Archivist finds a Treasure Trove in a Library's donation of 'source material, just old papers'. Stored in time seal conditions. Just one problem to the end of all their funding problems it was all hand written. -- Anon Guest
It was a sealed box in one of the Pre-Shattering Permaplastics. Someone had scrawled, "rando papers" in permanent marker across the lid. Scanners indicated that it was still hermetically sealed. This required care and attention to detail.
Good thing the Archivaas were an order of information-obsessed weirdos for whom that was a normal Twosday night. Sealed room with clever air pressure modifications to keep any ancient pathogens in, check. Also heavily sealed livesuit with touch-reaction gloves, check. Every possible means of recording the unboxing at every angle including the helm and eyecam, check. An entire team of fellow nerdy historians looking on and prepared to commentate the proceedings. Of course, because these were like-minded nerds, they were also prepared to give opinions that nobody asked for.
This was a treasure chest of incalculable historical value. Priceless to the right people. Worthless to the wrong ones. The Archivaas could not think otherwise, since Terran history had lost vast chunks of its records via colonisation waves known as The Shattering. The fight to get even the smallest fragment of it back was known by Archivaas everywhere. That said, they were a cult so magnificently obsessed with their own mission that even other Humans called them insane.
"Are we rolling? All cams, all scanners, all everything?"
"Yup. Streaming, too. I just checked the feed. We're backed up on a dozen servers. Let's do this."
"Okay," sighed Archivaas Nale. "Moving the first lock." It was only a sealed vessel of potentially vital paperwork from before the Shattering, and close to the Digital Era. There were only so many billion future Archivaas watching and commenting about every move Nale made in the here and now. No pressure.
Gently, carefully, Nale cracked the first lock, then the opposite one. Two more, and the seal broke. No alarms, no alerts, no toxic spores from the dawn of time, just the usual assortment of toxins via the paper, ink, and sundry chemicals used in the making thereof. This was material that hadn't been viewed in centuries.
"People, we have a nineteen ninety-five yearbook," announced Nale. "I can see it under a layer of loose papers." Nale knew better than to immediately extract it. This was an archeological dig in its own way.
Nale got the glass probes and carefully lifted the first sheet out into a shallow stasis box made for documents. Only then did they turn it over. Legal paper, with dense text on it in a myopic font.
"Cursive," breathed one of the watchers. "I recognise that, that's cursive script."
Nale confirmed. It was an extremely myopic cursive, somehow also written by a hurried hand, one who could not write fast enough to catch up with the thoughts in their head, it seemed. Several corrections added between the cramped lines were phrases that should have been there the first time.
Nale laid it reverentially under the scanner for digitisation. Handwriting experts would have a ball with this one. Heck, one day, they might even get to the content of the document. One was already analysing the pen stroke history and by that convoluted process, divining what it might be saying, letter by painstaking letter.
There were people in the Archivaas who could read and write fluent Oggham. There were ones who studied Sanskrit and Hindi. There were those who could hold flamewars in Incan glyphs. Deciphering one Terran's crabbed handwriting was simply an issue of getting them to focus on one larger picture.
It would be some decades hence before they would realise that this particular priceless literary work from a forgotten age was part of an epic-length work of Furry porn.
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / blamb]
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