Unraveling the Past

Days and weeks went by as I constantly scurried around the world hunting for clues. Every time I found one, I would update Mark about it. We would celebrate for a while and then I would leave to find another clue.

Mark helped me as well whenever one of my searches weren’t working. He would talk to me over the phone and give me encouraging words which would have me up and searching in no time.

The last day of searching had finally arrived when I woke up with a yawn. I curled up on my bed looking at all the clues that I had taped up onto the wall. The last thing I needed to find out was how to make the item work.

Jumping up from the bed, I ran around the house to brush my teeth and do my morning routine. After breakfast, I rode the elevator to my room and quickly looked at each paper, pulling off the ones that contained clues on how to work the laptop.

I carefully reached into the secret compartment in my desk and took out the laptop. I sighed with happiness. Today, the risk of this adventure would finally end. Looking at the papers, I began to piece the facts together. The one that caught my attention was the clue I had gotten from newspapers in the attic of our house.

Reaching once again into the compartment, I drew out the long rope-like item. Taking the fat end, I plugged it into a socket in the wall. I stuck the narrower end into a place in the side of my find. I opened up the mysterious item and pushed a button that had a circle with a line in the middle. I had learned in one of my clues that this was the olden times “on/off” sign.

The item began to hum. I inhaled a sharp breath and smiled.

“Well, what do you know? You can talk! You made me waste all those days and weeks looking all over for clues…..Oh well, you made my life more interesting!” I began to talk to the laptop. All of a sudden, the screen blinked to life and the word “welcome” appeared.

“Oh my god! Thank you!” I beamed at the computer. What nice manners it has! Suddenly, the word disappeared and stuff began to appear all over the area. I knew this was the time to start looking at the clues on my papers now.

My eyes skimmed over the papers looking until it stopped on one I had gotten from a museum that contained stuff from time capsules. It had contained much information and I followed all of them to click until a so called “window” popped out.

By this time, I couldn’t contain my excitement and I quickly called Mark over. Together, we began to figure out the laptop. The window was a rectangle and inside it were many beeping lights. A yellow “circle” was moving around whenever I pressed certain buttons that had arrows pointing up, down, right, and left. It gobbled up little white dots which increased a number on the bottom right corner which I guessed were points.

There were also globs of colors moving around that kept stalking the yellow circle. Mark and I had a great time trying to avoid them and eventually a popup came up that said “high score”. I looked at the information from the time capsule and learned what that meant. We high-fived each other and continued playing until another window popped out.

“Great job! You were able to figure out about this laptop! Since I know you guys must not know everything, I’ll explain the main interesting facts about this item…” Mark read the words that had appeared on the screen but his voice eventually drifted away and we began to just read it quietly with our eyes. A sound came out to announce that we lost the game, but we didn’t care.

From the letter the person had written to us from a long time ago, we learned about the Internet, typing, making videos, and so forth. Everything that I’ve worked so hard for finally revealed itself before me eyes. The exhilaration to so great that all I could do was stare.

“Lyla, you did it! You really did!” Mark exclaimed.

“I know, now I just have to organize a meeting with the Past-Finder’s Organization!” I quickly dialed a phone number into my cell phone and talked to the leader of the PFO.

I turned to face Mark and closed the phone. My eyes twinkled with delight.

“I’m presenting it tomorrow!”