
prior to 1960 the contents hadn’t been added to the data banks. Now it was time to rectify that, and
what better slave labor than one of the local college students?
“Banzai,” Daniel said, just to hear his own voice, but he only sounded annoyed and resentful. He picked
up a crowbar and set to work on the lid of the earliest-dated crate. It was eerie down here in the
basement, a good fifteen degrees chillier than on the first floor.
Occasionally he could hear sounds, but the museum’s heavy construction muffled the noise above him
beyond recognition. Daniel doubted he could tell the difference between footsteps or something being
dropped. He was fairly disoriented, but he thought he might be at the back of the huge building; the only
windows down here were made of two-level heavy glass blocks, so there was no way to tell without a
floor plan.
The lid of the first box, marked 1939, suddenly came free with a screech and a jerk that sent him
stumbling backward. The scent of mildew drifted out, undercut by something else that Daniel hadn’t
expected—a smoky smell that brought to mind the image of burning paper. Glad he’d thought to wear
work gloves and, wishing the light down here was a little better, the young man began lifting things out of
the crate. Professor Ramihad assigned him one of the Paleontology Department’s laptop computers, and
the idea was to unpack each crate’s contents and enter everything on the data inventory form, then
carefully repack every box. Tedious but not so complicated, and Daniel tried to convince himself that it
was worth it—he might find a cool item or two, something forgotten or that, out of lack of knowledge at
the time, had been thought unimportant. Anything like that he would return to the Paleontology
Department for examination.
While he wasn’t sure what he had expected to discover in these crates, the items he lifted from the first
one were already oddly out of place. He’d anticipated records of old digs, photographs, and maybe
broken fossils—really good finds would still be on exhibit—but certainly not this. Perplexed, Daniel sat
back and surveyed what he’d uncrated. No bones here; instead, he was looking at the scorched remains
of someone’s tool kit: hammers, saws, chisels, brushes with no bristles and the head of a small spade,
what was left of a leather hat and pair of gloves, a canteen, and a primitive pair of half-melted goggles.
There was a beat-up metal clipboard, a ragged roll of plasterer’s scrim that had escaped the
as-yet-unexplained flames, even a still half-full sack of plaster, all of it charred and covered with a fine
layer of black soot. Stuffed to the side was a blackened leather saddlebag, and when Daniel looked
inside, he found a mound of ashes that might have once been paper.
Tucked beneath a twine-encircled stack of papers and files whose edges were burned to a mottled
brown was the final item in the box of gear: the shredded pieces of a heavy, army-style canvas tent.
When Daniel spread it out, the skin at the back of his neck crawled.It looked like an entire side of it had
been destroyed and there wasn’t nearly enough left to provide shelter. Worse, it was obvious from the
smoke stain pattern that the fire had been on theinsideof the tent.
Daniel shivered and sat back, again surveying the crate’s contents for a moment before reaching for the
files. He cut the old twine encircling them with his pocketknife and began to separate the stack carefully,
wincing as some of the dry, fire-damaged pages crumbled in his hands. It took him nearly an hour, but he
finally had a name and enough information to combine with the 1939 date so that he could lose the gloves
and do a search of the museum’s data files on the laptop.
Nuriel, Gibor (Professor). B. 1891 / D. 1939—Dept. of Paleontology. Hire Date: 2/14/13.
Termination Date: N/A. While on a dig at a Big Bend, Texas location on July 2, 1939, Gibor
Nuriel was killed by an explosion and fire inside his tent. The explosion was attributed to a
faulty camping stove. There are no known surviving family members. Material recovered from
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