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Speaker 1: I pressed the record button with the thumb goun almost

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n arm, the chill of the marble flour bleeding up

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through my shoes. The red light blink quickly in the

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dim and I tried to keep my voice at a whisper,

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pressing the tiny recorder close, close enough that my own

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breath stood loud in my ears. Entry, I murmured, then stopped.

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The word sounded silly. It wasn't an entry. I was stoling,

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heartsick with the sun side course from routine into something fragile,

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all because of a sheet of paper tuck between reference

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book snow and checked. After nine Deep in the aisles,

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the old pipes crunedd watery, breathless complaint, low enough to

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feel like the library's real voice, of voice that rose

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and faded, cycling from near to far and back again overhead.

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Then bulbs hung behind cages of yellow plastic one in

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thrieflickered at the edges there are and even glow casting

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rainbows against the white glass windows, amplifying the cold and quiet.

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A pile of returns weighted at my elbow. The library

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after closing always felt changed down to it, but somehow

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more attentive. Most nights, I could believe in the mondanity

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scan stack shelf motion repetition, but to night, with the

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sky black and hard behind those vast panes, I traced

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the note I had found not ten minutes before, with

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shaking fingers. It had been wedg tight inside foundations of

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American municipal law, a tome i'd only handle to dust

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off the house shelf. As soon as I noticed the

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acid yellow paved hedge protruding. My norse had prickled, a

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change in the pattern of silence, not a prank, not

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the result of Kell's shelving some one had wanted dis found,

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or never found at all. Leaning into the circle of

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feeble light, I unfolded the note ballpoint letters, cramped as

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though trying not to be heard. My voice when I

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read was rough as I tried to fix the words

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on to the tape. If you find this, please return

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the key. They are listening in the walls. That was all,

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no signature, no date. The last line trailed off inside

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a deepened increase, as if the hand that wrote it

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had schicken at the end or been interrupted mid thought.

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I set the note gently on the desk, as if

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it would keep it from disintegrating. My id badge clipped

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to my collar reflected the k go shits in the

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dusty glass window to my left. My own outline exhausted, nervous,

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then kemp sweep of my hair looked back at me,

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already somehow foreign. For a breath. Behind my unshadow movement quick,

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indistinct inside the compacted shells. Something darted behind a row

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of government recoats, colorless, insubstantial. I tensed, then, after a beat,

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forced a short, scornful laugh at myself. Rodents wore something

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in the glass, or too much caffine, but the shells

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had their own gravity. I set the recorder down, carefully,

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nudged a note beneath the weight of interlibrary, returned and

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stood for a moment. My throat felt dry, Remembering the

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caution thessessory always gave about lingering beyond neat where it

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was dark. Still, I paced towards the last place I'd

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seen movement, pums open, scanning, knee high, an elbow high

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between the unwave rain, walls of texts. Nothing but a

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shift in the pattern of dust, no footprints unless the

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subtle sweep of the carpets snap ruffled and itsigig accounted

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for evidence. If I was hoping for some closure, some

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sign revealing the joke of the purpose of the note,

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I went unrewarded. The only answer was the sound from

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the pipes, a tremulous croon, and a sudden pricking certainty

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that something now knew what I'd found. I stepped back,

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spine prickling, and called my own adventure For the moment,

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my trembling finger fumbled with the stop button on the recorder.

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Wed light blinked off, and the weight of the dart

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pressed and all the heavier as if it approved. Before

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all that nights at the library ran their peculiar doorless course,

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I started my shifts a little before seven in the evening.

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After the last day patrons shuffled off, clutching their overdue novels.

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The building's exterior shrank with the falling dusk, a single

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red sandstone block, three stores squatting on the corner of

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two silent streets. Inside, though it was always larger than

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any one could map, piles given to shifts and angles,

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children's next opening into research corridors, distant echoes bouncing up

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from the basement periodicals. That confusion of space grew more

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deliberate at night, when sound magnified and time spread. Then

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most of my eyros were solitary, reshwling, saving battered hard

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covers from the dangerous tides of the book drop, adjusting humidity,

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monitors forced to ignore the water stains creeping up the panel.

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In the ram manuscripts room, I listened to podcasts to

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myself of running audio lock to keep me awake and

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00:04:03,280 --> 00:04:06,560
stave off the restless pulse of insomnia. Talking to myself

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was both the defense in a crutch, and the stack shelves,

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with their relentless order, did their best to absorb my voice,

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flattening the sharp edges of my thoughts. By day, the

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reading room swarmed, students nesting into corners with power bars

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and laptops, retire volunteers squabbling over the bi weekly columns

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in the community archive, high schoolers using the free WiFi

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as an excuse to be anywhey but home. The reference

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desk and massive horseshoe of gray oak attracted every one

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with a question, some sensible, some knot. There was a

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dignity to the chaos. I'll grant that the air felt

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different during daylight, busy, warm, expansive, but once seven struck

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and the janitorial staff began their worksome the library turned

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hollow and strange, contract until every step echoed further than

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it should, and the walls themselves seemed to lean in.

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I was not truly alone, not always there were my colleagues,

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most barely more than nodding acquaintances. Jan the circulation manager,

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was brisk and sarcastic, always in a hurry, her arms

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wrapped around in label boxes. Young Joe. He repaired bindings

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and always listened to dark thumping music on ancient headphones,

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eyes at half masted, and then assess Severy the archivist,

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who never failed to catch my eye on her way up.

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Miscess every reminded everyone not to wander outside the lighted

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stacks a warren, and dressed as a joke, but always

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delivered with eyes that slid elsewhere while she talked. I

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first met her on a ring lashed of toboro evening,

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both of us startled by the other's presence at the

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door to the basement arcave. She was quick to step

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aside and quicker to chastise. You do welt to stick

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to routine, Dear, this isn't a building that rewards curiosity.

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That was one of the stores that grew up around

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the library, stories told and break rooms and behind the

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information desk. Some said the founders built over all city tunnels.

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Secret passage was blocked, and during Prohibition, some said the

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blueprints changed with every major audition, but nobody could agree

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which version was the right one. There were plaques, most faded,

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a few fresh, naming pride, directors, benefactors, and the elusive

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friends of local history. Splashes of black mold crept over some,

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as if raising the past. There was an entire wing

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name for a former may lost to scandal, though the

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details were never included in the tours. Rumors of lost

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books blamed on thieves or ghosts mingled with memories of

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staff who never left old hands, or unseen keepers whose

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voices supposedly echoed if you answered the wrong reference, call

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Wolven more quietly. Among all these were the whispers about

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doctor Ruman, not from the course staff necessarily. I'd only

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known the name because I passed of reference checkouts. Rudman

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was a local historian specializing in city growth in public myth,

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who'd made the dusty sub basement map's room his own.

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Night after night he poured over nigh impossible, microphomericos digging

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for some vanished at less. No one else could describe.

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His presence was a given and institution, until suddenly his

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correspondent ceased. I alone through Jan Lips, pursed when she

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said his name, that nobody's seen him in a week.

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His box is still full of returned clippings, just left.

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Such disappearance should have stung more, maybe, But the library

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thrived on absence, the pass forever patching over with new

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stacks and new names. Still there was something self protective

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in our indifference. I felt uneasy, but not implicated. Patrons,

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the regulars, at least, were the touched uns. There was

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missus Strift, who always wanted the same Armenian cook and

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always forgot she had already checked it out. One night,

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early in my hiring. She came to the desk prosclutched

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in one trembling hand and voice conspiratorial. Your hiding things

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on us, she accused, mouth twisted upward in a no

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unfriendly smile. The bulk, of course, was not on the shelf.

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The catalog claimed it had never even left the facility.

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I promised. The sky of the usual places, returns, stacks

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lost and found she left not entirely mollified, and I

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chalked it up to fate, muttering an apology to the

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vast ledger of unsolved mysteries. If I felt anything keenly,

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then it was fatigue. Night after night blowed together insolemnly

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carved out, gaped between my thoughts. The habit of keeping

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an audio journal my so called sanity look started as

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a joke, but became a necessity, specially after the first

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week with the new stacks. I felt guilty sometimes that

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I didn't care more about the rumors or even Doctor Rudman.

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I should have been more curious, more concerned that the

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volume of other people's anxieties built up until I learned

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not to attend to them. For a while, I thought

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that was practical. Now I'm not so sure. There was

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always faint hints of rumness floating between a woe of

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coppers and hashes of the h shrack system. But routine

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kept me whole, gave structure to the unreal. I told myself,

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if I followed the prescribed path, nothing could seep through.

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For a time I believed it. Not long after I

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on Earth the note certain patterns, the kind best dismissed

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in esolation, now visible as a slow turning cycle began

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to emerge from the usual noise. The first hint came

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as annoyance, not revelation. Irregular Mardyn stalked into my circle

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of lamp light, waving his lip for volume four of

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an ardencyclopedia. He've moved things again, he half accused, lips pressed.

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Then nothing's ware it should be. I pulled up the record,

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checked in only hours before the call number correct shelf location,

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remarked dutifully. I followed him down the aisle, expecting to

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find the book tuck behind a row, misfiled by an

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attentive patron of the Ghosts of Kells staff. Instead, all

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the call numbers marched in advancing order need as a ruler,

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except midway, a half inch gap just wide enough for

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small fingers to extracts something and not replace it. The

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route proceeding a gap pressed in tighter, as if the

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whole shelf had shifted to compensate. I repeated the search

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I performed a dozen times. Internally, I started inventing errors.

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The shelve re marked the return wrong, the patron remembered wrong,

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but other inconsistencies formed a faint ring around the incident.

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That evening, during my closing shelf walk, I noticed a

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carridindic stock, slightly yellowing file with exquisite precision, but out

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of order. His call number thirty two per cent g

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didn't match any known system. The title personal Song's catalog

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memory was unregistered and certainly not one of our holdings.

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I traced it front and back, no bar coding, no

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librarian's mark, nothing to tie it to the line of

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the living of the dead. I left it where I

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found it, an omen among the methodical lines. Morines arrived

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quietly and ceaselessly, missing book reports trickled in a book

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or two. Each shift was aligned between the digital and

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physical records. The catalog was always pristine, but the shells,

198
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despite constant reordering, never matched by exactly enough to notice

199
00:09:57,480 --> 00:10:00,240
only if he were obsessive aboard. On the night when

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I stayed late enough to count, my own numbers came

201
00:10:02,360 --> 00:10:05,759
up short by a margin so small as invited self doubt. Still,

202
00:10:05,799 --> 00:10:08,960
the gap shifted nightly, never the same, never settling. It

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00:10:09,039 --> 00:10:12,399
wasn't only paperwork either. Once the clock hit closing, a

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gradual chill crept from the under four vents, carrying whispers

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00:10:15,399 --> 00:10:18,320
that slid between the library's bones. The air felt thick

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with presents. On several evenings, most recently, two days after

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00:10:21,799 --> 00:10:24,039
I found the note, I heard what sounded like recitations,

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slow and methodical, from the locked ends of the stacks,

209
00:10:26,919 --> 00:10:29,200
A droning litany of numbers and names, a moving and

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00:10:29,279 --> 00:10:32,080
uninfected interrupted now and then by breath of static, as

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00:10:32,080 --> 00:10:34,799
though a radio tuned to a dead station. Following the

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voice always led me to silence, a cold patch on

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00:10:36,960 --> 00:10:38,799
the floor, and not so much as an unsettled a

214
00:10:38,799 --> 00:10:42,559
smote left behind. After such incidents, I returned to routine

215
00:10:42,559 --> 00:10:44,919
by force, carrying my bat At recorder in my pocket,

216
00:10:44,960 --> 00:10:47,440
trying to commit my impressions before Duck could erode them.

