He stared at the words perched on top of his ladder, the legs branching down either sides of the shops entrance. He grabbed a roller and erased over them with black paint. He insisted upon painting it himself so he could get it just right.
Klaas Books just didn't seem to sit right with him. Perhaps Carmichael Books? No, he needed something new. Klaas Classics? No, Klaas Klassics. He wrote that up forgetting about the wet paint. He had been trying all morning and the shop front had become a multi colour mix dominated by dark browns.
He looked down to see a small man walking towards the shop. Klass shouted down towards him. "Hey, you coming in here?"
The man looked up and stopped. "You're a bookshop right?"
Klaas was about to point to the sign then realised he had painted over it. "Yes"
"Do you have a copy of Nineteen-Eighty-Four? George Orwell."
"I'm a bookshop of course I have a copy of it." Klaas started to tidy up his paints.
"How much?"
"What, you want to buy it! Okay, go in, first shelf on the right three down, four across." Klaas hoped down the ladder and turned into the shop.
"Err, could you move the ladder?"
Klaas looked at it, it was arching over the door way. "Superstitious are we? Sorry there's to many things on it, just run through really fast." He carried on in hoping the man was too suppositious even to do that. He came through anyway and looked round the shelves.
Klass pulled out a transparent wet board, he wrote down 'With Klaas' on it and stuck it in the window as a temporary sign.
The small man came over with a few books from the shelves. Klaas flipped through them. 1984, A take of two cities, illustrated history of Aissur 3, Viaggio-Della-Stella. "paying in trade credits or latinum?"
"Trade. Its embarrassing using Ferengi currency because of the Federation's hyper socialism. Works on Earth but not on these outlying worlds, we need trade. Where do you get your books from?"
"Collected them slowly, lately I have been buying from traders from the Ferengi Alliance."
"The Ferengi, the amount of tariffs the federal assembly are placing on them nowadays you should looks elsewhere. I have a few books I would like to get rid of."
"Let's see." The man pulled a few small books from his bad. Klaas skimmed through them. "Few on coins, history, Jane Austin, Minoans, and an old atlas. Okay, got some nice ones here. Wit the books I am selling you, another 20 credits."
"20! I though they were about the same as these" he said holding up the ones from the shop.
"rubbish, I wouldn't sell them if they were worth 20."
"Well goodbye, I'll be back" The man said leaving. As the door closed behind him Klaas took a better look at the books.
The coin ones looked old, showed some nice ones from pre-unification. The Atlas was from 2042, almost falling apart. Something about the Minoans one though. "Dr Walstrom's Lost Book" He looked at the publication date "2099" It wasn't the 2071 publication Jaya was after but it did peace together what was known with new material. The only attempt to rewrite it. He turned to his computer and opened a comm channel.
"Klaas, let me guess, there's too many people around" Ryu spoke grinning.
"No, well yes, but I need something else. Can you get me in touch with the master of the Ancient Civilisations Library."
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