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“My goodness, Father Sheehan, you’re up early,” said BrightAngel cheerfully, as her colleague and fellow Machinist operative strolled into the base cafeteria. “I know, I know, you’re not a priest anymore, so don’t call you Father,” she continued, before he could say anything, and took a big bite of her breakfast. “So *John*, you’re up early. What could have possibly gotten you out of your bunk before noon?”
“You’re awfully perky this morning,” he replied, unable to keep from smiling, even at this (ungodly) early hour. “And you should know why I’m up. The new supply shipment came in last night, and I want some of that fresh coffee before Lyr drinks it all.” He paused. “She hasn’t drank it all yet, has she?”
“Don’t worry, she hasn’t even been down here yet.” BrightAngel said, pushing what passed as a coffeepot towards him. “She’s probably still geeking out over that package she got.”
“Package?”
“Yeah, it came with the rest of the supplies.” She stirred the food around on her plate, then took another bite. “From what I heard, the Machines were searching through some of the ruins on the surface, looking for Zionites and EPeeners. They didn’t find anyone, but they did find some old stuff that wasn’t too damaged in the war, and they brought some of it back.”
He blinked. “What, did Lyr teach the sentinels to ninja loot?”
BrightAngel laughed. “I dunno. After they sorted through it, I guess someone found something they thought Lyr would like. I guess. I mean, who knows why they do anything they do?” She took another bite of the not-quite-eggs. “She was on the radio last night thanking someone – or knowing her, something – for it. She sounded really happy.”
He nodded, as he poured himself a cup of the newly-delivered fresh coffee. “What was in the package?”
“A book.”
“A book?”
BrightAngel snorted. “Yeah, some old geology 101 textbook. Can you believe it? She was nose-deep in it all last night, except when she’d come running out of the recreation room to tell us how the moon isn’t always full, or that hotspots drift, or that Mars had sedimentary rocks, whatever the hell that means. I mean, she’s a geologist, shouldn’t she know all that stuff already?” she asked. “I swear, it’s like when ReProgrammed and Sneaker start talking about astrophysics.” She rolled her eyes. “’The Boring World of Niels Bohr? *That* sounds interesting!’” She grinned. “Y’know, I really wanted to take that book and hit her over the head with it.”
“Well, like you said, Lyr was a geologist as a bluepill,” he offered, taking a sip of his coffee. “And hitting her over the head with it wouldn’t be a good idea. That book’s probably hundreds, maybe almost a thousand years old, and it might be damaged if it connected with that thick skull of hers.”
BrightAngel shook her head. “Nah, the pages are made from some kind of recycled plastic polymer, not paper -- it looks brand new. Lyr said it’s from right before the Man-Machine war, though. Hey, I guess humanity got off its ass about recycling and conservation by then, too bad we had to go and screw up the planet in a whole new way.”
The ex-priest raised an eyebrow. “The book was from right before the start of the war, you say?”
“Yep. ”
“I see.” He paused for a moment, then took a second cup and filled it. He had a good idea where he would find the hovercraft captain, and it wasn’t in her quarters. “I’ll see you later. I’m going to see if Lyr would like some coffee.”
He was right. He found Illyria in the first place he looked – the same rec room BrightAngel said she was in last night. She obviously hadn’t been back to her quarters…she was fast asleep on a couch, the book still grasped loosely in her hands. On the low table in front of her were the notes she’d taken before falling asleep. Curious, he set the two cups on the table, then began to read.
Lyr’s first notes were rather dry...information on convection in the mantle, new fossils discovered, that sort of thing. Things that normally would be of little interest to him, if it wasn’t for the list of dates that followed each line of text.
All were dated after 1999.
“So, BrightAngel, I guess she really didn’t ‘know all that stuff already’,” he mused, turning the page. As he read further into her notes, he found the topics were becoming more interesting (in his estimation), and the writing less neat. Here were things Lyr obviously thought were of greater importance -- evidence of ancient oceans on Mars, hydrocarbon lakes on one of Saturn’s moons, planets revolving around other stars. The recovery of actual tissue from bones that were millions of years old. Gene sequencing on ice age mammals buried in permafrost. Proof that birds were the descendents of dinosaurs. Each item had a citation of chapter and page, and again, each was dated to 2000 AD or later. Some had multiple exclamation points after them. But it was the next section of her notes that really caught his attention.
Historical Events.
In a reference to the textbook’s chapter on natural disasters, there was information on a hurricane that had flooded the city of New Orleans in 2005. The death toll and damages were staggering, but they weren't nearly as bad as those of an earthquake and tsunami in Indonesia during 2004. There were multiple listings for these natural disasters, but what was worse – much worse, even though the actual death tolls were lower – were the notes for the text’s chapter on environmental hazards that were man-made. Deaths from long-term effects of chemicals and radiation were horrible, but what struck him most was an account of a terrorist attack in 2001 New York, something that had killed several thousand people that day, and then many more as the long-term effects of the airborne toxins did their damage.
“Bloody religious fanatics,” he muttered, then winced. But he hadn’t woken her up; Illyria was still sleeping peacefully on the couch. He looked down at the textbook, still in her hands…it was open to a page that showed a picture of the full moon, but the pattern of light craters and dark ‘seas’ didn’t look quite like those on the moon he knew.
He wondered, briefly, if whoever had given her this gift had known what he was doing – that he’d given her and the rest of the redpills a little piece of their lost history back.
He picked up his cup and quietly slipped out the door, not wanting to disturb her. The Machines documented everything. Of course they knew.