Serial Experiment

Wilson spent several minutes pouring over the list of names, many of them calling out to him with promises of adventure and excitement. He was elated, so many options, so many amazing options. Of course he would actually have to try to sell them, that was the point of a book shop. But in the meantime there was nothing to prevent him from reading as many of them as he could. It wasn’t long before he couldn’t stand it any more. He took the inventory book with him and went down the stairs into the book shop, his own private library, and began to look for the titles he was most excited about.

He pulled several from the shelves, and put several back, making small piles of the ones he planned to read right away, and those he would read later if they had not sold before he was ready for them. He decided that his short list could be stored behind the counter, or up in the apartment. He could always put them back on the shelf to sell afterward, he was a careful reader. As he did this he thought back to the conversation he had with Lyn. It had been a strange day so far, so far removed from his normal routine. Normally he would be emptying bins and toting his cart around, and now thanks to Tooth’s generosity, he was making stacks of books, planning out his nights for the next three months. He wished that Tooth was still around, so that he could thank him. Of course, Wilson knew that if tooth was still around he wouldn’t know that he had anything to thank him for, but that was beside the point.

Of course that also got him thinking about the unsolved murder. Tooth had given him so much, much more than a near complete stranger deserved. He still wasn’t sure that he could handle all of it, but the opportunity was more than he could have dreamed. He was surrounded by the stories he loved, thanks to Tooth, and he had no way to thank or repay the man. He looked down at the inventory book in his hands and had a thought. “What if,” he began to say aloud. He began to try to stop himself, realizing that he was beginning to talk to the shop as if it was a person again, but then thought better of it. It seemed right, somehow. “What if the Peace was wrong? They said it was a robbery gone wrong, but what if it went right?” And with that point he stopped talking to the shop, he stopped thinking. He had a plan, a hunch that needed bearing out. So he grabbed a pencil from behind the desk and set about his task, inventory book in hand, searching.