Frequently, they heard the leaning grey obstruction crack under its own weight. If they were quiet, Otto and Hedwig could make out the tiny, sifting sound of sandy debris tumbling from the crevasse they’d hewn in the wall’s base.
“Uh, Otto?” said Hedwig. “While we wait…”
“Yes?” said Otto.
“Could we please explore this place?”
“My thought exactly,” said Otto.
Otto and Hedwig followed the beam of their flashlights across the floor’s empty expanse until they reached a solid, beige wall. They followed the wall and found a door. Hedwig grabbed the handle and pulled. The door rattled but it would not open.
“Disappointing,” said Hedwig.
Hedwig ran the beam of his flashlight up and down the wall as he and Otto followed it further. A glare hit Hedwig’s eye and he lifted his hand to block it. The glare was from his own flashlight, a reflection. Just ahead, the beige wall turned to glass. Hedwig hurried and Otto followed. Otto reared and placed his paws against the glass. Hedwig rubbed at it with the sleeve of his shirt. Neither could make out what lie beyond the pane.
“Ah!” said Hedwig.
Further along there was an opening in the glass. Hedwig and Otto shot through. Flashbeams danced madly around the inside of the newly discovered compartment. The room was filled with rows and rows of shelves, and on the shelves, a countless variety of items. It appeared to be some kind of collection. Each spot on a shelf was home to ten, a dozen identical duplicates of the same item. On a table in the back was some ancient form of typewriter. Otto attacked the thing immediately, but could do nothing to make it live. His eyes wide, Hedwig wandered the rows of mystery. He told Otto to give up on the typewriter and join him. This, then that, then some new wonder caught his attention. Hedwig stopped. Many of the items, he realized, were branded with the same set of letters. Hedwig read to himself, moving his lips.
“I know where we are!” he said.
“You do?” said Otto.
“Mm, a lot of these things appear to have a sort of brand on them,” said Hedwig. “It’s the same on just about every one.”
“Can you translate?” said Otto
“Yes. You, uh, you won’t believe it. As near as I can make out, it says, ‘Seventh Museum of Western History.’”
“That’s fantastic,” said Otto.
“I can’t believe our luck,” said Hedwig. “This room must be a kind of storage area for artifacts not currently on display.”
“Yes,” said Otto. “That would explain why everything has one of these numbered stickers on it instead of a name and description.”
“Mm, nine decimal ninety-nine means nothing to us but it must have uh, told the museum workers everything they needed to know.”
“That typewriter,” said Otto, “is the only piece of technology in here. You’d be better off in the public section of the museum too; it’ll have explanatory plaques. I say we find it.”
Otto persuaded Hedwig they should check on their half-demolished wall first. They did. The wall was still standing and the exit was still blocked up. Otto and Hedwig struck off in a new direction, pouring over the dark stretch with their flashlights. Hedwig’s beam fell half on a familiar-looking beige wall, and half on black, empty space. He played the light up, down, and around the edge of the wall. It was an entrance, wide and tall, possibly the gate to an entire wing of the museum. Hedwig’s light fixed on something new. Above the entryway hung a single character that needed no translation. Over the centuries (at least) it had maintained a bright, red color. It dangled, slightly askew, suspended from the ceiling by wire.
?
It was a question mark. Otto and Hedwig exchanged a look. They walked under the question mark and through the entryway into the hall beyond. Decaying velvet ropes bordered their path. On the other side of each rope was a series of evenly spaced pedestals. Displayed on the pedestals was the stuff of dreams – fantastic artifact after unknowable relic after treasure beyond reckoning. To Otto’s delight, every last one appeared at least vaguely technological. The pedestals did have plaques, but instead of names and descriptions, each piece of engraved metal displayed a date and what Hedwig assumed was either the discoverer’s name or the location where the piece was discovered.
Des Moines
1246
Trenton
1348
Etcetera
XXXX
Hedwig speed-walked through the museum, turning his flashlight everywhere at once. Otto moved much more deliberately. He picked up and inspected each exhibit, opening it if possible. Most he returned to their pedestals. Some he set on the ground beside the velvet rope. A few, or parts of a few, he brought with him. Before long Hedwig left Otto behind.
