Document 7: Golden Secrets

VIDEO BEGINS TRANSCRIBING — — —

This video is wholly different from what came before. There is no professional quality camera framing an interesting background, no Judy front and center to explain. Instead, the footage is recording at a much lower quality, from an awkward angle high in the corner of the room.

It’s a new room as well, though clearly a part of grandma’s hunting lodge. The camera captures a kitchen, well past worn and on the way to dangerously old. The newest appliance is a rustic brass faucet over a yellowed porcelain sink, just beneath the window. Around the sink, the cabinets are worn and wooden things, with peeling laminate countertops also yellowing at the edges. The cabinet’s doors are twisted and warped, many unable to fully close. Through those gaps, stacks of old cans and dusty mason jars peak out—fully unlabeled and filled with substances impossible to distinguish without taking a risk and opening them. Even older than the rest of the kitchen is a charcoal stove and flue, ancient and blackened with use, stood in one corner across from the cabinets.

The window is dark, nothing visible past the absolute black of the nighttime forest, far isolated in the mountains. Even the kitchen’s light struggles to fight against the night, a dingy one bulb glass chandelier over the kitchen table mixing dim shadows across the room. The table itself is a mess, interesting items from the lodge are sprawled in random piles across its circumference.

Judy stands, hunched over the table, looking at the golden cube that supposedly contained her grandmothers journals. She had been messing with it for a while, fully focused, as the camera silently watched. Until editor Tim strolls into the kitchen from the double wide archway behind her. He is completely covered in a long hooded robe, the one he was wearing in Judy’s earlier video. A deep cowl covers his head, and leather gloves peak out beneath long billowed sleeves.

Judy glances up and notices him walking towards the old cabinets, “Aren't you hot? You should take that ridiculous thing off.”

“No can do love, I like my anonymity.” He opens a cabinet and rummages through a pile of snacks.

“Dude, both me and Fumu have seen your face. What do you mean, anonymity?” Judy looks frustrated, putting down the most recent object from the table she’d been using to investigate the cube.

“We’re recording.” He responds

“What?” Judy's head snaps away from the cube to look at him

“We’re recording.” He repeats, a gloved hand pointing to the camera in the corner of the room.

“Hold up, you put up little spy cameras in my house?”

“Yeah” Tim's voice is muffled as he sticks a granola bar deep into his cowl.

“Why?” Judy looks uncomfortable and a little angry at the idea.

“Don’t want to miss any footage. If we find something good, I can edit the moment into the next video.” Tim has never stopped moving, and as he says this, he strolls back out the doorway to the great room.

Judy just sighs as she watches him leave, then gets back to messing with the cube

>>> FAST FORWARD 2X <<<

A few more moments pass by, Judy's arms moving around in a blur. She pauses and gaps at something, but the moment speeds by too quickly to see what it was.

>>> NORMAL SPEED <<<

Another person arrives in the doorway, we can't see their face either. Unlike Tim, this is not an attempt to hide who they are—It’s likely just how they dress. In the recording, the light caramel brown skin of their hands as well as their hair can be seen.

The girl wears a baggy pastel sky-blue hoodie with a large purple pocket on the front and some gray—equally baggy—sweatpants. Both items of clothing are paint stained and worn, but clearly treated with love. On her head is a pink bucket hat, also a soft pastel, with a big floppy brim and bunny ears stitched into the top, clearly homemade. A white face mask with two big buck teeth and whiskers printed on it covers the rest of their face. Underneath the hat, her hair is dyed a glossy white or a dull silver, it's hard to tell with the camera's quality.

In her hands is a large sheet of see-through pink crystal, a shiny silver metal bordering the panel. The strip of silver extends down, under the crystal, forming an elegant loop, that serves as a stand so it can sit vertically, like a make-up mirror or a computer monitor.

“Hey,” The girl's voice doesn't quite fit her short frame and cute appearance, it's surprisingly rough and deep. “A little help?”

Judy jumps, then whirls around to help the girl with the crystal tablet. “ Fumu! Jeez, what's with this? I thought we agreed we would keep the heavy and breakable stuff where we found it.”

The two set the crystal on the table, Judy keeping a hand on it to make sure it wouldn’t fall over. The thin silvery stand doesn’t look incredibly sturdy

Fumushu takes a step back, waving off Judy’s concern and says, “I had a thought, and I didn't want to bother you.”

Judy is still concerned but interested in what Fumu had to share, “No, it's ok. If you need to grab me, then do. We’re a team.”

