[Flashback] The treasure of the cat kind

[Amir Delion]

"I can pick the lock. It doesn't seem complicated... At least from the first glance. I think I can avoid touching the lock itself in case there's something in it..."
Max took his backpack off one shoulder and stretched his hand to take the book, whether Alice was ok with giving it to him or not. But when he firmly took it in his hand - be it to get a better look at the lock or trying to yoink it out of Alice's hands - the book just opened on its own. Alice was sure she had held it this way before. It was clearly something more than some clever sensors or accelerometer-based code.
The text inside was unintelligible. None of the members of the team could even make an assumption about what type of language it was written in, if any. But again, they knew what was written there.
"Day 23. We have finally arrived on the planet. We must be close to our target location, at least if the information we collected is to be trusted..." The first page started like that.
Well, everyone except Amir knew that. The pirate understood precisely as much as he would expect to, which is, not in the slightest.
"Is it... Because I'm not one of you? I mean, Alice, I can trust you, so it's not a big deal, but I'm just slightly offended at this book."