Hedwig moved his mind at incredible speed, filling his memory with an amazing array of strange shapes, years, and name-dates. There were more gadgets, doo-dads, and whatsits then he could imagine uses for. The path came to an end, or rather, it branched out into three new paths. Hedwig decided to turn back and find Otto. On his way, he took in the exhibits a second time.
Hedwig heard a clinking, rattling sound. He stopped.
“Otto?” Hedwig said.
“Over here,” said Otto.
Hedwig continued down the path and found Otto hunched over several apparent pieces of technology.
“They, uh, do call it dead technology for a reason,” said Hedwig. “And you should know better than to do this kind of thing on-site, without documenting it first.”
“My guess is, once we turn this stuff over to the Neishoe Corporation, we’ll never see it again,” said Otto. “And it isn’t dead technology if I fix it.”
Hedwig sat on the ground beside Otto. He placed his flashlight down on its side and so it lit up the general area.
“Not possible,” said Hedwig.
“No?” said Otto.
Otto held up a largish, yellowish, dull metal bar and two circular metal bands. On the bar, and on each of the two rings, there were a couple tiny things that looked like light bulbs. Hedwig stopped breathing. The bulbs were blinking. They were lighting up.
“It’s alive!” said Hedwig.
“I wouldn’t want to try it out, but if I pressed down on this,” Otto pointed to part of the metal bar which apparently performed the function of a button, “something would definitely happen.”
“Wow, I mean, it’s actually alive,” said Hedwig.
“According to the Murti book I found at the H&L site, this is a rool,” said Otto. “It was used to help interpersonal decision making.”
“Come on, show me,” said Hedwig.
“Alright,” said Otto.
He popped open a compartment in the larger, bar piece of the rool and slid out a long, black rectangle that showed metal on either end.
“This is the power supply,” Otto said. “I transferred it from another piece of ancient technology. I’m taking it out so we don’t have any accidents. Shouldn’t have had the thing in at all, but I couldn’t help myself.”
Otto set the power supply on the ground.
“Now, you put this on your leg,” he said.
Otto handed one of the metal hoops to Hedwig. It had a hinge on one side, a hook and a loop on the other. Hedwig opened and closed the ring a couple times, then locked it in place down around his ankle.
“And I put this one on my leg,” said Otto.
He clamped the other bracelet around one of his own legs.
“Mm, not a bad fit,” said Hedwig.
“Then we press down on this area and the machine activates,” said Otto.
“Why can’t we try it?” said Hedwig. “We should use it to decide, uh, how about what I’m going to have for dinner tonight?”
“We won’t try it because I don’t know which way the power supply goes in,” said Otto. “The replacement I found doesn’t have any markings.”
“Huh, so that’s some kind of problem?” said Hedwig.
“If I put the supply in the wrong way, power will
flow into the device the wrong way,” said Otto. “These things aren’t usually designed to handle that. I have no idea how a rool works so we won’t risk it. The technology inside could short out, or it could overheat, or slag, or do something completely unexpected. The point is, I don’t know.”
“Hm,” said Hedwig. “Too bad.”
“I have another gadget that we can try out,” said Otto.
“You- you do?” said Hedwig.
“I’ve never even heard of anything like it,” said Otto.
Otto set the bar part of the rool on the ground between himself and Hedwig, beside the power supply. He reached back and brought out a long, thin rectangle with a triangle fixed to one end. The whole thing was translucent. The rectangle was two and a half feet long, six inches wide, and one inch deep. The triangle, which came out of one of the rectangle’s short sides, was six inches wide at the base where it connected to the rectangle, ten inches tall, and half an inch deep.
“That’s, you mean, you’re telling me it works? Now? For us?” said Hedwig.
“You know what it is?” said Otto.
“Maybe, yes. Show me what it does,” said Hedwig.
Otto searched the ground. He picked out a square, metal housing and a jagged piece of glass from a broken display case and set both neatly one beside the other. The rest of the debris, Otto swept from the immediate area. Hedwig watched, more excited even than he let on. Otto shouldered the ancient device and pointed the triangle’s tip at the cube of metal. A six-colored light shone from the edge of the triangle and lit up the cube. It strobed, then went off. Otto turned the triangle on the piece of glass. It too