In an age where history was bunk, Alistair had only discovered the languishing New British Museum by mistake. 

 However, sometimes taking a wrong turn had its advantages. 

 In Alistair's case, that day he'd been fleeing David Cooper and his goons, he'd taken a wrong turn and ended up at Russell Square. With dilapidation on all sides of the architectural relic, he'd chose to run the gauntlet: across the forecourt, up the worn stone stairs and in through the out door, whereby he hid in the shadows, catching his breath in the safety of the Museum's lobby. With David running the other way, and the weather inclement, he chose to head inside and sneak a peek.

Greeted with stuffy silence, the museum was deserted, so he had wandered from one exhibit room to the next, looking at odd and enticing artefacts, glimpsing a forgotten age as security guards napped. Moseying through his newfound sanctuary, he found the Rosetta Stone and Elgin's Marbles and a vast array of ignored antiquities. It was only when a Museum attendant named Lewis Butler asked him if he was lost, an hour in to his visit, that Alistair actually come in contact with another human being. Alistair assured Lewis he was not lost and with an upward curl of his lips, Lewis Butler straightened his hat, and gave the boy a guided tour with all the bells and whistles.

With so many questions, Lewis Butler was unable to keep up; eventually Lewis spotted a polite, middle-aged curator to provide the right answers to the questions why. The man had introduced himself as Robert Thompson and was the lonely curator of the Museum; a man who appeared more interested in preserving the past than living in the here and now. Not quite an ignoble task, it was nevertheless a thankless vocation. Lewis chose to go make a cuppa and left Alistair in Robert's care, relieved to return to his peace and quiet. Robert had asked the young boy what he thought of the Museum and its exhibitions and Alistair opened up, gushing that he wished to one-day visit the all the places where the pieces originated. Robert was taken aback by his joie de vivre and insatiable appetite for learning something new, so there and then, the curator had taken Alistair under his wing to share his knowledge.

That was then.

Now, when things got tough, Alistair would pretend he was on school assignment and spirit himself to the British Museum and trawl through the exhibits, left to his own devices. Or, he would hang out with his mentor.

Robert Thompson was a tall man; somewhat passive, a man his comrades would call doomed. With a shaved head, goatee beard and rounded spectacles - a quirky preference in this time of ocular implants - his superior tolerated his idiosyncratic ways as he made the right noises when it counted. A loner, Robert potted around the Museum, finding solace amongst the exhibits and in the countless storerooms and when not lightly dusting objects, he pored over books and maps of Old London, to solve delicate matters of state that concerned the Ministry of the Interior. If he didn't actually know the answer, he knew where he could find it, and being a man of knowledge assisting the Agents of Change ensuring the populace never found out a number of truths had its advantages. However, showing Alistair sympathy should have been considered a Futurist weakness but Alistair put his trust in him because Robert treated him like an equal, and eventually, Alistair felt he could ask the man questions he would never consider asking his own grandfather, forming a friendship forged from mutual loneliness.

Allowing Alistair access to the inner sanctum of the museum - a place full of forbidden relics – which Robert meticulously catalogued and controlled, it was all the more exciting for Alistair. Sworn to secrecy, there was much Robert chose not to reveal, lest the boy let the cat out of the bag, such things of a more regal providence purportedly lost or destroyed during the Civil War, with links to a proud British history. It was this sort of history Robert knew the Futurists would never teach Alistair in school, let alone admit to possessing in a dusty old Museum slap bang in the middle of New London. But even if Robert Thompson wasn't telling him the full story, Alistair still had the benefit of learning and seeing and touching many other items that were indelibly linked to a time and place that no longer existed.

When all was said and done, Robert was keen to have an assistant, someone to share cups of tea and exercise the gray matter with. Alistair possessed a vibrant youthfulness and naivety, often stumbling across simple solutions to Robert's complex conundrums. In turn, Alistair enjoyed being occupied and would help in cataloguing crates of shipments coming in and out of the museum and did not fear getting his hands dirty with knowledge.

Yet, best of all, Alistair could sit in Robert's cramped office, with a battered Streamline music device, a pair of ultrasonic headphones and listen to 'classical' music Soundbytes that Robert drip fed him. This century old 'classical' music, sounded fresh and exciting, if not downright incendiary, to Alistair's young ears compared to the anodyne, manufactured pop music churned out by the heart throb popsters like the insipid Corey Kershaw and No Direction who saturated the New British charts. Anything, Robert intimated, sanctioned by the government for public consumption on Top of the Pops had to be warily avoided at all costs. Sadly for Alistair, this 'classical' music could never leave the room however it remained in his mind like an infection. Even hours later, the rhythm and the melody would make his toe-tapping tendons twitch, aching for more. But he daren't hum a tune, lest he be arrested. To be safe, Robert accounted for every Soundbyte and Alistair pledged his ongoing silence each and every time.

"Maybe in the Federated States of America you could amass a collection of classical music but in New London, forget about it," Robert warned. "And no matter how good it is, don't expect to see it on the High Street in the near future."

Alistair embraced his forbidden pleasures and spoke of it to no one else.

**********************

Riding the grimy hyperlift to Russell Square, Alistair kicked the heel of his HyperBoard and scooted in to the New British Museum. Bereft of patrons, not surprising as the masses strained with daily tasks, and really couldn't care less, a prim Museum attendant with a Futurist badge blocked the grubby Alistair, thinking he may well have been a sickly urchin come to cause rack and ruin upon culture like a Visigoth.

"He's with me," Robert called, spying the boy.

