the floor for questions.”

“Hmmm,” said Kathleen.  She looked at the screen, waiting until the pdf viewer had loaded and showed the paper that Joshua was writing.  “Where are you submitting this to then?”

Joshua listed three journals that he had in mind; one was prestigious and probably wouldn’t accept this paper, but he thought that the other two would probably take it.  To his mild surprise Dr. Hawne nodded at all three of them.

“Let me know if you need any help,” she said.  “I have friends on editorial boards.  While it would obviously be unethical to try and influence their decisions, I can certainly ask them to fast-track your paper when it arrives.”  Journal publication could take easily a year for print-media, so fast-tracking would help Joshua out enormously.

“Thank-you,” he said, meaning it.  “That’s very generous of you.”

“Just deliver a good seminar on it,” said Kathleen, tapping the page-down key-combo a few times.  “There’s no point screwing up the advertising if the product’s actually good.”

Someone knocked on his door.

“You seem to have visitors,” said Dr. Hawne.  “I’ll let them in.”

Dr. Hawne left as Venkat came in, holding the door open for him.  He looked a little surprised, so Joshua decided to explain.

“She’s not quite my boss,” he said.  “She’s important here though, and she wanted to see how some of my work was progressing.”

“Oh,” said Venkat looking around the room for a seat.  Joshua was, of course, sat in it.  “I hope it’s going well.”

“Well enough,” said Joshua.  “Did you get your pass ok?”

“Yes, thank-you,” said Venkat.  “Your security people are very efficient.  More so than any others I’ve encountered, I think.  I wasn’t expecting it.”

“They’re like the Spanish Inquisition,” said Joshua.  Venkat didn’t smile.

“In what sense, please?”

“Oh,” said Joshua realising that the joke had fallen flat.  “Well, no-one expects the Spanish Inquisition, do they?”

“I wasn’t aware that there was still a Spanish Inquisition,” said Venkat carefully.

“Yeah, forget about it,” said Joshua.  “It was a joke.  A bad one, apparently.  What did you come to see me about then?  You said something about anachronistic mathematics.”

“Could I sit down somewhere?” asked Venkat, looking around again.

“Sure,” said Joshua.  “Let’s go to the coffee lounge.”

As they walked, Venkat started talking.

“I have been told that you have read something recently that would have seemed out of place,” he said.  “The word used was anachronistic, but I’m not familiar with that word.  I was told that you’d understand it however.  It is connected with mathematics somehow, and now that I’m hear I see that you are a mathematician of some kind.”

“Some kind, yes,” said Joshua.  “What do you know about a journal that turned up in my office a couple of days ago then?  Because that’s what you’re talking about.”

“I’m sorry?”

“I came back to my office a couple of days ago and found a journal in there with a bookmark in it,” said Joshua.  “Security can’t find any evidence of anyone coming in to my office to put it there, and I know I didn’t put it there.  So it just appeared there somehow, and the bookmarked entry was the kind of mathematics I do.  But it’s dated at least a hundred years ago, and these mathematics weren’t invented back then.  So this is some kind of weird practical joke, and now that you’ve turned up and admitted to it, I want to know what’s going on, and who this is supposed to be funny for.”  He pushed open the door the coffee lounge and walked through ahead of Venkat.  Venkat looked around and then waited.  Joshua got coffees and sat down on an armchair, holding the other coffee out to Venkat.

“Is there any milk?” asked Venkat, so Joshua pointed.  When he returned and sat down as well, Joshua sat forward.

“So, who thinks this is all funny then?” he said.

“I don’t know,” said Venkat.  “I don’t think you quite understand what I mean when I say told.”

“What?”  Joshua looked at him and blinked.  “You mean you got a message and you don’t know who from?”

“No,” said Venkat.  “I know who the message is from, but I’m just the messenger.  I’ve not been told anything about what the message means, or why it might mean something to you.  I’ve just been told that you know this and that I’m to come here and help you get to Oakvell.”

“Why would I be going to Oakvell?”

“Because that’s where these mathematics that are in the wrong place were found.”

“Back up a moment,” said Joshua.  “Where is Oakvell?  And how do you know that this is where the writings were found if you don’t know anything about this journal?  Who is telling you all this stuff, and why are they only telling you bits and pieces?  And why are you doing it?  This doesn’t make any sense.”  He sipped his coffee, his eyes on Venkat.  “Why don’t you just tell me whose idea this is of a joke and I’ll go and talk to them directly.  You can get back to doing whatever you do in real life.”

