Black Monster

Professor Atkins stood infront of the stick thin man who seemed to be made all of joints jutting out at angles. He looked so young probably the same age as his grandson. It made it more annoying to think that he once looked like that himself though not with the huge whole in his ears – did the boy realise how much the things already stuck out? Emphasising was not a good idea.

‘Floppys?’ he said supprised looking at the black flat plastic square in his hand. ‘No wonder the front desk couldn’t help you! I don’t think the college has the equipment to deal with this.’ The old mans shoulders slumped, he wasn’t quiet sure why it seemed so important but something about the girls wounds had reminded him of what he’d found in the Orical of the Dead. And most of that was on the floppies, they had destroyed his journals but they couldn’t erase his memory nor the information he’d gleaned from others who had not been caught at the site.

‘What’s on them?’ the boy asked.

‘Archeological stuff, field notes and things,’ he said.

‘Hmmm and there your only copy?’ the boy had not made eye contact with him once.

‘yes it was the back up.’ the professor blushed – how many times did he rant at students about making sure you had multiple back-ups

‘Ah! I see,’ he sighed =, it was a sort of whistly sound. ‘I can’t officially do anything but I have this mate,’ the professor groaned.

‘No not like that!’ the boy suddenly beaned a huge geniun smile. ‘He belongs to this place called a Hack Space a sort of community that have lumped resources to get equipment and things. He’s been trying to get me to go along and I think this sort of thing might be right up their street. It’s a bit before my time to be honest – you need a data archeologist!’ The professor looked at him a little vacantly trying to catch up with the line of logic.

‘Erm, you will be careful with it wont you?’ he shouldn’t really entrust it to this kid but he was at a loss as to what else to do, he supposed he could just hand it over to the young officer but he didn’t know if she could really be trusted nor if she would have access to the sorts of resources needed to read the date.

‘Of course! Now I think reading the data off of them shouldn’t be that hard – someone is bound to have a device to do that but flopies were really bad for data decay and that I don’t know much about but I’m sure one of Eds friends will.’ The boy was enthusiastic about the project, the anticipation was almost visible.

‘Ok then’ he said making the hard decission, he handed over a box of floppies only hesitating slightly. ‘When do you think you’ll have some results for me?’

‘Well I’ll tag along with him tonight – it’s their social, allowed to bring friends along night so I’ll ask but I’m sure how things work at these places. I’ll email you’ And Atkins knew he had been dismissed in a way that had not happened in about 30 years. Bizarly it cheered him up. He put his hand in his pocket and smoothed his gnarled fingers over the smoothe glass of the glitter ring, he wondered if he should show that to the boy, but it seemed ludicrous so he muttered thankyou and left.

He tottered back to his room of rock and bitter cheap coffee, a small study group was in there. They bearly looked up at him as he passed, a glance at the table showed false coloured images he recognised as Olympus Mons and other such geological things from Mars and Titian and a host of other bodies. He took a better look at the group and realised it was a half term school thing – he couldn’t remember the names for them. But it would be a mix of teenagers from various places taking advantage of some free advanced education in the hope that they could then get the scores and the financial backing to go to the University. They lost a lot of the candidates to other Universities but they tended to come back as post graduates or lecturers so it was a good investment.

One girl he noted in dungerees was intensly studying the images, she looked so serious it was comical on her delicate elf like face. She looked up at him suddenly blushed as if caught doing something wrong and reached for another image. ‘You may take one image home with you’ said the session leader, there was a mad scrabble and the girl he noted had somehow ended up with two. Which she disgreetly placed in her bag. She almost jumped when the session leader tapped her on the shoulder evidently thinking she was caught. ‘That was an amazing question you asked about wheather there was ice tectonics going on on that moon which year are you in?’

’10’ the girl said blushing furiously. The professor calculated that made her what? 14-15 evidently the session leader was taken aback too. ‘My Form tutor thought these sessions would be a good idea’ she said timidly.

‘Are you thinking of doing Earth Sciences when you go to Uni?’

This was the wrong question the girl looked ready to cry, ‘I… I don’t know if I can go, depends on money’ she shrugged in an attempt at nonchalance – it didn’t work.

‘Well there are grants and things I’m sure tutors and people will help you if you work hard. Are you doing any other sessions this week?’ The professor was impressed with the session leaders people skills the girls face had brightened up.

‘I’m going to the Archeology and Art History session tomorrow!’ she pipped, Atkins looked at the girl a bit more closely, she’d been in one of the summer school sessions he’d lead, she’d been a quiet stuttery person who only asked questions when you were next to her, no putting your hand up or joining in group discussions. But the questions she had asked were amazing.

‘I’ll see you tomorrow then!’ he said automatically. The girl looked frightened for a moment but then smiled shyly at him, ‘I loved your talk on Dionysis being a metaphor for Jesus in those paintings, I.. I.. I…m g..going to put it in a story.’

‘I’ll brings some papers along for you to read on the subject then’ he said it without really processes the conversation, it would be about half an hours work in his over crowded scedule but he needed to look at those papers anyway.

‘Thankyou,’ she said and scuttled off.

Posted: Wednesday, November 21st, 2012 @ 8:29 pm
Categories: Uncategorized.
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