Immediately, Robert marched Alistair to the bathroom. Pointing to the soap he made the boy wash the soot and grime from his hands and cheeks. Satisfied, Robert escorted him to his office where Alistair hooked in to a Soundbyte, listening to a song about teenage wastelands. Meanwhile, Robert pored over a handful of documents and blue-prints. When the song ended, Alistair took off the headphones, stretched his arms and yawned. Peering over Robert's shoulder, he checked out the white outlines on the blue paper.

"Where's that?" he asked, helping himself to an apple on Robert's desk.

Robert turned over one of the aged pages.

"It's the ground plans for the Tower of London," Robert informed him.

"Really?" Alistair said, munching in to the apple. "It doesn't look much like that these days." His attention was drawn to the top left corner and he quickly recognised a faded logo in the corner of the blueprints. It surely couldn't have been coincidence.

"What's that?" he queried, pointing at the embossed seal.

Robert brushed a hand over the blueprints and held down the curled corner.

"These three lions?" he said, placing his finger on the lions, and Alistair nodded.

"It's the old seal of the City," Robert offered.

"Was it common?"

Robert was non-committal but still answered. "Back in the day, yes. But now? No, not particularly common." Robert continued. "It's an old British symbol, and the architects and designers used it in the past, but it's a leftover anachronism of a bygone era."

"But would you see one these days?"

"No, not really. Once in a while, you might unearth one, but you should always report it to a Guard so they can remove it. Why do you ask?"

"Would you get in trouble if you didn't report it?"

"That really would depend," Robert mulled. "Did you see the seal somewhere?"

Alistair shook his head and decided against confessing to Robert of his encounter in the Underground, instead segueing the conversation.

"So what's going on down at the Tower?" Alistair asked, as he wandered over to the other side of the desk and mindlessly flipped through other pieces of bric-a-brac strewn over the table.

"Well, if you must know...the Tower ruins have been partially protected from the Thames by a laser-dome," Robert explained. "Not that the Government really cares about anything down on ground level anymore, but it's dangerous because of the unexploded civil war shells."

"Booby traps?" Alistair asked.

"No, not really booby traps," Robert chuckled.

"So, to get to the treasure, you have to get through the laserdome and past the booby traps?"

"Treasure? Booby traps? You make archaeology sound awfully exciting," Robert dismissed. "There's more chance you'd find life on Mars. No, the only treasure I have is this," he added, holding up his IdentiCard, encoded with its Museum privileges.

"As a Government employee and Museum curator, I do have some benefits...a Priority HyperLane licence plate and a clearance in to all the blacklisted historical sites of New London."

"Really?" Alistair asked excitedly. "Access all areas?"

"Precisely," Robert grinned. "It's like a backstage pass to the past." Alistair was easily impressed as Robert continued.

"We could go looking for Civil War militaria," Alistair chirruped.

"You and your Civil War obsession," Robert chided playfully. "I can't just turn up willy-nilly, especially with guests. I'd have to have sound basis for me to gain entry and the Government has been tightening up on such activities lately with the odd-spots of civil disobedience occurring. The Government seem to think some people might be fixating on a past they don't want people to remember."

"Whatever. So what are you doing at the Tower now?" Alistair asked.

"It appears the foundation spots of the laser-dome projectors are starting to sink in the river. Remember that high tide back in February? Tidal waters washed away soil under the banks and as the Government don't mind if the Tower sinks in to the river, we are hurriedly excavating what's left before it washes away forever. I have been instructed to ensure everything of a historical nature the diggers retrieve is thoroughly examined before being warehoused or destroyed."

"Destroyed?" Alistair asked curiously.

"Well...I didn't mean destroyed," Robert back-tracked though Alistair hadn't really being listening as he aimlessly flipped through some minor maps on the desk.

"About six weeks ago, the workers found a half-dozen, semi-flooded tunnels and antechambers that had been blocked off and didn't appear on any existing plans. Apparently, some nefarious types had been illicitly digging for treasure. The Agents got a whiff of it all and shut it down pronto. But they wanted it all examined, so each night after work, I'm down inspecting and cataloguing the items they dug up. It's all rather hush-hush but still quite exciting really."

"The Tower is only a pile of bricks," Alistair concluded. "Are they really that important?"

Robert paused, and a determined finger pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose. He thought through his response carefully.

"We should do all we can to protect the past Alistair. It is quite important the mistakes of the past are not repeated in the future."

Alistair cast another quick eye over the plans.

"Is there any real treasure down there?" he asked again. "Like, if the booby traps could be evaded, and all that?"

Robert turned to face him.

"Oh Alistair, you are an amusing boy," he chuckled, and began to roll up the blue-prints and slide them in a thick tube. "Of course there's treasure. Those piles of old bricks, that's my treasure. I should say I have a colleague who works in the Ministry who believes the whole area should be bulldozed in to the Thames. She's more of a modern kind of New London girl if you know what I mean."

Robert stood back from the desk and slid the tube in to a large rack with a number of other tubes.

"Promise me you won't try to sneak down there," Robert pleaded. "It's dirty and dangerous, and the Guards won't take kindly to you."

"Oh, ok," Alistair agreed.

"I guess I stand accused of living in the past," Robert sighed. "I'm just not so sure if that's a bad thing. No one pays their respects anymore. As we move onwards and upwards, I sometimes worry, we're also moving backwards. If only those Tower walls could talk, Alistair...the tales they could tell."

Alistair mulled over this thought as Robert opened his desk drawer and selected another Soundbyte.

"Here, listen to this," Robert said, loading the song and pressing play. "Bohemian Rhapsody is a whimsical masterpiece. And just like my Tower of London, it's an utter treasure!"