“This is what I do in real life,” said Venkat.  “Last week I was doing an exorcism, this week I’m trying to make sure you have the help you need for your mystery.  Maybe next week I’ll be scuba-diving off the coast of Africa making sure that someone does or doesn’t find ruins that pertain to Atlantis.”

“You’re a crank,” said Joshua.  Suddenly everything clarified; the weird paper with its mysterious appearance, the strange pronouncements, the turning up unannounced and the insistence that Venkat could help Joshua.  “You planted that journal yourself; what did you do?  Bribe a student to leave it my office when I wasn’t looking and then wait until you heard I’d found it?”

“I had nothing to do with the journal,” said Venkat patiently.  “I have only been told that you’ve found it and that you need help.”

“The mathematics in there is very good,” said Joshua, ignoring him now.  “You probably don’t need to do any of this.  Lots of it is already known, but you’ve got an interesting angle in there and it definitely doesn’t need a whole lot of work to take it further.  You should be able to get help you want without needing to make all this fuss.  If you’re local and you’ll drop all this pretence I’ll help you myself.  I’ve got some ideas from it, and it’s only fair to give credit where it’s due.”

“It’s not mine,” said Venkat.  “I don’t know much about mathematics.  I just provide help where it’s needed.”

“Well I don’t need any help,” said Joshua.  “It’s you who needs help, whether publication or a psychiatrist.  I’d go with the first, if I were you.”

His words hung in the air, and they both realised together than the room had fallen quiet just before he’d spoken.  Several faces had turned to see who he was speaking to, and they were now slowly turning away again, interest turning to disinterest as they failed to recognise Venkat.

“I don’t need a psychiatrist,” said Venkat.  “Look, you’re going to go to Oakvell.  I just want to go with you and help you.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Joshua.  “I can’t be going to somewhere I’ve never heard of, and I definitely don’t want to go there with you.  I think you need to leave now.”

Venkat looked down, and when he looked back up there was a note of defiance on his face.  “Very well,” he said.  “I’ll go.  But I want to come with you when you go to Oakvell.  I’m being told that it’s important.”

“Yeah, right,” said Joshua.  “No problem, I’ll text you my itinerary.  Thanks for the visit, try not to do it again.”  He stood up and walked out of the coffee lounge, not bothering to check behind him to see if Venkat was leaving or not.  He was pretty certain that Security would pick him up now that he’d seen how good their monitoring of the building was.

NaNoWriMo Day 15

Joshua had woken up late after another evening in the pub with Mark, and was eating buttered toast as he walked across the campus.  It was May now, and Beltane had passed so there were no bonfires lit, or the smell of woodsmoke hanging on the air.  Instead the air was slightly warm, the trees were shivering their leaves in a strong breeze, and flowers were blooming happily below them.  Joshua was sure that they must have all been like that before Beltane, but in his mind all he could see were stark white-and-grey tree branches, sullen green grass and no flowers.  He preferred campus when it was vibrant and alive though.

Sudden footsteps behind him made him slow his step and turn his head, curious to see who was overtaking him.  The footsteps stopped though, and a young-looking man with jet black hair, brown eyes and a wide smile showing bright white teeth caught his eye.

“Excuse me,” he said.  “I am looking for the Mathematics building, and I was told it was this way.”  It wasn’t a question, but there was a slight rising intonation at the end of the sentence that suggested he was looking for confirmation.

“Um, yes,” said Joshua swallowing.  He pointed with his toast.  “Follow this path to the end, then turn left towards the Quadrangle – that’s the group of building you can see there, and it’s the one on the far side.”

“Thank-you,” said the young man.  “You’ve been very helpful.”

He walked ahead of Joshua, who was considering saying that he was going that way himself, but then he decided that he preferred the company of his own thoughts.  The young man appeared to have a tan already, and he wondered briefly just how well-off students here were these days.  He was sure that he couldn’t afford a holiday this year to anywhere that hot.  Not that he wanted to, he preferred moderate temperatures, and even liked the chill of Spring or Autumn.  He crammed the rest of his toast into his mouth and carried on towards his office.

