CHAPTER 11
Paranoid Workers and Paper Jams
The library was huge and almost as large as the military base itself. It had three marvelous marble covered floors and about ten separate wings only in the main building. Several other branches weaved off of it into a maze of knowledge and literature. The Colonel deposited the two girls at the front desk near the Librarian and made his way into the archives. The Victorian sisters were not allowed into the lower levels or east wing and branches for they were built specifically for military uses. Several passageways, that John used frequently, lead from the main base to separate sections of the library. The girls poked around a bit getting a few harsh glares and hushed whispers from the workers in the almost empty library. The Librarian looked quite irked whenever they'd walk by sending a shock wave of whispers along with them.
Riven inhaled the smell of musty pages and old leather to which only the avid reader would proudly claim to enjoy. She searched around the library for the Alchemy section and pulled out several books that seemed important, under read, and interesting. By several books being the minimum for Riven, she managed to read a shelf bare within a half hour, piling the books up in organized categories that can only be decoded by her or a person with very bad structural skills. She skimmed the pages one by one eating up words and diagrams like they were candy. Her sister on the other hand was researching religious history, something that Riven was not too fond of. Fernandina had large mountains similar to hers but they were actually managed in the logical manner of numerical and alphabetical order. The Librarian and other workers loathed in the corners of the library, fearing the time that they would have to clean up the mess that these two girls made. Minutes and hours ticked by on the old grandfather clock and through this neither of the girls even looked up from the pages of their books, yet somehow they managed to move from the shelf aisle to the overly beaten leather chairs. Their piles somehow moved with them as well, making the workers even more paranoid. Fernandina jotted down a couple notes in a tiny leather bound notebook and then tossed her things aside. She took off her helmet and rubbed her uncovered eye in exhaustion. Riven was still actively engaged one against one in her reading.
"Riven," Fernandina sighed as she slouched in her chair. Her white haired sister looked almost heartbroken as she tore her eyes from the book she was reading to listen to her.
"Yes Ferny?" she said, motioning for her to continue. Fernandina let out another tired sigh.
"What was it that you were looking at outside in the Market this afternoon?" she asked her but regretted it as soon as she saw her sister's face. Riven paled instantly in the mere memory of it. That was something that scared Fernandina more than seeing god himself.
"It was," Riven said shakily as she placed her book cautiously on the table nearby. The words seemed to not want to comply with her as she forced them out of her pipes. "I thought I saw Dad," she said quickly almost ashamed of the truth. What seemed like the entire library fell into utter silence. Even the rustle of papers seemed to cease making the new form of quiet take a toll on the girls' ears. Fernandina sat frozen in her chair for a couple of minutes digesting the simple answer that she was given. Their father was dead. He died in the accident a few years ago.
"How is that possible?" she finally asked quietly.
"I don't know. It might have been a trick or illusion, but he looked too real to be that. It all seemed too real, way too real."
"Maybe it was someone who looked like our father. It could have just been a doppelganger of some sort," Fernandina added. Riven nod her head in agreement.
"I guess that was possible. But this whole thing just shocked me so much," she closed.
The clock stroke eight and the Colonel didn't come up from the Archives yet. The girls started to file through the books they had and replace the ones they thought useless to their rightful places. This put the paranoid workers at ease, knowing that the work that they needed to do wasn't all that big. Both the Victorian sisters had a stack of books, about ten each, that they wanted to check out for some light reading later that night. The librarian at the desk looked at them in slight aggravation as he started to catalogue and check out each book individually. That amount of reading would only last a few hours, let alone a day. When the librarian put the last stamp on the books he quickly threw the girls towards the door. With the harsh looks the workers gave them, they thought it best to wait outside.
The Colonel hated paperwork and sifting through the dusty shelves of the Archives was not how he pictured this day would be going. When the vault opened and revealed the massive amounts of paperwork, he was so thankful to have Parkinson to rely on. He made an immediate bee line for the Fire department records, block two, third aisle over. It was probably the most organized of all the aisles he been in. Everything in the civil obedience and homicide case blocks were completely torn apart from constant use and dishevelment. The Fire brigade seemed the type of well-organized people who liked to categorized things by date and case. John, though being strongly agnostic, almost felt like there was a god out there. It took him only a couple of minutes to find the storage boxes with the relative dates that his subordinates gave him. After clearing off the mile thick coat of dust, he opened the box to find it stuffed with clearly tabbed vanilla folders. John almost felt the need to go to Chaplain Petters and tell him he wanted to convert. One by one he thumbed through the tabs, most of them being about match factories and oil trucks and someone named Mrs. McGregor. His fingers however, managed to roll through three boxes with the related dates and nothing came up. Maybe he wasn't going to convert. He started to take boxes off the shelves and sifting through them with lightning speed. The entire block was investigated and nothing about the arson case came up. Colonel started to panic.
Where did that photo come from if the file was nowhere to be found? Did someone tamper with evidence? Was it confiscated to the eyes of the Furher? The Colonel kicked the box he was holding gently across the floor and moped down to the ground. He hated paperwork because there was nothing organized about it. Papers never got to where they were supposed to be, people always lost them, deadlines were never met. His office was the peak example that fueled his hatred for the institutionalized paper system. The only reason why his office got anything done was when Lieutenant Parkinson put a gun up to his head and forced him to file papers for his life. John's eyes grew bigger as the epiphany turned around in his head. That was it! The file was still in the main office building! To be more specific, his department of the office building. John Smith shoved the boxes roughly onto the shelves in a new fashion that he liked to call the 'I don't give a shit.' No wonder paperwork was never in its right place. He marched straight out of archives, and sprinted down the spiraling mazes that linked the Library to the main building.
It took him all but ten minutes to get there and five more to make it to his own office. Luckily he had the key in his uniform and unlocked the door with one swift motion. His office was exactly like he left it, and preferred it to stay; a disaster area. Though it didn't look like it, John knew exactly where everything was, he just tended to forget about them. He shoveled his way knee deep in paperwork that mostly consisted of paychecks and donour organizations. A mild panic flew to his mind as the file was nowhere to be found. Several obscenities escaped his lips as he tore apart the file cabinets and drawers. They were a wreck, with paper jammed in the corners and on the tracks of the cabinets. His inspection wasn't helping either. However organizing and filing was work for another morrow. He worked from the lowest drawer on up. Every single folder he drew was another disappointment. When he reached the top drawer, he yanked it open a little more out of anger and haste rather than necessary force, and it flew to the ground the heavy metal landing on his booted foot. More curses flung from his mouth and the scattered papers on the floor were kicked everywhere. Papers always seemed to find a way to get knocked over in his presence. Several times earlier that week he dropped and tipped over several storage boxes unleashing their contents onto the floor.
That's it! He quickly stood up, not without hitting his head off of an open file drawer, and sprinted out of the room towards the storage closet. He remembered is paperwork for once, and it was right where he left it. He broke open the storage closet door to reveal the remains of the paper crime scene that happened earlier that week when Parkinson made him drop his box of papers. The evidence was everywhere. While he never managed to actually make it into the storage closet, that didn't mean that the files couldn't. Sure enough, as he expected, a solitary vanilla folder was crammed underneath one of the metal shelving in the room. His eager, hands picked it up with shaking amounts of joy and rejoicement. It was in fact the case to the Arrington Arson.
sorry for not updating I had finals to study for and 7 chapters of physic notes aren't going to write themselves. Never trust technology with keeping information if you don't want it to be deleted. I learned my lesson.