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Dinomancy - An Allosaur TF
Alan had never been so happy.
After more than one year filling forms and papers, sending countless requests and spending hours making contacts, he finally had his authorization confirmed. His colleague and friend Michael had sent him a simple “It’s okay” message. These few words had been enough to enlighten his whole day, and he had been wearing a warm smile since the morning. All the anxiety and his worry of getting his requests denied were gone. Now he was officially allowed to access to the National Archives.
It had not been an easy task. Despite Alan having a PhD in astrophysics and several publications in international journals, the National Archives, and especially the reserve where old and rare books were stored, were not open to him. Only a few people were authorized to visit these places and even less were allowed to manipulate the precious books. And even with one of them having been a close friend since University, the zone was so restricted that Alan’s wish could have never come true.
Yet Alan’s dream was quite simple. At least once in his life, he wanted to see – and perhaps even touch – all the invaluable collection of scientific books sealed there and preserved from attrition. Books that were written by philosophers and searchers from the past millennia. Books that sometimes had not even been fully translated, or were left unread because of their state of decay.
Alan was particularly interested in seeing all the original astronomy books. Ancient works coming from Greek and Arabic savants, and that were recovered and copied by monks during the 13th century. The young man wanted to witness the hard work of these men who spent their lives retrieving lost writings and copying them by hand to preserve their content. Though some works never got copied because they were considered heresy, the monks’ rigorous work allowed most of Antiquity’s knowledge to survive until the contemporary era.
Alan had decided not to go to the lab this day. He had all the reasons in the world to believe such an occasion was not going to happen again. As soon as he had received Michael’s message early in the morning, he had canceled everything for the day, and jumped in his car to drive to the National Archives. He was getting more and more excited with each passing minute, and in his impatience he realized he was even driving a little too fast. “Look at you, he said to himself. You must look like a child the night before Christmas.”
Alan took a deep breath and forced himself to stay calm. He didn’t want to be taken for a turbulent kid eager to touch everything that would be at range once he would have entered the archives.
He had a reputation to uphold.
He soon arrived to the National Archives. He parked his car in a hurry, despite knowing he was absolutely not late. As he was climbing the stone stairs, he met Michael who was waiting for him. He surely had expected Alan to come early. For sure, he knew him well. Michael was the one who had made everything possible. The scientist was always feeling like he was pressuring on his friend about this book obsession. But the man had managed to put him in contact with the right people faster than Alan could have ever wished.
-“Already waiting for me?” Asked Alan as he reached the doors next to where Michael was standing. “Weren’t we said to meet at seven?”
Michael smiled.
-“I know you’d be here long before the said time. I’m actually surprised I arrived before you.”
The man perfectly fitted in the librarian role. He was as old as Alan, but was much taller and thinner. He was wearing his long, washed-out coat, which was giving him a lanky look. His little glasses and pointy nose gave him a severe look, added to the fact he was rarely smiling, or very discretely. Alan had known him for over a decade now, and Michael was not comfortable with strangers and people. He had always preferred the calm of libraries and the company of books, but he was resourceful and behind his reclusive look, the young man was of high education and culture. It was no surprise Michael had managed to get this post at such a young age, compared to his colleagues.
-“I came up as soon as I got your message,” Alan calmly answered. “But judging by how dark it is inside. I guess nothing’s open yet?”
Michael grinned and put his hand into one of his pockets. From there he got his magnetic badge.
-“The public area won’t open before at least a good hour. There will be nobody to annoy you or me during this duration”, he said while opening the front door. “Gives us plenty of time for you to have a look at your precious books.”
Alan followed him as they entered the Archives hall. The whole building was still plunged into darkness. The arches supporting the vault of the large nave overlooking the book shelves and empty reading tables were lit by moonlight and it all had a quite spooky atmosphere. While they were walking through the rooms usually open to public, the man tried to remember the last time he had been there to actually read a book and not just to see his friend. He had all the books he needed for his researches in his personal library, and nowadays most of the information was found in scientific journals.
The only thing he missed was restricted access.
Michael soon arrived to the counters behind which staff worked. There, he and Alan walked through various narrow corridors, twining between offices and books storage areas. The scientist did not manage to work out how the place was designed and wondered if this tortuous layout of corridors and rooms had been done on purpose or not.