He slipped in through Newton’s Door as usual and up the stairs.  He heard raised voices distantly as he ascended them, and wondered what the argument was about.  Mathematicians, in his experience, rarely shouted at each other about maths, though they might get more upset about people using their coffee cups without asking first, or, on one memorable occasion, their wife.  He certainly wasn’t interested though; he needed to make sure his seminar propositions were written up today as he’d had an email from Dr. Hawne the evening before saying that she would be coming in to look them over.  There wasn’t a lot to write up, from his perspective, as the result was already established and he was writing it up separately into a journal submission, but he knew that she’d want to see some planned structure for his talk and she’d probably want to look over the result as well.  He doubted that she’d follow it that well, given that their areas of specialisation were distant, but he’d never seen her admit to being wrong, or even slightly inaccurate yet.

In fairness, he supposed, he’d never actually caught her out in an inaccuracy either, and that was quite a feat for anybody.

He carded his door open and stepped into his office.  As he took his jacket off he looked around, and realised that he quite liked the office being tidy.  It was the effort involved in keeping it that way that he didn’t enjoy.  Maybe he should ask Mark about that idea of getting a cleaner in to do it for him, but he could see problems with the cleaner being given access to the room.  Definitely problems, he remembered what the Security office had been like.

His jacket went on the back of his chair and he flipped the lid of the Macbook up.  It beeped, passive-aggressively informing him that he’d forgotten to plug the power-cord in again, and dimmed its screen so that it was hard to read.  When that was fixed he was torn between checking his email and checking on his presentation, finally justifying email to himself as finding out if Dr. Hawne had changed her mind, or even specified a time that she’d be arriving.

The knock on his door happened just as he’d deleted the first ten emails, and he looked up in panic.  Surely Dr. Hawne couldn’t be here this early?

“I’m sorry,” he said as he opened the door, running his excuse through his mind and trying to get it out before she could speak.  “I’ve only just… you’re not Dr. Hawne.”

“And you’re not the Mayor of London.”  The woman stood outside his door was the one he’d spoken to in the Security offices.  Behind her, head bowed and looking at his feet, was the young man that Joshua had given directions to earlier.

“No, said Joshua.  “I think you have to live or work there to be that.  Have you found who put that journal in my office?”

“No,” said the woman.  “I thought you looked familiar.  We reviewed additional footage, including the outside of the building.  No-one entered your office at the time you claim the journal appeared, so you should reconsider when it entered your office.  Anyway, this person here,” she gestured behind her, but her eyes didn’t leave Joshua’s face, “says that he has business with you.”

“Does he?”

“Doesn’t he?”

They looked at each other for a few seconds, and Joshua started to feel a little uneasy.

“Who are you?” he asked, looking at the young man.

“Venkat,” he said immediately, holding out his hand.  As the woman from Security was in the way it was a rather awkward handshake, and Joshua noted only that it was firm and fast.  The young man seemed to have quite warm, dry hands.  “I want to talk to you about Oakvell.”

“Never heard of it,” said Joshua, shaking his head.  “Are you sure you’ve got the right person?”

“I think so,” said Venkat, his smile never leaving his face.  “I was told that you’ve recently read a newspaper about it.  Something about mathematics there.”

“You don’t really get mathematics in newspapers,” said Joshua.  “And when you do it’s usually wrong.  Or old news.  And I don’t read many newspapers, not really.”

“But I was told,” said Venkat, his smile fading.  He tilted his head to one side and seemed to be listening to something.  “Perhaps… perhaps it’s not a newspaper? A paper of some kind?”

“I think that’s enough,” said the Security woman firmly.  “I’m sorry we bothered you,” she said to Joshua, her tone suggesting that she wasn’t all that sorry.  She turned and took Venkat’s elbow in her hand and pushed him away from the office.

“A paper about mathematics that was… anachronistic?”  Venkat seemed to be repeating words only he could hear.  A sudden cold chill ran down his spine.

“Wait, what?” he said.  The woman from Security gave him a baleful look but stopped pushing.  “What do you mean, anachronistic?”

“I don’t know what that word means,” said Venkat apologetically.  “Um,…” he tilted his head again.  “Mathematics that isn’t old enough?”

“Close enough,” said Joshua.  “You can come in.”

