Sigma/Star

Chapter 78: Closure

Porter sat down in his room, listening to the door slide shut and lock. For the most part the lock functionality on the student dorms was meant to help them keep out annoyances while studying. In this case, Porter was about to do the most intensive work in his entire academic career...and it had nothing to do with school.

An array of displays were strewn around Porter's desk, each one containing the same files, the ones acquired from Earth in the library of Beijing. Porter took in a deep breath and held onto it for a moment, his chest tight and stomach spinning. This was the next step in his search for Carter Veillon and in understanding what had happened to Ardwen's brother.

The student's fingers played over the different devices, and each one ignited, shooting out a virtual display of files. There were six screens in total, which Porter had had to obtain by "borrowing" them from classrooms around the academy. Each one was currently listing the different articles, documents, and reports that had been downloaded from the terminal in the library, and Porter cried a little inside as he skimmed through the daunting list.

Still, this had to be done. This was a promise to himself and a silent one to Ardwen, a goal that he was so close to achieving. Indeed, it was quite possible that Carter's name had been erased by glitch, a technical error, after being executed, and that his was all a wild chase but the teenager would not rest until he had exhausted every single option and read every last damn word. And so began a very meticulous process of going through the records during the time that Carter Veillon was imprisoned.

First came the easiest part. Searching through every document for just the mention of the words "Carter Veillon." Aside from the prisoner lists though, this yielded no results. There was nothing in a single newspaper clipping or court document or doctor's note that said Carter Veillon. That wasn't surprising though. Porter did find, however, that Carter had been assigned the prisoner number 11407, which would probably provide a more profitable return when searched.

As the computers went through the fifth sweep, Porter took a moment to look at the clock. It was starting to get late for the academy, approaching his usual sleeping hours. Hopefully he could find at least one thing before he normally went to bed. Wouldn't want to lose out on precious time for sleeping. The search stopped, completed, and showed a list of results. They were the same each time Porter looked: medical records, work reports, change in prison roommates, letters concerning exchanging Carter in a normal prisoner trade with the Enian Federation. None of them showed much more than what Porter could have guessed before he started all this.

Predictably, all of the records for Carter Veillon ended at the same time his name disappeared from the prison listings, as if he just stopped existing. Of course that was quite likely after all. It seemed that the majority of prisoners eventually died, were traded, or were sold as slaves into society. While Carter's complete absence was an abnormality, it had too many possible explanations for this to be much more than a technical glitch.

More hours went by. Porter continued to comb through results with his hopes dwindling as each minute ticked away. He leaned back in his chair, letting out a deep breath that shot out above him and swirled around in the air. He had an assignment due on the history of Enianism, a report to complete on the specifications of Mongoose-class Goliaths, and an essay to be written on critical thoughts towards strategic implementations of close combat weapons and he was putting them all aside just to stare at screens. It was starting to hurt his eyes. And his brain.

His searching still provided no answers and no results. He knew this because the noise the computers made as they finished woke Porter up from his nap on his desk. His head snapped back in surprise; last he had checked he had been awake just a moment ago. Foggy eyes went over the empty list once more and Porter slapped himself to wake up a little. Still nothing.