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mystery

By TheoPublished about a year ago 6 min read
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The aroma of hot coffee invigorated the old bones of Arknun. Het set content on his porch outlook gazing at the airway traffic in front of his house. The old vintage quilt kept him much warm more then he would have guessed. Back in the day they really built things to do their proper job. He sipped the black liquid letting it seep into his joints like oil on old rusted joints. He really enjoyed this form of caffeine far more than the common pills and energy injections.

He gazed past the force field to the traffic of flying cars and small planes, his mind occupied. After centuries of being alive he still found himself surprised at how often mind wandered to things others found minute and irrelevant. For example, of the twenty-five billion people on earth, how many of them thought about coffee? Probably less than percent. Most of them probably don’t know what coffee is. It used to be a billion-dollar industry in its peak before the pills came out and in a mere night all but bankrupted the entire coffee industry.

His eyes glanced up into the traffic; his lips all but glued to the rim of the cup. A drone was making his way towards him. Twirling in the small air vortexes of the cars and other machines passing in terrible speeds. It reminded him of an old lady making her way through traffic as young kids ran around her unaware of the ancient treasure of knowledge that was one bump or nudge from disappearing.

Hmmm his mind told him. Drone where all but extinct, since the drone wars it seems. The hackers made it dangerous to own a drone. The speed of a drone being hacked and the time it took to kamikaze into a house or vehicle was instantaneous. With that reason after years of people dying drone were banned from being made. So, the fact that drone was approaching his floating house had Arknun curious to its reason.

With a wave the drone passed through the force field. It flew up to him. For second he though” hmmm maybe this is the end”. The drone dropped the package and flew away. He glanced down at the box shaped package and up at the retreating drone only to smashed to smithereens. “Well, well, well” the word flew through his mind. “Apparently the owner doesn’t want me to know who sent the package. He looked down at the package again. He got an ominous feeling from it.

His finger itched to open it, but his mind was a bit stronger. There was a reason he had lived as long as he hand and that wasn’t because he rushed into things. Curiosity killed the cat, wasn’t that was the old saying. The one that made kids follow the order of parents and adults without inquiring. That was days of old. He was no longer a kid he could think for himself. The package talked to him called in ever language he knew. It called him in a child voice to open him up. It asked him in old Latin to open him. It asked him in German, Russian, Japanese, and old language of nostalgia to open up. Finally in the ancient language of love he was moved to remove the tape. Inside he found an ancient leather journal, or it seemed to be like but once he picked it up it turned out to be nothing more then a modern book.

Publisher a while back found a way to mees with people perception when it came to reading. Books like any product was at the mercy of capitalism and with that in mind the book business came into the tech world with their book of endless pages technic. They created at translucent paper of which you could write as much as you want but to the reader it’d look like your barley started. It allowed the publishers to sell books all in the same volume without the reader realizing how big they were and so when they bought it, they were unaware hoe long the book was and to it came to be a surprise to by a book. in response the stock of books went up.

He gazed at the book of endless in his hands. He didn’t realize that he had picked up the book. It had no cover no voice. The leather felt nice between his fingers. He shouldn’t open it he knew, or at least a part of his brain knew but at this point the curious part had taken reign and he didn’t know that he could stop even of he had wanted to. With his thumb he piled back the cover. Nothing. He turned the next page. Arknun. He turned the next page.

“It wasn’t till the age of five that I cold remember the date of event. It was a backyard feast and my pet dog Evan was turning on the spit. I guess with event like that one loses his innocence. Arknun dropped the book, his book. Frozen on the porch the muted volume of the cars passing by.

He had heard of it. his adversity. his supposed enemy told him he would make it. complete but he had never believed it. This was it. Actual book of life and death. He laughed. This could be it. He laughed louder. This was a joke just so that he would be sacred. He picked the book and opened it to a random date.

“He ran from the gunman hi voice pounding hard. He would not die too tonight. he was meant for more.” He remembers that day. But he had talked about that frighting day to many. he notices the date of that memory and flipped through the book till he came to the current one. “After a good morning of sipping coffee sitting on his rocking chair on the overlook of is cabin, he got a call from his child” the phone rang and he dropped the book again. With slight shake of his hand, he picked up the phone.

Hello?

“Hey dad”, the voice was old. “I just wanted wish you a happy birthday.” They talked about the weather the government and anything else what would give them time to be in company of each other since they had little else to talk about. After twenty minute he put the phone down. With growing fear he picked up the book. He came to the page he was at. “The kid talked about till to nothing just wish to have a conversation with me because I never gave him much of anything when I was alive. All he wanted was my attention and I never gave it when I busy and now, I was retired I didn’t know how.”

The book fell from his grasp. So, it was true. It had happened. Life was finally mapped. That did not freeze him as much as his subconscious mind written down for all to see. Hi kid wanted his time. He turned for the phone he should call him, talk to him, make up for all those lost years…. But he had lived this long for a reason. The end of book would tell his mortality something he had always run from. He sat back down in his chair his mind torn between his future and his past.

Mystery
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