“Yes, I burned David Ward’s house down. No, I don’t know where he is. No, I did not kill him, although it might have been better if I had.”
Detective Carson, a tall, bulky man, both his shoulders and his belly straining his white button-down shirt, sat across the table from me in the small room. He slowly scratched his close-cut black hair, then picked up his notebook.
“Ok, Mr. Benedict, let’s go over your story from the beginning.”
I stared down at my hands on the table, took a sip of the terrible coffee they’d offered, then looked back up at Detective Carson.
“If I thought you could use anything I know to replicate Ward’s research, I’d go to jail the rest of my life rather than tell you a thing. But I think not…I hope not. So here goes.”
Back to chapter one
This time we crossed paths in the Orne Library, one of the older buildings on campus. I don’t know what it was, maybe some quirk of the architecture or the building materials, but the library never seemed sufficiently lit. It seemed as if you could put a lamp in every corner of every room, and it would somehow still feel dim.
On the other hand, the solid, unshakeable wooden shelves and the oak tables with intricate scrollwork on the legs were beautiful, and clearly murmured the message that this was a place for scholarship. (“Murmured” because this was, after all, a library.)
I was looking for some light reading to help cleanse my mind of the dreadfully-composed student essays. As I came upstairs, I saw Dave sitting at one of the study tables on the second floor, hunched over an old text in…was that Greek?
I called out softly and when he turned to look, I was taken aback. He seemed worn and strained in a way he hadn’t in our last conversation. His shoulders were pulled in tensely, and his eyes seemed both tired and energetically searching for something.
“Oh, hi Doug. How are your classes going?”
“A drudge, but fine. How’s your research?”
He bit his tongue a moment before answering. “It’s not moving as quickly as I’d hoped, but HASTUR says he’s making progress and we should have some results soon.”
I sat down across from him. “I’m sorry, um, Hastur?”
“Oh, right. You wouldn’t know. That’s the name I’ve given my AI language-decryption program. It stands for Heuristic And Statistical Translation Using Recursion. Anyway, he says even with apparent parallel texts, it’s taking an enormous amount of computing power to decipher this script. But I should have some results within a couple more weeks.”
“You talk as if this were a person.”
Dave paused with his mouth open a moment. “Ah, yes, I guess I do talk like that. Given that the program’s purpose is natural language translation, I made the usual interface work as a kind of chat bot. We talk through things. Of course, I can access more technical details ‘behind the curtain,’ as it were, but usually the chat interface gives me what I need. After a while, it’s natural to talk about it like a person, even when you know it’s not.”
“So you think you should get real progress soon?”
“I’m hoping so. And I’m still only half through scanning the book. Non-destructive scanning is time consuming work. And like I said, the translation requires a lot of computing power…or time.”
“But surely the school has the resources to—”
“It does, but until I get some promising initial results, I’m keeping this close to the chest. The bugs are bothering me though.”
I waved a hand, “You’re a coding genius, Dave. I’m sure you’ll track them down and sort them out just fine.”
Dave squinted at me. “What? Oh no! Not programming bugs. Insects. Real ones…I think.”
I paused to process this. “You think they’re real?”
“They’re these tiny black and orange beetles.” He held up his hand with finger and thumb just barely apart. “I’ve seen them a few times at my house. It seems like it’s only after I’m working with the Script, weirdly enough.”
I couldn’t help it. I was stuck on that one point. “And you think they’re real?”
Dave rubbed his mouth, clearly embarrassed by this. “Well I, I caught one once in a jelly jar. I brought it into the school. I was going to ask someone in biology to identify it for me, but when I pulled the jar out of my bag in my office, it was gone.”
I smiled a little. “Well surely it just escaped and—”
“I don’t see how. The lid was screwed on quite tightly.” Dave’s words came fast. He seemed to be getting agitated.
“Ok, guy. Sorry, I just,” I noticed the time on one of the wall clocks. “Hey, I gotta get moving. Good luck with your research.”
He smiled and held out his hand. We shook and I headed off into the stacks.
Next time: The Ward House
Keep it up, I really enjoy your writing 👍
The name Hastur is fun foreshadowing. Hopefully things get weird.