Miss Flipper, or Marge Dougherty, had been an employee of the Carnegie Library System for fifty years. Marge wanted to quit when the name was changed to honor Fidel Castro, but her pension earned in the U.S. was frozen, so she needed the work. She started as a clerk in 2000, shelving returned books. Her Irish-Catholic family had been in the Oakland area of Pittsburgh since the 1880’s, coming over to work in the mines and mills.
Her father had been a local fighting hero to the “Micks” of Oakland, fighting for the middleweight
championship in 1965. He lost, but it made him a local celebrity. Marge went on to graduate in Library Sciences at Pitt, received her Masters and spent her whole life behind the walls of this world famous library. It was her whole life. She never married. It was through books that she created her perspective on life. She never questioned the outside world, never paid attention to it. Everything came from the written word. She saw the decline and fall of the United States as inevitable because it, a decline and fall of a nation state, had been written about since history was recorded. What bothered her as she lived in this new world, was the decline and elimination of the ethnic traditions of her childhood. The strong Catholic and Irish environments were gone.
Most of her relatives had returned to the western lands of Ireland, especially her young cousins. She had thought many times of going but she couldn’t imagine her life without the books of her Carnegie Library, which she refused to call Castro. It was something she could not leave.Marge Dougherty looked up and said, “There, I’m done, now you asked me something about time, right? A minute, I believe you asked for a minute. I’ve got at least a year, here, young man,” she said in a deep and empty voice as she turned towards Martin.
“What does that mean?”
“It means that I’m seventy-four years old, and according to the edict that I received last week, all personnel will be allowed to work until the age of seventy-five. Of course there was a special notation to remaining personnel of the Carnegie Library, all six of us, that termination would be within the year. So, I’ve got a minute. Do you want to take out some books on William Shakespeare?” she sarcastically asked.
“It’s the Castro Library, lady, if I’m not mistaken,” he abruptly said to her.
“You are mistaken. That is for sure. Now, what do you want?” Miss Daugherty answered quickly and sternly.
“I want to know about someone who recently spent time in this department of the library,” Martin asked.
“Who might that be?” she warily replied as she rolled her chair further back from the counter.
“His name is Sloan. Kurt Sloan. He’s about...”
“I know him well,” Ms. Daugherty said. “He’s a fine person, brilliant scholar. Probably the best history buff in the City. I still say City. To me this is still Pittsburgh. Yes, I know the gentleman. So what?” she coarsely said.
“I want to know, if you know what he did here at the Library. What area, subject was he recently working on?”
Martin asked.
“The man works here. He works for Dr. Alexander. He had his own office and had access to all the files in the system. So what if he came into this part of the Library? That’s his job, for heavens sake.”
“I want to know what he was concentrating on, say the last few weeks,” Martin said quickly.
“Well, everyone’s entries are recorded. Now he was also assigned to the old files and in some cases they aren’t recorded. Your Administration wants to shred some of the oldest materials on the history of this area. Priceless material going back to the 1700’s. I can’t believe it. Anyway, that was part of his assignment. A lot of that material is deep in the bowels of the basement. Mr. Sloan recently began to come here on his off-days, mostly Saturdays and Sundays. On those days, he went down to the basement file areas.”
“What’s down there?” Martin asked.
“The oldest and most valuable ones,” she answered stiffly.
“Like what?”
“Well, he was here two weeks ago and discovered some files that concerned the water system his father had worked on. You knew his father designed the Aquifer System, didn’t you?”
Martin’s face froze. He was astounded. “No, I didn’t know that. What did he tell you?”
“Nothing, he just stopped by, I think it was two weekends ago. In fact, he stopped by to see me on Saturday and Sunday. He seemed in the best mood when he left Sunday. The man is usually so serious and when he left, he actually seemed happy. More than I had ever seen him. I’m usually here in the afternoons on the off days. My life is here, you see. I love this place. I …”, she said as she was interrupted by Martin.
“Lady, I don’t want your life story, I just want to know what he said when he came up from the basement.”
“He just said that he had put most of the pieces together on his family history which he had been working on for months. As I said, he was so happy and so was I.”
“What day was that?”
“Saturday. He also stopped by late Sunday and said everything was great. He said that he never realized how much valuable information had been preserved. Then he made a comment about reading something on the Great Allegheny Passage”.
“What the hell is that?” Martin snapped at her with an incredulous look on his face.
“That was a hiking trail that Pennsylvania, our State, finished around 2006. It went all the way to the capital in Washington, D.C. I was going to school, right here, when it opened. It was a big deal in these parts. It was supposed to be the most beautiful walking trail in the East. Mr. Sloan seemed so happy. I’d never seen him like that.”