217
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Sometimes at my desk, i'd listened back on playback. It

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00:10:51,559 --> 00:10:53,720
was easy to believe it all harmless, A coff haired

219
00:10:53,720 --> 00:10:55,600
a snap as a book settled on its spine, there

220
00:10:56,240 --> 00:10:58,480
at least until I heard it, the faintest of whispers

221
00:10:58,480 --> 00:11:00,840
trailing the edge of my own remarks, syllable shaped like

222
00:11:00,840 --> 00:11:03,559
a return oral lissen, words that did not belong to

223
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my mouth or anyone nearby. I began to joke, mostly

224
00:11:06,559 --> 00:11:09,159
to myself, sometimes to Jan that the library at night

225
00:11:09,320 --> 00:11:11,799
was a shifting maze with only the cruel sense of humor.

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But even jokes curdled in the early hours, and I

227
00:11:14,919 --> 00:11:17,480
wondered when the laughter would stop sounding like something entirely

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00:11:17,519 --> 00:11:20,600
my own. The next phase, if I am honest, felt

229
00:11:20,639 --> 00:11:23,759
like evolution, evidence stacking up, pointing towards pattens. Too stubborn

230
00:11:23,759 --> 00:11:27,840
to ignore, I started documenting every quirk, recording each sudden aberration,

231
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the book talis, the out of place cards, even the

232
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temperature dips near certain archieve shelves. A tally grew in

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the back of my invasion budget. No book never left

234
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un attended, never referenced by any one but me. Some

235
00:11:38,679 --> 00:11:41,440
nights the miscount stood its hero more, typically off by

236
00:11:41,480 --> 00:11:44,879
a sliver. Although the catalog's memory remained picture perfect, the

237
00:11:44,960 --> 00:11:47,799
missing books felt urgent, and a kind of desperate curiosity

238
00:11:47,799 --> 00:11:51,600
infected my nightly patrols. I made subtle over Jewish authority

239
00:11:51,759 --> 00:11:53,480
when I asked miss As every if I might checked

240
00:11:53,480 --> 00:11:56,240
the old archave stacks. After another book on my inventory vanish.

241
00:11:56,360 --> 00:11:59,159
She paused, lips thinning, then agreed, but not without warning.

242
00:11:59,679 --> 00:12:01,840
You can go down, but don't wander off, not even

243
00:12:01,879 --> 00:12:03,960
to find a short cut some places downstairs. If you

244
00:12:04,000 --> 00:12:06,600
lose your away, you'll never find it again. She handed

245
00:12:06,600 --> 00:12:09,120
me a ring of jangling keys, each labeled with tape

246
00:12:09,159 --> 00:12:12,159
in minuscule ballpoint. I noticed the lust key had no

247
00:12:12,240 --> 00:12:15,200
label at all, brass gundel from years of handling. What

248
00:12:15,279 --> 00:12:18,639
followed felt half like research, half like trespass. I spent

249
00:12:18,720 --> 00:12:20,879
a lunch I raking through the d news back offices,

250
00:12:20,960 --> 00:12:24,000
searching for something, anything, that would explain the building's erratic memory.

251
00:12:24,600 --> 00:12:27,360
In a bottom drawer Beneacheet's stamptop's leech do not use,

252
00:12:27,559 --> 00:12:30,159
I found a battered blueprint listing dates stretching back to

253
00:12:30,200 --> 00:12:33,879
the nineteen thirties. Peeling the layers free, I found something odd.

254
00:12:33,919 --> 00:12:36,679
The original library far more modest and scope squared off

255
00:12:36,679 --> 00:12:39,320
in places that he was shot off at angles. Later

256
00:12:39,519 --> 00:12:42,159
editions were clear enough, except for one section when new

257
00:12:42,159 --> 00:12:44,879
walls and corridors seen to merge, the transition marked by

258
00:12:44,879 --> 00:12:48,159
a seam of raised lines and ambiguous measurements. The blueprints

259
00:12:48,200 --> 00:12:50,879
map rooms that didn't exist anymore, or maybe never did.

260
00:12:51,519 --> 00:12:54,519
One mark a rectangle half hidden by an overlapping paper

261
00:12:54,679 --> 00:12:57,759
was labeled special arc of nabric. Around midnight, on my

262
00:12:57,840 --> 00:13:00,559
next shift, inventory duties took me again to the stacks.

263
00:13:01,279 --> 00:13:03,639
I resolved to test the maps, plotting a line from

264
00:13:03,639 --> 00:13:05,679
al Tea to the rare map's annex, where the missing

265
00:13:05,759 --> 00:13:08,279
items tended to appear, only to find myself popping out

266
00:13:08,320 --> 00:13:10,240
next to the emergency exit at the opposite end of

267
00:13:10,240 --> 00:13:13,159
the floor. Retracing my steps failed to restore the normal

268
00:13:13,200 --> 00:13:16,080
geometry the layout walked underfoot. I ended up at a

269
00:13:16,080 --> 00:13:18,240
blind wall with no sign of doors passed or present,

270
00:13:18,399 --> 00:13:21,759
though the blueprints insisted a corridor continued. My heart thuded

271
00:13:21,759 --> 00:13:23,679
fierce behind the wall of my ribs. The sense of

272
00:13:23,679 --> 00:13:27,639
trest besore, consuming the library, it seemed was built to confound.

273
00:13:28,279 --> 00:13:30,720
Trying to ground myself, I ran my hands along the

274
00:13:30,759 --> 00:13:33,639
backs of the shelves, fingers closing on an impossible object,

275
00:13:33,639 --> 00:13:35,600
which behind a bout it at the sparely visible but

276
00:13:35,720 --> 00:13:38,759
unmistakable wood, I tugged a child sized brassquy, worn and

277
00:13:38,799 --> 00:13:41,559
untouched by reason crime. I stared at it for a while,

278
00:13:41,679 --> 00:13:43,519
half listening and certain if I should leave it in

279
00:13:43,519 --> 00:13:46,279
case it was part of some childish pranco pocketed in

280
00:13:46,320 --> 00:13:48,600
a moment of impulse, I slipped it into my jacket,

281
00:13:48,759 --> 00:13:51,919
feeling the teeth pressed against my palm. It weighed almost nothing,

282
00:13:51,960 --> 00:13:54,919
but felt heavier than iron. Later, when I raised the

283
00:13:54,919 --> 00:13:57,679
matter softly to Joe, he shruked, face flickering between concern

284
00:13:57,720 --> 00:14:00,879
and dismissal. All buildings have hidden stick of maintenance dutes

285
00:14:00,960 --> 00:14:04,200
used to leavesepair keys write probably a blank nothing more.

286
00:14:04,759 --> 00:14:06,799
He pivoted immediately into a story about the time the

287
00:14:06,799 --> 00:14:09,639
elevator ate the delivery, leaving me uncertain if our exchange

288
00:14:09,639 --> 00:14:12,799
was a warning or just practiced deflection. Growing bolder and

289
00:14:12,840 --> 00:14:15,600
more desperate, I built my own primitive system for navigation.

290
00:14:16,200 --> 00:14:17,679
I tied a scarff to the end of the shelf

291
00:14:17,679 --> 00:14:19,840
where the corridor had vanished, hoping to beat the maize.

292
00:14:20,480 --> 00:14:22,639
When I returned after an hour, the scarf was gone.

293
00:14:22,679 --> 00:14:24,720
The whole way had lengthened its far bounds and touched

294
00:14:24,720 --> 00:14:27,240
by any mark I could remember, making. The feeling of

295
00:14:27,279 --> 00:14:29,759
secularity settled deep in my muscles, as though I were

296
00:14:29,799 --> 00:14:33,000
being led to ruin invisible loop by an unseen hand. Worse,

297
00:14:33,120 --> 00:14:35,240
with each step, a new echo followed me footfalls. I

298
00:14:35,279 --> 00:14:38,519
could not belong to my own movement. That evening, combing

299
00:14:38,519 --> 00:14:40,799
back through the last week's recordings, I caught more than

300
00:14:40,799 --> 00:14:44,759
breath and shuffling in several entries. Plain zinc urgent whispered syllables,

301
00:14:45,440 --> 00:14:47,759
so echoed what I'd said second before, like a shadow

302
00:14:47,759 --> 00:14:51,200
of copying my thoughts. Others muttered, only they are listening

303
00:14:51,240 --> 00:14:54,519
in the walls. Hearing it, my mouth went dry. The

304
00:14:54,519 --> 00:14:56,519
phrase from the note returned as if on a loop,

305
00:14:56,519 --> 00:14:58,279
always quieter on the tape than it felt in my

306
00:14:58,320 --> 00:15:00,879
own memory. The breaking pot when a route fear gave

307
00:15:00,919 --> 00:15:03,120
way to resolve, if only in the way repetition let

308
00:15:03,159 --> 00:15:06,799
suscumfoplour into routine. I resolved to map the anomalies in person,

309
00:15:06,879 --> 00:15:09,759
bracing myself with recorder and the scavenged brass key, daring

310
00:15:09,799 --> 00:15:11,879
myself deeper into the most out of bound's reaches of

311
00:15:11,919 --> 00:15:15,120
the stacks. The rules of the ordinary had already started

312
00:15:15,120 --> 00:15:17,200
peeling away. To linger at the edge just brought dread.

313
00:15:17,279 --> 00:15:19,759
But her retreat now would mean seating the territory forever.

314
00:15:20,440 --> 00:15:23,200
Whatever weighted in the architecture, whichever truth or fiction gave

315
00:15:23,240 --> 00:15:25,639
birth to shifting rooms and recorded echoes, would pivot that

316
00:15:25,799 --> 00:15:28,840
night from rumor to reality. I prepared my supplies like

317
00:15:28,840 --> 00:15:32,399
a real investigator. Blueprint notepad jackets it past my collar bone,

318
00:15:32,480 --> 00:15:35,720
fresh batteries in the recorder, edging past the public reading

319
00:15:35,799 --> 00:15:38,000
room I made for the older stairs for once connecting

320
00:15:38,000 --> 00:15:41,080
the first stacks to unrenovated ground at the bottom step,

321
00:15:41,120 --> 00:15:43,519
the light flick of painting the doors and feeble shifting yellow.

322
00:15:44,080 --> 00:15:46,840
The unfamiliar brass key felt cold in my hand, fitting

323
00:15:46,879 --> 00:15:49,120
none of the labeled rings, but still promising entry to

324
00:15:49,159 --> 00:15:51,840
something never named. The store room at the far end

325
00:15:51,879 --> 00:15:54,279
of the basement of badoed padlock steel door had always

326
00:15:54,279 --> 00:15:56,480
been dismissed as a junk cause it but the key

327
00:15:56,480 --> 00:15:58,639
slaiden with the soft clack the locks are rendering as

328
00:15:58,639 --> 00:16:01,399
if it had been waiting for just this moment. Inside,

329
00:16:01,440 --> 00:16:03,399
the air was so thick it seemed saturated with paper,

330
00:16:03,480 --> 00:16:06,279
dust and cold, a weight that clung to my tongue. Shells.

