The Ghostwriter's Words

Sammy: Those Damned Old Notebooks

Sammy tried to keep his face as neutral as possible as the Professor delicately lifted the first of the tablets from its crate, but inside he smiled so hard he couldn't believe it didn't shine from him like a lighthouse through the fog and give him away. It was all he could do to keep himself from bursting into laughter. He'd nearly forgotten those stupid old notebooks. It had been five hundred years.

They had been transcribed from his great-grandfather's original 'digital' notes, in part, peppered with embellishments and additions, with significant omissions as well. It had been no more than a juvenile prank, having been particularly annoyed with The Faith at the time. But, to be fair, he'd been annoyed with the entire world. Sara was gone and not just on another wanderlust. She'd stormed out in a fury, and he wasn't sure whether she intended to return. For the first time, she left without the promise that she would, and he hadn't been sure her blanket promise that she always would come back still held.

He'd threatened to kill the man who'd been his best friend and mentor for nearly his entire life, the better part of the prior five hundred years. Sara's friend for nearly her whole life, too, which he'd known, but not to the extent they'd just revealed. He'd felt devastated, heartbroken, and betrayed. He'd felt a mean streak fill him that he hadn't been aware he'd been capable of harboring, like the hairs standing on the back of an angry dog. He'd felt the need to strike out at someone, anyone.

The Curia had been waging its phony AI War for a century, which he knew even then would continue for another hundred years, as it had been written in the Book, while he'd dealt with the primary problem in hours and the aftermath in a few short years. Then he'd had those who'd begun calling themselves The Truth shortly after their split with The Faith hiding in the caverns beneath his estate because The Curia had wanted them all dead.

Why? Because Sammy had injured The Father's pride by publicly disagreeing with and ridiculing the solution the Eldest Elder had proposed. And those hiding in the caverns had had the audacity, insight, wisdom, or foolishness to agree with Sammy. Then, adding insult to injury, Sammy had proven The Faith, and The Father in particular, wrong in a simplistic yet spectacular way. Their typical response: Deny the truth, of which they'd never been particularly fond. Try to cover it up with another of their lengthy list of frauds while attempting to eradicate any evidence of the truth, specifically any witnesses who supported what The Faith mockingly referred to as The Descendant's 'Alternate Truth.'

Sammy couldn't remember precisely when he'd discovered the crates of unused, still mostly yellow, lined tablets in a back corner of an antique shop. He always found the most intriguing things hidden and forgotten in the corners. The shop owner did not know their origins, so he apologized for not being able to provide any provenance. The crates of notebooks had been in the shop since well before his days. Perhaps his father or father's father had acquired them. But he'd been happy to sell them, as they were, especially when Sammy not only hadn't haggled over the price but offered far more than the man would have ever dared to ask. Of course, the shop owner had no idea of Sammy's identity or that he'd been in the presence of 'The Descendant,' only that Sammy had offered him cash. A lot of it.

Sammy was always discrete and tried to remain as anonymous as possible any time he ventured beyond the secured boundaries of his estate and rarely purchased anything himself. Instead, generations of people in his employ, who he did not personally know, handled nearly all his transactions. But he would get bored and sneak out into the world on his own periodically, especially while Sara was away.

When he discovered and purchased the crates of old notebooks, he'd decided that was not something he cared for anyone else to be aware he'd done - not even Sara. He could have his secrets too, which he'd somehow managed to keep. There'd been the shop owner, of course. But even if the man had recognized Sammy and been able to identify him, he expected that the man would be long dead before anyone could trace the tablets back to that particular shop and torture the man into revealing who'd purchased them. That was the problem with, but also the occasional benefit of, mortals. They grew old and died. And, since the transaction had been in cash, the shop owner was unlikely to have recorded it.