“Forget all the nice talk. I want all the entry codes for Kurt Sloan during the off time periods. That’s what I want, not his day work.”
“I can’t do that,” she said briskly.
“Listen lady, it might take me a few hours, but I can get the codes. I can get printed summaries of his requests. I can call right now. I know the Chief Magistrate of the Security Court. He’ll get my probable cause and transmit a warrant for an officer of the Court to search the Library’s databank. Take five minutes to trace his entries. But if I have to do that, I’ll tell him of your uncooperative attitude. You won’t even finish out the year here. You’ll serve it down the Panther Hollow in the new Detention Center along the river. I don’t care how old you are or how long you’ve been working here. This is important to me and I know it will be to the Administration. So what is it? You going to help me, or is it good-bye to this place?” he stated directly in her face.
She glared at Martin. She sighed and said, “You’re right” she acknowledged looking him right back in his face.
“You’ll get your access that way. Nothing has changed. Retribution still reigns in this world, black or white,”
she added with sadness in her voice and face. “What am I going to do, fight you, City Hall!” She walked around to the window that looked out over Panther Hollow next to the Library. She turned back to Martin and said, “As I said, Mr. Sloan was only working on his personal family stuff in his off time
“Lady, I don’t want your explanation of what he was doing, just get me the entry data. Security needs to see proof of entry. So bring up that data, now,” Martin demanded.
“Well, actually, the information is not in the system, just his entry points and the subject matter. I think what he may have seen was old hard copy, not data copy. I just know what he said to me,” she replied.
“There must be something relating to these files.”
“There is. Outlines, subject matter, etc., the hard copies.”
“Bring that up, now!” he said, his voice rising.
“Don’t get agitated, young man.”
“I just want what he was working on and may have turned up.”
She punched away at the thin keyboard, then looked up at Martin and said, “Here’s an outline.”
She looked at her monitor. Martin came around behind the counter and looked at the screen. He stared at the title ‘MAP OF THE GREAT ALLEGHENY PASSAGE TO THE NATIONS’S CAPITAL’ and with topics
listed below. It was dated 2012. He noticed a button to the side of the monitor which read “visual”. He hit enter and a video obviously based on GPS positioning outlined a broad red line that began where the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers met, known locally as the Point and also the beginning of the Ohio River. The moving picture scanned the trail as if in a low flying air craft sailing over the facsimile of the trail as it had been in those days. It listed the mile posts through the mountains all the way to the Potomac River until it reached the capitol of the old United States, Washington, D.C.
Martin knew where Sloan was going, how he was going to get there, and possibly where he was that morning.
He was probably already hiking that old trail. He thought grudgingly that it was pretty ingenious. No one would have looked on that trail for someone trying to leave illegally. Emigration rules were strict for anyone, especially an Anglo employee. Security had been on highest alert to protect against any threats to the Aquifer.
In this security climate, it would make it very difficult for Sloan to get through Security checks. To avoid the normal routes, this trail would be perfect. Martin was impressed, but how would he gain asylum at the border.
Columbia was almost a police state and very difficult to enter. He would need something of value to convince the authorities to grant asylum and get him passage. His wages were strictly Atlantica credits, so he would need something else to offer the air service or their government. Martin suddenly was aware of the whole scheme Sloan was attempting as he looked at the screening visual which stopped at the entrance way to Georgetown. He understood it all. ‘Sloan is a traitor. He’s trying to sell out my country,’ he thought.
Martin looked away from the monitor at the old lady, who stood with her hands on her desk with, a look of fear in her eyes as he said, “I thought you told me that all you could get was an outline? That was GPS video concept. Don’t play games with me lady, this whole thing is getting worse and worse for Sloan and for you. Is that all that is there?”
“I didn’t know it was set up that way for that particular file structure. Most of the old files are just that, files. I think you will find the rest of them, in that section, just what I said, hard copy,” she said.
“Whatever. Just generate a copy of that, now,” Martin said to her as they stood beside each other.
She pushed a copy button and instantly a slender paper thin disc came out of the printer next to the terminal.
Martin walked over and picked up the disc.
“Save that, permanently,” he said to her. She hit another button. He looked at her for another moment and said,
“Remember what I said. I’m convinced now that this man is a traitor and you don’t want to be an accomplice in the investigation that is pending. Do you understand, old lady?”
She didn’t answer him, but looked at the screen, now fading back to gray. Martin looked at the thin disc he had, back to her, and then walked away. Marge watched him with tears in her eyes and slowly snapped the switch that turned off the data unit.
“God forgive me,” she murmured to herself.