“When he has a visitor’s pass,” said the woman from Security promptly.  “Are you willing to vouch for him as your visitor now?”  Joshua nodded.  “Good, sign here.”  She produced an iPhone-sized gadget from a pocket and pulled a stylus from the underside of it.  The screen lit up and the device beeped.  Joshua took the stylus and wrote his signature on the screen.

“Thank-you.  We’ll be back in a few minutes when we’ve issued the pass.”

“Right,” said Joshua, a little bit taken aback.  “Is this normal for visitors?”

“We normally have a list of expected visitors,” said the woman from Security.  “So that we can prepare the passes in advance.  Come on you, you can come back in a couple of minutes.”  They disappeared down the corridor, and Joshua returned to his office wondering exactly what he’d just witnessed, and what Venkat knew about the mysterious journal.

NaNoWriMo Day 14

The library was a discreetly large building.  It was built into a gentle hill so that from the front it didn’t look particularly big at all.  There were four stories of dark-red brick with high arched, stone framed windows and gothic frippery; the doors were probably better called portals given their size and immensity, and all of the windows were mullioned, lead-framed, and many of them were stained-glass.  Inside, the building had been extended both into the hill and downwards so that there were four basements levels, of which two were reserved for library use only and not open to students.  The top floor was predominantly desks and the canteen facilities, in an attempt to keep the books away from liquids and food that might spill and stain them.  The extension at the back of the building, being newer and invisible to the outside, was larger and more spacious, although there were no windows, because it was supported by steel and concrete rather than brick and sixteenth century building codes.

Just inside the front doors were the usual RF-gates to catch any students attempting to leave with more books that their library card allowed (and since students were allowed a generous twenty loans at any given time it tended to be those who’d had their cards suspended for non-payment of fines that attempted it), and beyond them was a large, three-storey high entrance hall where the returns and loans desks dominated.  Joshua went to them, and then walked around them to a side desk where journals, periodicals and non-book materials were checked out.  Behind the desk was a young man he didn’t recognise, but as the library employed students as cheap term-time labour he wasn’t particularly bothered.

“Hi,” he said.  The man behind the desk looked up but didn’t say anything.  “Is Barbara on shift?”

“I don’t know,” said the young man, his words slightly slow.  “I’ve only just started.”

“Could you ask, please?” said Joshua.  “You can tell her it’s Joshua asking.”

“Oh can I?”  The young man stared at him, suddenly belligerent.  “If you’ve got something to return you can give it to me.  If you’ve reserved something, I can look it up for you.”

“And if I’d like to talk to Barbara?” said Joshua.  He looked at the young man, wondering where this anger had come from.  “Will you relay the conversation between me and her?”

“She’s not here and you can’t talk to her.”

Joshua’s eyebrows lifted in surprise.  He opened his mouth to retort, and then caught sight of Barbara walking between the reshelving carrels a little behind the counter.  He lifted his arm and waved, and she turned to see what it was, then smiled as she saw him.

“You have to leave,” said the young man abruptly.

“Hi Barbara,” said Joshua, ignoring him.  “I was hoping to catch you.”

“Hi Josh,” she said.

“He has to leave,” said the young man to Barbara.  “He’s being a nuisance.”

Barbara looked at him quizzically and then at Joshua.  “I don’t see that,” she said.  “He’s just standing there.”

“He wouldn’t tell me what he wanted.  He’s rude.”

“Look Nick, can you go back there and reshelve the books on carrels 4 and 5 please?  I’ll come and talk to you about this when I’ve dealt with this man here.”

“He’s rude.”  Nick stood there obstinately until Barbara gestured, and then he moved off, his face twisting into the sullen expression of someone sulking.

“Not a student then?” asked Joshua when he thought Nick was out of earshot.

“Actually he is,” said Barbara.  She sighed.  “I’ve no idea what the admissions criteria were for him, but they can’t have been academic.  What can I do for you, Josh?  Have we lost anything of yours?”

There was a running joke between them about losing things, as Josh’s first three visits to this desk had all been for reservations that the library had mysteriously lost.  Barbara had dealt with each of them, which had lead to them chatting and dating very briefly before deciding that they were better as just friends.

“Nope,” he said.  “I’ve got this to return.”  He placed the journal on the counter.  “The mystery this time is that it appeared in my office and I don’t know who put it there or why.”

Barbara picked it up and flipped the cover open.  “Really?  You’re returning things for other people now?  I don’t remember you being this helpful!”

