1.

 Norman Charring stood up and stretched his body, he leaned and twisting one way and then the other way.   Then he interlaced his fingers and pushed his palms out and away from him, as far as they could go.  His body was stiff from spending hours sitting and his fingers were stiff from hours of writing.  He shouldn't complain, it was his choice to use the ancient format of paper and pen.

Samuel, his friend and colleague at the Museum was surprised that Norman had been offered the commission, which came from an unexpected sector.  Samuel made the point that the commission was perhaps too generous.  He had also made the point that the text on the sample page of the manuscript was not overly difficult and that he would be able to do the job.

Norman had agreed,  but for reasons unknown to them the private museum wanted him.

"Be careful Norman," Samuel said.  "The offer is too generous, there is something we are not being told."

Norman  was pleased that he had taken Samuel's advice, and packed his never ending paper. The documents he had seen were fascinating, and they appeared to be originals.  It was hard to be ninety nine percent sure unless you could run diagnostics on them.  At the moment that was something Norman couldn't do.  Even after the diagnostic test, there was always the chance, that the ancient pages might not be ancient at all.  Norman had to consider that some-one might have re-organised things a little, he suspected that there had been some nano enzyme repairs made to the documents that he was studying.  How much repair had been done he couldn't tell.  It was how the skin on his fingers felt more than anything, whatever had been done, was recent.

The owner of the documents, Ulrich, was in the habit of popping into the office every couple of hours to see how much progress was being made.  Norman did not need the pressure, ancient language was tricky sometimes, not that he didn't know the words, it was more the context of the word.

Take the word 'wicked', sometimes it meant very bad and other time it meant extremely good.  He was sure that the ancient people who used the word could distinguish the difference, he like a challenge he reminded himself, and that was the reason he was here.

He grabbed his cup and took a sip.  Oh yuck, how long has that cup been sitting on the desk, he needed another cup of coffee, and something to eat, something more than just the small plate of sandwiches he'd eaten for lunch. Norman grabbed his cup, he wondered if he could get a refill.  He turned the handle on the door only to find the door seemed to be stuck.  His heart stepped up its beat.

© M. J. McKay