9. Analysis

The night before..

Harrison was pacing up and down his shop mumbling to himself. The glass shard lay on his desk. Shirley was on her perch, eyes an emerald green.
"Search complete."
Harrison stopped pacing.
"Ok. What you got for me?"
"In the year 2025, the environmental crisis began. Leading corporations pooled resources to combat the catastrophe. EnvirTech and SpaceGlobal Inc. spearheaded the operation."
"Stop right there, Shirley. I need to know who were the CEOs of those two companies at that time."
Harrison took out a pencil and pad from his back pocket.
"EnvirTech - Chairman Executive Officer - Richard Masters
SpaceGlobal Inc. was going through an embezzlement lawsuit, last known President Darrius Al-Gaziri."
Harrison quickly jotted down the names then rubbed his chin, he repeated the names over and over again in his head. They sounded familiar but he couldn't pin point exactly who they were.
"Ok. Continue with the history lesson."
"As you wish. The main concern during the environmental crisis of 2025 according to my records was global warming. Ozone depletion had elevated heat levels at 1 percent per year. A research and development team came up with a multi-step solution. In the scientific community they were known as the, "Big Three".
First, being the restoration of the ozone layer by releasing bio-carbons into the atmosphere. Second, switching from fossil fuel to solar and wind energy. Third, the.."
"Wait. Didn't they use hydro electric generators at some point?"
"False. A quote from leading scientist Omni Namkimura at EnvirTech, 'Due to declining water levels hydro-turbines are not a viable long term solution.' End quote."
"Ah, I see. Luckily those kids can't read code otherwise they would have realized the etchings on the object were manufacturing imprints. This thing was made somewhere. I'm going to give you what I think it says. Ready? 06012035. Add that to your search parameters and tell me what you come up with. Search carefully, try not to overlook anything, Shirley."
Shirley became very still and her eyes glowing again.
Still staring at the names in his pad Harrison went over to a stack of old magazines he had been meaning to read under his desk. He started to look through them. De-ja-vu started to play out in his head, he envisioned one of the names on a magazine, but which one was it? Carefully he analyzed each one, reading their titles and checking them off his mental list. The titles were boldfaced, some italic. Suddenly the sense of time travel encapsulated him as kept searching. Most of the magazines had a random person on the front and in smaller font their name and title. "Man of the year", "Sexiest Woman of 2019", their accomplishments bordered the irrelevant. "Best Music Video Award", "Best Picture Shoot", "Most Games Won." It made his head spin, where was the rest of life? How could society favor only one type of people? And of all people, those who had nothing to offer humanity other than their surgically precise good-looks.
Harrison began to thumb through one out of curiosity, some pages smelt strongly of alcohol with the words 'SAMPLE' along the edge. He turned a page and there was a man wearing a scarf, wool sweater, khakis, with a ridiculous hair cut sitting on the on the beach, it made no sense. His skin showed no blemish or sign of imperfection, not even pores, his chin was muscular and his body symmetrical.
"Wow, everybody was that perfect back then?"
Harrison laughed at his sarcastic remark.
After a few more pages another alcohol covered page came up with another scent. This caused him to chuck the magazine behind him.
"Stuffs giving me a headache."
After a few more minutes of searching through the assortment he stopped and looked around. He was surrounded by magazines. Just thinking about cleaning up this mess along with the frustration of not finding what he was looking for made him kick the rest of pile over.
"Damn it. I should just bring it to the black market and let them figure this crap out. But I know that son of a b***h Squid will stiff me."
He waved his finger in the hair, as if saying, No, I won't give up. Sitting in the center of the tabloid hurricane, he started to rub the sleep from his eyes. Harrison had been up four hours since the kids left and wasn't any closer to knowing what they had brought him.

Rubbing his eyes had blurred his vision. He tried to focus as one of the magazine came into view. Something about it caught his eye. At the very bottom of the pile it lay half-covered with the letters ENVIR in dark green letters exposed.
Slowly, Harrison nudged the magazines uptop to the side a bit, revealing the next letter to be a T. Anticipation caused him to snatch the magazine from beneath was the pile.
"ENVIRTECH. HUMANITIES LAST HOPE?"
At the very bottom there read a quote :
"We have found a solution from sustainable resources in which we can all finally achieve a utopian society." - R. Masters
"Eureka!"
He quickly read the table of contents and found the page of the article. It was a pop culture science magazine.
"What's Hip And Scientific!" Read the banner along the front page.
"They should fire their editor.", mumbled Harrison.

