Kairn’s Cause

Kairn’s clothes clung to his shivering body as he watched a car slowly pull away from the gate he was overlooking. It was a miserable night. The black sedan slowly pulled down the long drive with its wipers on full blast in an effort to battle the downpour. It did as much good as the poncho Kairn chose to wear for this excursion.

Kairn had been waiting patiently in his hiding spot for a few hours now, none of which were dry, and he was looking forward to finding some warmth. He knew he would find it in the two story cottage being assaulted by rain in front of him, but the owner was taking his time in leaving. In that time Kairn had been going over the plan in his mind to calm his anxieties.

Get in. Get the book. Get out.

None of these objectives should be particularly difficult to complete, and though he did not expect any surprises, still something was troubling him. This job seemed too easy, and too well paid. The e-mail from his contact with The Servicers seemed normal enough. All he had to do was snatch the artifact in that house beyond the low stone fence before him.

When researching the owner of the artifact and the estate that he had to infiltrate to get it, Kairn was puzzled. The $20,000 reward for this Service seemed exceptionally high when, by all appearances, the man he was about to steal from was just a moderately wealthy farmer. No security detail, and no security system. This guy didn’t even own a dog! It really was going to be a cakewalk if all went to plan.

Kairn could just make out the tail lights of the sedan through the curtain of water around him. As it turned on to the main road, Kairn slowly raised himself from his hiding spot. He took a moment to stretch his aching joints and brush the debris from his clothes. Not that he needed to. The water cascading down his poncho left no dirt or grass behind. With one more look down the end of the driveway, Kairn gave himself the all clear and began moving toward the glistening stone wall.

The barrier was only about chest high and made of large river stones. Kairn jumped it easily. Landing softly in a crouch on the other side, he took a quick look around the immediate area to get his bearings. It was maybe forty feet to the house. All of it open yard from the fence to the back door of the stone structure.

“Too easy”, Kairn whispered to himself.

He could picture heinous traps buried beneath the soft well managed lawn. He firmly pushed the image of a deviously placed landmine blowing him to bits out of his mind as he broke into a run towards the house. He knew he didn’t need to run. The house should have been empty. Even if it wasn’t, the rainfall was too heavy to see the yard from the windows of the house at this time of night. He didn’t want to admit it, but Kairn was eager to put distance between himself and the possibly booby-trapped lawn.

As Kairn covered the last few yards to the back door, a motion light came on above it. Still in a full run he quickly ducked and threw himself to the side. He knew the light was there and that it was not a concern to him, but he was so lost in thought about falling into a concealed pit of spikes, snakes or something of that sort, that the light caught him off guard, so he acted on instinct. He cursed himself as he stood up and walked calmly to the back door, letting the rain do its work in removing the debris. As he stepped onto the back patio and up to the door, Kairn made a quick check for any cameras he may have missed in his research of the property. All was in order.

“Easy,” he thought as he reached for the doorknob and gave it a twist. It was locked,”but not too easy.”

Kairn smiled too himself that there was finally a set-back. Even if it was a very minor set-back, it eased his nerves a little. He reached under his poncho and pulled out a set of lock picks. Within seconds the door was open. Kairn quickly stepped into the house and closed the door quietly. Occupied or not, he didn’t see any reason to make excess noise.

After taking a moment to make sure there were no sounds of movement in the house, Kairn began going over the layout of the house in his mind. Currently he was in the kitchen. There was an archway directly in front of him that led to the dining area. He could just recognize the dark outline of a table with a chair pushed underneath it through the doorway. On the wall to his right stood the archway he needed. This one opened into a hall that led down the back of the cottage to another hallway and a set of stairs leading up to the bedrooms and study. This is where he would find the artifact.

Confident that he had the path correctly laid out in his head, Kairn moved to put the lock picks back in his pocket. As he fought the poncho for access to his vests utility pockets, Kairn saw movement in his peripherals. He started with a gasp, and the lock picks hit the tile floor with a loud clatter. The cat that had walked into the kitchen and startled him froze in place for a split second. With eyes wide and tail fluffed straight up, the feline suddenly turned and tried to run for an exit, but its soft paws could find little traction on the cold tile. Finally after much effort the feline slid-ran its way to the dining room doorway and disappeared.

