A Little Black Book

Moira opened the little black book with anticipation and awe. She did not know what she was going to find out today, but she knew it may change her life. Every day, when she opened the small, leather-bound notepad, the world skipped a beat.

Every morning as she fumbled through the thin, yellowing pages, the world held its breath.

Every page, possibilities turned and twisted and the future set its course.

Every morning, it was a surprise. Wonder, what will it be today?

She flipped pages, until she found a sentence, written in neat script.

Moira read it and smiled.

It has been about three months now since the notepad came into her possession, but Moira remembered it vividly. Her aunt Clara had died. Her strange, distanced yet extravagant and chipper aunt Clara. Moira used to walk over those three blocks to Clara’s house to see if she needed anything, sometimes to play cards on the patio, drink gin and tonic and watch people go by. Sometimes just for a bit of a chat. Living by herself and ever outed as the weirdo of the family, Clara did not have many visitors but Moira’s presence always seemed welcome. Moira liked her aunt. She had the exact good cocktail of carelessness, wisdom come of age and sheer chaotic madness ...coming from the age too, she guessed.

When Clara passed – swiftly and unexpectedly – it fell to Moira to take care of her possessions, reinforced by the occurrence of somewhat boring and severe Mr. Reed as her aunt’s attorney announcing she inherited most of the estate.

All of it was just household stuff and knick-knacks, except for a rather large safe which – upon opening – revealed an old notebook and a hand-written note.

The note – in Clara’s untidy scrawl – addressed the notebook to Moira and instructed to look into it daily.

Moira had found the sentiment curious, but the quality of the small piece of stationery was undeniable. Rich, black leather for covers. Strong – if somewhat yellowing pages. Golden-plated ‘Journal’ adorning the front cover.

However the strangeness of this book has shown itself over the coming days. All the pages were empty, except for one, that contained one sentence. Moira did not remember what it had said any more. She only knew, it was not there the next day and it got replaced by another message, on a different page..

Every day, as Moira opened the book, the previous sentence vanished and a new one appeared, scribbled somewhere within the journal. It apparently seemed to have no pattern. The text showed up in the middle of a page, in the margins, scrawled all across, upside down. And it always changed. What did not change, was the handwriting style.

From what Moira could tell, the book predicted the immediate future for that day.

That would sound amazing, but in reality was not as easy.

Moira read the sentence again, ‘The big, red man of the crystalline basin plummets like a rock today’.

She closed the book, feeling the leather covers. Of course. All black notepads have a bit of magic in them. It would be curious if this one did not.

The wall over her study table was a curious display of detective effort. Covered with scrawled sentences, post-it notes, newspaper clippings, photographs, notes on the newspaper clippings and circled words … a marvelous cacophony of fates.

And all her attempts to decipher the predictions the book has delivered, day by day.

The problem was the predictions always seemed to be accurate, but to find out what they are about was the real puzzle. Imagine having a distracted, absent minded old professor from the nineteenth century read the newspapers of tomorrow and paraphrasing one thing they read. And then, somehow sending it through time a day back without understanding what it all means. It was… challenging.

She looked at her past attempts to decipher the book’s message. Sometimes, the events described were big, global events - like the earthquake in Pacific two weeks ago. Sometimes, more local. Like the outing of the Mayor of the city for corruption. Not all of the predictions were bad, some focussed on little, feel-good stories. Like a dog rescuing a child. Always a correct prediction, but always obscured.

Hands on a cup of coffee she brought from outside, Moira blew off the hanging black curls of her hair and took a long sip. As the time progressed, her work with the curious journal grew a bit easier and she had some successes in the past. The picture in one of the newspapers of her rescuing a litter of kittens from a drainpipe always brought a smile to her face. The directions were obscure, but close enough for her to have spent two hours walking around the neighbourhood looking for them. The news people being in the area was just fate. Another time, she helped to find a missing person on a targeted walk through the outskirts of the city. Sometimes – she thought – she was living in a self-fulfilling prophecy.