-“How do people to not get lost here every day?” asked Alan. “I’d never realized the reserve was so huge!”
-“The reserve is four to five times larger than the entire main hall and up to eighty percent of our books are stored here”, Michael answered. “Each book gets a code and a category. You’ve rooms for economy works, scientific papers, philosophy… It sure is a lot of work if you don’t want the whole place to become a mess within a day.”
He shrugged before stopping in front of a big, thick glass door.
“But it’s not my work. My work is much cooler”, he whispered as he withdrew his magnetic card from his pocket.
He put his card in the optical sensor, and Alan could hear the door latch open. Michael entered into a dimly lit corridor. Alan followed him and they both climbed down stone stairs. Air was getting rarer. Or it was heavily filtered. He coughed slightly, pulling his collar nervously. Michael noticed it.
“This part of the Archives is only ventilated with air conditioning. Humidity and oxygen rates are strictly controlled. Some books down here are even stored under inert atmosphere. Same for light: the less the books are exposed, the slower they decay.”
He gave a look at Alan.
“Don’t get too excited when you’re inside or you’ll quickly run short of oxygen!” he winked at him.
Apparently satisfied with his joke, he kept climbing down the stairs.
“Do you know how deep we are going?” asked Alan.
“I do,” answered Michael.
The scientist waited a few seconds for his friend to carry on, but Michael said nothing more. Alan guessed it was surely not something he was allowed to know. They soon reached a vast nave. It was too dark in here for the young man to distinctly see the cellar. But at this moment he did not care. All along the walls were stored hundreds, thousands of books from the past centuries. This was a priceless collection, without a doubt. Alan instantly started looking for the science area. It was like if he had just entered the supermarket of his dreams. Here and there, books and papers had been put under sealed glass boxes. Those were surely the ones Michael had been talking about sooner. From where he was standing, they really looked like they would molder just by looking at them. No wonder they had to be manipulated with the most extreme attention. But even other books were highly protected. Each shelf had been given a glass door preventing dust and curious hands to reach their content.
Suddenly he found it. The Department of Sciences. His heart skipped a beat. He was so impatient that for a moment he had forgotten about Michael.
“I see you didn’t waste your time Alan. Please don’t drool too much on the books or I’ll have troubles with my boss,” he said smoothly and jokingly. He knew he had just offered to Alan the best gift possible.
“My friend, this is… far beyond my expectations… Thank you Michael.”
“I have another surprise for you.”
Alan turned around and saw the librarian was giving him the magnetic card he had used sooner to enter the Archives.
“I managed to get you a three-day pass. It will expire on Friday evening. I assumed you would like to have more than just a day to visit the place.”
He saw Alan’s stunned look and smiled. Words were not enough to express how grateful the scientist was.
“All you need is to present your badge each time you need to enter the building or a specific zone of the Archives,” he carried on. “But you already know how it works don’t you? I imagine the system is quite the same in your lab. Anyway, here you are!”
He pressed the card against the detection device and the door opened. Alan slowly walked into the room. Kepler, Copernicus, Newton, Galileo, he knew they were all there. He tried to act as a grown man even if could barely contain his excitation.
“Can I have a look at them?” he asked, blushing.
“Sure you can. Only the ones on the shelves though. The others are too decayed to be manipulated by non-professional hands. Of course, I trust you to be gentle with the books you read. Also for security reasons no book may leave this room even for a minute. But I won’t bother you any longer with safety rules.”
Alan nodded. He spent a good ten minutes just looking at the first shelf and reading only the titles of the books. He had heard about many of them before. But some were totally new to him. He then thought three days would never be enough to read everything stored in the shelf he was standing in front of. And there were perhaps thirty shelves filled with science books, waiting for him. All the knowledge from the past and he would have to leave before being able to actually embrace it.
What a pity.
