Chapter 1: A walk in the park
It was a sunny day on a weekend, and a perfect day for a walk, which is what Shane is taking his dog Edgar for in the park. As he sat down on a bench and let Edgar for a run, he started to read a roll of newspaper. Shane, aged 32, is an aspiring private investigator who always had the job as his lifelong dream. He always had fantasized himself solving an astonishing murder case, or perhaps uncover a great secret, which no one else was able to even start to crack, and just like that, he becomes publicized onto the news, or even become a worldwide sensation! Sadly, that is just what it was, a fantasy, but not for long, he knew, for a mystery is just around the corner, he could feel it.
After looking through the local news and the ads section, Shane put the paper down, disappointed. It had been 12 years since he embarked on his dream journey, a journey which was fruitless. He was only able to fumble upon small cases, thefts or disloyal partners. There was one of a girl, of age 19, who was found dead alone in the kitchen, appearing to have died from suffocation in the middle of the night from a leaking natural gas tank as the room was sealed . It would seem to be an accident, except the footage from the security camera within the house at the time of death was gone, the bruise mark on her head was from a blunt force, with the additional fact that natural gas does not poison nor intoxicate humans became clues which lead Shane to believe otherwise. "This is a murder made to look like an accident!" He announced as the parents of the victim came to him with the same disbelief of the 'accident'. "And I will catch the murderer, you have my word." He continued. This would had been a case he would be proud of, but unfortunately for him, he was not able to fulfill his promise as the incident was what it looked like, purely an accident: During the night of the 'crime', there was a thunderstorm which induced a power trip. While the girl was trying to find the circuit breaker, she was unlucky enough to have a trip of her own and bumped her head on the cabinet, which completely knocked her out. Then as the saying goes, 'misfortunes never come alone', the natural gas tank just so happened to be leaking and she had her windows closed, finally leading to her death. Just like that, his biggest case turned into his most embarrassing case. Business reduced after that, and he was left to rely on odd jobs and hoping to come across a case to barely sustain his bills.
"Edgar, it's time to go home." Shane called for his German shepherd. There was no response. He stood up and called its name again. He headed towards the direction of the section of trees and bushes, which was where he last saw his dog ran to. Sure enough, Edgar was there, barking and digging at a peculiar spot under a tree. Intrigued, Shane helped to dig away the dirt. After a few minutes, he uncovered the object beneath it, and gasped.
Chapter 2: New Beginnings
John was in his room, typing away on his computer. John, aged 29, is a writer whom had written a handful of books of the mystery and adventure genres. His biggest dream would be to be able to write a bestseller, and become a popular author. While that goal still remained to be far from where he is now, he had nearly two hundred fans in the town, and he was content with that. John is also Shane's roommate in the apartment which they pay rent for together for more than 5 years, during which they also had become good friends. They often use the living room as their office, where John would be working on his stories or reading on a couch while Shane looks through his laptop on the other. As of now, John is trying out a new story idea under a science fiction genre. It was then Shane barged through the door and interrupted his train of thought, shouting: "I've found it!"
"What, your sanity?" John replied sarcastically.
"Shut it John," Shane snapped, and revealed stone sphere from his backpack, "look at this, what do you think this is?"
"I'd say that its just a cracked piece of clay, but with your excitement, you're going to say its a rune, aren't you?"
"No it's not, I mean, obviously it is from a long time ago. Can't you see the symbols on it? It's not English, but it's obviously an ancient code or language."
"How do you know how old it is?"
"I found the sphere right under the roots of a tree in the park, like exactly under the tree itself. I had asked Old Dude Gerald, and he stated that the trees in the area were planted in his school opening as an appreciation for the community donations towards the construction of the school, so I am sure that this is at least that old."
"Mr Gerald? Why didn't you ask him about the orb thing while you visited him?"
"For one, he just so happened to be in the park at the time, which is where he is everyday anyway; and two, I'm doing this on my own."
"Well, while that is a deduction which I can't argue against, but is it not possible that it is just some toy or an art project that was thrown away?"
"Come on, I already told you its too old for that. It definitely has a meaning. Just you watch, I'm going to reveal something huge, in fact I'm going to get on the papers for it!" Shane revealed proudly, and rushed towards his room.
