Old Files

Eldorado. Tanja knew that this term had come up in the investigations of her colleagues already. She had searched the database at the police station without any result. Then she went to the old data storage, which today had a lonely and dusty existence right next to the janitor's storeroom. Tanja had to remove a few stackable chairs and an expired box of freeze-dried donuts to get to the large piece of equipment which occupied a large portion of the room. One of the ceiling lamps flickered. Tanja wiped the dust off the little screen with her sleeve, but it stayed dark. Then she remembered that this piece of technology was from a time before Flux batteries. She reached behind the thing and managed to fish a long cable which she connected to a socket in the wall. The light flickered again, but the data storage was now definitely on. Tanja had to connect her pad with the data storage manually to gain access. It was all very retro. It took some time to get any connection at all and the system was awfully slow.

When she typed in 'Eldorado' the screen froze for a few seconds, but then there was something. A short note about a detective Harshvardhan Gokhale who went to investigate 'suspicious goings on' at the building site of Eldorado. He was there under-cover, no less. There were a few short reports about him following people. Someone found dead. A request for an autopsy. A short note about having found something 'incredible'. Then nothing.

Tanja frowned. This was not satisfactory. On the other hand it seemed to be proof that Eldorado was real or had been real at some time, at least. The reports were from 134 years ago. She sighed, disconnected her pad and turned off the old data storage device. The light flickered a last time before she turned it off and left. There was one last thing she wanted to try.

A short time later, Tanja exited the tramway at the ring-road which surrounded the city center of Katastropolis. She got out at Memorial Square, where some tourists were crowding around the sculpture of the great catastrophe. The tour guide held up a colourful umbrella. It was its only purpose. It never rained in Katastropolis, of course.

This was one of the better areas of the city, with its typical expressive facades of coloured concrete, partly decorated with tiles of elaborate design. The air smelled of food from the street vendors at the nearby market and the fist dinner guests headed to a variety of restaurants and bars in the area.

Tanja made a sharp turn left at the 25/7 supermarket and after a few minutes of walking she reached a doorway, like a funnel of stone leading into the hill on which the inner district was built. There was a black metal plate on one wall saying 'City Archives' in large, bold letters. She entered through a heavy steel door, which led her into an entrance hall. The walls around her seemed like they were carved into the reddish stone on which the city was built. To her left there was a large room - only parted from the entrance hall through a row of heavy stone pillars - where people were sitting at desks, using work stations or actually looking though paper copies of something.

Between the entry and a large doorway leading further into the hill, there was a reception desk. It was occupied by a middle-aged woman with curly hair. After a few minutes of standing at the desk and watching the receptionist type something while not being recognized, Tanja had enough and waved her warrant card in front of her eyes.

The receptionist looked up and frowned.

'What do you want?' she said.

'I called an hour ago. I have an appointment with Professor Klein, would you please tell him I am here?'

The receptionist made a face, but called Professor Klein, who showed up just a few minutes later. He was a tall elderly man in a crumpled emerald suit.

'I am glad you called,' he said, as he led Tanja through a large doorway at the back wall, right next to the reception desk, 'you are here at exactly the right time. Who would have thought?'

The way led them over a walkway with glass walls on both sides. It went through a large room filled with rows of large, shining black boxes. Each of them emitted a purple light through a narrow groove at about half their height. They were marked with numbers.

'This is our main data storage. You could say it is the brain of the city. Unfortunately the search words you gave me brought no results at all. None.'

He briskly led her to the large iron door at the end of the walkway.

'But you are lucky,' he opened the door, 'one of our students stumbled upon something while doing research not long ago. We found it very curious, but didn't have the time to give it a closer inspection so far.'

Tanja stepped through the door and suddenly found herself in a large, high hall with high, narrow corridors on both sides. There were 3 storeys of narrow iron walkways running along the stone walls into which – so it seemed – shelves were carved. These shelves were filled with an unimaginable amount of old books, storage boxes, folders, various data storage devices and other things she couldn't quite comprehend. Light was coming through large, circular windows in the ceiling and additionally cast-iron wall lamps were mounted around the shelves.

Professor Klein led Tanja up the stairs to the 2nd walkway. They crossed a bridge over one corridor, then another, then followed the third corridor. On the way he pointed out various first editions, rare items and other things he obviously found quite amazing. Somewhere he picked up a banana peel from the floor and absentmindedly put it into his pocket.

At the end of the corridor, Professor Klein looked at a couple of boxes for a moment, tracing their labels with his index finger as he read. Finally, he had found what he was looking for, took a rather battered small box from the shelf and held it for Tanja, who opened the lid.

'We don't have any record of where this box came from. It doesn't even exist in our files. It may even have been here for as long as the archives have existed.'

Inside the box there was a strange metal object of irregular shape, with some unfamiliar symbols on it. Tanja had not the slightest idea what it was. There was also a transparent orb which was half filled with some gelatinous mass in which a tiny plant seemed to grow. It didn't look dead, it must have survived in there for a very long time. Under these two items there were some folded sheets of paper. One seemed to be a hand drawn plan of a city and directions. One was filled with various sketches of strange looking interiors and items. Lastly there was also a small book with a colourful pattern on its cover. Tanja opened the first page.

'The deceased Henry Morgenstern's grandmother,' Tanja mumbled to herself, 'now isn't that a coincidence?'

She opened the diary at a random page and went on reading...

24

Tavaron

01.05.23 Front Page

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