331
00:16:06,320 --> 00:16:08,720
Receded into the dock, piled with ledgers and stacks of

332
00:16:08,720 --> 00:16:12,919
tangle film reels, all unloerered and unlabeled. Old cardboard boxes

333
00:16:12,919 --> 00:16:15,960
sat cocker beneath the center table. Yelled labels from decades past,

334
00:16:16,320 --> 00:16:20,080
redacted dispose when done. Behind them, a rock wall glinted

335
00:16:20,080 --> 00:16:23,399
at the brooks, irregular, darkened with ancient leaks. No sign

336
00:16:23,399 --> 00:16:26,600
of mortar repairs or recent work, just stage layered upon age.

337
00:16:27,120 --> 00:16:29,120
I swept the flask light side to side, hard beat,

338
00:16:29,159 --> 00:16:32,440
spiking with every fresh discovery on the table, half barred

339
00:16:32,480 --> 00:16:35,320
beneath the ledger, a photograph curled with humidity, seepy face's

340
00:16:35,360 --> 00:16:37,799
starrings stiffly at the camera, each figure in a faded

341
00:16:37,799 --> 00:16:40,480
staff uniform. I rade before what looked like this fery wall.

342
00:16:41,039 --> 00:16:42,799
The date on the back was sculled in Fountain Pen

343
00:16:42,960 --> 00:16:45,320
nineteen forty, though the people looked older than that, their

344
00:16:45,360 --> 00:16:49,320
expressions unreadable. A second photograph was overlaid with a note.

345
00:16:49,720 --> 00:16:52,840
I recognized doctor Rudman's looping script from his catalog cards.

346
00:16:53,080 --> 00:16:55,159
Do not open. Records are all we have to keep

347
00:16:55,240 --> 00:16:58,559
us safe. The warning was blunt, the urgency like a slap.

348
00:16:59,120 --> 00:17:01,480
I ran my fingers over the words, certain now that

349
00:17:01,519 --> 00:17:03,600
the secrecy was no accident. They hid in more than

350
00:17:03,679 --> 00:17:06,759
just extra supplies. The records are all we have, I

351
00:17:06,799 --> 00:17:10,359
repeated into my recorder, voice thin and bragged. No sooner

352
00:17:10,400 --> 00:17:12,119
had the words left my mouth than the well dropped

353
00:17:12,119 --> 00:17:15,119
into a sharper clarity. The overhead bulbs pocked in and

354
00:17:15,200 --> 00:17:17,680
even flickered once twice before plunging the room into a

355
00:17:17,680 --> 00:17:20,440
half lit strobe. From behind a brick wall, a course

356
00:17:20,480 --> 00:17:23,680
of voices rose, urgent, wordless, conducting old grievances and to

357
00:17:23,759 --> 00:17:26,680
mans through cracks and stone. The sound was not organized

358
00:17:26,759 --> 00:17:29,119
enough to be conversation, nor animal enough to dismiss his

359
00:17:29,200 --> 00:17:32,839
pipes or weather. I stumbled back, recorder pressed to my lips,

360
00:17:32,839 --> 00:17:35,720
hot racing in my ears, convinced those voices had noticed me,

361
00:17:35,960 --> 00:17:39,480
recognized the trespass of my presence. The contents of the storeroom,

362
00:17:39,519 --> 00:17:41,799
the ledgers, the film reels, the curious, the breaked off

363
00:17:41,799 --> 00:17:44,599
wall would not passive relics, but pieces of an ongoing process.

364
00:17:45,359 --> 00:17:48,720
Some one or something actively maintained the gaps, covering over

365
00:17:48,759 --> 00:17:51,359
their own history, hiding books that the library and perhaps

366
00:17:51,359 --> 00:17:53,920
the city was not meant to remember. I should have

367
00:17:53,920 --> 00:17:56,039
fled or called for help, but instead I sat heavily

368
00:17:56,039 --> 00:17:58,640
on the edge of a cold iron stewel. I whispered

369
00:17:58,640 --> 00:18:01,279
into the recorder, words humbling out until cents left me.

370
00:18:01,400 --> 00:18:03,359
There here I hear them reading to each other, the

371
00:18:03,400 --> 00:18:05,599
shell's chain shape. When I blink, the records were as

372
00:18:05,640 --> 00:18:08,880
doctor written, why does no one check? I crossed outbit

373
00:18:08,880 --> 00:18:11,720
out of routine into the realm of secret custodians, and

374
00:18:11,759 --> 00:18:14,279
the sensation grew that I was being quietly inventoried and

375
00:18:14,279 --> 00:18:16,920
weighed from a distance, even as I tried to catalog them.

376
00:18:16,920 --> 00:18:19,799
In return, A sudden crisp sound cut through the roar,

377
00:18:19,839 --> 00:18:22,000
a footstep no more than six feet from my back.

378
00:18:22,640 --> 00:18:25,640
The footfall was distinct, heavy, definite, too purposeful for accident.

379
00:18:26,319 --> 00:18:29,079
I froze, head turned halfway, flashlight trembling in my hand.

380
00:18:29,720 --> 00:18:31,960
The voices shifted to a low rustle, as if retreating

381
00:18:32,039 --> 00:18:35,319
the air charged from somewhere inside of beyond the brick wall.

382
00:18:35,440 --> 00:18:38,480
A scratching started, a patient, expectant sound, as if something

383
00:18:38,480 --> 00:18:40,759
of someone was searching methodically for what had been hidden

384
00:18:40,799 --> 00:18:43,680
too well. It was then, and only then, that I

385
00:18:43,720 --> 00:18:46,640
understood the investigation of cross from the superficial missing books,

386
00:18:46,680 --> 00:18:49,240
confused layouts, idle rumors to whatever waited in the sealed

387
00:18:49,240 --> 00:18:51,599
heart of the library. I could not tell the ford

388
00:18:51,599 --> 00:18:54,160
approached was human, or if the shelves themselves, in some

389
00:18:54,200 --> 00:18:57,039
impossible way, had decided to make their own audit. I

390
00:18:57,079 --> 00:18:59,960
pressed the record button again. Bret Shallow knowing that before

391
00:19:00,000 --> 00:19:02,240
the night ended I might learn precisely what the library's

392
00:19:02,279 --> 00:19:04,920
arkhouse had been built to contain. My hand shook with

393
00:19:04,920 --> 00:19:07,440
the recorder so badly. Each clickin's grape was probably etching

394
00:19:07,440 --> 00:19:09,880
static across the tape, but I forced myself not to flinch,

395
00:19:09,960 --> 00:19:12,519
not to betray any noise louder than a harby. The

396
00:19:12,519 --> 00:19:15,160
storm's gloom was absolute, between flashes of the dying bulb,

397
00:19:15,240 --> 00:19:18,359
the shuddering light swinging shadows up across stacks of handwritten ledgers.

398
00:19:18,960 --> 00:19:21,680
The footstick came again, more measured, this time moving on

399
00:19:21,680 --> 00:19:24,200
the other side of the damperrick, dragging just slightly at

400
00:19:24,240 --> 00:19:25,960
the end, as though its owner was halted by the

401
00:19:26,000 --> 00:19:28,359
same low and ease as I was. I listened to

402
00:19:28,359 --> 00:19:31,559
mouth dry as paper for anything more. Pipes perhaps, or

403
00:19:31,599 --> 00:19:35,000
the expansion of oldstone, But no ordinary sound repeats as such,

404
00:19:35,079 --> 00:19:37,319
patient rhythm, the kind only made by the wig intention

405
00:19:37,400 --> 00:19:40,480
of a body hiding from or searching for something. Swallowing

406
00:19:40,480 --> 00:19:42,319
down the ouch to run, I fixed my eyes on

407
00:19:42,359 --> 00:19:44,759
the scene in the wall, the bricks pressed against one

408
00:19:44,799 --> 00:19:47,400
another with the heavy patients of a century neglect. Yet

409
00:19:47,440 --> 00:19:49,359
at the base, and the scene closest to the floor

410
00:19:49,519 --> 00:19:52,400
dust had been swept away in an uneven arc. Someone

411
00:19:52,440 --> 00:19:56,680
had touched the spot recent maybe to night. That or

412
00:19:56,720 --> 00:19:59,519
whatever press from inside, had disturbed what no custodian bothered

413
00:19:59,519 --> 00:20:02,400
to clean. I couldn't leave, not with the strange completeness

414
00:20:02,440 --> 00:20:04,559
of the moment holding me hostage, and not with doctor

415
00:20:04,599 --> 00:20:07,319
Rudman's name whispering through my head like a warning. I

416
00:20:07,359 --> 00:20:10,359
pressed my ear to the cool brick, listening for a second.

417
00:20:10,519 --> 00:20:13,319
All I heard was the low rush of my own blood. Then,

418
00:20:13,400 --> 00:20:15,480
between the clatter of far off returned books and the

419
00:20:15,480 --> 00:20:18,000
faint vibration of the building's bones, a thread of words

420
00:20:18,000 --> 00:20:21,000
coiled in the darkness. On the other side, Entry returned.

421
00:20:21,039 --> 00:20:24,240
The records keep us. They overlapped different voices, one graveled

422
00:20:24,240 --> 00:20:26,960
with age, another sharp and anxious. Many roughened into nearly

423
00:20:27,000 --> 00:20:30,279
wordless groans. Not just one person, but a group, or

424
00:20:30,319 --> 00:20:33,079
an echo of many groups, fractured murmurs running together at

425
00:20:33,079 --> 00:20:36,079
the scenes. I jerked away, all my bravado gone, with

426
00:20:36,119 --> 00:20:38,839
the chill cling up my arms. When I blinked, I

427
00:20:38,920 --> 00:20:41,240
shape pressed into the corner shadows, just at the periphery,

428
00:20:41,240 --> 00:20:43,720
a figure or else the memory of one My flash

429
00:20:43,759 --> 00:20:46,279
flight couldn't land on it. The beam diffused helplessly against

430
00:20:46,319 --> 00:20:50,359
boxes and rags, showing only ordinary detritus. A slow scrape

431
00:20:50,400 --> 00:20:52,960
metal on stone now made me whip around in the

432
00:20:53,000 --> 00:20:55,359
farthest angle of the storeroom, where two sets of battered

433
00:20:55,400 --> 00:20:59,319
shells met. Something metallic glinted. Kneeling half expecting the voice

434
00:20:59,319 --> 00:21:01,440
to rise again. I pressed my hand into the darkness

435
00:21:01,480 --> 00:21:03,240
and felt the cool edge of a ring bound round

436
00:21:03,240 --> 00:21:04,920
a key, this one larger than the brass one in

437
00:21:04,960 --> 00:21:08,359
my pocket. Its teeth were old, blunted, and irregular. The

438
00:21:08,400 --> 00:21:11,119
tag tied around it rattled as I was dreary, annex

439
00:21:11,160 --> 00:21:13,440
hashed free, closed to see severy o riman only it

440
00:21:13,599 --> 00:21:16,880
read and block capitals. I held it against my palm,

441
00:21:16,920 --> 00:21:20,039
the unfamiliar wit throwing me off balance. A flash like

442
00:21:20,079 --> 00:21:22,160
cut a brief, narrow path along the edge of an

443
00:21:22,200 --> 00:21:25,839
exposed beam. Overhead. I squinted, uncertain. The stone above the

444
00:21:25,839 --> 00:21:29,680
breaked up section was etched deeply but halphazardly. Letters overlapped,

445
00:21:29,720 --> 00:21:32,240
as if a dozen hands had carved. Score were cut.

446
00:21:32,799 --> 00:21:34,839
I picked out a winding, stilted ur ud, then an

447
00:21:34,839 --> 00:21:37,160
abrupt break, as though the carving had stopped mid name.

