This scene takes place in the story’s present, several years (or decades, or cycles of 10 months, in the Mintakan calendar) after Hlau’s initial trip to the House of Wisdom.
Hlau was in the Evek’s office when they were going over the intelligence they got from the Agency of Investigation. The Agency had called them because they needed consultants on a string of computer hacks, all of which were virtually untraceable to any device. The Agency’s computer experts had gone over the evidence they had available and they could not find anything that would identify a computer or a particular user. Without any real evidence, the Agency had come to the conclusion that this series of events was of a psychic nature, which is where priests from the School of Wisdom could help.
The Evek got up from his desk and walked up to a red-stained teak filing cabinet, and placed his hand at the handle of the top drawer for a few seconds and then opened it. He took out a book-sized box and brought it to the desk and sat down. He drew his finger along the line created by the lid and the lower part of the box and opened it. Hlau knew that the Evek had just unlocked a psychic lock on both the cabinet and the box. The Evek then took a folded piece of paper from the box, unfolded it, and said, “I think you’re ready to see this.”