He had to make a choice between all these books. And the faster he would be done choosing a few of them to study, the less time he would waste. For a start, he would surely be able to find the few fragments remaining of Democritus’ work about light, atoms and Universe. Books and papers seemed to be stored by author in alphabetical order. He moved to the left, searching for the D letter. Euclid, Eratosthenes, Epicurus, Empedocles, Diogenes… he was getting closer. But then he stumbled upon a rather large, red book that immediately caught his attention. It had no writing on its cover whose finishes were looking sloppy compared to most of the other books kept within these walls.
Forgetting about Democritus for an instant, he took the curious book. It was heavy. And it had no title on its front cover either. Pages were badly put together. It looked more like a diary than an actual science book.
“Michael?” he said while turning to his friend, “Do you know this book?”
The librarian threw a very quick eye to Alan and what he was holding in his hands and shook his head.
“No, I don’t. I’m not responsible for the Science department, and even after years working here I still haven’t read half the books of my section.”
He shrugged before continuing. “What does it talk about?”
Alan carefully opened the book. First thing he saw was that it apparently had no author. And it had not been dated. The handwriting was crude and hard to read, despite being in a language Alan could understand.
“Dinomancy”, he deciphered.
“Dino-what?” asked Michael, surprised.
The scientist had to reread the single hastily written word on the first page twice. It was not a misreading. He turned some pages. But the book did not seem to have a summary, and even less an introduction. It was filled with partial texts – surely copied from former works –, fragments of notes, scratches, anarchical figures and blank pages here and there. This disjointed patchwork had clearly not been written to be read by anybody else than its author. Michael came close to him, and Alan could feel he was reading over his shoulder.
“I have really never heard about such a book” he said doubtfully.
Alan was still reading through the pages.
“Do you also have books about dragons and alchemy? My lab is still trying to figure out how to turn lead into gold,” he joked ironically.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if we actually did. Our purpose is to store and preserve everything that was ever written.”
“Even when the subject treated is blatant occult foolishness?”
“Well, it’s still worth keeping them. You can mock their content but you can alwa-”
Alan had spotted what looked like a poem about mystical and forgotten forces being released upon Earth. What a joke of a book.
“Ahah! I found a magical spell!” he exclaimed cynically.
Illustration done with markers on a B5 paper sheet
Story to be continued? =)
After more than one year filling forms and papers, sending countless requests and spending hours making contacts, he finally had his authorization confirmed. His colleague and friend Michael had sent him a simple “It’s okay” message. These few words had been enough to enlighten his whole day, and he had been wearing a warm smile since the morning. All the anxiety and his worry of getting his requests denied were gone. Now he was officially allowed to access to the National Archives.
It had not been an easy task. Despite Alan having a PhD in astrophysics and several publications in international journals, the National Archives, and especially the reserve where old and rare books were stored, were not open to him. Only a few people were authorized to visit these places and even less were allowed to manipulate the precious books. And even with one of them having been a close friend since University, the zone was so restricted that Alan’s wish could have never come true.
Yet Alan’s dream was quite simple. At least once in his life, he wanted to see – and perhaps even touch – all the invaluable collection of scientific books sealed there and preserved from attrition. Books that were written by philosophers and searchers from the past millennia. Books that sometimes had not even been fully translated, or were left unread because of their state of decay.
Alan was particularly interested in seeing all the original astronomy books. Ancient works coming from Greek and Arabic savants, and that were recovered and copied by monks during the 13th century. The young man wanted to witness the hard work of these men who spent their lives retrieving lost writings and copying them by hand to preserve their content. Though some works never got copied because they were considered heresy, the monks’ rigorous work allowed most of Antiquity’s knowledge to survive until the contemporary era.
Alan had decided not to go to the lab this day. He had all the reasons in the world to believe such an occasion was not going to happen again. As soon as he had received Michael’s message early in the morning, he had canceled everything for the day, and jumped in his car to drive to the National Archives. He was getting more and more excited with each passing minute, and in his impatience he realized he was even driving a little too fast. “Look at you, he said to himself. You must look like a child the night before Christmas.”
Alan took a deep breath and forced himself to stay calm. He didn’t want to be taken for a turbulent kid eager to touch everything that would be at range once he would have entered the archives.
He had a reputation to uphold.
