“It uses the kind you can look into the sky with.” he grinned from ear to ear.
“Point taken.” I turned again to walk away but he stopped me.
“Do you want to go up and take a look?”
I stood there for a moment thinking about going up to the top of a mountain. I did want to see what the town looked like from up there.
“Well?”
“I don’t know. How long does it take to get to the top?”
“About seven minutes.”
“Are we allowed?”
“Yeah, we just have to be careful.”
He used a key to unlock the door and held it for me, smiling.
“Alright.” I walked into the building.
We walked through the dark lobby, old florescent lights lit up as we walked through the room but most were blown. There was dust everywhere and the computers on the receptions desk looked at least ten years old. There was a bank of four elevators at the end of a hall.
Silence pressed the button on the wall between the doors. A set of doors opened and he stepped in holding the door open for me again. This elevator car was a little different than any I had seen before. Instead of just an open room there were seats around the walls that had harnesses mounted to the back of them.
“How do we get up so fast?”
“I don’t know how it works.” He said honestly.
I sat down, and Silence did the same. We both strapped the harnesses across our shoulders. He pressed the red button on the armrest of his seat.
I felt a humming in the floor, and all of a sudden the elevator rocketed upward.
“How fast are we going?”
“Around nineteen, twenty miles per hour.”
“It seems much faster than that.” The car shook like the plane had every time we had hit turbulence.
“It’s fast enough.”
The landing at the top of the mountain was in pretty rough shape. The damage that I had seen from the plane was nothing compared to up close view of the dilapidated buildings. There were two communication dishes, one of which was embedded in the ground below where it had once stood.
“What happened up here?”
“Not sure it was like this when I got here and they have never put any money into fixing the place. Plus Sam doesn’t want the repair to bring us any undue attention.” he showed me through to the observation deck.
There were at least twenty computers in the room. All of which were lined up so that one person could wheel to them all.
He took me out to the telescopes. There were six of them perfectly lined up in two rows of three. We walked into one of the domes and I checked out the telescope.
It had about a ninety inch mirror that really needed to be cleaned but the rest of the telescope seemed to be in good condition.
“What do you think?” Silence asked with his hands in his pockets.
“I would like to see what these things can see.” I wiped the filth off with my finger measuring about an eighth of an inch thick.
“I wouldn’t know where to start.” he said.
“Well if all these mirrors are this dirty we won’t be able to, but if Fade kept her images on the computers then I’m sure we could find something.”
We went back into the control room and I started to boot up the computers. It was a slow process; the computers were older. They had an operating system that I had never seen before and had to assume was custom designed for the observatory.
“She spent most of her time in front of this computer.” he pointed to the computer with the biggest screen.
I sat down in front of the station, it booted right up, not asking for any kind of password. The desktop was relatively empty but there was a single icon. I clicked on it opening a program that started with a splash screen. It said Eastcroft Observatory. The Eastcroft had a mark through it, and Fade’s was written next to it.
“She had a good sense of humor, didn’t she?”
“Yeah.” he said face low, "Look Grace I didn’t mean to upset you earlier out on the field.”
“What?”
“When I grabbed you, I didn’t mean to hurt you or anything.”
“Don’t worry about that. I overreacted.”
“Thanks.”
I looked into his eyes. The same color eyes that we all had, so blue they were glowing.
I cleared my throat and looked back to the computer screen. There were a few icons inside of the program, one marked targeting, one marked notes, and one marked imagery along with one marked settings. I clicked on the one marked imagery.
Hard Drive Error: No Files Found
“Well that sucks.” I said.
“Sorry about that, the computers have been sitting for a long time.” He looked down at his watch. "Crap, we need to get going, the sun’s going to be up soon, and we need to get you home.”
“Do you mind if I come up here and work on getting the telescopes working?”
“I don’t mind but you’ll have to ask Sam if he is alright with it.”
“I thought it was ok if we were up here.” I shut down the computers.
“Well I may have fibbed a little. Sam prefers that we ask first.”
“Hmm, that is a good way to start off a relationship.” I got up from the desk chair.
“I figured it would be a good first date.” He didn’t miss a beat.
I stammered for a second, "I umm.”
“Don’t worry about it I’m just joking, Grace” he grinned again.
Chapter 13: Denver
I slept that morning. I got the best sleep that I had for a very long time. When I woke I was in a great mood. I got out of bed, grabbed a stack of clean clothes, and hit the shower. I didn’t have to fight anyone, they were all out of the house already.
I walked out of the bathroom putting my hair up when I almost collided with Silence in the kitchen doorway. I took a few steps back and let go of my hair.
“What are you doing here?”
I walked past him and searched for a clean bowl but there wasn’t one to be found. Every dish in the house was stacked in the sink.
“Vanish is out at the field with everybody today, all they really need for now is a glorified babysitter.” He joined me next to the sink and dried as I washed.
“Ok, but why are you here?” I rubbed my stomach as it growled loudly.
“Sam gave me that for you.” He nodded towards an envelope on the counter.
I opened it up. It was stuffed full of cash, all of it hundreds.
“How much is here.” My mouth hung half open; I had never seen that much money at one time before.
“Ten.” He said.
“For everyone?”
“Nope, just for you. It’s to get you started, you know get what you want. It’s a government re-establishment fund that Sam developed. He found some non appropriated money or something, I don’t know.”
I took a breath and sighed in disbelief. I just looked at the money.
“Come on I’ll take you into the city.” He smiled
“What city?”
“Denver, we usually go around there when we need to go shopping for anything that is not dime store stuff.”
“What about the others?” I asked my mouth watering; I still had not eaten anything.
“Sam is going to take them later.”
“What if I want to go with them?”
“You can if you want. I figured you’d want some space given your midnight stroll last night.” He seemed kind of hurt that I was considering not going with him.
I thought for a moment. The money was burning in my hand, and I wanted some clothes from this decade. Things started to jump into my head, like a new laptop, I had never had a new laptop. Just government issued refurbished stuff.