Chapter 3: The first clue
After spending a night on searching online and analysing the sphere, Shane fell on his bed, exhausted from the lack of success or even a hint showing him in the right direction towards progress. There was no match with the language used, nor could he decode it matching with the English alphabet, as he found that the roughly 20 signs marked on the rock were unique, or at least from what he could tell between the cracks. It was already way past midnight, and he was so tired that he soon fell asleep with Edgar by his side. When John checked in on him the next day, it was already close to noon. He woke immediately and raced to the kitchen for leftovers, mumbling to himself on how much time he had wasted. However he was still determined on decrypting the symbols.
After he finished the leftover porridge, he took Edgar to another walk in the park, hoping that perhaps if he just looked around the area, he would find a clue which he missed. He entered the vegetation once more and sent his dog on a search. Unfortunately after half an hour of fumbling around, he came up with nothing. Exhausted and disgruntled, Shane sat down on a stone stool in the pavilion, giving out a long sigh.
"Why the long face, young man?" Gerald who was sitting across from him on the other side of the stone table asked. He had a kind smile, which emerged clearly from his white patchy beard. "It's a good day today, cheer up." He said, tipping his flat cap.
"I'm afraid that's none of your business," Shane tried to be polite, "why are you here all the time anyway? I barely see you being, you know, not here."
Gerald gave a shy laugh at the question. "My children aren't home, you see. It's really boring just being alone at home. It's better for me to get some sunshine out instead."
"Yeah, but why here, Verdure Park specifically?"
"Well, I've had quite fond memories here. Verdure Park, though it wasn't called that then, it was more of a field we used as a playground, was my childhood. I'd come here all the time with my friends, we'd just play together, it was the good old times."
However Shane was not in the mood to listen about Gerald's good old days, and started to scroll his through his notifications. Gerald took the hint quickly and left to sit somewhere else. Shane, feeling the sense of guilt, also stood up to leave. But then he noticed the small metal plate welded onto the stone table. It had 5 symbols surrounding the centre, each pointing in the direction of a stone stool around the table. He always thought of it purely as artistic symbols or just an old, even foreign language. However with closer inspection, he noticed that it was quite similar to the ones on the stone sphere. Unlike most symbols such as those of Vedas, the dots were specifically and visibly intentionally drawn as small triangles. Furthermore all the characters had only three lines, with one long one cut off at both ends with the other two short strokes. He quickly realised the characters on the table shared these properties, so he took a picture and got off to work.
Chapter 4: The link
The first thing he did was to make his way to the Erudio library, which was also the town library, and the only library in Agrestia town. It was originally built as part of Erudio school, the first school to ever be built in town during its 10th anniversary. It was very similar to a classroom then, just slightly larger than one and only had half a hundred books for students who wanted to read something extracurricular after school. However as years went by extensions were made to the library and more books were shipped. Currently it is a 2 storey building covering around a thousand square metres built beside Erudio school containing thousands of books slotted into different genres.
The Erudio library does have another section as well, the historical section, which contains records on the events in Agrestia town, also being the purpose for Shane's visit to the library. This was a subsitute for a museum, as there simply was not that much to record, nor have the town came up with the budget to build up.
"Moving on from the colonisation of the British in 1909, here we can see the pictures of Erudio school when it was founded in 1932." The tourguide explained to the group of visitors. Shane moved quickly past them, past the World War 2 section and found the small panel holding the label: 'Verdure Park'.
'Verdure Park was just a plot of land which villagers use as a community centre at the start of the 1900s, it was only a big field then. In 1935, after Erudio school was founded, the headmaster held Project V, where the school students and staff all came together to furnish the park by planting up to two hundred trees and built benches and a number of facilities, giving the lands its purpose as a park' Shane read off the poster on the wall. He jumped through the few paragraphs in the middle and finally found the line: 'In 2001, Verdure park is rebuilt by Richard Johnson, giving it life once more, and forming it is to what it is today.' Just beside it was a photo of Mr Richard himself under the newly built pavillion, having the caption, 'Richard Johnson, sitting in the pavillion he designed.'. As Shane looked closely at the table, he could see that indeed as he had thought, the then shiny plate already bore those symbols.
He then made his way to the frames of great Agrestians. Amongst of course included Richard Johnson the famous designer who became a millionaire off of it, and even designed every thing in Verdure Park when he funded the rebuilding of it. Shane was now convinced that Richard was involved with the sphere itself, however as he continued to read the text, Richard had already died of old age last year.