He soon arrived to the National Archives. He parked his car in a hurry, despite knowing he was absolutely not late. As he was climbing the stone stairs, he met Michael who was waiting for him. He surely had expected Alan to come early. For sure, he knew him well. Michael was the one who had made everything possible. The scientist was always feeling like he was pressuring on his friend about this book obsession. But the man had managed to put him in contact with the right people faster than Alan could have ever wished.
-“Already waiting for me?” Asked Alan as he reached the doors next to where Michael was standing. “Weren’t we said to meet at seven?”
Michael smiled.
-“I know you’d be here long before the said time. I’m actually surprised I arrived before you.”
The man perfectly fitted in the librarian role. He was as old as Alan, but was much taller and thinner. He was wearing his long, washed-out coat, which was giving him a lanky look. His little glasses and pointy nose gave him a severe look, added to the fact he was rarely smiling, or very discretely. Alan had known him for over a decade now, and Michael was not comfortable with strangers and people. He had always preferred the calm of libraries and the company of books, but he was resourceful and behind his reclusive look, the young man was of high education and culture. It was no surprise Michael had managed to get this post at such a young age, compared to his colleagues.
-“I came up as soon as I got your message,” Alan calmly answered. “But judging by how dark it is inside. I guess nothing’s open yet?”
Michael grinned and put his hand into one of his pockets. From there he got his magnetic badge.
-“The public area won’t open before at least a good hour. There will be nobody to annoy you or me during this duration”, he said while opening the front door. “Gives us plenty of time for you to have a look at your precious books.”
Alan followed him as they entered the Archives hall. The whole building was still plunged into darkness. The arches supporting the vault of the large nave overlooking the book shelves and empty reading tables were lit by moonlight and it all had a quite spooky atmosphere. While they were walking through the rooms usually open to public, the man tried to remember the last time he had been there to actually read a book and not just to see his friend. He had all the books he needed for his researches in his personal library, and nowadays most of the information was found in scientific journals.
The only thing he missed was restricted access.
Michael soon arrived to the counters behind which staff worked. There, he and Alan walked through various narrow corridors, twining between offices and books storage areas. The scientist did not manage to work out how the place was designed and wondered if this tortuous layout of corridors and rooms had been done on purpose or not.
-“How do people to not get lost here every day?” asked Alan. “I’d never realized the reserve was so huge!”
-“The reserve is four to five times larger than the entire main hall and up to eighty percent of our books are stored here”, Michael answered. “Each book gets a code and a category. You’ve rooms for economy works, scientific papers, philosophy… It sure is a lot of work if you don’t want the whole place to become a mess within a day.”
He shrugged before stopping in front of a big, thick glass door.
“But it’s not my work. My work is much cooler”, he whispered as he withdrew his magnetic card from his pocket.
He put his card in the optical sensor, and Alan could hear the door latch open. Michael entered into a dimly lit corridor. Alan followed him and they both climbed down stone stairs. Air was getting rarer. Or it was heavily filtered. He coughed slightly, pulling his collar nervously. Michael noticed it.
“This part of the Archives is only ventilated with air conditioning. Humidity and oxygen rates are strictly controlled. Some books down here are even stored under inert atmosphere. Same for light: the less the books are exposed, the slower they decay.”
He gave a look at Alan.
“Don’t get too excited when you’re inside or you’ll quickly run short of oxygen!” he winked at him.
Apparently satisfied with his joke, he kept climbing down the stairs.
“Do you know how deep we are going?” asked Alan.
“I do,” answered Michael.
The scientist waited a few seconds for his friend to carry on, but Michael said nothing more. Alan guessed it was surely not something he was allowed to know. They soon reached a vast nave. It was too dark in here for the young man to distinctly see the cellar. But at this moment he did not care. All along the walls were stored hundreds, thousands of books from the past centuries. This was a priceless collection, without a doubt. Alan instantly started looking for the science area. It was like if he had just entered the supermarket of his dreams. Here and there, books and papers had been put under sealed glass boxes. Those were surely the ones Michael had been talking about sooner. From where he was standing, they really looked like they would molder just by looking at them. No wonder they had to be manipulated with the most extreme attention. But even other books were highly protected. Each shelf had been given a glass door preventing dust and curious hands to reach their content.
Suddenly he found it. The Department of Sciences. His heart skipped a beat. He was so impatient that for a moment he had forgotten about Michael.