After agonizing minutes of careful listening, Kairn was confident there was truly no one in the house. He allowed himself a hearty chuckle as he reached down for the lock picks, stowed them away and made his way to the door on the right. Once through the doorway, Kairn made his way down the hall as swiftly as he could without actually jogging. The hallway ended and turned left, leading to another hallway with a set of stairs running halfway along its outside wall. It was these that Kairn now jogged to. A sense of eagerness washed over him as he took the steps two at a time. All thought of being caught was absent from his mind.

As he reached the top of the stairs. He turned to his right and looked down a long hallway that ran down the middle of the second floor. Doors lined the hallway leading to spare rooms or bathrooms. One of these doors led to the study. “Fourth door on the left”,Kairn recited to himself thoughtfully. He quickly walked down the hallway, counting doors as he went. Finally standing before the door that led to $20,000, Kairn reached for the door handle, twisted, and pushed into the room.

The room was set up as you would imagine a typical home office would be. There were a couple armchairs strategically placed under floor lamps for easier reading. An antique looking globe sat atop an oak end table in the corner. Directly across from the doorway was an old weathered desk nestled under the window. Kairn crossed the room in a few strides to stand over the desk. The window in front of him was closed thankfully, but the curtains were open, showing the continued deluge beyond the glass panes. The artifact he was looking for should be somewhere here. It would not be hard to recognize once he found it. People stopped using these kinds of things decades ago.

Kairn did not want to make more of a mess than he had to so he left the clutter on the desk alone, and opted to search the drawers first. He was able to end his search with the opening of the second drawer. He dried his hands thoroughly before reaching into the drawer and gently lifting out the artifact. It seemed like such an odd thing to warrant such a high reward. In his hands Kairn held one of maybe 60 surviving notebooks in all of North America. Most paper products had undergone forced-recycling at the start of the Electro-Revolution, when the world turned away from its clear cutting habits. There was an astronomical tax on any paper product now, and had been ever since the infinite power plant was constructed in Guadalajara.

Turning the small black book over in his hands, he could feel the soft leather cover slide over his skin with a surprising familiarity. On the back, stamped in gold lettering was the brand name. Kairn recognized it as the same brand of his E-Note+. As he looked again at the soft leather cover and lightly ran his fingers over the spine, Kairn realized that the leather used to make this little black notebook was the same type used on the brand’s “E-Note” books. They must have kept their signature binding when they were forced to go digital due to the tax.

Before placing the book in a water-proof bag, Kairn dared to open the notebook and take a deep breath from within its soft white pages. “You can’t get that from a screen,” he said to himself dreamily as he bagged the artifact and made his his way out of the room and down the hall to the stairs. He was halfway down to the first floor when he stepped on something soft, heard a yowl, and lost his footing on the step. He went ass over tea kettle to end up crumpled in a heap at the bottom of the staircase.

He came to a few minutes later. The cat that apparently wanted him dead was licking the blood trickling down the side of his head. He shooed the cat away and stood up to do a damage check. Besides the small cut on his scalp he seemed to be relatively okay, if a little sore. He checked to make sure the artifact was undamaged before heading back to the kitchen. The cat followed him, now confident that the intruder did not pose a threat. As he reached the back door, he stooped down to rub a knuckle between the felines alert ears before stepping through the door and locking it on the way out into the stormy night.

Hours later, after delivering the book to the buyer and receiving his payment, Kairn found himself pulling into a familiar parking lot. The storm had not ceased, but his spirits couldn’t be higher, as he stepped out of the vehicle and entered the lobby. The nurse at the front desk smiled in recognition as he walked up to the desk to sign in.

“Good evening Mr. Jains. Nasty storm out tonight. They say we may even get a flood down by Hopper’s Creek if this keeps up.”

“It definitely wasn’t a fun drive,” Kairn replied with a warm smile, “How has she been the last few days? I have been away for work so I haven’t been in for a bit.”

The nurse stood up from her chair to hand him his visitor pass, “She has her ups and downs. Not much change to be honest with you sweetie. She asks about you often though” She sat back down and poured him a cup of coffee from the pot on her desk, “How was your work trip anyways?”

Kairn grinned tiredly, “It was very lucrative. I may actually make headway with some of these medical bills.”

He accepted the coffee and thanked the sympathetic nurse politely before turning down the hall that lead to his dying mother’s room.