However, Shane was still determined.
Chapter 5: A second opinion
Richard did not have any heir nor a partner, and hence no one with direct connection to him could be interviewed, which should mean that there was no one which he could gather information. However this would not stop Shane from getting the information he needs. Upon investigating all the symbols even further on a paper, he noticed the cracks on the bottom of the sphere, which he had always dismissed as unrecognisable, was quite similar one of the five on the table. He had built up a hypothesis, and now he requires more evidence to make a theory.
It was already nighttime when he reached home, and opened his laptop. "Still on that thing you found in the park?" John asked him as he came through the door.
"Yep." Shane answered quickly.
"You look really tired, when did you sleep last night, or did you get any?" John asked as he saw those eyebags which appeared darker than usual. Shane however only made a click noise to indicate that he would very much not like to answer that question. "Well I hope you don't push yourself too hard. I don't think it's healthy for you when you always get so worked up and miss stuff like eating and sleep." John adviced him.
"I'm fine, John, in fact I've already found the strong evidences I need," Shane said, "now I have to write an email."
Two days later, Shane entered Erudio school's admin office, for a quick interview with the one of the school management office's staff about Richard Johnson, on if there was anything peculiar about him when he was in school.
However when she was bombarded with Shane's strange questions on the subject, she was only able to answer: "I'm afraid that I can't say for certain, from what I've heard of him from my seniors, he was a star student and was always eager to learn. He did only enter high school only due to financial issues, however his talents still shone through, and achieved his dream. What is this really about, may I ask?"
Shane soon realised the awkwardness of it, and had to take his leave. However as he turned around he noticed a news clipping of a much younger Richard pinned on the wall. One of the pictures was him in his thirties or fourties, while another was an even younger black and white photo of him which was expressionless, hence possibly taken out of a class photo. "When was this taken?" Shane asked, pointing at it.
"Oh, that must be from one of the local newspapers at around... 1970s, I presume."
"Does the Erudio library store old papers?"
Luckily for him, it did. The librarian led him into a storeroom which archived the older papers, and gave him a warning to be careful and not to touch anything it was wrapped in plastic, then left him to himself for the afternoon. He took the three hours he was given to read through every single magazine, newspaper or files to find any linkage between the symbols and anyone else in Agrestia. However he soon found that Richard was really the only person to connected to it and any information there was about him was already known. Giving a groan as he placed the last paper back in the box labeled 2000s, he started to think that perhaps he should really just give up.
When he stood up, the boxes wrapped in plastic caught his attention from the corner of his eye. Out of curiosity he crouched down and pulled out the box with the label 1940s. Inside was 10 small chests with a year on each of them. He took out his penknife, carefully cut the tape open and opened one of them. Inside the box was a verity of items, which were mostly stationery or notes, and a small sculpture in the shape of a dog. Shane knew what it was, it was a time capsule which the graduates of each year would put an item into as a memory of the class, as he had also participated in before. He could remember clearly, the object he put in his class' box was a pencil, when everyone else at least placed something more interesting such as a drawing. Within the 1946 time capsule was also a small notepad with Richard's name. He flipped it open, and there was plenty of designs of objects such as machines, which while was incredibly inaccurate or implausible to be made, they were undeniably well drawn. Then a few pages in, he saw the five notable symbols again, and one of them appeared prominently, as if they were being practiced. As he turned to the final page, he saw a crudely drawn map, and there were labels detailing certain locations, which were also written in the encryption. While some of them were quite identifiable according to each other, such as the school, the park, the library and the Agrestia entrance, there was one which he does not recognise, however he could see that it was in the just off of Verdure park. It was visibly important, as it had the whole opposite page dedicated to it. Motivated once more, Shane pulled out his notebook and copied everything there was, placed the notebook back in the chest, the chest back in the box and taped it close.
Chapter 6: Final destination
Shane gave a shout of delight. He had run a program which decoded the language written on the map, allowing him to understand what was on it. Using it he was able to read the caption under the unknown location:
'The Great Cave Defensive
The cave was discovered and used long before it was discovered by the users that are still alive. Long ago in the years of knights and dragons, it had already been used by the rebellion of rogues and wizards against the ruthless emperors. The cave was once ladled with tables and banners for the rebellion and its people to feast, rest and plot their attack on the empire in the cave where it was safe from the evil enemies through the spells set by the good wizards. The spells obstruct evildoers from even being to go within a kilometer radius of the cave and only those who have been accepted can enter the underground base. After peace was returned to the land, the cave had not been in use since, until now...'