448
00:21:37,759 --> 00:21:40,359
Whoever had started it, intended only the first hint, trusting

449
00:21:40,400 --> 00:21:43,400
recognition to whoever followed. The air in the room thickened,

450
00:21:43,400 --> 00:21:45,720
and not with dust, but with the unmistakable town of Ozone,

451
00:21:45,759 --> 00:21:48,640
that the scent of old electricity and machinery. The bulb

452
00:21:48,680 --> 00:21:51,400
overhead flickered a last time, then fizzle to blatness, leaving

453
00:21:51,440 --> 00:21:54,240
only the slim hollow of my flashlight and my shallow breath.

454
00:21:54,680 --> 00:21:57,200
I retreated a half set, then another, not quite daring

455
00:21:57,240 --> 00:21:59,480
to turn my back on the wall. My mind chased

456
00:21:59,519 --> 00:22:01,759
and helpful po spillity shifts in foundation, a trick of

457
00:22:01,759 --> 00:22:04,279
old vents, a homeless drifter, even the elaborate ghosts that

458
00:22:04,319 --> 00:22:07,759
the city's sore is told. But none felt plausible, not here,

459
00:22:08,000 --> 00:22:11,640
not now. In that stammering dark, I forced myself to speak,

460
00:22:11,759 --> 00:22:13,640
if someone's here, or if you can hear me I've

461
00:22:13,759 --> 00:22:16,799
or not. The key to my words fell flat, swallowed

462
00:22:16,799 --> 00:22:19,640
by a now apparent difference in atmosphere. It was quite

463
00:22:19,680 --> 00:22:21,839
a here, but not absent of sound, Rather as if

464
00:22:21,880 --> 00:22:24,680
any utterance would be gathered, weighed, returned in form or

465
00:22:24,759 --> 00:22:27,359
not at all. Trying to decide whether to push my

466
00:22:27,440 --> 00:22:29,720
luck or retreat, I remembered the reference to annex hash

467
00:22:29,759 --> 00:22:32,359
three Innikey's tack. I had seen the name on the

468
00:22:32,400 --> 00:22:35,200
oldest blueprints, far from the standard traffic of either patrons

469
00:22:35,279 --> 00:22:37,200
or staff, mapped in a remote corner that on my

470
00:22:37,279 --> 00:22:39,680
last physical walk seemed to end blank wall beside the

471
00:22:39,720 --> 00:22:43,279
periodical's annex. I should have gone straight upstairs, but the

472
00:22:43,319 --> 00:22:45,559
sense that something crucial lay within my reach made caution

473
00:22:45,640 --> 00:22:48,559
feel cowardly. I pocketed a larger key along side the

474
00:22:48,559 --> 00:22:51,039
brass one voice shaking as a chronicle every move into

475
00:22:51,039 --> 00:22:53,839
my recorder. I'm leaving the store room. Nothing else here

476
00:22:53,839 --> 00:22:57,160
but ledges, reels. Another key in a note, will check blueprints.

477
00:22:57,200 --> 00:22:59,039
The war sounds like voices, and the fart sight to

478
00:22:59,079 --> 00:23:03,240
persist outside. The corridor was stupy with shadow. The distant

479
00:23:03,240 --> 00:23:06,640
fluorescent glow from the stairs lent everything adjaundice pallor. I

480
00:23:06,720 --> 00:23:09,319
crept along the wall, eyes and the pealing archival map

481
00:23:09,319 --> 00:23:12,599
mounted next to an emergency exit. If a wall hid anything,

482
00:23:12,720 --> 00:23:15,119
it was recess behind this in the coal of masonry

483
00:23:15,200 --> 00:23:17,480
that no plane updated since the sixties had accounted for.

484
00:23:18,119 --> 00:23:20,720
As I approached the supposed location of annexa's free and

485
00:23:20,799 --> 00:23:24,279
eld again, tracing the marble at floor level. Opposite the wall,

486
00:23:24,359 --> 00:23:26,359
a thin laddice of scuff mark's phaps from shoes or

487
00:23:26,359 --> 00:23:29,000
from cart wheeled by invisible staff, smudged across the tile.

488
00:23:29,599 --> 00:23:31,920
In the far corner, a metal scutch and plate concealed

489
00:23:32,000 --> 00:23:34,720
yet another small key hole, nearly invisible unless you were

490
00:23:34,759 --> 00:23:37,759
on your knees. I held the new key up, compared

491
00:23:37,759 --> 00:23:40,200
its teeth one by one, and with what verged on hope,

492
00:23:40,279 --> 00:23:43,519
worked into the slot. It resisted at first, then duck

493
00:23:43,599 --> 00:23:45,559
home with a click so loud it felt like a signal.

494
00:23:46,079 --> 00:23:50,279
I hesitated, listening for a response. Silence, Then from behind

495
00:23:50,279 --> 00:23:52,519
the wall, the low gattural surge of breadth, either wind

496
00:23:52,559 --> 00:23:55,440
racing ancient fence or debated inhalation of something not quite

497
00:23:55,480 --> 00:23:59,440
ready to speak. The wall shifted minutely, No drama, just

498
00:23:59,480 --> 00:24:02,319
the slackening of pressure, as if some hidden latcher pulled free.

499
00:24:02,720 --> 00:24:05,319
The panel flexed, exposing an arched slice of darkness that

500
00:24:05,359 --> 00:24:07,880
gaped into nothing of passage unlet there on my cheek.

501
00:24:07,920 --> 00:24:10,960
Colder shopper than any ventilation dock could account for a

502
00:24:11,000 --> 00:24:13,440
cascade of fear, battered my better instincts, but I flicked

503
00:24:13,440 --> 00:24:15,880
the flasklight down the opening, and stepped forward, careful not

504
00:24:15,920 --> 00:24:18,599
to let the slab shut behind me. The stone lip

505
00:24:18,640 --> 00:24:21,160
was cold, as still, a line of condensation gathering below

506
00:24:21,200 --> 00:24:24,200
my palm on the inner side. Steps led down sharply,

507
00:24:24,240 --> 00:24:26,359
four maybe five, at a rough angle, ending at a

508
00:24:26,359 --> 00:24:29,720
pact or of floor. Here the silence broke, distant but

509
00:24:29,799 --> 00:24:32,880
growing impression of paper, shuffling of catalog cluds thrashed by

510
00:24:32,920 --> 00:24:35,680
invisible hands, and from deep inside the measured rhythm of

511
00:24:35,680 --> 00:24:39,960
a pen scratching slowly across ledgers, interlaced barely audible voices

512
00:24:39,960 --> 00:24:43,240
a catalog to erased aanic's preserve us. I steadied myself

513
00:24:43,240 --> 00:24:45,880
and moved forward the farstlight, tracing faded stripes of paint

514
00:24:45,880 --> 00:24:48,200
at the base of the old corridor, the kind libraries

515
00:24:48,240 --> 00:24:51,039
once used to color coat and tire rooms. The shoe

516
00:24:51,119 --> 00:24:54,000
was impossible to name. Somewhere between townished copper and dried blood.

517
00:24:54,599 --> 00:24:57,400
Half free down my foot struck a brittle ridge, nearly

518
00:24:57,440 --> 00:25:01,160
sending me tumbling. Steadying, I glanced down. The obstacle was

519
00:25:01,160 --> 00:25:03,839
a mound of torn gray paper, all the fragments stamped

520
00:25:03,880 --> 00:25:06,920
with the same circular date August nineteen forty two. Not

521
00:25:07,000 --> 00:25:09,400
a recent trespass, but a settling, as if time itself

522
00:25:09,440 --> 00:25:11,839
had stopped to pile evidence here, outside the world's sense

523
00:25:11,839 --> 00:25:14,640
of order. I eased around it, slowing my breath, and

524
00:25:14,680 --> 00:25:17,160
turned a corner. The light fell on what, for a

525
00:25:17,200 --> 00:25:19,440
split second I mistook for a person hunched by the

526
00:25:19,440 --> 00:25:23,240
far wall. The shadow elongated. I turned hot, doubling in pace,

527
00:25:23,480 --> 00:25:25,640
only to find a broken chair, piled high with bundled

528
00:25:25,640 --> 00:25:28,160
in Dick's cards, some clean as bone, others very past.

529
00:25:28,200 --> 00:25:31,720
Reading in the midst a single unshelved volume, Foundations of

530
00:25:31,759 --> 00:25:34,039
American Municipal Law, the very book i'd plucked the nerve

531
00:25:34,079 --> 00:25:37,079
from back in the reference aisle. My knees nearly buckled

532
00:25:37,079 --> 00:25:40,240
as the circularity clicked into place. I set the recorder

533
00:25:40,240 --> 00:25:43,160
on a ledge, forced myself to speak, low teeth chattering

534
00:25:43,240 --> 00:25:45,240
the book back here, cards too. Did I bring it?

535
00:25:45,319 --> 00:25:47,920
Or was it always here? I doubted my own memory,

536
00:25:47,920 --> 00:25:50,359
disoriented by how perfectly my movement seemed to echo what

537
00:25:50,440 --> 00:25:52,960
lay below. As I reached for the stack, the air

538
00:25:53,000 --> 00:25:55,599
snapped cold, immediate and personal, like walking through a curtain

539
00:25:55,640 --> 00:25:58,160
of ice water. A voice so close it had to

540
00:25:58,200 --> 00:25:59,920
be inches for my ear, but so diffused as to

541
00:26:00,119 --> 00:26:03,839
everywhere at once, whispered, forgotten, forget again, keep the doors closed.

542
00:26:04,440 --> 00:26:07,000
My fingers coiled from the cards, each bearing not only

543
00:26:07,039 --> 00:26:10,920
call numbers, but names, many unfamiliar, some half remembered. Doctor

544
00:26:10,960 --> 00:26:14,240
Rubbins was repeated, written in urgent block capitals, then crossed

545
00:26:14,240 --> 00:26:19,559
out by a second hand rudman request deny escalated for preservation. Breathless,

546
00:26:19,680 --> 00:26:21,640
I hurried to scooped the items into my jacket, but

547
00:26:21,720 --> 00:26:24,119
the shadow of movement rose again at the threshold behind

548
00:26:24,799 --> 00:26:26,640
It was no trick of light. A figure lingered at

549
00:26:26,640 --> 00:26:28,640
the top of the steps, linen by the weak electric

550
00:26:28,680 --> 00:26:32,079
glow leaking from the corridor. I stopped pulse roaring and

551
00:26:32,119 --> 00:26:34,279
watched as the figure, too tall from assess every too

552
00:26:34,319 --> 00:26:37,400
acular for gen hesitated as assenting the room. A distinct

553
00:26:37,440 --> 00:26:39,720
sensation spread through me, the knowledge that it was not

554
00:26:39,759 --> 00:26:42,559
allowed to cross into the annex, not yet, perhaps barred

555
00:26:42,559 --> 00:26:46,039
by the very secrecy of records guarded. I froze, considering

556
00:26:46,079 --> 00:26:51,400
my options back truck call for help. The recorder, still running,

557
00:26:51,440 --> 00:26:52,880
hissed with the static of all the breath I had

558
00:26:52,920 --> 00:26:55,960
wasted since entering in a whisper. Barely more than thought,

559
00:26:56,160 --> 00:26:59,519
I said, Annex unsealed, Rubbin's name erased, records shows only

560
00:26:59,559 --> 00:27:03,599
gaps muster. The figure took a deliberate step forward. My

561
00:27:03,680 --> 00:27:06,680
flasklight died, a battery drained, or perhaps something less honest.