The article had a color picture of a dark skinned man who looked to be in his late forties, his hair was combed to the side, his teethe were an ivory white, shoulders broad, and chin chiseled. He could have been the model's on the beach father. In the picture, Richard stood at a podium with a group of scientist in lab coats behind him. A young woman with glasses wearing a female version of the same suit stood next to him, pin stripe black, probably his assistant. Beneath the picture a journalist who had attended the event explained how this was a defining point in history. They compared it to prevention of the Great Depression in the 1930s. As he flipped to the next page, step by step illustrations showed a bunch of scientist operating machinery. They would pour what looked like sand into rectangular trays. The sand was called, "Composite 137". The trays would then be sent through an oven on a conveyor belt to be heated to a scolding white hot color, then fed to a compression machine. The result was a thin layer of what seemed to be a type glass. Next, they took it and dipped into a vat. The end result was a sheet of turquoise green glass. They called it, "Solar Glass".
The next page were illustrations of the various amounts of environmental exposure it could withstand. Below there was a caption reciting the figures.
"Can withstand gale force winds of up to 200 mph. Sustainable under -80 degrees Celcius and a 400 degree heatwave."
Harrison licked his thumb and flipped the page.
"With the partnership of the SpaceGlobal Inc. we have achieved something no other country could have within the current time constraint. We literally have invented the future, ladies and gentlemen. With our environmentally safe "Solar Glass" in combination with SpaceGlobal's knowledge of cosmic energy, we will harness the power of the sun to its fullest potential. I say to you my fellow men, women, and children with upmost optimism, we will survive this catastrophe."
The next few pages the journalist explained how relieved she felt. How there was a bright future ahead of her, how she could get married and have kids. The last page was a photo of Richard Masters receiving the Nobel Peace Prize and several humanitarian awards from various leaders of the United Nations.
Harrison studied the pictures of the glass for a minute.
"Well, here goes nothing."
He jumped to his feet, ran to his desk, snatched the shard, went to his wall of assorted tools for sale and grabbed a blow torch. He clicked the self-igniter, a low flame appeared. He laid the shard on his work bench. Slowly, he began to put the torch above the shard, he grabbed a pair of goggles and threw them on shading his eyes from the flash. He waited a few seconds then pulled away. The shard was intact, no smoke, no smell of burning, nothing. Harrison cranked the blow torch to the max, the flame stuck out several inches like a lizards tongue. He pushed the flame onto the shard again, this time covering it with the blue part of the flame. His workbench started to bend under the heat. He quickly shut off the torch, threw on some gloves, and nudged the shard off the table. Then he picked it up, placed his goggles on his forehead, and examined the shard.
"Someone is watching, Harrison."
Shirley whispered.
In such a deep trance the whisper caused Harrison to throw the shard in the air out of shock.
"Where Shirley!?"
"The open window."
Immediately he turned in the direction of the window, just that second he could see someone peering through the screen, both their eyes met for mili-second before whoever was at the window ducked out of sight.
"Shirley, initiate security protocol!"
The mechanical hawk which barely moved jumped into action. She lept off her perch and began to glide through the air crashing through the window. Once outside she took to the sky, it was pitch black outside. Changing her optics to night vision she had a birds eye view for miles.
Harrison switched his goggles for his regular ones, adjusted the lense over his eye and tapped a button on the back. The lense began streaming an image in fluorescent green from hundreds of feet in the air. He was seeing what Shirley saw.
"Alright, can you read me Shirl?"
"Loud and clear."
"Ok. Stay on them. How far out are you?"
"Approaching half a mile. What are you orders?"
"Get close I want to find out who's peeping tom."
"Roger."
Once he finished his sentence she carried out the command. She dove directly down on top the perpetrator, once she was close enough she nudged them just enough to throw them off balance. With power of interia they fell face first into the dirt. Shirley landed a few feet ahead so she could get a clear shot of their face when they got up.
"Good one. Now let's see who this b*****d is."
Slowly they got on all fours, shook their head from all the dizziness, then knelt on one knee.
"Shirley, zoom in."
As her eyes tried to focus, Harrison noticed someone kneeling in the background a few yards away. They appeared to be holding something.
"SHIRLEY MOVE!"
I loud BOOM cracked the sky.
Shirleys visual stream went black.
Harrison got up and made for the door as fast he could.
"No, no, no, not you. They're not taking you too."
He tapped another button on his googles, this time it went to a radar display.
"Where are you, where are you?"
There was no radar ping.
Harrison's heart started to thump in his chest, but the adrenaline pushed him onward. He stopped, looked around in the dark, switching to night vision.
"Hey, you there, old man?"
The voice startled him, he spun around to see if anyone was there.
"No, stupid. We're long gone."
The voice was coming from his goggles.
"Who are you? Give me back Shirley, damn you!"
"Hey, relax. We ain't gonna hurt her. She's fine. Just an little EMP to knock her out."
Harrison coming to his senses tried to memorize the voice, it was male, teenage, unfamiliar.
"What do you want?"
"Don't worry about that just yet. We'll be in touch."
The connection cut out again.
"Wait! If you hurt her I'll kill you!"
Harrison shouted at the top of his everyone profane word he could think of but eventually reality settled in. He fell to his knees and began to sob.
In a whimpering tone,
"Shirley..I'm sorry.."