‘The big, red man of the crystalline basin plummets like a rock today.’

Now, what could the red giant be?

Big, red man. Connected to rocks. What could that mean. Mars perhaps? The red planet? No, Moira shook her head. There were no men on Mars yet and she could not imagine Mars falling anywhere. The predictions usually revolved around more … let’s say local news. Local to this planet, if anything.

Hmm. Red man. Could that mean a – dated – old name for indigenous Americans? The big man could then mean someone prominent. Moira had already learned not to take the wording literally. It could indicate a fall, but it could also be a fall from grace. She scanned the internet for prominent native american people. Speakers. Leaders. Any signs of trouble and connection with rocks, minerals. Fifteen, twenty minutes and nothing came up that would catch Moira’s eye.

Okay. Maybe she was going about it wrong. Red could mean other things. A party member, falling from grace? Nah, too common of an occurrence.

How about, if it is not a literal man? Maybe it is a symbol? A mascot. Moira pulled a few pages concerning mascots and symbols of different sport teams. Several could come into the picture and Moira carefully wrote down the team names. Next to them, if they had a game scheduled for today. Only one of them did and Moira read the name and navigated to their Wikipedia page. She closed it after five minutes of reading. Just did not feel right.

Maybe it is not sports teams? A short scan showed a plethora of mascots, symbols, signs and logos of companies and establishments that could be related to a red man. Moira eyed the page with frustration. This was not going anywhere and she has spent an hour on it already.

Okay, what about the rest of the sentence?

‘The big, red man of the crystalline basin plummets like a rock today.’

Crystalline basin … rocky … tub? Somebody falls in a tub, while showering? She chewed on her lip in frustration. While that could make news, it was so small and unpredictable she was not able to do anything about it. In the past, she learned to try to focus on events she could use to her benefit or participate in.

Basin.

What a curious word. Moira pulled up the definitions and started writing them down.

“Circular vessel,” she hummed to herself, “a bowl, a dock, a depression in the land—”, she stopped, pen hovering over the scratch paper.

“A gorge. A valley ... a crystalline valley!”

Sparks in her eyes, Moira dropped the pen and returned to the page with firm logos.

There it was. A big tech giant. Logo a big, running man the colour of red. Where is their headquarters?

San Francisco, Northern California.

Silicon Valley.

Yes. Fingers clacked on the keyboard as she conducted another search.

A big player in the stock market on a constant rise. Rumours of fraudulent activities. CEO denying everything, but even the FBI was involved in investigations.

This has to be it. It just felt right. Financial markets. Hundreds and thousands of traders, moving prices up and down based on their value, news and political events. Stormy and unpredictable. Moira did not know too much, but she knew enough. There was chaos. There were big moves. There was uncertainty, all based on the fact that noone – noone in the world – could predict their future.

What, if she … could?

It was not the first time the book predicted a major move in the stock market, but maybe the first one that she was really ready for.

Moira checked the clock. Fifteen minutes to open. Good. She put in a large short order. As much money as she could spare without it being a wild gamble.

She knew enough to know that.

The trade in, she spent some more time checking news for anything else that could involve a red man, falling down or something else but nothing surfaced.

So she went about her day.

At market open time, her trade got executed as she was walking down the road.

She had been working on her article in a coffee-shop for about two hours when the news came. Major fraud case, falsifying numbers to look as if the company was making money even though the opposite was the case. CEO being walked out of the main building in cuffs by the police.

The numbers in her brokerage platform started growing by the time she was having her lunch.

By the end of the day, she made more than twenty thousand dollars.

“Twenty,” she mouthed to herself, trying to stifle a grin. That called out for a cake.

Enjoying the sweet, chocolate sin, Moira opened her bag and gingerly touched the spine of the black journal and whispered a silent ‘Thank you’ to Clara.

Her keepsake.

Her legacy.