“Thanks,” said Josh with a half-smile.  “Actually I’m returning it in the hopes that you can tell me who borrowed it and I can find out how it got into my office.”

“Ah, that’s more like it,” said Barbara.  “Purely selfish.”  She softened her words with a smile and laying her hand on top of his briefly.  “That’s odd though, there’s no accession details here.”

“Huh?”

“I don’t think this is one of ours,” she said.  “Let me check.”

She turned away to a separate desk where a keyboard and LCD screen were located, and tapped quickly on the keyboard.  She touch-typed, which impressed Joshua as most the library staff – even the students – were hunt-and-peck typists.  As a result she was back in under a minute.

“We’ve never carried this journal,” she said.  “And it’s not coming up under any inter-library loans either, and there’s no accession markings or numbers in any of the usual places.  I’d say this isn’t ours.  You get to keep it!”

“Damn it!” said Joshua.  “I was really hoping that I’d find out who put this in my office this way.”

Joshua sat back in his chair and looked around the office.  On his way back from the library – or rather, out of his way, as the mathematics buildings were much closer to the library than either building was to the campus shops – he’d gone into the little office supply shop and bought a half-dozen binders, half-a-dozen box files and some manila folders.  When he got back to his office he’d spent an hour and a half picking papers up, sorting them into related areas and putting them into a binder or a box-file together.  The papers he was working with, or writing, were all put into the manila folders.  The binders and box files were on the bookcase, where he still thought they looked slightly out of place, and the folders were neatly stacked on the corner of his desk.  The Macbook was now proudly centred and not in danger of knocking anything over when it was opened, and he’d even found two old coffee cups and a bar of chocolate that had been lost in the mess.  This had – purely coincidentally he assured himself – meant that he’d been able to check under the desk and in all the cupboards again; naturally enough there was no hiding in any of them.  There had also been no signs of any other odd journals or papers left around; everything else in there he recognised, occasionally with a feeling of guilt.  There was now a small collection of books on a bookshelf by themselves that needed returning to their owners, although one of them was on the normal shelves as he knew that Linda had left the university six months previously.

There was a knock at the door, and he jumped up to open it, expecting Dr. Hawne to be on the other side with more details about the seminar.  In fact, it was Mark holding two cups of coffee.

“Got you a coffee,” he said.  “Good job you’re here or I’d have left it in your homework folder.”

“In the cup, I hope,” said Joshua.  Outside the door was a cork board where the lecturers could pin notes for students; he had a manila folder pinned there for homework from the single graduate class that he’d been cajoled into giving.

“Maybe,” said Mark with a grin.  He offered Joshua a cup.  “What happened in here?  I can see the furniture and the carpet!”

“I tidied,” said Joshua, a little defensively.  “You know, spring cleaning.”

“Better late than never, I suppose,” said Mark.  “You should try keeping it like this.”

“How about I pay you to come in twice a week and tidy for me?”

“How about you stuff that up your arse?”

Joshua laughed.  “So is this a social visit, or were you just looking to offload a spare coffee?”

“Mostly social,” said Mark. “And I wanted to know if you found anything else out about your mystery journal.”

“It didn’t come from the library,” said Joshua.  “Barbara checked it for me, they’ve never even subscribed to the journal.  She said it’s mine.”

“Wow.  It definitely seems more like a joke now.  You upset anyone lately?”

Joshua thought for a moment of the spindly shape that he thought he’d seen in his office, and though he shivered he didn’t want to mention it to anyone.  They’d think he was mad.

“Looks like you can think of someone.”  Mark’s eyes were sharp.

“No, just cold,” said Joshua.  “I was outside a lot going to the library and the shops.”

“It’s hardly cold out there!”  Mark glanced out of the window; the sun was shining.  “The sun returned remember.  They lit all the Beltane bonfires and it came back.  Any ex-girlfriends with a seriously academic side who obsess over tiny details?  Or ex-students who like to stalk?”

“No and no,” said Joshua.  “I try and stay away from both of them.”

“Not good,” said Mark, shaking his head in mock approbation.  “All work and no play….”

“Describes most people in this department perfectly,” said Joshua.  “Including you.”

