Day 189 - Paper Trail Story

Paper Trail Story

Matthew Ryan Fischer

There’s always a paper trail, no matter how faint. A person just had to know how to look for it. It was Nestor’s job to follow paper trails. He was exceptionally good at tracking. He could see the links in the trail when no one else could. He could find clues where there weren’t any. He had an intuition for it. It was almost like an unnatural gift. It was almost as if he could see what he was looking for before he found it. But that would be impossible. It was safe to say that Nestor was really really really good at his job. It was not safe to say that he could do the impossible. Nestor didn’t know where it came from, but it came easily. It was an intrinsic gift.

Most of Nestor’s work came from corporations and lawyers. That was about eighty to eighty-five percent of his work. It was basic data analysis and he found it fairly boring, but it paid the bills. Nestor was a freelancer and wanted to stay a freelancer, even though he was known as one of the best there was. He commanded a high price and he always got it right.  There had been many many offers over the years, but he stayed a freelancer because he wanted to work on what he wanted to work on, when he wanted to work on it. He didn’t turn down a lot of jobs, but he wanted to reserve the option. Some things weren’t supposed to be tracked down. He had learned that the hard way.

Much of the remaining work came from detectives. On a rare occasion, he would get to do something exciting and fun for a government agency. He didn’t get that sort of work very often because he was usually regarded as untrustworthy. That was their mistake. When it came to information, no one was more honest. Nestor believed in philosophical shades of gray, except when it same to numbers and data. Numbers and data told hard facts. He had the utmost respect for them. If he could have been cleared as a security risk, he could have done wonderful things as a spy, regardless of which nation it was for. But that was a different path on a different world, and governments seldom trusted Nestor the way they should.

And then, every once in a while, there was a truly exceptional job offer. He would be hired by men of means that kept their identities and motivations private. These were the sorts of jobs that paid incredibly well and required incredible discretion and he was supposed to never speak of them to anyone. Nestor was very careful when accepting these sorts of jobs. A man of secrets with secret agendas could not often be trusted. Still, they did usually come with the most interesting job offers.

In his spare time, Nestor had a standing job offer from a particularly private and secretive library. There was a list of texts and pamphlets they wanted copies of. They were some of the rarest materials rumored to exist. This was only a spare time job because Nestor couldn’t make a promise of completion. He hated to accept work or payment when unable to perform the job requirements. He and the library were in good standing with each other. When he found something on their list, they were always eager and able to pay him exorbitant prices for his work.

Nestor had been in Hong Kong when he came across a rumor of a sale of a lot of books. There was no receipt of purchase, but money had changed hands. Nestor could prove that. A large sum of money had gone from one mystery account to one rumored dealer. She was a rumored dealer, because no one could prove she dealt anything. Nestor was sure she was though. She was in the right place too many times and accepted too many large sums of money from mysterious benefactors. She had to be dealing something, of that he was sure.

Nestor followed the trail from Hong Kong to London to Brazil and back to Hong Kong. He would have been very upset if he had been traveling full circle. Following data electronically really helped him save on the travel expenses.

As the legends went, there were four major volumes to the Book of the Apocalypse. There had been more, as seemingly every culture and religion had one, but at one point the operators at the libraries condensed and compiled the most important stories into the four volumes. There were notes from famous prognosticators such as Nostradamus and Sibylline, but most of the content came from lesser known sources. Soon, every prophecy of doom and the end of days were written down. By writing them down together, it gave the book power and made the predictions real.  Because what was done could not be undone, the texts were divided and hidden around the world. As librarians came and went, the exact locations were lost. Years passed and the secrets were buried deeper and deeper. But there were always those that were looking for them.

Nestor didn’t know if he believed the legends or not, but knew other people did. And he would rather his clients find them because it meant he got paid. He had no idea what they would do with the books, but that wasn’t really his concern.

Nestor didn’t find any of the parts to the Book of the Apocalypse in Hong Kong. What he tracked down was a book of blank pages. It had no title on its cover and had no official name. But it demanded a high price and there were many people after it.

There were three ancient and secret texts – The Book of the Past, The Book of the Present, and The Book of the Future. They were all three made with blank pages. The stories said that if something was written on the blank page, then it would become true. The pages only appeared blank. Really, they were full from the infinite amount of things that had been written down in them. Supposedly, the only way a person could read what was written down was to write something down themselves.

Nestor didn’t know if any of that was true, but a book like that would have to be the most powerful weapon ever conceived. One scribble could erase a person or a kingdom or a century. One prediction could alter everything that was yet to occur. He didn’t know which of the three books it was that he had. He wasn’t about to write anything down, and risk changing reality, just to find out.