Map Seekers: The Brotherhood

Chapter 3

Hunter and Sheldon had been scouring the Internet for hours. So far all of their searches had resulted in a grand total of zero information.

It would seem that no one had ever heard of a lost map for something called The Way. Hunter was beginning to suspect his grandfather had made the entire story up and Sheldon's cynicism was back at an all-time high.

"Well, bro, I think we've tried every angle. This map of yours is either the world's great mystery or your grandfather's biggest scam. In either case, I don't think there's anything more we can do," Sheldon said.

Hunter couldn't tell if Sheldon was boasting about being right that the map was bogus or disappointed, like he was, that they had found absolutely nothing about the map. Sheldon was never one to give up easily, especially when it came to solving a problem, but he seemed ready to throw in the towel on this one.

"So you're done?" Hunter asked.

"What else can we do? We've tried every combination of keywords, I asked people I know who are into all sorts of weird stuff, and no one knows a thing. I'm open to suggestions."

Sheldon looked at Hunter, waiting for some response.

Hunter hung his head. He was mentally and emotionally drained from the day but he wasn't ready to admit defeat.

In his mind he said a short prayer, Lord, if this is something you want me to know about, something you want me to pursue, then I need wisdom. Please, Lord, show me the way...

That was it!

"Type in, 'The Way,'" Hunter shouted.

"The what?"

"The Way! Maybe we've been approaching this all wrong. Instead of searching for information about the map, we need to search for information about what the map represented." Hunter's excitement had returned.

Sheldon swiveled in his chair and typed "The Way" in the open window.

The screen refreshed with one listing that fit their query. The title of the listing read, "Ancient Maps of the World - lost, discoveries, destroyed, history of..." then there was a link: .

Both boys leaned forward.

Sheldon clicked on the link and the screen went black until a few obscure symbols started appearing. The site loaded slowly which was strange considering the speed of Sheldon's network connection.

"Man, this site is taking forever. Whoever programmed this did a shoddy job," Sheldon remarked.

After a few more seconds the site had completely loaded. It was dark by design, with a black background with white and red text. The strange symbols, which were the first to load, acted as buttons to the other pages of the site and when Sheldon rolled the cursor over them, they transformed into a title box that displayed what the link went to. There was no reference anywhere as to who created and maintained the site, but it did have some interesting information.

Hunter and Sheldon pored over every detail on the first page, which described the art and history of cartography.

"This seems like it might have something on it. Why don't you bookmark it in case we want to come back," Hunter said.

Sheldon hit a few buttons and the site was permanently saved in his Favorites folder. Then he hit the print button so they could make a hard copy of the page, but to his frustration nothing printed.

"Someone doesn't want us to make a copy."

"Bummer. I would've liked to have a copy to study later," Hunter said, disappointment easy to hear in his voice.