Shane could feel it, the truth was literally one trip away, and he was not going to miss it. He called Edgar and left without before John finished asking where he was going. The location which was listed was also in a bit of forestation, however this bit was not planted in Project V and was instead there long before most residents even came, and instead the park was the spot which was cleared when they needed wood. As the the forestation was a lot thicker and unorganized, filled with mud, heavy foliage, uneven roots and critters in every corner, which made it even more difficult for Shane to venture through without getting scratches and cuts from everything. However Edgar was far more excited to be allowed in the wild and ran off on his own the second him saw a squirrel or something.
Very soon Shane was fatigued from the trek and was still unable to find the cave. In fact, there was no hill or any large structure that was not a tree to hint at the existence of a cave. It was then when he noticed that he had not seen Edgar in a while, and started to call for him. He heard a muffled woof. He walked in the direction of the cry and found the hind of the shepherd sticking out of the ground, his head stuck in the foliage and vegetation. Shane had to take out the clippers he prepared to cut apart the roots, but then as he nearly finished the last bit, the ground gave way and revealed a large pit.
Shane turned on his flashlight and entered the pit. Edgar got his head free and entered as well to continue chasing the lizard that entered the hole. As he went in, he knew that it was the cave he was looking for. The walls and the floor were of stone and the roof was solid enough despite it only consisted dirt. There were also a few items on the floor, which despite appeared to have been corroded with time, were clearly made made such as knifes or pens. The dead giveaway was of course the symbols appearing once more on the walls, carved into it and therefore remained clear even when time had taken its toll on everything else.
As Shane examined the other markings on the walls, he noticed a few numbers. They were 1952, 1957, 1962, 1967, 1972 and so on, increasing by five every time until it stopped at 2002. Each of these numbers, except for 2002, had a line stricken through them. Shane noted all of them down, however before he was able to hypothesize the backstory of this, he heard someone calling him. He turned around and saw Old Dude Gerald outside: "Shane?"
Chapter 7: The reveal
Shane entered the apartment after Gerald, and sat down on the sofa. Gerald sat on the sofa across from him, and asked: "It's been quite some time since I last had a visitor, would you like some tea?"
"Cut it old man, you told me to come here to explain their darned cave, so spill the tea right now." Shane snapped back at him and pulled out a pen. "Let's start with how you knew it was there, then what were you doing with it?"
Gerald gave a sigh. "You do know of Richard, right?"
"Richard Johnsons?"
"The very man. Believe it or not, we were great friends when we were around ten. We went to school together. There was also Abe, Zack and Oliver, and we used to be together all the time. In fact I would say they were my childhood. We would play games in the Verdure Park. While it wasn't much then, we made do with the dirt and the trees. We climbed trees and ran in the field. It was a great time..."
"Please carry on and get to the point, Mr Gerald." Shane pulled Gerald back to reality as he started to drift off reminiscing in his childhood.
"Ah yes, I'm so sorry," Gerald said sadly, "I suppose you do know enough about World War Two, right? It was around when we were ten when it happened. In fact I believe it was only our second year of school. When they attacked and took over, we were all forced to remain in our homes as it as too dangerous to go outside. Unfortunately we weren't like the rich families and often lacked food, hence we sometimes still had to leave our homes for food, hence most of our time in that is spent in traversing the woods since we wouldn't get spotted by the intruders. It was then when me and Abe were sneaking out that we spotted this hole in the ground that we found to be an entrance to a huge empty pocket. I shared it with the others, and there was where we would often go to, even after World War Two ended, as a secret hideout. We had quite a lot of fun over that."
"Then what were you doing there, today? And the 1952, 1957?" Shane continued to ask.
"We had that when we all reached 18, and some of us wanted to leave the town for jobs in the city. However we still wanted to honor out friendship and in the name of that we had an agreement that every five years we would meetup there. Sadly, as you could see we couldn't honor that at 2002, as time caught up and our bodies just couldn't manage to break apart the dirt and the plants that cover it over the years or even enter it. At least we could still just sit together, maybe have a drink together every year, we thought. Except until like 10 years ago, when Oliver, then Abe, Zack, and last year, Richards..." A tear rolled down Gerald's cheek.
