Page 41 of Booked for Theft

The untracked prepaid cards, which were irritating to acquire on a good day, involved cash and a store clerk willing to break the rules a little. Some hand sanitizer and a cloth could get rid of the fingerprints, especially if he took care to stash everything in a bag after cleaning them. As far as risks went, I could see the ploy working.

Someone might, after work, find the laptop and figure out where it had come from. “The serial number?”

“I removed the sticker from the back of the machine. It was cheap enough it wasn’t etched on. A trip to the bathroom and a key fixed the problem of the phone. That number was lightly etched on, and the case was not strong enough to defeat steel.”

I nodded my approval. “All right. We have confirmation that the government is making certain we can’t line up 0 MR with historic Gregorian accurately. Why would they do this?”

“It makes the Gregorian calendar seem more remote and irrelevant,” Meridian replied, and she shook her head. “I’ve always wondered why it was obscured, but now that we’re talking about it in this context, it makes a great deal more sense. If we can’t associate the dates, if we can’t line up the events with our reality, it’s a lot harder to make the past feel real—and it makes it much easier for governments and those in power to keep their power.”

That I could believe. “So, history has been rewritten, and we have no foundation for when things happened in the past. I do have a Gregorian timeline on how our government deteriorated to the point we’re at, but I haven’t been able to link events listed then with events we’re taught in school.”

“We do have a few clues,” Mickey said, and he reached over to point at my reference to 0 MR on the first page. “Several generations have passed since the changeover; there are no living people to ask about the change and its implementation; the eldest of that generation died likely before our grandparents had been born. That’s a starting point. We also have a starting point in terms of our technology. We can associate the Gregorian calendar with the development of technology we have today. If we can find an MR reference to a brand, model, or make that we still have today, we might be able to get a match within a few years—and within a few years might be enough. More importantly, the government has made it so we don’t really think about what year it is much. Logically, we all know it’s 527 MR. We also know that 0 MR was set significantly before modern times to lessen the chances of us being able to link the year in AD to the link in MR—and unless you happen to be a librarian, most aren’t even aware AD actually existed in practical use. It’s something they heard about once in school as a footnote of history. The government went as far as eliminating as much history as possible from education; if it didn’t fit into the MR system, it wasn’t discussed.”

“We know some AD dates, like the foundation of the United States,” I replied.

“But we don’t know, precisely, how long ago that was anymore. We only know that it is at least three hundred years old due to some AD records. History wasn’t completely erased. How much older than three hundred years? That we don’t know.”

“Beatrice, your thoughts?”

“Don’t look at me. I run when my branch needs a volunteer to look up anything from AD.”

“Mr. Tawnlen?”

“Mickey’s technology angle might point us in the right direction. There are a few brands of phone and computer that existed in both calendar systems. If we can get an MR date and the AD date, we might be able to align the calendars. However, we’d have to figure out what the lines were called in each of the systems because the government made them change the names, likely for this purpose.”

I stared at my boss. “They seriously forced tech companies to change their names of their products?”

“Even the names of general technology were changed, not that the government was able to erase it all. Motherboards were kept because the populace refused to call them chipboards. Brand names and models were changed, however. The government offered significant fiscal benefits to those who cooperated and hefty penalties for those who did not. Those were recorded only in the MR dating records to obscure when the transition happened. I’ve done a few research projects for politicians on that subject.”

Interesting. “And you can provide a list of those politicians?”

“All politicians who poked their nose into that subject matter are deceased.”

Well, shit. “I want a sane government for Christmas, Bradley.”

“We already had that discussion. You can’t have a sane government for Christmas. You can have an expansive research project requiring the theft of sensitive material for Christmas, however. You can also have a nice collection of accomplices, most of whom happen to be librarians. We’re going to be sampling criminal activities to make this work. I’m hoping we can limit our activities to theft, but extortion might be on the agenda.”

As my mother was in the kitchen and couldn’t chide me over the question, I asked, “How about we burn the entire government to the ground?”

“We are not currently indulging in arson, no matter how tempting that might be. It’s bad enough we’re going to be participating in theft.” Bradley sighed. “Why am I the only one who is actually concerned that we’re doing this?”

“Stealing shit sounds like fun,” Beatrice replied. “It also beats doing nothing. I’d rather go out at least trying than just take this garbage lying down. And if nobody else is going to step up, why not a bunch of angry librarians?”

I shrugged. “What she said.”

Mickey and Meridian nodded.

Even my boss shrugged before saying, “I’d rather die trying than just die, and that’s the probable endgame at this point. If we’re not useful to the government, then we need to stop sucking government resources. At this stage, librarians are only useful to the master plan because of illusory tactics. The government can pretend they’re working for the sake of the people if they promote and use libraries—but only when we provide the information the government wants the people to see. Obscuring the dates from the old calendar and the current one is only part of their efforts to control the populace through ignorance. Their plan to weaponize exsanguinators fell because Janette happened to be at the right place at the right time and changed public perceptions through heroism. And once the people heard how Janette served in the ER? It was an overnight shift, especially since other exsanguinators are showing up at hospitals around the country to take advantage of the opportunities they hadn’t enjoyed before.”

Sometimes, change came swiftly.

The rest of the time, someone had to fight for progress with tooth and nail.

“So, that leaves me with a question,” I announced, hoping my next words didn’t condemn us to a significantly shortened lifespan. “What are we stealing, how are we stealing it, and when are we stealing it?”

“You just asked three questions,” my fiancé replied. “They’re good questions, but you definitely asked three questions. You forgot to ask who we are stealing it from and why.”

I sighed. “Okay, fine. I have six questions. What are we going to do with the stuff we’ve stolen?”