The Dracula Index - Vampire Epoch//01

13 - Mell

Bryne and I had never been more excited. For once, we were about to know something new. Something that no one else was aware of at R-34. We took it all in, like a child studying the moon. Behind the wall was a shallow, windowless space. Inside was a wide, glass table, unlike anything we had ever seen, with curving metal legs. Upon it was a monitor, an old model, like the one they have in the kitchen, with a green screen and tiny illuminated text that run across it when keys on the button board are pressed. I know that the one in the kitchen has a loud hum when it's powered on, but this one was silent as Bryne flipped the switch.

"It has juice? How?"

Bryne pointed to a hole in the ceiling ten feet away. Vines were growing down into the room like water dripping from the pump in Townsquare.

"The sun must hit this panel at the top for around an hour a day," he said, pointing to the dusty, black rectangle that was half attached to the monitor. "Photovoltaic. That's the name. It harnesses energy from the sun. It's pre-encampment tech."

"I know what it is, Bryne. I've just never seen a panel so small before. Know-it-all," I muttered, both amused and defensive. It's our way of flirting. We never allow the other to think they're too smart.

Bryne found a second switch on the side of the monitor and flipped it on. The screen clicked a few times. There was a series of beeps and an even hum. Then, from the bottom of the screen, digits began to highlight the darkness, ratcheting up to the top until they looked like an image, rather than rows of numbers.

I recognized the image, having dreamt of it constantly since our last lesson with Teacher Deirdre. "It's our world. The circle with the books around it," I said, reaching up to touch the screen. I wiped the caked layer of dust free and peered closer. The digits were gradually switching to letters of a similar shape. There was a word repeated in the pattern of letters that created the image. Over and over, it made up a single word: CHRONOSCOPE.

"What's Chronoscope?"

"I'm not sure," said Bryne, as he pressed the enter key on the button board. After a few more blips and whirring noises, the screen went black and a phrase surrounded by a box of asterisk symbols came up at the center.

INPUT CONTENT

"Content? What's it saying?"

While I tried interpreting the message, Bryne inspected the drawers below the glass desk. There were rows of them. He pulled out each one and examined the gadgetry inside. I can't describe what I saw because I don't understand most of it. Loads of tiny metal pieces connected to form structures that were mysterious to me. But there was a recognizable symbol on one of the handles. It looked like my Notes Book. I opened the drawer. There was a tiny phrase engraved on a metal plaque inside. It said:

PLACE BOOK ANYWHERE ON RECEIVING SHELF. CHRONOSCOPE WILL PROCESS ALL CONTENT HELD WITHIN.

"So, it was built to...read books?"

"No, I think it records the books," Bryne assumed, while closing the door. "All information systems, really. There is more than one way to write something down, Mell. Or, at least, there was at some point in our history."

"It stores them so they won't be destroyed, maybe?" I added, thinking back to an afternoon a few years back when some blank pages from Felicity's Notes Book had dissolved after being left out in the rain.

"More than that. It gathers the information for a purpose. The drawers all say the same thing. To process the content."

"Like, so it can search for something?"

Bryne nodded. "Or to make the book searchable. This was probably an essential device for every encampment. Look, see?" He pointed to the smooth plastic encasement surrounding the black monitor. On it were the words, Property of Encampment R-13. "And these," he noted, lifting a roll of wires. "These are the same ones I saw on the roof. By that metal tower with the small platter attached to it. I think it's a way for this device to communicate."

"Like the Carrier Birds, but with electrics?"

"Looks like it." Bryne got down on his knees and began fiddling with the cables at the back of the Chronoscope. "I was right. Come see this."

I bent down and saw him pointing to a symbol that looked like the metal platter attached to the tower on the roof. One of the cables Bryne was holding connected to a port labeled with that symbol. "Does it work like the Photo-whatever panels?"

"Don't think so."

I squinted at the symbols. "What's the word printed there?"

"Satellite Dish. Must be what it's called."

"So can we communicate with others using this thing?"

"Doubtful. Maybe we used to. Mell, if this came with the airdropped Encampment Parcel, it must be important to civilization. They hid it so well that the Scavers didn't even know it existed."

"That means we probably don't have one back at R-34. If it's rare, maybe it mattered which encampment got one. What do you think they used it for? What were they processing?"

Bryne crawled out from under the glass drawers and continued examining the system. "My best guess...to find a cure. Think about it, Mell. Everything else at our encampment focuses on protecting the healthy, but there's nothing around to ensure that we live beyond the infection. The Elder Councils of the world must have known that building encampments would take generations. Life-jobs were written on the Tablets of the Law, right? Why would they need people to scavenge in the beginning? Maybe Scavers were always meant to search for clues to what happened while the rest of us stayed alive. This thing," he said, pointing down at the dusty glass machine, "It was built to find the answer."

I held his gaze. "Bryne, how do you know that?"

He smiled. "I just do."

There it was. The one thing I love most about Bryne. For every question, he knows the answer. Either through logic, reasoning, or heart. I know Bryne better than anyone, and it was so easy for me right then to trust what his heart was telling him.