Tome of Desire Ch. 03

About 9 am, Ian was in the office. Sitting alone reading, rereading, and examining the scripts of the old tomes. Progress, however, was non-existent. No matter how much effort he put in, and despite his knowledge of Latin, ancient Greek, his complete grasp of the grammar of most now-extinct languages, he could not understand as much as a character. The pages would not yet yield and kept their secrets. This was anticipated but frustrating nonetheless. Ian reminded himself that he hadn't gotten any of the context documents that Amara had promised, but it was dawning on him, just how different this was and how beyond anything he had ever worked on. The script was much more complex than anticipated. The first big surprise came when looking at the simple statistics from his first day; each symbol was used precisely the same number of times in each document. A property he had never encountered before.

After a few hours, he was hoping for some distraction. Perhaps another visit from Amara, but he knew she was busy, and they just talked yesterday. Despite her polite promise to make time for him whenever needed, he knew better than to call on her the very next day. Sitting in his cozy office, and with a unique task at hand, everything should be perfect, but Ian was struggling, and a sliver of doubt crept into his conscience. Amaras stupid games were not helping either! Constantly, his mind wandered when trying to focus on the texts; lewd fantasies in an unbroken line distracted him, all of them featuring the same two Italian women. The nature of the fantasies was also surprising; they were vivid and arousing in an unfamiliar way. So different from the usual products of his imagination.

While the office time seemed increasingly difficult, it was nothing compared to the evening solitude when Ian returned home. In his current state, he dreaded returning to the empty apartment. So on the way home, he stopped for dinner at a small restaurant, ordering a pizza. It was still early, and besides him, there was just a young beautiful Italian couple. While waiting for his food, Ian looked at the woman, who was staring at him curiously. Their eyes locked for a moment before she shot him a smile and looked away. She had definitely noticed Ian watching her, but she had been watching him too! Her curly auburn hair reached her shoulders; her petite figure with small perky breasts was a starking contrast to the broad-shouldered guy she was dining with.

Ian then saw her lean over the table, and she whispered something in her boyfriend's ear. A shocking look at the guy's face showed that she had said or suggested something wildly inappropriate. Shaking his head firmly. The woman leaned back in her seat. Her light yellow summer dress was buttoned down the front. Startled, Ian saw her hands move to the top-most button, undoing it right in the middle of the restaurant, knowing that Ian had been looking at her mere moments before! She looked across the table, challenging the guy, probably her boyfriend, opposite her, but he shook his head again. Then her hands returned to the next button on her dress, paused for a moment, then teasingly slow undid it. Now, the curves of her breasts were showing. The two parts of the dress held in place only by her hardened nipples. The view was turning scandalous quickly. The guy shook his head again and swallowed hard. Droplets of sweat were forming on his forehead. The woman's hands returned to the third button playing with it before she frustratingly slow undid it. One side of the dress slipped down, baring her right breast and body all the way down to her navel! She mouthed so clearly across the table that Ian understood it: "Fuck. Me. Now." In a single movement, the guy was up and briskly walked towards the restroom. The woman triumphantly pulled her dress back in place, clasped her hand holding it tightly across her breasts, and ran after him. Passing Ian, she winked before disappearing into the restroom. Not a minute later, moans of pleasure reached the restaurant.

No way! Ian thought. Was the world conspiring on torturing him? Nowhere seemed to be safe, not at the office, not at home alone with his thoughts, and now this. Luckily just moments later, the owner strolled out for the kitchen, pausing as he heard the couple, then handed a pizza over to Ian, grinning broadly at the ridiculous situation, and said.

"You want it to go, right?"

Ian nodded and reached for his wallet.

"No need. They are paying for this too." The owner nodded in the direction of the more and more insistent moaning.

Ian laughed, took the pizza, and thanked the owner. As he left the restaurant, a loud drawn-out moan followed him out. Inside, an orgasm swept over the woman in the restroom, and the moaning turned to whimper before they finally fell silent. That night he was lying awake staring at the ceiling. He finally decided that this absurd waiting game had to end.

But on Friday morning, something unexpected happened. Something that for just a little while took his mind off sex. Ian was back in the office and had started working. He was plotting different statistics for the texts but not really into it. Ian had, in his own opinion, gotten as far as was possible. The futility of his efforts was on the bring of overwhelming him when something caught his eye. A table drafted earlier in the week showed the number of characters in each document. Looking over the list, he was mostly by chance adding the digits of each count together, but each number seemed to follow the same pattern. This was strange. He quickly typed a few commands and checked, and his hunch held true for all of them. Everything was divisible by three! This could be no coincidence. The realization soon led to another: When grouping the characters three and three, the distribution of their usage was much more typical of old texts. What they had thought to be a single character was just a third of one! A significant breakthrough indeed, but also a sign of the complexity of the texts. Just imagine the task, writing a meaningful piece of text using each letter the same number of times. It would be an impossible, almost superhuman task. Ian's head was spinning, but he knew this would get him Amara's attention, and maybe - hopefully - there was even cause for a little celebration. Ian was typing faster now, composing an email to Amara, trying to explain what he had found. Correcting all the typos in the hurriedly written message, he couldn't stop himself from smiling. Then he clicked send.