562
00:27:07,359 --> 00:27:09,240
I was left in a darkenss layered with the scent

563
00:27:09,279 --> 00:27:11,720
of spoiled paper and warm brass, my hand groping in

564
00:27:11,720 --> 00:27:15,119
the deepening black for anything solid shelving boxes, door frames.

565
00:27:15,759 --> 00:27:18,079
The corridors were sigil light where it breached, caught, and

566
00:27:18,119 --> 00:27:20,599
fine swirls of dust mapping currents of air disturbed. Only

567
00:27:20,680 --> 00:27:23,440
moments before I knew, because stors were on their way

568
00:27:23,480 --> 00:27:25,880
past logic, and because the personal myth making of fears

569
00:27:25,880 --> 00:27:28,079
always more creative than facts, that turning my back would

570
00:27:28,079 --> 00:27:31,400
be disastrous. I faced the darkness, and, half way between

571
00:27:31,440 --> 00:27:34,200
certainty and terror, called out, what do you want? Why

572
00:27:34,240 --> 00:27:36,880
keep these things from the world. The words rang off

573
00:27:36,920 --> 00:27:39,599
the musty walls, gaining no answer, but the fence pressure

574
00:27:39,640 --> 00:27:42,359
at my back a warning or reassurance I couldn't entangle.

575
00:27:43,000 --> 00:27:45,880
A final noise, distinct crisp as the shelf, unexpected thee

576
00:27:45,880 --> 00:27:49,079
were shelving broke the trance. The figure vanished, not in

577
00:27:49,119 --> 00:27:51,519
a rush, but in a thinning, its presence stretched until

578
00:27:51,559 --> 00:27:54,960
only absence was left. I followed, feeling my way out

579
00:27:55,000 --> 00:27:57,400
of the annex, passing through currents of cold that carved

580
00:27:57,440 --> 00:28:00,119
history out of air. I merged into the corridor, not

581
00:28:00,240 --> 00:28:02,640
much wiser, bearing instead a new fear that the missing

582
00:28:02,640 --> 00:28:04,880
and the erase in this place operated by their own logic,

583
00:28:05,039 --> 00:28:07,759
a system was intricate and silent as the catalog itself.

584
00:28:08,400 --> 00:28:10,680
Back top side, the regular world did not return as

585
00:28:10,720 --> 00:28:13,559
easily as I expected. The shadows clung to my skin,

586
00:28:13,599 --> 00:28:17,400
the unfamiliar keys branding my palm. Upstairs, the circulation computer

587
00:28:17,480 --> 00:28:20,000
registered neither my overtime nor the odd books I'd carried.

588
00:28:20,519 --> 00:28:22,559
When I tried to check out the ledgers, the digital

589
00:28:22,559 --> 00:28:24,960
system refused the barcods, as if the items had ceased

590
00:28:25,000 --> 00:28:28,559
to exist once unsealed. Missess, every passing behind my desk

591
00:28:28,720 --> 00:28:31,160
for a single point, a glance more warning than acknowledgment,

592
00:28:31,200 --> 00:28:33,400
had marched off before I could close the gap between us.

593
00:28:34,200 --> 00:28:36,680
I took careful notes into the recorder that night, fearing

594
00:28:36,680 --> 00:28:38,599
both what I'd learned and what was left and spoken.

595
00:28:39,039 --> 00:28:41,680
The references had changed. The missing books now appeared to

596
00:28:41,680 --> 00:28:43,759
cycle through staff hands in a rhythm. Longer than any

597
00:28:43,759 --> 00:28:48,160
shift records maintained. The catalog muttered when I refreshed status

598
00:28:48,359 --> 00:28:51,559
locked see archivist for future review. The rest was lost

599
00:28:51,599 --> 00:28:54,799
even to the ADM and password. That night, trying to sleep,

600
00:28:54,839 --> 00:28:57,200
I felt the scent of the library crawl beneath my window,

601
00:28:57,319 --> 00:28:59,759
the sounds of turning pages and whispering voices rising. In

602
00:28:59,799 --> 00:29:02,599
the day, the key in my pocket grew heavier, as

603
00:29:02,599 --> 00:29:04,799
if it belonged somewhere even now, and not returning it

604
00:29:04,920 --> 00:29:08,599
meant staying marked. Catalog observed, weighed again and again. The

605
00:29:08,680 --> 00:29:11,640
next day, I resolved to trace the history proper. If

606
00:29:11,640 --> 00:29:13,720
something watched from inside those bricked holes of those who

607
00:29:13,759 --> 00:29:15,799
vanished did not vanish entirely. It was time to map

608
00:29:15,799 --> 00:29:18,240
the unscene, to reread the building back against itself. And

609
00:29:18,480 --> 00:29:20,839
if I coat to document what should never have been lost,

610
00:29:21,519 --> 00:29:23,680
tomorrow I would find the blueprints that spelled out the

611
00:29:23,680 --> 00:29:26,599
true dimensions of the library, no matter what the front deskinied.

612
00:29:27,279 --> 00:29:30,359
Tonight I pressed stop on the record, heart drumming as

613
00:29:30,359 --> 00:29:33,000
the machine went silent somewhere behind another wall. The voices

614
00:29:33,039 --> 00:29:35,599
kept up, those soft, cataloging, endless, patient, hungry for the

615
00:29:35,680 --> 00:29:38,400
next name to cross the secret list. A slice of

616
00:29:38,440 --> 00:29:40,799
morning sun, sharp and pale, found its way through the

617
00:29:40,799 --> 00:29:43,240
living room blinds while I crossed reference blueprints from the

618
00:29:43,240 --> 00:29:45,759
bat had hung firelight board from the library's back drawer.

619
00:29:46,359 --> 00:29:48,799
My jacket hung on the kitchen chair, Both pocketed keys

620
00:29:48,799 --> 00:29:50,880
wrapped and hidden at the bottom, carefully as if they

621
00:29:50,920 --> 00:29:53,880
might scorch my fingers, even through wool. Every few minutes,

622
00:29:53,960 --> 00:29:56,240
I stopped to reposition the blueprints, seeking out the neat

623
00:29:56,240 --> 00:29:59,359
rectangle shaded under recent construction, each border clashing with their

624
00:29:59,359 --> 00:30:03,200
earlier block lines. In my note book, I sketched dimensions

625
00:30:03,200 --> 00:30:06,240
and cross reference with the library's current online map. Three

626
00:30:06,319 --> 00:30:08,480
rooms may be four appeared on paper, but nowhere in

627
00:30:08,480 --> 00:30:11,680
physical space. I plugged in my recorder, letting the blue

628
00:30:11,680 --> 00:30:15,920
indicator blow for company entry seven forty and blueprints support

629
00:30:15,920 --> 00:30:19,000
the annex theory. Multiple discontinuities in the original stake design,

630
00:30:19,039 --> 00:30:22,519
three major gaps. The act of recounting combe pulse made

631
00:30:22,519 --> 00:30:24,960
the secrets manageable. Each where a stone atop the others

632
00:30:25,039 --> 00:30:28,119
keeping panic at bay. Surveying the blueprints, I traced a

633
00:30:28,119 --> 00:30:30,960
finger along overlays with the old children's reading room became

634
00:30:30,960 --> 00:30:33,720
a brick hole on nearer drawings where the southeast service corridor,

635
00:30:33,960 --> 00:30:37,079
once neatly squared, curved around a blank space which mismatching

636
00:30:37,119 --> 00:30:40,480
every adjacent aisle. I marked each hiding geometry with color

637
00:30:40,519 --> 00:30:42,920
code of FAGS on a PDF copy. Green for public

638
00:30:43,000 --> 00:30:45,680
rooms now raised read for spaces that had shifted between

639
00:30:45,799 --> 00:30:49,119
editions without explanation. The most significant void open behind an

640
00:30:49,200 --> 00:30:51,440
L shaped wall in the sub basement, precisely atop the

641
00:30:51,480 --> 00:30:53,960
stale books scented wind that cull through the corridors late

642
00:30:53,960 --> 00:30:57,839
at night. Civic records online yielded little, though fire of

643
00:30:57,920 --> 00:31:00,839
nineteen thirty eight explained some gaps, applausible loss of blueprints

644
00:31:00,839 --> 00:31:04,000
and a convenient filter for display city histories. But more

645
00:31:04,039 --> 00:31:07,400
recent events, especially in nineteen seventy six, personnel calling and

646
00:31:07,400 --> 00:31:10,720
stray mentions of improper cataloging ended in bureaucratic dead ends.

647
00:31:11,359 --> 00:31:14,680
The news clipping fairly legible reference to a special Committee

648
00:31:14,720 --> 00:31:17,440
on Library Preservation whose mandate was to evaluate our Cavil

649
00:31:17,480 --> 00:31:21,640
records for collective safety. No further details were available. I

650
00:31:21,640 --> 00:31:24,400
typed in doctor Rudman's name again, hoping for a new clue.

651
00:31:24,839 --> 00:31:28,160
His municipal profiles stubbornly redirected to a generic research initiative

652
00:31:28,279 --> 00:31:30,640
landing page. The record had been either deleted or swept

653
00:31:30,720 --> 00:31:33,880
under a mass of meaningless digital debris. In the paper files,

654
00:31:34,079 --> 00:31:36,599
old committee letters appeared his signature at the bottom of

655
00:31:36,599 --> 00:31:38,759
a carbon copied sead of minutes from a decade prior,

656
00:31:38,839 --> 00:31:42,160
abruptly replaced afterward by nothing but formal letters and blank lines.

657
00:31:42,680 --> 00:31:45,599
Giving up on digital traces, I recalled the overheard snippets

658
00:31:45,599 --> 00:31:49,000
from last week, musses Sever's clip remark the real collections

659
00:31:49,039 --> 00:31:51,680
not for public eye. One staff are confiding to another

660
00:31:51,720 --> 00:31:53,839
by the vending machines. Or remembered a quote if you

661
00:31:53,839 --> 00:31:56,359
see someone in the wrong area redirect do not explain

662
00:31:56,839 --> 00:31:59,200
the chill in their voices, lingered, a warning of boundaries

663
00:31:59,240 --> 00:32:02,160
I hadn't known exists, didn't tell now. Pushing my luck,

664
00:32:02,319 --> 00:32:04,240
I tried to ask John about those closed wings when

665
00:32:04,240 --> 00:32:06,920
I clocked him for the afternoon shift. She cut me

666
00:32:07,000 --> 00:32:09,440
off force lowered. Some parts are closed for a reason.

667
00:32:09,519 --> 00:32:12,000
That's why the admint staff moved upstairs after the flooding.