“I see you didn’t waste your time Alan. Please don’t drool too much on the books or I’ll have troubles with my boss,” he said smoothly and jokingly. He knew he had just offered to Alan the best gift possible.
“My friend, this is… far beyond my expectations… Thank you Michael.”
“I have another surprise for you.”
Alan turned around and saw the librarian was giving him the magnetic card he had used sooner to enter the Archives.
“I managed to get you a three-day pass. It will expire on Friday evening. I assumed you would like to have more than just a day to visit the place.”
He saw Alan’s stunned look and smiled. Words were not enough to express how grateful the scientist was.
“All you need is to present your badge each time you need to enter the building or a specific zone of the Archives,” he carried on. “But you already know how it works don’t you? I imagine the system is quite the same in your lab. Anyway, here you are!”
He pressed the card against the detection device and the door opened. Alan slowly walked into the room. Kepler, Copernicus, Newton, Galileo, he knew they were all there. He tried to act as a grown man even if could barely contain his excitation.
“Can I have a look at them?” he asked, blushing.
“Sure you can. Only the ones on the shelves though. The others are too decayed to be manipulated by non-professional hands. Of course, I trust you to be gentle with the books you read. Also for security reasons no book may leave this room even for a minute. But I won’t bother you any longer with safety rules.”
Alan nodded. He spent a good ten minutes just looking at the first shelf and reading only the titles of the books. He had heard about many of them before. But some were totally new to him. He then thought three days would never be enough to read everything stored in the shelf he was standing in front of. And there were perhaps thirty shelves filled with science books, waiting for him. All the knowledge from the past and he would have to leave before being able to actually embrace it.
What a pity.
He had to make a choice between all these books. And the faster he would be done choosing a few of them to study, the less time he would waste. For a start, he would surely be able to find the few fragments remaining of Democritus’ work about light, atoms and Universe. Books and papers seemed to be stored by author in alphabetical order. He moved to the left, searching for the D letter. Euclid, Eratosthenes, Epicurus, Empedocles, Diogenes… he was getting closer. But then he stumbled upon a rather large, red book that immediately caught his attention. It had no writing on its cover whose finishes were looking sloppy compared to most of the other books kept within these walls.
Forgetting about Democritus for an instant, he took the curious book. It was heavy. And it had no title on its front cover either. Pages were badly put together. It looked more like a diary than an actual science book.
“Michael?” he said while turning to his friend, “Do you know this book?”
The librarian threw a very quick eye to Alan and what he was holding in his hands and shook his head.
“No, I don’t. I’m not responsible for the Science department, and even after years working here I still haven’t read half the books of my section.”
He shrugged before continuing. “What does it talk about?”
Alan carefully opened the book. First thing he saw was that it apparently had no author. And it had not been dated. The handwriting was crude and hard to read, despite being in a language Alan could understand.
“Dinomancy”, he deciphered.
“Dino-what?” asked Michael, surprised.
The scientist had to reread the single hastily written word on the first page twice. It was not a misreading. He turned some pages. But the book did not seem to have a summary, and even less an introduction. It was filled with partial texts – surely copied from former works –, fragments of notes, scratches, anarchical figures and blank pages here and there. This disjointed patchwork had clearly not been written to be read by anybody else than its author. Michael came close to him, and Alan could feel he was reading over his shoulder.
“I have really never heard about such a book” he said doubtfully.
Alan was still reading through the pages.
“Do you also have books about dragons and alchemy? My lab is still trying to figure out how to turn lead into gold,” he joked ironically.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if we actually did. Our purpose is to store and preserve everything that was ever written.”
“Even when the subject treated is blatant occult foolishness?”
“Well, it’s still worth keeping them. You can mock their content but you can alwa-”
Alan had spotted what looked like a poem about mystical and forgotten forces being released upon Earth. What a joke of a book.
“Ahah! I found a magical spell!” he exclaimed cynically.
Illustration done with markers on a B5 paper sheet
Story to be continued? =)
Category Artwork (Traditional) / Transformation
Species Dinosaur
Size 1000 x 1433px
File Size 1.84 MB
Listed in Folders
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