three
I didn't realize until now that Dave was an orange cat. I guess he was so dirty that he looked like he was brown. Washing him out wasn’t as hard as expected. I still felt bad since he obviously didn’t like it, but I knew he would be much happier when he was cleaned off.
Anyway, when I got back from the bathroom, I handed Nyla the book. As the only responsible person in our group, I thought she should hold onto it. She decided that we should get a hotel room, and then we should look through the book. It could give us a clue to where to find the 'vat of knowledge', whatever that is.
It is surprisingly easy to find a hotel. The place looks like it has seen better days, but it is also super cheap. Having a bed to sleep on is a luxury on quests. Normally demigods must sleep on the ground. I guess we were lucky enough to get sent on a quest that was in a large city. The guy at the desk hands us our room key, not even bothering to question us about why we are here. That is surprising given we are two 13-year-olds and an 11-year-old. We walk up 5 flights of stairs (we don’t trust the elevator that looks older than my dad) and search the maze of rooms for ours.
Our hotel room smells like old socks. The ugly wallpaper is peeling off the walls and the door to the bathroom is falling off its hinges. The bed has no bedbugs though, so that’s a bonus. We all crowd around a table in the corner of the room, the one furthest from the bathroom. The bathroom will probably forever smell like fart and mold, which I don’t want to smell right now. I open the window, letting in some fresh air. The temperature outside is colder than I would like, but it is better than the old rotten smell.
Nyla opens the book to the first page. There is a loose-leaf paper taped to it, with someone's sloppy cursive written on the page. Nyla sets the book on the table so everyone can see it, and as the only non-dyslexic one here, she reads it out loud.
"If you have found this letter, I can only ask you one thing, use this book wisely.
This book holds great power. This book can travel people forward or backward in time. You can use this ability that the book has by writing a date into a book (ex: July 10th, 1972). If you write a date that does not exist, it will travel you to the nearest possible date. Ex: if you wrote the date February 30, 1988, the book would transport you to the date March 1st, 1988.
I must warn you, if you have this book, it may put a target on your back. Many people will want to take the book, making you the biggest target for monsters and other related attacks. Thankfully, you can easily travel through time with this book to escape. That is all the information I have for you. Good luck and good travels.
Sincerely,
John Matthews"
Out of all the things I could have imagined the note would be about, this was not it. I suddenly wished I hadn't come on this quest at all. A big monster target was now on us, and monsters could attack us and take the book now at any moment in time. I also had no intention of time travelling, so I have no need for this book. If I wasn't nervous before, I am scared for my friends and my safety now.
The good thing is that this is possibly the 'vat of knowledge' we are talking about. A book is the main place where people gain information; it shouldn’t have been as surprising as it was. I guess I was expecting a container or something, since a vat, whatever that really is, seems like something that would contain another object.
I wonder if the trench coat guy is John Matthews, and why he would specifically want me to have the book and why he knew my name. It would make much more sense than him being a monster, but this way, it gives me so many more questions that I don’t know if we have time to answer.
I looked over at Nyla, who seemed to be very deep in thought. While she was distracted by thinking about what just happened, Peggy took the book from her and began inspecting it. She flipped past the page with the letter taped to it, and onto the next one.
The next page had a date written on it in sloppy cursive. The date on the page was February 19, 2025. this means that someone has already used this book. Possibly the guy in the trench coat who gave it to me.
I was about to ask Nyla what she thought when the book started to glow a reddish orange. That is probably not normal. Along with the book, everyone; Nyla, Peggy, Dave the cat, and I started glowing a reddish orange. It wasn't hot, like the light was a projection from something else. Suddenly, the book started to glow a lot brighter. It flashed really bright for a second, and for that second, I felt like I had been thrown out of a building. But the second was quickly over, and soon we were standing normally in the hotel again, like nothing had happened.
I looked around the room. Peggy and Dave looked fine, but confused, Nyla looked slightly nauseous, but otherwise okay. What just happened?
"Uhm, is it just me, or does this room suddenly look different?" Peggy asked. I was about to mention how crazy she was, the room couldn’t just change on its own, but sadly, she was correct. Instead of the old peeling paint that was outlining the window before, there was a fresh coat of paint, the blindingly white paint yet to be stained. Instead of the ripped and patterned wallpaper, there was a coat of boring grey paint covering all four walls. The ceiling was smooth and white, instead of having the popcorn ceiling that was there before. The room smelled much better, more like a scented lavender candle than mold and old socks. What had happened?
Curiously sniffing everything, Dave the cat seemed to come to the same conclusion as the rest of us. We had just been transported to the future.