The Ebban Journal: Pristine

Ebban’s boots touched Earth’s ground at 19:26 solar time and auto-adjusted for the change in gravity. Nueva Earth’s resurfacing was supposed to have begun by now, but the Leveling Day explosion had rocked the core of Earth, made it uninhabitable, and delayed reconstruction.

Shame, Ebban thought, Earth was a beautiful planet to begin with and Nueva Earth had promise, but now---. He surveyed the square of land he was assigned to and made the quick assumption that he wasn’t going to find anything worthwhile. His partner Shahn touched ground shortly after him, some 30 feet away on his own plot, and made a simple hand gesture to suggest he felt the same.

Pickings were slim on this side of Earth since Leveling Day, but occasionally someone found something worthy of Artifaction’s criteria. Ebban worked for Artifaction since he was fifteen and had had his share of luck here and there in his thirty years of dredging. His best find was a single shoelace packet. In near-perfect condition, that find got him a year’s worth of food and water rations, 3,000 digians to spend, and the “Ebban Shoelaces: Boxed” were put on display at the Artifaction Museum for an entire season; a high honor for a Dredge Head, but that was nearly twenty years ago.

“Hey Ebb,” Shahn’s voice came alive inside the earpiece. “I’m gonna go dark for a while, look for some biolumes for Nessa. Holler if you hit!” Shahn’s headlamps went black in the distance and Ebban flashed his in response.

The building code he was assigned to illuminated in the corner of his visor, indicating he had reached his target, and the Holobuild activated immediately, filling in anything above twenty feet that had been leveled with a colorful rendition of what once was. This one was once called a brownstone, although now there was nothing brown about it as a thick layer of black ash covered everything in the Leveling.

Ebban climbed the short set of stairs, his boots crunching on old concrete, and easily popped open the lock on the door with a good shove. Upon entry, he could see the ceiling of that first floor, mostly intact; an uncommon occurrence in his line of work. This lifted his spirits a bit more, considering the items inside might be better preserved than other dredging locations.

“Shahn, I got a ceiling. Jealous yet?” No answer.

He shrugged and continued his search, finding a few items he knew he could sell to individual collectors, stuff Artifaction had no market for and would pass on to him after screening. He almost passed a china closet when his headlamps caught on something metallic amongst the broken porcelain on a shelf. It was a key, and by the look of it, it fit a small drawer in the middle of the closet. Artifaction’s regulation on locked drawers was clear: do not damage the contents, which meant no electro-charge that might set the inside on fire, and no drilling.

Must be my lucky day. Ebban thought, retrieving the key and opening the lock with ease, but the drawer stuck with age. He tapped on the corners of the drawer to try and jar it loose, but it did not come free. However, years of dredging gave him more experience than was needed for this moment. He reached into the open space below the drawer and gave it a hard whack. It sprung open easily then, but he heard something heavy fall behind it. I’ll check that later, he thought as he carefully emptied the contents of the drawer. To his surprise, he found a large wad of money sealed in a plastic bag. Without opening it, he thumbed through the bills. There was at least $20,000 in there, but nothing else in the drawer had any more value than the plastic bag. He slowly slid the drawer fully out of its enclosure and shoved his hand in to reach what had fallen behind it. It felt like another plastic bag, and he fingered yet another firm stack inside of it, but this felt different.

Withdrawing his hand, Ebban found something that could set him and his partner up for the rest of their lives. Inside the plastic was a preserved journal that made his heart leap into his throat. The journal was bound in pliable black leather with an elastic cord to hold it closed. The pages within were a soft ivory, and a small, shiny black ribbon marked a page to be explored. It was made to stand the test of time, and someone made sure it would.

He had trained two whole months for this chance event. The written word was far more valuable to Artifaction than anything printed, more so if it was written in ink. Towards the end of the Written Age, people used ink sparingly and it was rare to find a pen, but opening the journal in the volatile air to find out would be a compromisation of the pages within it. So, with his nose practically touching his helmet’s visor, he examined the edges for any sign that there was actual writing inside. To his satisfaction, he could see the writing waves on the edges of the paper and just a smudge of blue on the corner of a few pages. Level: Pristine. His heart began to beat so hard he thought he’d choke. He could see the broadcast now. It played over and over in his head.

“Come explore the beautiful pages of the ‘Ebban Journal: Pristine’ at the Artifaction Museum. Artifaction. Putting the art back in artifact.”

Liars. They would tease everyone with the outside of the journal, but never show what was written within. No. That privilege was only given to the curators and the wealthy who could conjure up 500,000 digians to see it. Not even he, the Finder, would be able read what was inside. He was only a Dredge Head after all. He’d done the math. He’d have to save up every digian he’d earned for fourteen years in order to see it. An Artifaction season only lasted five years, and fourteen years was a long time to go homeless and hungry. He began to imagine the words written within it and couldn’t shake the feelings of guilt and jealousy that welled up inside him. He was suddenly hyper-aware of the small space in his O2 box that could fit the journal perfectly.