668
00:32:12,119 --> 00:32:14,400
You're best off sticking to your roads. Don't make waves,

669
00:32:15,119 --> 00:32:17,599
she'd out the desk twice in nervous habitual. Dick then

670
00:32:17,680 --> 00:32:20,640
smiled as though nothing ought had passed between us, but

671
00:32:20,680 --> 00:32:23,960
the warnings weren't universal. Joe henden Halt, when I asked

672
00:32:23,960 --> 00:32:27,279
about an accounted rooms, he avoided my eye, offering only,

673
00:32:27,359 --> 00:32:29,559
I don't look too close any more. Last one who did,

674
00:32:29,559 --> 00:32:32,400
they didn't come back. As he turned, I noticed he

675
00:32:32,480 --> 00:32:34,039
was stuffing a handful of cards and tone on the

676
00:32:34,039 --> 00:32:37,920
script on velopindix stalk cream colored. Don't ask, he muttered,

677
00:32:38,680 --> 00:32:42,119
just let sleeping things lie. That evening's routine felt walked,

678
00:32:42,160 --> 00:32:44,920
every lighted, agreed, emmer, every whole way impassable, though nothing

679
00:32:45,000 --> 00:32:48,519
visibly had changed. The city outside receded into a cold

680
00:32:48,599 --> 00:32:51,880
blue dusk. I checked my jacket multiple times for the keys,

681
00:32:51,880 --> 00:32:53,960
a talisman, and a curse, rolled into one and sat

682
00:32:53,960 --> 00:32:56,920
at the terminal just inside the reference vault. My email

683
00:32:56,920 --> 00:32:59,880
contained only the ordinary reminders to Talley returned DVD to

684
00:33:00,079 --> 00:33:03,119
update the outdated policy printouts, but the memory of the

685
00:33:03,119 --> 00:33:05,400
Wall of the Name struck through the ledgers. The impossible

686
00:33:05,440 --> 00:33:08,240
logic of the hidden ANX crowded every thought. If there

687
00:33:08,240 --> 00:33:10,240
was an order to this place, it wasn't the one

688
00:33:10,279 --> 00:33:13,240
we displayed to the public. Some one or some circle

689
00:33:13,240 --> 00:33:15,839
controlled which pieces of the city's story survive. And their

690
00:33:15,880 --> 00:33:19,200
care taking now included me by accidental mistake. I packed

691
00:33:19,200 --> 00:33:21,440
a spouset of batteries and the newer blueprint into my

692
00:33:21,480 --> 00:33:23,920
bag along with the keys, and waited for the library

693
00:33:23,920 --> 00:33:27,319
to close. Jan left early, waving with feign cheer, and

694
00:33:27,400 --> 00:33:30,440
Joe vanished on some invented errand by ten the place

695
00:33:30,519 --> 00:33:33,680
was hushed again. I signed myself unpatrolled and the logan

696
00:33:33,759 --> 00:33:36,319
listened as the outer doors lock shut, the security system

697
00:33:36,359 --> 00:33:39,160
cycling with a mechanical chime. No way up but the

698
00:33:39,200 --> 00:33:42,640
staff exit and all the stacks between. Before I moved, though,

699
00:33:42,720 --> 00:33:44,960
a brief surreptitious exchange caught my ear from the far

700
00:33:45,079 --> 00:33:48,759
end of the lobby, muffled byunmistakable Two older staffers, likely

701
00:33:48,799 --> 00:33:52,519
from administration, exchanged whispers. Their cataloging against storage. Notice goes

702
00:33:52,559 --> 00:33:55,319
to council tomorrow. The council made their decision. Special Collection

703
00:33:55,400 --> 00:33:58,440
must stay out of circulation. City can't handle another incident. Silence.

704
00:33:58,559 --> 00:34:00,759
Then the SEV was not up for someone else can

705
00:34:00,799 --> 00:34:02,720
take over. The public must never find it. A click,

706
00:34:03,279 --> 00:34:05,960
their voices snapped off, the conversation ending as soon as

707
00:34:06,000 --> 00:34:08,840
they sense motion nearby. I let the house settle, heart

708
00:34:08,960 --> 00:34:12,599
rattling in my robes, the ordinary rules of staff hierarchy mass,

709
00:34:12,679 --> 00:34:15,880
something much stricter, possibly older than the building itself. It

710
00:34:15,920 --> 00:34:18,199
wasn't a leap to connect the dots. Certain room sealed

711
00:34:18,199 --> 00:34:20,920
for its safety, ledgers with nanes crossed out history Beard,

712
00:34:20,920 --> 00:34:23,639
along with the staff who proved too far, the city's

713
00:34:23,679 --> 00:34:26,239
lost scandals, all traced back and obliprintce to one or

714
00:34:26,280 --> 00:34:28,920
another improved wing, each expansion eating the story of those

715
00:34:28,960 --> 00:34:32,480
who came before. The implication dawned gradually. Each missing book

716
00:34:32,599 --> 00:34:35,519
was perhaps more than carelessness or accident. The missing staff

717
00:34:35,519 --> 00:34:37,840
not casualties of boredom or a better opportunity, but of

718
00:34:37,880 --> 00:34:41,599
an imposed ceremonial forgetting. With all daylight banish the tension

719
00:34:41,599 --> 00:34:43,639
in the earth, thick and expectant ends at my back,

720
00:34:43,840 --> 00:34:45,800
checked the batteries in the recorder, and set out to

721
00:34:45,800 --> 00:34:49,199
follow the real map. The jagged, irregular geometry behind the catalog.

722
00:34:49,880 --> 00:34:52,239
The staff elevator grown. As I pressed for the sub basement,

723
00:34:52,280 --> 00:34:55,360
my reflection wopped in the scratch mirror, a clipped metallic

724
00:34:55,400 --> 00:34:58,280
voice from the intercommon hond main floor oca's lower stacks.

725
00:34:58,800 --> 00:35:01,719
At the lowest landing, the mechanism stuttered, releasing me into

726
00:35:01,760 --> 00:35:04,039
the unofficial domain of Lost Things. A length of corridor

727
00:35:04,079 --> 00:35:06,480
painted a letting go color, gray white, peeling to ochre.

728
00:35:06,599 --> 00:35:09,199
The air cooler than the floor was above. I slipped

729
00:35:09,199 --> 00:35:11,440
the brass key into the lock at annex hast freeze panel.

730
00:35:12,000 --> 00:35:15,000
This cutcher yielded, slow but obedient, revealing the narrow slit

731
00:35:15,039 --> 00:35:18,800
into darkness had found before this time. Equipped with fresh batteries,

732
00:35:18,920 --> 00:35:21,280
I pressed my flashlight ahead of me, angling its beam

733
00:35:21,320 --> 00:35:25,320
down the stone steps. Here the library's public face was gone.

734
00:35:25,719 --> 00:35:29,079
The shells bristled with unlabeled hand bound volumes. Rows of

735
00:35:29,119 --> 00:35:31,760
ledgers boxes lined the walls, all acid stained with the

736
00:35:31,800 --> 00:35:34,960
marks of decades old tape. The air was damp, undercut

737
00:35:35,000 --> 00:35:37,599
by the smell of rotten glue and vinegar. At the

738
00:35:37,599 --> 00:35:39,559
corner of the far wall, the brick vault I had

739
00:35:39,559 --> 00:35:42,800
seen emerge from shadow, its surface faintly gleaming under stray cobwebs.

740
00:35:43,400 --> 00:35:45,559
My sense of the every day slept further with each step.

741
00:35:46,119 --> 00:35:49,079
The room felt alive, charged by the artifacts of deliberate forgetting,

742
00:35:49,199 --> 00:35:52,039
all arranged for eyes that might never see. I pressed

743
00:35:52,039 --> 00:35:55,400
the recorder button voice Hush. Entry. Annex opened storage records

744
00:35:55,400 --> 00:35:58,079
show ledgers not in digital catalog shells appeared to cycle

745
00:35:58,119 --> 00:36:01,800
patterns and clear. The navigation was harder. Now, distances wapped,

746
00:36:01,840 --> 00:36:04,960
the route behind barely resembled the way forward. I caught

747
00:36:05,000 --> 00:36:07,639
myself circling. The stucks were shaping around me, impossible lines

748
00:36:07,679 --> 00:36:10,760
of sight, sending me back on myself. Nearly alert, I

749
00:36:10,800 --> 00:36:12,880
lined up the blueprints, using the color tape on the

750
00:36:12,880 --> 00:36:16,440
floor as anchor. But the tape pealed and shifted. Several

751
00:36:16,480 --> 00:36:18,440
doors that should have opened into closets or nowhere now

752
00:36:18,480 --> 00:36:22,079
gaped into narrow passages, rank with old moisture, none well

753
00:36:22,119 --> 00:36:25,000
listed on any map. I reached the end of one tunnel,

754
00:36:25,000 --> 00:36:26,480
on sure if it was a dead end or simply

755
00:36:26,519 --> 00:36:29,840
a corridor folded upon itself. The thick air vibrated just

756
00:36:29,920 --> 00:36:32,400
enough that the hair at my neck prickled. Behind me.

757
00:36:32,519 --> 00:36:35,440
Something shifted to gus, maybe by the movement of heavy fabric.

758
00:36:36,079 --> 00:36:38,920
I spun pulse hammering. At the midpoint of the stack,

759
00:36:39,159 --> 00:36:42,239
a figure emerged. They were swathed in black fabric, a

760
00:36:42,320 --> 00:36:45,119
sash drawn diagonally over a dark suit, face obscured by

761
00:36:45,159 --> 00:36:48,679
a crisp paper mask. Every gesture was precise, ceremonial, the

762
00:36:48,719 --> 00:36:51,760
burrowing of someone used to being obeyed. A second and

763
00:36:51,800 --> 00:36:53,920
then a third figure stepped into the not light, all

764
00:36:53,960 --> 00:36:57,440
identically attired. The roon silence deepened until it seemed to

765
00:36:57,440 --> 00:37:00,440
press on my chest. Why are you here, one asked

766
00:37:00,440 --> 00:37:03,880
the voice, little close? How did you come past council doors?

767
00:37:04,519 --> 00:37:07,639
My mouth was dry, found the key following what shouldn't

768
00:37:07,639 --> 00:37:11,159
be missing? A fourth person joined voice, a little softer older.

769
00:37:11,840 --> 00:37:15,159
Curiosity is dangerous. Curiosity build the catalog, but nearly undid

770
00:37:15,199 --> 00:37:18,559
it too. They circled me, not threatening exactly, but with

771
00:37:18,639 --> 00:37:21,960
the deliberation that chilled the mirror. The leader spoke some

772
00:37:22,159 --> 00:37:25,079
records or casualties, others crimes. We keep the council's charge.

773
00:37:25,199 --> 00:37:27,920
What we take down here, history mistakes, the lost must

774
00:37:28,000 --> 00:37:31,159
remain to How many are lost? I asked, forcing my

775
00:37:31,199 --> 00:37:34,239
courage to a throat thick with fear. Every phase beneath

776
00:37:34,239 --> 00:37:36,880
the masks was blank, but the answer came anyway. Too many.

777
00:37:36,920 --> 00:37:39,480
Each annex holds what the city cannot afford to remember.

778
00:37:39,559 --> 00:37:41,199
Each name you find is both a warning and a

779
00:37:41,280 --> 00:37:43,880
witness rudmind. He sought to undo the forgetting others too.

780
00:37:43,960 --> 00:37:47,239
Before him. A fifth joined them, bearing a battle ledger

781
00:37:47,280 --> 00:37:49,519
in a box with the city seal. We do not

782
00:37:49,599 --> 00:37:51,960
choose lightly. They in tone, opening the ledger to a

783
00:37:52,000 --> 00:37:55,039
page mocked by a thick red slash. My eyes made

784
00:37:55,039 --> 00:37:58,199
at doctor Rudman's name, half erased, then traced underneath by

785
00:37:58,199 --> 00:38:02,400
block capitals for catalog persurferb a new current past to redassembled,

786
00:38:02,400 --> 00:38:06,599
a mutual calculation, the oldest mass counselor stepped close. If

787
00:38:06,639 --> 00:38:09,119
you leave, you must remember nothing. If you stay, ye

788
00:38:09,119 --> 00:38:11,400
take up the wrecker. Either path has its price. Thou

789
00:38:11,440 --> 00:38:14,199
want to understand wire their voices in the walls, names

790
00:38:14,199 --> 00:38:17,519
struck through, and rooms that don't exist. I measured pause

791
00:38:17,519 --> 00:38:21,039
heavy as old bindings. When all else fails, the leader said,

792
00:38:21,159 --> 00:38:23,320
we seal memory with stone and sound. The vases you

793
00:38:23,360 --> 00:38:25,840
here belong to the catalog, those for whom collective forgetting

794
00:38:25,840 --> 00:38:28,639
became their only safety. That echoes our penalty in our shield.

