Yes, story time. This came to mind after I saw the movie conclave, which was a lot more worth its time when you think back on the movie than whilst you see it. The setting of cardinals (not the football players) is a lot more worthy then you think it is (If you never saw the movie) and you don’t need to be a religious fanatic to appreciate the movie. And after seeing the movie (I also checked if it was actually fixed in the Vatican, which it was not) the setting was pretty overwhelming. I also saw some 4K touristy movies on the walkthrough on the sisteen chapel (with roof view) and these sights gave me the setting of what comes. You should never waste the imagination of grey cells. Ask Ryan Gosling, he went to the Tau Ceti system after all (a massively good movie) so there is plenty of immersion and excitement to go around. I wanted to bitchslap Sundar Pichai at first through a public service announcement, but at present my new Google Pixel 11, decided to behave. As such I don’t have the screenshot to make Sundar shiver with fear. But that will come, don’t you worry.
So story time. Lets get cozy.
It was a warm day and I was looking over a silo that was kind next to the Via dei Servi where the Leonardo Interactive Museum was. And it was not that what had me bothered. You see, the attic had a smaller attic the held a map that I wanted very badly. As I saw it, it was a forgotten gem of Italian maps, a foundational map that was somehow forgotten in all the chaos of yesterday and it had some of the most ghastly of settings. So as I walked on the roof of a building, there was nothing to be heard and it needed to remain silent, because the smallest noise and too many people would start to look and that would never went my way. There were too many sides that could spot me. So as I went from roof to roof, I was now only one roof away from the Leonardo Interactive Museum. I studied the roof and aw that one place that was off. it was not driven into smoothness. That must have been the place. I studied the roof pats and there it was, I compared it to the movie I had made from the inside and the windows showed exactly where it was, there was a small additional space and the terracotta pans looked older there. So o got to that point and slowly started to move the pans, first I nailed a hemp sheet with wax layer to part of the roof, then I removed the wax cover, so that I could place the tiles and they wouldn’t accidentally slip and fall. The wax was a simple bee wax, there was no way it could be traced. Then I drilled a small hole in the roof and let a small wire down. I looked, it was black as night, the infrared option showed me some kind of dusty room completely dark. The sight was energizing, because this means that the story was seemingly true. I saw a few benches and they looked wooden. I looked at the roof again and measured the 4 by 5 pans I had to move and I started. I moved the rest of the 20 tiles onto the hero sheet and it took me the better part of 5 minutes to do this, I tested the hemp sheet and it all looked sturdy. I then got a small portable gypsum saw and I worked the first thin wooden beam. That went smoothly, these wooden beams were dry as fuck, the gypsum saw made short work of it and when the lower side was done the first beam was done, 10 more minutes and the other 5 bemas were cut I folded the wax sheet over the pans and placed the beams on that. It all looked unmovable, I then placed a small net over it all and fastened it to the roof, just in case a wind should blow. I then lowered my backpack and slingback to a wire fastened to the roof and in I went.
The room was pitch dark, which might have explained why no one thought of looking there. My daylight goggles showed nothing out of place, merely centuries of dust and there was plenty to be had. I got a canister of air from the backpack and cleaned the wooden bench. It looked immensely old. It should fetch a decent euro if it was ever actioned. I moved to the side to see and old map archive and opened it. It had loads of maps and I liked through them. Then I saw the maps I needed and I took images of them all before moving them. There was no such thing a bad luck and I carefully folded them all in a roll and placed them in my pvc canister and they fitted well, I had taken a canister two inches bigger then I needed and I rolled the entire collection up. The other drawers were mostly empty with nothing much in the way of art. Then the lower drawer had even more maps and even a parchment or two. I had not counted on that, but I had brought more canisters and they weight next to nothing and now it turned out that they were a godsend (an applicable label for this) and as I completed the setting I went back outside. Whilst first applying thick double sided take to the open hole so it could carry the weight of the ceiling beams. I might have used to much of that, but better be safe than sorry. Then I placed the thin beams back to their original place I then applied thick wack over the beams and especially the places where they were cut so that water wouldn’t find entrance there, I then placed a plastic sheet over that and applied more wax. Then I place back the pans and the roof looked almost what it looked like and I vacated the area, putting the hemp and net in a plastic bag. Leaving nothing behind and whilst I retraced my original steps I took extra tie to see if my location was not observed. 25 minutes later I was back where I started and it was only a block way from a block from a large garbage bin and dropped the waste. I felt good whilst I walked back to the car and drove back to Rome where the jackpot was, It was a mere 274km and almost 3 hours drive, but I was energized with the findings I photographed. In the end it took me 215 minutes to get back to my garage and whilst I looked like a slightly mature art student, I walked back to my apartment, where a table and a well deserved espresso machine would make me my cappuccino.
As I looked at the art and maps I was taken aback, the art was old, really old and whilst some might take it at face value, I recognised the work of the artist, but not the drawings. The autograph told me these drawings were from Andrea del Verrocchio. This is quite the find and I carefully stored them. 5 drawings with charcoal would easily be worth over a million euro’s each. That was a decent price for a week of sneaking. But it was not the price, so as I had away the goods I returned to the table. These maps had to be identified and the drawings were immensely old early 14th century and several had a coat of arms, which I didn’t recognise.
As I understood it, there were rooms far below the sisteen chapel and there was no way in or out, not anymore, but there was one option, it was an old sewer system, it only grazed that location and grazing was enough for me. I understood the assignment and it would be one hell of a trip, I set out to get the equipment I needed, first there was a gfasprrof suit, because these sewers were loaded with germs of all kinds gong pac to plague ridden Italy, then there was the rat repellent, these buggers bit into anything, then the hardware for drilling and cutting and there was a good chance that one trip was not enough, but it hd to be done in one go, because something like this will alert every institution in the world and I could not leave traces, not anything. So first a scouting party to where the entrance lies. The I thought of another option and I looked at the map again. This might be possible, but scouting was essential and for that I needed to visit a hobby shop. A drone ship was required, a remade version of the LCVP (aka Higgins boat) with a small addendum, adding snow tracks below the boat would let it move where there was no liquid and as he worked out the dynamics of it all the design formed in his brain. He got his 10 inch boat and added the tracks, he then added 4 power banks which would let it go a much longer way and he attacked a encrypted camera and added the observational settings in his little van. There were even provisions to let it submerge completely in case there were sunk settings of the sewer. Two days later he had the contraption he needed and as he studied the map, he realised that in every nation governments were seemingly lazy and an opening might be found in the Viale Vaticano. So he looked into an old CCTV setting, because these old systems were designed to detect faults, He needed none of the, merely to see it intersecting was possible and whilst he could not go there, his mini Higgins could see where he could enter. So whilst he parked his van on the Viale Vaticano, he had adjusted the van to drop stilts behind every wheel to support this van on the ground because a moving and shaking van would still attract all the wrong attention. As such he get into first gear and launched the Higgins through an open grate and close it immediately after that and as he did this at 03:00, he remained unseen.
End of part one
Lawrence van Rijn - Law Lord to be 