They never screen the OxBox. I could just---

“Ebban! Man, you scared half the life out of me. Your Ox acting up? What’cha find?” Shahn’s hand clapped Ebban’s shoulder just as he shoved the journal into the O2 box.

“Ox is good, just checking levels. Found twenty grand!” Ebban’s heart settled down into place again.

“What! That’s a K of digi’s, easy.” Shahn said with a chuff.

“Five hundred-five hundred. Even split, remember?” Ebban corrected.

“You don’t have to do that. S’not a hard Dredger rule.”

“Even split. S’rule to me, partner.” Ebban reminded Shahn who nodded humbly in agreement before turning to leave.

Back on the ship everything went without a hitch. All gear went through a different entrance along with them, and the only thing screened was the container of biolumes Shahn found for his daughter Nessa. Of course he’d still have to file a claim for them, but that was easy. The Artifaction collection carts would go through careful screening; each item scanned and rated according to demand. The list constantly evolved. Worthy items could be labeled unworthy from month to month and vice versa, but items like the journal were in constant demand due to their variability: some were unpublished novels, some drawings or accounts of childhood, some were just the rambling thoughts of an oxygen deprived brain, but all were deemed valuable. Unworthy items were given back to Dredgers so that they might make a small profit in the marketplace.

Ebban and Shahn had brought in close to 300 extra digians monthly in Mark sales. No one ever knew what would sell and what wouldn’t, but everyone knew Artifaction’s numbers depended on Mark’s records. As soon as an item became a demand, it was flagged and automatically labeled an Artifaction target. Clever sellers made sure not to sell any item too high and often altered the numbers in their books at a lower price than what was asked for under the table. Unfortunately, Mark wasn’t full of clever sellers; most were inexperienced and the rest were afraid of the hefty penalty for being caught. No one wanted to spend a whole year in the Zero Sect where the government thought the struggle to survive was punishment enough, and equality meant setting all of your numbers to zero: zero digians, zero rations, zero hope.

Home at last.

Ebban turned the journal over in his hands, cherished the smoothness of the cover, and finally slid off the elastic band with his finger, like slipping off a lover’s clothing. The journal revealed its secrets to him page after page; the words telling the story of a woman’s struggle to find balance on a planet that was dying. The last written page suggested that Leveling Day was near. She spoke of her fears of separation from her family. Immediate family was housed together on the colonized planets, but there was no guarantee that the rest of your family would be housed on the same planet. Migration happened quickly and it didn’t matter where you were in the course of your day. When the government said it was time to leave, you had thirty minutes to gather what you could carry before boarding the ships.

Her haste and fear reached his mind and after reading each page, he knew he had to act quickly. They were coming for him. He scanned each page and created the encryption file which would be sold to the highest bidder in the Mark before being distributed through the galaxy within mere moments of the transaction. These words would not be left to the elite. Her words would circle the galaxy a million times over and become immortal.

“Your file has been sold to Barters and Givings. Confirm 840,000 digian transfer to 50-50 account?” A melodic voice chimed.

Barters and Givings, a modern-day Robin Hood and a good sale point, high in digital tracking coverage, and a widespread information band. Perfect. They would never be able to trace the digians back to his brother or his niece, and the journal would travel far and wide.

“Affirmative. Passphrase: Family is forever.” Ebban said authoritatively.

“Ebban Rasul: unit 3764. Your unit will be breached in thirty seconds for inspection due to weight discrepancy during screening. Place your hands on the security circles and prepare for entry.” A voice boomed throughout the complex. He was sure Shahn had heard it too.

“Barters and Givings is requesting a transaction scrub. Confirm?” The voice chimed again.

“Confirm and scrub system. Delete all. Passphrase: Freedom has a price.”

Ebban heard the whirring of the machine and confidently placed his hands on the security circles on the floor just moments before the police entered his unit. It didn’t take them long to find the journal, but it was too late. The journal was no longer of value to Artifaction, his digians were already split between his brother Shahn and his niece Nessa, and he imagined that millions of eyes were reading the journal now. He smiled.

“Ebban Rasul, you have been found in possession of a Pristine level artifact. You will be automatically sentenced to five years in the Zero Sect. What are your final words?”

“S’rule to me, partner.”

The words reverberated through the complex. On his way out, Ebban could see his brother in the distance. Shahn made a halo with his finger around his head before placing his fist over his heart; the Dredger signal for ‘many thanks.’

Ebban placed his fist over his heart and was never seen again.