Shane gulped before he slowly continued: "Alright, about the symbols...?"
Gerald gave a jerk, and continued: "Yes. That, was actually kind of a joke we had. One of the things we had were those comics that came out at the time. They were really new, and we were fascinated by it. They had mostly superhero and spy stories, and they were riveting, and the stuff that really got us were the secret codes in one of the comics, which was what we were really into. So that's how we eventually made our own ode which can translate directly from English. We had quite the fun with it, as we would pretend to be a part of the secret organization like in the comics in our hideout. In fact, Zack even drew a little comic with the characters we made up!"
Gerald had a slight smile at this thought, however Shane fell silent. The story was too innocent for what he thought, yet it sounded genuine. He looked up at Gerald, who was then walking into the storeroom, visibly searching for something. Shane found him shuffling through a few boxes, and also tried to help search through them. After a while, Gerald pulled out a bundle of papers from the bottom compartment of the shelf, which appeared similar to a very old magazine. Gerald opened it up and looking closer, Shane could noticed that there were art drawn on the pages in the style of a comic, however they were incredibly unclear and were mostly taken up by yellow edges tattered in by the passing of time. Gerald was beaming as he turned the pages. "Gosh, now I look back at it, Zack was a horrible artist. I wouldn't believe that he would become hired as a comic artist if this was all I saw."
Shane stood up again and wanted to excuse himself for leave, but then was halted by Gerald stumbling after him. Gerald shook his hands and said: "Thank you Shane, it's really been a while since I had could talk to someone about stuff like this, thank you."
Chapter 8: Move on
Shane replayed the recording on his pen once more, and swiftly clicked it off as John entered the living room. "Still not letting it go, Shane?"
Shane sighed and had a pause before he replied: "Shut up John, how was I to know it was a let down? Now all I've done is invade a dead privacy."
"Well in the end you did have a good talk to a man who needed one. It was nice of you to stay back and have dinner with him afterwards actually, I was joking when I said I was angry that you didn't appreciate my fried rice. What did you guys talk about then?"
"I told you, we barely talked much." Shane muttered as he lied on the couch. "The sphere was just a art project that a kid in the 1940s made for an inside joke they had which he just so happened to lose and got covered over by a tree."
"Are you sure you're alright, Shane?" John asked.
"It was just disappointing, alright? I expected more from it."
John sat down on the couch beside him. "Don't we all? We always expect more out of things, but reality can often be disappointing. That's why people innovate and take action to change their lives for something better, something more fun for everyone, or do different things as an adventure."
"I can get that, but it just feels like I am doing something wrong. There's no success from it, it's pretty much pointless. I wasted a whole week on a kid's toy, for god's sake." Shane groaned.
"Come on, Shane, get off that attitude. Look, I don't know the specifics of what you have gone through or done in your job, but I really don't think the point of doing something should be that there is success expected off of it, instead rather that it was a good thing to do, and I think you do have good intentions; I know you tend to think that what you're doing isn't much, or what comes out is unsatisfying, but at least you ended up helping others, which was what you intended in your job, helping people! Isn't it?"
"Yeah?"
"Good! So don't feel like you're doing something wrong if it is a good thing to do, and you're passionate about it. Of course it's going to have up and downs or even turn up fruitless, because that's just how life turns out, random, unpredictable to the point at which it feels bland and disappointing. That is what makes adventure more exciting though, isn't it? Even if it doesn't turn out as you expected, it still has its own value. I can tell how excited you were on your case about those symbols or whatever, but even if it didn't turn out to be the adventure you wanted, it didn't turn out half bad. I actually called Old Man Gerald just now, and he was actually really happy that you talked and even stayed to have dinner with him. So stop being so harsh and obsessed on what you wanted out of what you did, instead be truly passionate about your work and appreciate the better parts of it. Life can often turn up wrong, but that shouldn't stop you from making the best out of it."
Shane sat up from the sofa, took a deep breath and said: "You know what, thanks for that, really. Never knew you did pep talks."
"Well I stole some of those lines from a book I read to be honest."
"Thanks anyway. I'll think it over, I actually found a message on a new case. Possible murder, I'm going to see whats up right now." Shane pulled out his phone and headed for the door.
"Hey, Shane." John interrupted him. "Good luck."
"Of course."
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