She lets go of the crystal after testing to make sure it was stable, “This is heavy! How the heck did you get it all the way here? And why, what's your idea?”

“Well, the box is supposed to have information on it, right? Maybe it's like, a CD or a computer, like, it's just storage but with no way to show what's inside it on its own. So… I was thinking about what magic item would work to show information. I remembered finding this, and I can’t imagine it has too many other uses. It’d be a cruddy mirror.”

“You might be onto something. How would we connect the two, though? We haven't found any loose cables or wires; and neither one of the things have obvious ports to connect them, it's all smooth flat surfaces” Judy looks at the pink crystal then at the golden box, “Wait a minute, I found something earlier… It can’t be that simple, right?”

She gestures at Fumu, “Help me lift this on to the top of the box, maybe if the stand touches the box it’ll do something.”

The two carefully lift the crystal screen onto the top of the golden box then step back, staring, waiting for something to happen. A second passes, then two, then three. Nothing.

Fumu hunches over, burying their hands into the front pocket of their hoodie.

“Oh… I really thought that would work. It was a kinda dumb idea.” She sounds embarrassed, her voice crackling a bit more than normal.

“No, it is a good idea, Fumu. It feels right. Maybe, … maybe we add something else.” Judy is still focused on the two devices, thinking hard. “ If the box is like a computer, and the crystal is a monitor, we just need a way to turn it on, to give it power.”

“What if…” Judy grabs two small corkscrew pieces off the table and taps them on opposite sides of the cube. They sink into the solid exterior as if it was made of jello, till only a small handle pokes out on each side and Judy can push no farther. With a flash the crystal lights up displaying a picture.

“Holy shi-”

END TRANSCRIPTION — — —

Hello Jujubee You have found this, my not so small secret. I do not know how, but since you have, there is a question for you to answer. Do you believe in magic? Few do, but they should. On this GBM I have stored the documents and files that prove it. The world will know if I am ever strong enough to show them. I know the next question you will ask, Judy. How do I know it is you? Well, I know because there is no other person I would let come so close to this truth. Let me explain. If you have snuck so deeply into my secrets that you have found and restored this Simuladata. I will assume that you have already found out where I went missing in my twenties, and that you know the answer to my first question. Magic is real. I would bet you feel the need to find out what happens next, well, what happened in that new world. That world of magic. The answers you wish to find are stored here, congratulations. You can end this now—if you want—answers found. I do need not know you have been searching through my past. That is the safe option, staying quiet and leaving me none the wiser. The answers you need, however, are not on this device, those only I know. Let me pique your interest. What happened when I came back? Why haven't I brought the world the magic I learned? When I first returned, Gordon, your grandfather, hurt me more than you could ever understand. The day I made it back to your father and your aunt, the day I would finally hold them again in my arms, was turned sour. By his own hand, Gordon turned my greatest triumph, my glorious and impossible return to my family, into a defeat twofold as grand. That day, instead of finally coming home, I realized in my blind pursuit of the past I had lost not one family, but two. I had nowhere to go, and no one to show the things I had brought back. Over these long years, Gordon had not waited for me, his love for me had faltered, then vanished. Then twisted. He had poisoned my family against me, he claimed I had abandoned him. When I came back, ready to share what I knew, ready to show him what I had seen, he called me mad. Not just to my face, but also to every family or friend I went to for help. I was alone and lost, declared dead, not a person on my side or a dollar to my name. I will never forgive him, not till the day I die. It was impossible to keep me down. With the tools I had and the meager magic at my disposal here on Earth, I rebuilt myself from nothing for the second or perhaps the third time. But I could never bring my self to do as I had planned and give my tools and artifacts over to this world. These artifacts were no longer proof of what had happened to me. No longer evidence of where I had been and what I had learned there. Now they were the last little bits and pieces of the family I had truly made a decision to abandon. The Goblins. I decided I had to go back, so I formed a group for those who had slipped through the gaps in reality, much like myself. They betrayed me too. So I gave up, it seemed my destiny was to be alone, dammed forever to lose what little family I could find. Then I met you. I will always remember that Christmas, it was the year Gordon died, and the year your aunt first invited me to the family holidays. I found hope again. As I have watched you grow up from that magic loving seven-year-old to the wonderful mystery solving girl you are today, that hope has only grown stronger. So, read and explore what you will then come to see me. Together you and I can fight, together you and I can change this world, or together we can move on to another. Love, Grandma Trinaday Cro d zelih L zdv dkjob dka ahixaha, lq exoq qrr pxfe qr yidph pbvhic.