Employee of the Month

[Corile]

Dia glanced at the admiral and took one last look at the note, then placed it back in among the papers. "Well, I guess you are right," she spoke with exasperation. "I suppose I will have to continue this on my own."

She gathered the documents and placed them back into the folder. She paused for a few seconds to compose herself before handing it to Vaillant. "Nevertheless, I appreciate the favour. I hope to make it up to you one day."

As Valliant went off to confer with another guard and put the documents in their place in the archives, she studied the jottings that she had written that were a crude copy of Katsouranis's note. Unable to make any more sense of it, she put it in her pocket.

She intended to stay in the library for a little longer and look for inspiration. She wanted to say her goodbyes to Vaillant and continue her musings alone, but the conversation with the guard took longer than she had expected. She wandered off, looking at the various books on the shelves.

The shelves closest to her contained fables and historical fairy tales. She continued further, towards philosophy, then metaphysics, then ancient history. She crossed an aisle and turned a corner, walking past a section on music and then medicine. The categorisation of paper books seemed to make little sense for her but there undoubtedly was some sort of method to how they were arranged. Eventually, she reached the entrance and the front desk.

Behind it a young woman tirelessly scrolled through pages and pages of images and short videos on her PAD. Not wanting to interrupt, Dia stood a little to the side and studied the holographic board behind the desk. The news on it changed every few seconds, showing both news from all around Gallia, as well as more local items, pertaining to the library itself and the events it hosted.

There was information about an upcoming poetry reading, then it scrolled past a few items she did not understand. The larger section in the centre of the board switched more slowly, showing recent news of the Metz famines. Then, something appeared in the corner of the board. She paused, glanced around, and looked harder. What?

Bibliothèque nationale de Gallia
Employé du mois — juin 844



André Mauroy

She did not recognise the name, but the face was unmistakably the one of Petros Katsouranis. Bearded, lacking glasses and with a different haircut, sure, but she recognised the old ambassador immediately. Still, she was uncertain if the eyes weren't deceiving her.

Then she thought back to the note that he had left her and immediately realised her error. Her initial interpretation was that she was supposed to look for information in the library. But, being the ambassador, he must have known at the time of the liquidation of the embassy that the documentation would have been placed in the Bibliothèque's archives. It was not information that she was supposed to find in the library, it was the ambassador himself. She could only marvel at the realisation.

The dots took her a few excruciatingly long seconds to connect. She glanced at the woman behind the desk to see if she had noticed anything about her behaviour, but the woman was firmly glued to the screen of the PAD. Attempting to compose herself and disguise the immense relief that she felt, she turned on her heel and noticed Vaillant walking towards her. She remembered that she had never revealed a photo of the ambassador to the admiral. She decided to keep her findings to herself.

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Reflections on the Revolution in Gallia
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