The evening gloom is slowly encroaching upon the room. 'Lights.' I call out and immediately the voice activator clicks into action, bathing the room in the soft glow of recessed spotlights.
Putting the photo of my grandfather and his friend back on the piano, I realise that there are no pictures of my grandmother among the frames. Then it occurs to me that no one has ever mentioned her. Perhaps she died before I was born but surely my grandfather would have retained a photo of her, after all he had kept a photo of his fighting buddy from over forty years ago. Yet the small amount of information I had managed to drag from my aunt only centred on my grandfather. I also never knew why my father's family was so against me connecting him. Some deep, dark family secret which I was now determined to uncover. But it seemed that for every answer I gained another ten sprung up to take their place.
I spend some time just wandering from room to room, mentally cataloguing all the fixtures and fittings, trying to work out what I am going to do with them all. Give them to charity I guess. One thing that never changes over the years, there are always people in need. Something tells me Grandpa would have liked that to happen.
One thing I do learn about my grandfather is that he was musical. As well as the piano, one of the smaller rooms is entirely given over to recording equipment. Good stuff too. Mixing desks, soundboards, digitizers and the rest. For an old guy he was certainly up-to-date on his technology. The shelves are lined with old style CDs and mini-disks, some I recognise, more I don't, Placebo, Coldplay, turn of the century groups I guess, and I'm betting the desk's hard drive holds many more tracks. Does all this mean that he was somehow involved with music professionally? All this equipment seems a bit excessive for it to have just been a hobby. There I so much I don’t know.
I feel distinctly uncomfortable about opening too many cupboards and going through all of his possessions but I know that I'm going to have to sooner or later. Reasoning that it can wait until tomorrow though, I call it a night for now and head back to my hotel.
Going back into the main room I pick up the precious casket and on impulse take the photo from on top of the piano too.
'Lights off.' I command.
Resetting the security code, I use my keycard to exit and hail a passing shuttle cab.
My hotel is in the part of town which could be called either up-and-coming or quaint depending on your point-of-view. It has 'character' I give you that. That's one of the things I like about Earth, the way everything feels so old. Starbases, no matter how well established always seem to have an artificial, sterile quality to them.
Here they have real baths and real food, unlike the sonic showers and replicated food I have to endure at home. Admittedly everything thing takes longer but I figure the change in pace is good for me.
After a good, long soak in the tub and ordering some food, I make the call that I have putting off all evening.
Fishing around I find my hand-held vidilink. Checking the time difference, I take a deep-breath and punch one of the autodial buttons. It’s 2am on Luna Five which means that the person I’m calling will be on shift which suits me just fine. To say that when I left we were on less than amicable terms is an understatement. Is it really possible to love and hate someone at the same? It takes a few seconds for the link to establish and then a face fills the tiny screen I am cradling in my palm. Good, I’ve got the ansavid. ‘Hi, it’s me,’ I say when the tone prompts me. ‘Umm, just to let you know I’ve got here safely. I really don’t know how long it’s going to take. Er, I’ll call again later, you know where I am…’ I trailed off, the rest of the sentence left unsaid.
Terminating the link, I put the phone down on the side table and sitting down on the bed pick up the photo I brought from the house. Carefully I try to prise the back open; hoping it will yield a clue as to the identity of the two soldiers, which one is my grandfather and why his companion was so important that he kept his picture all these years. Sadly my endeavours are all to no avail, time has ensured that the back is firmly sealed in place.
Admitting defeat, I turn and address the ever passive casket. ‘What are you trying to tell me? What is it that I am not seeing?’
Whatever it is my grandfather, for the moment at least, is keeping it to himself.
The following day I make an early start on the house. Beginning with what I think will be easiest - the closets. Like everything else in the house my grandfather's clothes are of a very high quality, earth tailoring. I lift a shirt to my face and breathe in deeply; it smells of the wood of the closet, the chemicals of the cleaning machine and something else I can’t quite place. In short it smells of Grandpa. This is what he would have smelt like had he ever taken me on his knee, had I ever been able to hug him to me.
Reverently I take each piece and fold it neatly onto the bed, making separate piles depending on its ultimate destination. Within a few hours the contents of the closet diminish and the piles on the bed grow. With the closet clear I turn my attention to the boxes in the bottom. Mostly they are filled with junk. Older clothes, shoes, books, some sort of toy figures. Then I open one and catch my breath.
This one contains dozens of 3.5" floppies all neatly labelled with the year and date. There are also several thick notebooks, again all labelled by year but starting a year or so ahead of the disks. Journals. Feeling a slight twinge of guilt I pull the box out fully then pause - I have no way of reading the floppies, they became obsolete many years ago, replaced by the smaller, more durable 2" ROM's. But maybe, just maybe if my Grandpa stored data on them then he might still have a machine for reading them. Not daring to hope I go back into the living room and take a closer look at his comms setup. Nothing. Pulling open a few nearby cupboards I find it. A late 20th century laptop. It's so ancient it needs main power as opposed to solar. Fumbling around I find a cable, hook it up and switch it on. I just pray it doesn't have a boot password. It doesn't. The software is just as ancient as the machine, I mean windows 2020, this should be in a museum, but it's working that's the main thing, and even if the software is outdated the principles are the same. Grandpa must have switched to ROM's eventually as there silently blinking away in the corner is a state of the art comms centre.
Once I've figured out the software I fetch the box from the bedroom and insert the first disk into the drive. I caution myself that these could just be household accounts or something equally tedious but something deep within me tells me not. The drive whirls and opens an application. The data appears to be logs of some description. I click on the first one Shoot! Password needed. Oh well I'm not the best hacker on the station for nothing and the software is primitive. A few well chosen commands later and I am in. The document opens onto the screen.
'My dearest D' it starts. E-mails. I've found my Grandpa's e-mail log. Again that twinge of guilt. Can I really go through and read someone else's private correspondence like this? Yes! my inner voice screams. Here could be the answers you are looking for.
I skim the contents, it's a love letter that much is obvious, but from whom I can't tell as they just sign themselves 'Me'. At least 'My dearest D' is easy. D is my grandfather, the name on the solicitor's letter told me that much. Yet when I check the path this mail is in the 'sent' folder. So who then is D? My grandmother? Again more question than answers.
Sighing I decide to start with the journals, perhaps they will give me some insight. The earliest one there is 2006, roughly the same time as the photo. The same time as the war.
Decamping to the plush sofa, I curl up and opening the front page, start reading...