NaNoWriMo Day 13

Joshua woke with a dry mouth and the hint of a headache.  He rolled over, wondering why and then remembered going out to one of the campus bars with Mark after they’d eaten and finished off the beers that he’d brought round, and then leaving again when last orders were called.  He rubbed his face with his hands, and then recoiled from the smell.  He decided at that point he’d rather get up and washed than try and sleep for any longer and find out what else he might have put his hands in or on while he was drunk.

After his shower he skipped breakfast and went into his office.  He was through the door and shifting papers on the desk to make some room before he remembered the events of the day before.  He stopped and looked around the room carefully, and then he checked under the desk and inside all of the cupboards.  No-one was hiding there.  He looked over at the Macbook and saw that the old journal was still lying propped up against it.  He picked it up and turned over the pages again, looking idly through it and wondering still where it had come from.  When he reached the bookmarked pages he reached a decision: he’d photocopy the pages and then take the journal back to the library and let them deal with finding out who owned it.  With any luck they might tell him who’d taken it out in the first place.

The photocopy room was more of a cupboard and contained two large photocopiers and a printer than was connected to the computer-lab next door.  All the machines were card-operated, so that you couldn’t get a print-out or make a photocopy without touching an RFID-enabled card against a reader first.  As usual there was a short queue of students outside the room waiting for their turn to get their print-outs from the printer.  One of the photocopiers was occupied by Sheila, a department secretary who knew Joshua slightly.  She grinned at him when he came in; she was younger than him and liked to tell him about her nights out in the campus bars and nightclubs whenever he popped into her office.  She looked a little dishevelled this morning, and he guessed that she’d been out the night before too.

“Hi Josh,” she said, pushing a hand through her hair.  It was thick and blonde with dark roots.  “I must look a mess, right?”

“No, of course not,” he said.  He fumbled in his pocket for his card.  “Where were you last night then?”

“Oh, I think we started in the Ivy,” she said, naming a bar near the student accommodation.  “There was a band playing and we wanted to see if they were any good.  They weren’t.”  She giggled a little.  “After that we went on to the Cavern and we were going to go off-campus and maybe go by the Aquarium but it got late and we couldn’t be bothered so we just stayed in the Cavern till the end.”

“Mark and I went to the Campus Pub,” said Josh.  The Campus Pub was decorated in the style of an olde Englishe pub and tended to attract post-docs and lecturers except at the beginning and end of terms when all the bars struggled to cope with all of the students being out at once.  “I wasn’t going to out at all, but he made me.”

“Oh, if I’d known you were going out I’d have invited you to join us!  It was a bit dull anyway, my sister came out but she’s always complaining about her job these days.  And her boyfriend’s a bit –“ she mimed gagging.  Josh smiled.  He opened the journal and laid it on the glass plate of the photocopier.

“What’s that then?” asked Sheila.  “I’ve just got twenty-four copies of the report to make for the department meeting today.”

“It’s a journal,” said Joshua.  A thought struck him.  “No-one came back asking where my office was yesterday, did they?”

“No, why?”

“Oh, this journal turned up in there and I don’t know where it came from.  It was just on the desk when I came back, and I’m wondering who wanted me to look at it.”

Sheila looked puzzled.  “No-one can get into your office when you’re not there, can they?”

“I don’t think so,” he said.  “I thought maybe they’d come by someone’s office who can get in and asked them for help.”

“I can’t get into any of the offices,” said Sheila.  She looked slightly flustered.  “I can’t even get into my own office after 5, my card stops working except to let me out.  Security could let people in, and maybe Facilities might be able to.  You could ask them.”

Joshua turned the page and photocopied the next one, the machine humming quietly to itself.  “I asked Security,” he said.  “They’ve got an amazing office down there, haven’t they?”

“I don’t know,” said Sheila.  “I’ve not had much to do with them to be honest.  They issue cards when they’re lost, and sometimes come round and ask questions about students, but that’s about it.  I think their office is downstairs somewhere.”

“Yeah,” said Joshua.  “It’s impressive, if you get the chance to see it you should!”

“I hope I don’t,” said Sheila.  “Well, you could ask Facilities then, but if Security don’t know then I don’t see why Facilities should.”

“Yeah,” said Joshua.  “That’s what I thought too.”  He turned the page of the journal again and discovered that he’d reached the end.  He gathered up his pages of photocopiers and touched his card against the reader again to update the balance and close out his account on the copier. “See you later, then!  I’m going to return this to the library and see if they know who took it out, then I might know who wants me to read this!”

