"Step this way, please," said Slingsby as the tour group reached the bottom of the stairs
The hall to the Great Master's wine cellar was clean and clear but dimly lit. There weren't any solar transferal panels, only a few primitive incandescent bulbs. Stewart Manor was, as advertised, preserved exactly in its Turn of the 21st Century state.
"Some of the artwork on the wall dates back to the 1800's, but most are from the Stewartian Era. Note the photograph of a quaint London street to the right. To your left, there is..."
I wasn't listening. Just off the base of the stairs was a door. No doubt it was just a broom closet or some such, but I couldn't afford to skip any room. I turned the old-fashioned doorknob and peeked inside. The door creaked as it opened.
I shone my flashlight into the darkness of a cluttered 10x10 storeroom. Nothing but leaning bookcases and places and spaces and things. Looked as though it was where the Great Master kept all of his broken and worthless household goods.
A wooden table stood by the door. On it was a meat cleaver, a blonde wig, and an old hardcover book on the philosophy of solipsism. There were also a few cheap travel souvenirs -- a small plastic Eskimo icehouse, a tacky doll of a young Nordic woman, and another female doll of a most peculiar design. And, of all things, a billiard ball! Strangely, the concrete at the base of the table had disintegrated into dirt.
But the most notable item on the table was a toy -- an old fashioned wind-up chicken. I gently reached in and turned the stem. It waddled across the table, clucking loudly.
The sound caught Slingsby's attention. "I'm sorry, sir, but that room is off limits," he said as he walked up behind me. "Please stay with the rest of the group."
"Um, sure. Let me ask you a quick question. Did these items belong to the Great Master?"
"Yes. A few of them were found scattered about Stewart Manor, like the little igloo there on the table. He seemed inordinately fond of it, and the book as well. Others were found already stored in this junk room. The renovators didn't feel that any of them added to the ambiance of the house, and no Stewartian museum wanted them either. So, they're kept here for storage."
"Seems like an odd collection. Especially the chicken."
"Perhaps. But there's nothing of interest. Let's move on..."
I began to close the door, but as I did I took one last look at the base of the table. Was that a faint remnant of writing I saw in the dust? I switched on my temporal sight restorer. Wonderful invention, a TSR. Shine its beam on an object, then set it to any past date. It cuts through the veil of the years and reconstructs exactly how the object appeared at that time. I turned the dial to 1995 and pointed it at the dust....
...and I almost passed out. These words magically appeared in the beam:
1995 ASML BOAP: Worst Ten Songs:
# Song Rating Album -------------------------------------- 126 The Carmichaels 3.351 BI 127 Strange Girl 3.335 RAA 128 Scandinavian Girl 3.311 TWIMC 129 Pretty Golden Hair 3.220 TWIMC 130 Real And Unreal 3.191 LDOTC 131 Cleave To Me 3.034 TWIMC 132 Princess Olivia 2.967 IS 133 Anna 2.952 ZSF 134 Turn To Earth 2.537 TWIMC 135 Lover Man 1.995 BI
"What was *that*?" asked Slingsby, peering over my shoulder.
"Um, nothing." I swallowed hard and switched off the TSR. My heart was racing -- the poll results were hidden in Stewart Manor after all. It was the anthropological find of the century! But were they all in this little room? I needed to keep Slingsby occupied while I gave it a quick once-over. "Say, is that a photo of Richard Nixon I see over there?"
"Yes," said Slingsby, who was still staring suspiciously at the dust under the table. By now, the rest of the party had joined us. "Is it true what they say about the gap on the Watergate tape?" one of the VR tourists asked.
"Indeed it is," he replied brightly. "In 2153, a team of archaeologists specializing in magnetic tape restoration proved St. John's Last Theorem. Mr. Nixon received a copy of Love Chronicles from aide G. Gordon Liddy -- this was several decades before Liddy was convicted of cold-bloodedly running over two people on a Memphis street and sentence to life in prison. Anyway, Nixon played it one day while working in the Oval Office. He came to the famous line about, um, plucking and...you know. Anyway, he was outraged by the language. He asked his secretary to delete the expletive from the office tape. Turns out she deleted the whole song."
As Slingsby spoke, I combed the rest of the storeroom quietly. Most of the contents were worthless legal papers and other relics. However, on one bookshelf there were a few interesting items: rusty metal keys, ten or twelve dusty vinyl albums, an invoice of some sort, a milk bottle, a red telephone, and some old letters from the Great Master's friends asking him when he was going to return home from London.
I took a closer look at the telephone. It looked like the sort of primitive communications device you might see on display at a museum, except there was something strange about the dial. Then I realized what it was: the letters were Cyrillic. I checked its underside, where written in faded gray pencil was the following:
1995 ASML BOAP: Worst Three Albums:# Album Rating ----------------------------------- 13 A-Love Chronicles 3.654 14 A-Bedsitter Images 3.646 15 A-Russians And Americans 3.570
"Folks, I think we've spent enough time in this little storeroom. Let's move on to the Great Master's wine cellar."
"*All* of us," he added with a pointed glance in my direction.
Fine by me. I had found the first two results. The remainder were hidden elsewhere in Stewart Manor. We closed the door and headed down the hall....