795
00:38:28,760 --> 00:38:30,760
If we lose control, the city suffers in you. The

796
00:38:30,760 --> 00:38:33,320
missing become guardians. The recorders keep them safe, so the

797
00:38:33,360 --> 00:38:36,800
rest of us may forget. The implication staggered me. But

798
00:38:36,960 --> 00:38:39,480
Rudman weares he e tried to breach what must not return.

799
00:38:39,559 --> 00:38:41,639
The ark of took him as it takes any one's staff.

800
00:38:41,719 --> 00:38:44,559
Patron Director who opens what's best left ormant? He is

801
00:38:44,599 --> 00:38:47,639
memory now, and memory is co fire. A sudden static

802
00:38:47,719 --> 00:38:49,840
rose from the walls, a hum, and then distinct syllables,

803
00:38:49,880 --> 00:38:52,280
as if the building itself exhaled. Keep the wrecker, haul

804
00:38:52,360 --> 00:38:55,239
the key, Do not open the doors. My panic spiked.

805
00:38:56,159 --> 00:38:58,400
I tried to back away, but the figure's close ranks,

806
00:38:58,400 --> 00:39:01,400
not violent but absolute. The leader place a hand, thin

807
00:39:01,440 --> 00:39:04,480
gloved on my shoulder. It isn't anger or revenge. We

808
00:39:04,599 --> 00:39:07,679
keep danger in trust. If the library forgets the city's office,

809
00:39:07,719 --> 00:39:10,079
if you open all the rooms, something older than council

810
00:39:10,119 --> 00:39:13,239
will come looking. I tried to wrench free. I don't

811
00:39:13,239 --> 00:39:14,920
want to be part of this. I just want to know.

812
00:39:15,519 --> 00:39:17,679
They spoke as one. The mask shifting in the lanterns

813
00:39:17,679 --> 00:39:20,280
half light. If you choose knowledge, you are responsible for

814
00:39:20,280 --> 00:39:22,719
forgetting Stay and help us cattalog. I'll leave, but carry

815
00:39:22,719 --> 00:39:24,760
a compulsion. You may speak, but no one will believe.

816
00:39:24,840 --> 00:39:27,079
You may remember, but every year more it will vanish

817
00:39:27,079 --> 00:39:29,920
from your own mind, paths, faces, even your own entrant.

818
00:39:30,000 --> 00:39:32,880
This is the charge of preservations or oblivion? Will you stay?

819
00:39:33,400 --> 00:39:35,880
A shrieking when cut through, rattling every aisle, The ledges

820
00:39:35,920 --> 00:39:39,320
fluttered as a hundred whispers fie for speech. In the confusion,

821
00:39:39,400 --> 00:39:42,840
instinct overrode reason. I dashed forward, pushing past the nearest

822
00:39:42,840 --> 00:39:46,480
MOUs guardian. One grab from my sleeve, I yank free, pulse,

823
00:39:46,480 --> 00:39:49,400
skipping rocod a hell tide. The voices in the walls

824
00:39:49,440 --> 00:39:52,039
rose to a cacophony, words blending until every phrase was

825
00:39:52,039 --> 00:39:54,880
nothing but a chorus of return, the key return, Preserve, Preserve.

826
00:39:55,599 --> 00:39:57,960
I crashed for a swinging panel, barely registering that it

827
00:39:58,000 --> 00:40:01,079
opened for me, not for them. The corridor bent itself

828
00:40:01,079 --> 00:40:04,280
into a spiral architecture, warping with every step. Names and

829
00:40:04,360 --> 00:40:08,599
numbers raced past, painted and stuttered overlapping lines, marden drift,

830
00:40:08,800 --> 00:40:12,000
severy rudman. Each time the paint smeared to gray ones.

831
00:40:12,039 --> 00:40:15,719
They passed, erasing behind my steps. Running now, I groped

832
00:40:15,719 --> 00:40:18,239
for the staff entrance, twisting up stairs that telescoped further

833
00:40:18,320 --> 00:40:22,280
with every landing behind me, the masked figures measured steps faded,

834
00:40:22,519 --> 00:40:24,800
replaced by something less human, an echo that didn't quite

835
00:40:24,840 --> 00:40:28,599
match the footfalls, reverberating often seen doors and ducts. Time

836
00:40:28,679 --> 00:40:33,280
unravel the corridors, repeated passageways, bleeding into themselves. Some doors

837
00:40:33,320 --> 00:40:35,559
I tried were sealed. Others opened outward onto holes that

838
00:40:35,559 --> 00:40:38,360
shouldn't exist. Thock have rooms packed within shelved ledgers, study

839
00:40:38,440 --> 00:40:41,760
carrels overgrown with yellow catalog cards, stop corridors leading off

840
00:40:41,800 --> 00:40:45,480
into nothingness. I doubled back, hot joy by dread, guided

841
00:40:45,480 --> 00:40:47,679
only by the faintest memory of what the blueprint should be.

842
00:40:48,280 --> 00:40:50,679
At the threshold of a service lift, the brass key poles,

843
00:40:50,679 --> 00:40:53,599
with warmth of phantom heartpeat in my palm. In desperation,

844
00:40:53,760 --> 00:40:56,400
I slammed it into a tiny lock beneath the elevator controls.

845
00:40:57,000 --> 00:41:00,480
The wall panel clicked open with hand shaking oppressive button.

846
00:41:00,920 --> 00:41:03,800
The lift shuttered, doors stuttering until impossibly I was on

847
00:41:03,880 --> 00:41:07,239
the main floor across the marble runs. The fluorescent light

848
00:41:07,320 --> 00:41:10,280
was too bright, the reader tables vacant and untouched. I

849
00:41:10,280 --> 00:41:13,639
staggered toward the exit, long's aching. The main doors were

850
00:41:13,639 --> 00:41:16,679
shut tight, bade scannered dead. I threw myself through the

851
00:41:16,679 --> 00:41:19,079
nearest staff hallway, not carrying that I might just as

852
00:41:19,119 --> 00:41:22,360
easily run in circles. Suddenly, the shouts of the council

853
00:41:22,400 --> 00:41:24,599
fell away, swallowed by a new flood of voices, hundreds

854
00:41:24,639 --> 00:41:27,320
of them, overlapping familiar in knot voices of the loss,

855
00:41:27,440 --> 00:41:29,599
the erased, Every patron and staff are for whom the

856
00:41:29,639 --> 00:41:32,480
back hawck aves were the last entry. The sound battered me,

857
00:41:33,159 --> 00:41:35,480
not pure threat, but a blowing, a dissolution of everything

858
00:41:35,480 --> 00:41:38,360
I'd known the world, bleeding into the library's own hope's memory.

859
00:41:38,920 --> 00:41:40,960
In the surge of dread, I reached back, yanking the

860
00:41:41,000 --> 00:41:43,880
recorder from my bell, and shouted, I refuse. I will

861
00:41:43,880 --> 00:41:47,920
not become another catalog ghost. The tape histe static musking

862
00:41:47,960 --> 00:41:50,320
my voice, followed by chorus of return the key, keep

863
00:41:50,360 --> 00:41:52,159
the record safe, Do not open the doors, Do not

864
00:41:52,199 --> 00:41:54,119
open the air that the last threshold What had once

865
00:41:54,159 --> 00:41:56,639
been the old periodical's room a final barqueid' sto and

866
00:41:56,760 --> 00:41:58,719
im play a door, its face carved by the lathe

867
00:41:58,719 --> 00:42:01,920
of countless nervous hands. Words and names had been scored

868
00:42:01,960 --> 00:42:05,480
and sanded away, leaving only the suggestion of language I

869
00:42:05,599 --> 00:42:08,000
lock or intention. My key fit the lock, its teeth

870
00:42:08,039 --> 00:42:10,119
matching a groove that didn't look designed for a standard.

871
00:42:10,119 --> 00:42:13,199
Is she for a full frozen second? Every voice ceased.

872
00:42:13,800 --> 00:42:16,039
The building went silent and not empty, but charged, as

873
00:42:16,039 --> 00:42:19,239
if it waited to see my decision. I twisted the key,

874
00:42:19,760 --> 00:42:22,239
the door swung open, leading into a chamber I'd never

875
00:42:22,280 --> 00:42:25,039
seen on any map. Its size was in determined. He

876
00:42:25,079 --> 00:42:26,880
could have been the space of a broom, closet, or

877
00:42:26,880 --> 00:42:29,800
perhaps a small chapel. The walls were lined with moret

878
00:42:29,840 --> 00:42:32,519
index cause than I had ever imagined could exist. Each

879
00:42:32,519 --> 00:42:35,079
stack rose to the ceiling as surfaces marked with names

880
00:42:35,159 --> 00:42:37,800
or only dates. The sound that filled the room was

881
00:42:37,840 --> 00:42:40,800
not one person's voice. It was an amalgam nothing of

882
00:42:40,800 --> 00:42:43,119
the living well, but instead the collected residue of every

883
00:42:43,159 --> 00:42:46,400
lost memory, every vanished staffer, every patron consigned to the

884
00:42:46,400 --> 00:42:49,519
library secret history. The voice it was not mine, nor

885
00:42:49,559 --> 00:42:52,159
the councils, nor any I could recall. In making Life, Intoned,

886
00:42:52,400 --> 00:42:54,440
you have held the record. You know the shape of forgetting,

887
00:42:54,599 --> 00:42:56,960
return what is borrowed, or carry the burden home. If

888
00:42:56,960 --> 00:42:58,880
you stay, you will fade, but the books will remain.

889
00:42:58,960 --> 00:43:01,880
If you go, everything you love or fade. Instead of faces, memories,

890
00:43:01,920 --> 00:43:04,880
touches of the real world. Choose the impulse to surrender.

891
00:43:04,920 --> 00:43:08,079
Just let it take me join the cataloged forget, every vertigo,

892
00:43:08,199 --> 00:43:10,239
touch night, and every question I'd asked wash over me

893
00:43:10,280 --> 00:43:13,440
with surprising gentleness. At the same time, the sudden notion

894
00:43:13,559 --> 00:43:15,880
of a life femptied of everything I cared about, replaced

895
00:43:15,880 --> 00:43:19,480
by haunted routines and strange compulsions staggered me, stealing What

896
00:43:19,480 --> 00:43:21,280
will I could? I shout it, I will not keep

897
00:43:21,320 --> 00:43:24,559
your secret. I will not stay. The room darkened, index

898
00:43:24,639 --> 00:43:27,519
CODs shuffling as if buffeted by wind. The amalgam of

899
00:43:27,519 --> 00:43:30,800
whispers rose into a single, exhausted sigh. You have seen

900
00:43:30,840 --> 00:43:33,079
what must be hidden. Go then, but you cannot remember all.

901
00:43:33,199 --> 00:43:35,480
Give back the key, keep only what can be borne.

902
00:43:35,800 --> 00:43:38,199
With trembling hands, I placed the brass key atop a

903
00:43:38,199 --> 00:43:40,920
pile of CODs, stamped only with the word forget. As

904
00:43:40,920 --> 00:43:42,800
I did, the door behind me wrenched open, the air,

905
00:43:42,840 --> 00:43:46,480
pressure shifting. The council's footsteps resounded beyond the threshold, but

906
00:43:46,519 --> 00:43:48,679
the ancient voice spoke above them. Let the keeper go.