NaNoWriMo Day 12

Jimmy didn’t return while Marie tidied up around the museum and made sure that all the doors and windows were locked.  That was a very quick job as she’d had no reason to open any of them during the day.  Then she checked that the statue was in its display case, put the printout on the desk in the catalogue room, and set the alarms.  Just as she was putting the dirty cups next to the sink, deciding that they could wait until the morning to be washed, a key turned in the lock of the entrance doors and Jimmy came in.

“Still here?” he said, seeing her with the cups in her hands.  “You’re working late tonight!  Don’t tell me we got some visitors in for once!”  He chuckled and rubbed his hands together.

“No,” said Marie.  “That would be nice.  I was just finishing off the cataloguing and didn’t notice the time.”

“What?  Oh, the new statue.  Did you find a place for it that isn’t the fridge?”

Marie forced herself to smile, but knew that there were too many teeth showing.  “Yes, it’s got its own display case and there are plenty of lights on it to keep it warm,” she said.  “It’s in the Northern Hemisphere wing if you’d like to check on it.”

“I’m sure you’ve got it all under control,” said Jimmy.  “And the alarms are probably on by now, aren’t they?”  Marie nodded.  “No point unsetting them and setting them again just to look at an ornament.  I’ll take a look tomorrow, I’ll be in all day.  Then on Thursday I’m off out again, down to London.  I’ve got a meeting with a chap who says he knows a guy who might be able to get us some more stuff.  It’s probably a waste of time, these things usually are.  He’ll have junk, or old bones he’s dug up from a garden somewhere, but now and then you find a little gem in all the shit.”

Marie nodded again, not wanting to join in a conversation that she didn’t really understand.  There was a hint of impropriety here, she was sure.  How could Jimmy know if the stuff wasn’t stolen?

“You look like you want to leave,” said Jimmy.  He patted her shoulder with a large, calloused hand.  “Go on then, have a good evening.  Do something fun!”

He stood in reception watching as she left, and was still watching when she turned back to close the door and lock it from the outside.  She thought that was a bit odd, but also entirely typical of her boss.

The roads were quiet and she was almost all the way home before she stumbled on something.  She looked down, and there was something long and dark, almost hidden in the gloom.  Probably a tree-branch, she thought, and carried on walking.  She stopped again though, whatever it was had caught on her shoe somehow.  She shook her foot, but it didn’t dislodge it, so she tried stamping, and then shaking again, only harder, and still it didn’t come free.  She looked around for something to hold on to so that she could use her other foot to help force it off, but there was nothing.  She looked down again, and then realisation struck her and she looked back around.

There was nothing around her.  No sign of the road, no sign of the pavement she’d been standing on a moment earlier.  No houses in the distance, not even trees or hedges or bushes, or anything.  Just an emptiness that rolled out on all sides around her.  Above her the sky was dark and huge, and she realised that the stars above her looked different.  She turned around, barely feeling the thing dragging at her foot, looking for Orion, but there was no constellation like that anywhere in the sky.  None of the stars up there were in patterns that she recognised.

She squeaked, a tiny little scream automatically muffled because you don’t scream in public, and her breath puffed out in a cloud before her.  Then whatever was gripping her foot shifted of its own accord, and she felt it moving up  and wrapping around her ankle.

Now she screamed, and uncaring of her balance lifted her free foot and stamped down, scraping the heel of her shoe down her ankle and mashing it onto whatever was holding her.  There was a distant hiss like the rush of escaping air from a pressurised bottle.  She stamped again, raking her ankle with her heel some more and whatever was holding her seemed to slacked its grip.  She stamped again and again, her breath coming in tight little gasps, puffs of white escaping from her and drifting off into the still, foreign air.

There was a sensation of sliding, as though the world had been waiting just out of sight, round a hidden corner, and the road and pavement and houses all came back as though they’d never been away.  She stumbled, surprised, and her foot tore free from what was obviously just a tree branch, woody and thorny.  Behind her someone cursed her for not looking where she was going, and she turned, so relieved to see another human being that she didn’t care that all she saw was their back as they angrily marched on their way, muttering about people who had no manners.

She looked around, making sure that everything was where it was supposed to be again, and then ran the rest of the way home.