907
00:43:49,320 --> 00:43:51,960
I turned, bare eyed, now propelled through the narrowing gap

908
00:43:52,000 --> 00:43:54,760
into the main corridor. The door slam shut just as

909
00:43:54,800 --> 00:43:56,960
council hands grasped for me, the sound echoing like a

910
00:43:56,960 --> 00:43:59,599
final stamp of approval. The air in the public's s

911
00:43:59,599 --> 00:44:02,760
tax was freezing, the preserved refrigerated silence of pre dawn.

912
00:44:03,039 --> 00:44:05,519
I stumbled toward the exit, each movement harder, as if

913
00:44:05,519 --> 00:44:07,679
the very act of leaving cost me pieces of myself.

914
00:44:08,159 --> 00:44:11,320
I reached the outer doors, sid blerin the glass, always

915
00:44:11,360 --> 00:44:14,280
cold and clean, buckled in my vision, then cleared as

916
00:44:14,280 --> 00:44:16,880
I stepped through the world outside, rushed back with the violence.

917
00:44:16,920 --> 00:44:20,000
Head lights, city wind light driss a beginning on the sidewalk,

918
00:44:20,519 --> 00:44:23,639
the libraries aside behind me glow brick red and impenetrable.

919
00:44:24,199 --> 00:44:26,480
I walked home, not daring to look back the way

920
00:44:26,519 --> 00:44:29,679
to vanish details already pressing inside my skull. The nights

921
00:44:29,719 --> 00:44:33,280
afterwards were different. I played the last recording over and over, it,

922
00:44:33,280 --> 00:44:36,280
each time a little less clear, the urgent whisper of return.

923
00:44:36,360 --> 00:44:39,280
The key became nothing but hiss, then vanished altogether, replaced

924
00:44:39,280 --> 00:44:42,639
by static. My resignation that had composed itself in fits

925
00:44:42,639 --> 00:44:46,199
and starts, eventually delivered in half copy, no explanation offered.

926
00:44:46,840 --> 00:44:49,440
For weeks, sleep slipped away from me, dreams littered with

927
00:44:49,480 --> 00:44:52,000
a scent of mold voices beneath the wallpaper. The slap

928
00:44:52,039 --> 00:44:55,840
of solidarity and cold stone rumors rippled quietly across the city.

929
00:44:55,920 --> 00:44:58,880
Fire code violations, h tract failure in our cavil rooms.

930
00:44:59,559 --> 00:45:01,920
The stack wings at the back were cordoned off police

931
00:45:01,920 --> 00:45:05,920
state bisecting corridors were sunlight never reached. City councils should

932
00:45:05,960 --> 00:45:09,159
boiler plate apologies, unforeseen repairs, a temporary closure for safety.

933
00:45:09,760 --> 00:45:12,800
Friends asked if I was all right. I nodded, smiled,

934
00:45:12,880 --> 00:45:15,239
said little, letting their concerns. Lip passed like so much

935
00:45:15,320 --> 00:45:18,599
drift and dust. The library's public face never changed, but

936
00:45:18,679 --> 00:45:21,840
I noticed the absences. The sass Servery, whose watchful eyes

937
00:45:21,880 --> 00:45:26,000
attract every boundary, retired abruptly, her desk cleared overnight, Joe Vanish,

938
00:45:26,039 --> 00:45:28,719
his name sprub from the payroll. The patients had none

939
00:45:28,760 --> 00:45:32,119
lingered or left their routines broken. Some nights, my memories

940
00:45:32,119 --> 00:45:34,599
of doctor Rudman returned with force, clear and insistent. Other

941
00:45:34,679 --> 00:45:37,159
times I struggled to recall even his face, as if

942
00:45:37,199 --> 00:45:40,119
it had dissolved, his static specifics about the map of

943
00:45:40,159 --> 00:45:42,440
the stacks, the route to the annex, all the alternate

944
00:45:42,480 --> 00:45:46,760
doors gone, replaced by blunt and certainty in a hollow ache. Sometimes,

945
00:45:46,880 --> 00:45:49,320
on my way past the library for groceries, at glimpse

946
00:45:49,320 --> 00:45:51,960
of face behind the glass mast obscured may be only

947
00:45:52,000 --> 00:45:55,159
a trick of the evening lie. I kept walking. What

948
00:45:55,280 --> 00:45:57,360
I did remember, I carried like a bruise. If you

949
00:45:57,400 --> 00:45:59,400
stumble into the wrong room, if you find a key

950
00:45:59,400 --> 00:46:03,360
that doesn't belong long, forget it, turn back. There are things,

951
00:46:03,400 --> 00:46:05,800
even histories, meant to be preserved by erasure, kept for

952
00:46:05,840 --> 00:46:08,880
reasons older than reason. Night, often night, I repeated my

953
00:46:08,920 --> 00:46:11,159
own warning into my recorder, of compiling a message I

954
00:46:11,199 --> 00:46:13,800
half expected no one would ever hear. I don't go

955
00:46:13,840 --> 00:46:16,360
searching for lost rooms. Don't try to return what was

956
00:46:16,400 --> 00:46:18,559
meant to be forgotten. If anyone ever tells your buildings

957
00:46:18,599 --> 00:46:20,960
blueprints don't line up, run faster than you can think.

958
00:46:21,599 --> 00:46:24,159
I never played these final notes back, leaving them trapped

959
00:46:24,199 --> 00:46:27,119
on tape, evidence of a secret I barely believed. But

960
00:46:27,199 --> 00:46:31,119
it was never that simple. Nothing ended completely. One night,

961
00:46:31,239 --> 00:46:33,519
months after my resignation, I woke out of a dream

962
00:46:33,519 --> 00:46:36,360
of endless corridor's rooms that didn't connect. Words itched in

963
00:46:36,360 --> 00:46:38,960
a language I only knew in my bones. The air

964
00:46:39,079 --> 00:46:41,840
was cool against my arms. At the farthest corner of

965
00:46:41,880 --> 00:46:45,039
my tiny apartment, a red eyar glimitted my overcorridor, somehow

966
00:46:45,119 --> 00:46:49,000
left running, its batteries not yet run dry. Curious, uneasy,

967
00:46:49,159 --> 00:46:52,519
I padded barefoot to the table, lifted the recorder. My

968
00:46:52,599 --> 00:46:55,199
voice first burbled and skipped hair, and drew no reference

969
00:46:55,199 --> 00:46:56,920
found door one open it, and then fell into a

970
00:46:57,000 --> 00:46:59,960
haze of distortion. Abruptly through the fog, a voice lag

971
00:47:00,199 --> 00:47:03,000
in nothing like mine, filtered through a century of lost time.

972
00:47:03,039 --> 00:47:06,480
Please return the key. I dropped the recorder, its case,

973
00:47:06,480 --> 00:47:10,039
split batteries, bouncing across the hardwood from the night and

974
00:47:10,159 --> 00:47:12,480
drawer where I kept spare cords. I heard the slide

975
00:47:12,480 --> 00:47:15,599
of something shifting braced against the chill, heart shuddering, I

976
00:47:15,639 --> 00:47:19,079
pulled open the drawer. There it was the Brasky, the

977
00:47:19,119 --> 00:47:21,880
same tooth marks, the same batter attack, set atop a

978
00:47:21,920 --> 00:47:24,079
neat pile of a marked index card's cars, as blank

979
00:47:24,159 --> 00:47:26,199
and expectant as the night I first found the yellowed

980
00:47:26,239 --> 00:47:29,800
slip in the stacks outside, in the deep silence before dawn,

981
00:47:29,880 --> 00:47:32,280
I heard a fancies or slight, millions of turning pages

982
00:47:32,519 --> 00:47:35,599
or the wound, chasing after empty catalog cards, each seeking

983
00:47:35,599 --> 00:47:37,480
a home, a story, or a keeper who could bear

984
00:47:37,480 --> 00:47:39,079
the weight of remembering what all the rest of the

985
00:47:39,119 --> 00:47:42,440
city had chosen carefully compulsively to forget. I shut the

986
00:47:42,480 --> 00:47:44,679
drawer softly, not quite daring to touch the key. It's

987
00:47:44,679 --> 00:47:47,480
half half, expecting it might skate away beneath my trembling fingers.

988
00:47:48,119 --> 00:47:50,280
The edge of the index cards pressed against one another

989
00:47:50,320 --> 00:47:53,519
without friction, each one blank and sully by date or name,

990
00:47:53,599 --> 00:47:57,079
and subtly iridescent under the discount's groggy glow. For a long,

991
00:47:57,239 --> 00:47:59,760
motionless stretch, I just watched cold leaking up through the

992
00:47:59,760 --> 00:48:02,039
bold words into my arches, the old dicks of sleepless

993
00:48:02,039 --> 00:48:04,880
library shifts, returning as if I had never left. The

994
00:48:04,880 --> 00:48:07,599
city was silent outside, not merely from the lateness of

995
00:48:07,639 --> 00:48:09,719
the eyele, but as if it too was waiting, holding

996
00:48:09,760 --> 00:48:12,920
its breath. In the stillness, I found myself scanning my

997
00:48:12,960 --> 00:48:15,599
own hazy reflection in the windows black glass. Searching for

998
00:48:15,639 --> 00:48:18,639
signs had cost some reversible line carrying something home that

999
00:48:18,679 --> 00:48:21,679
could not belong in any apartment's calmed evenings. There was

1000
00:48:21,719 --> 00:48:23,719
a listless husher within the room, the same hunger for

1001
00:48:23,840 --> 00:48:25,719
order of an explanation that had driven me night after

1002
00:48:25,800 --> 00:48:29,159
night through those impossible corridors. The difference now there was

1003
00:48:29,159 --> 00:48:31,920
no where to file what I'd found, no staff meeting,

1004
00:48:32,039 --> 00:48:34,679
no chain of command, no procedural report, just me a

1005
00:48:34,760 --> 00:48:37,840
recorder that Brasqui and the slow synchronized events of memory

1006
00:48:37,880 --> 00:48:41,079
against the walls of my own mind. I hesitated, struggling

1007
00:48:41,119 --> 00:48:44,039
to remember how I had once felt about the library before.

1008
00:48:44,760 --> 00:48:47,760
The stacks then were only a place to earn a paycheck,

1009
00:48:47,840 --> 00:48:49,920
to pace off iOS amid the overgrown order of books

1010
00:48:49,920 --> 00:48:54,119
and old stores. Now every angle flicked with significance. My

1011
00:48:54,159 --> 00:48:57,639
thoughts kept circling, compulsive, always ending back at the same questions.

1012
00:48:58,280 --> 00:49:01,119
How many others had brought something home? Had stood in

1013
00:49:01,119 --> 00:49:03,360
this precess hush feeling The air thickened with the scent

1014
00:49:03,360 --> 00:49:06,320
of brittle paper, waiting for the other shoot, a council, perhaps,

1015
00:49:06,400 --> 00:49:09,000
where the voices from the walls to arrive. I found

1016
00:49:09,039 --> 00:49:11,960
myself muttering a reflex We was that only half formed

1017
00:49:11,960 --> 00:49:14,960
a sound? Why keep the key? Why send it back? Now?

1018
00:49:15,639 --> 00:49:18,159
The tape in the recorder, if it even worked tip minutely,

1019
00:49:18,199 --> 00:49:19,760
as if eager to trap the words before they could

1020
00:49:19,800 --> 00:49:23,519
drift into forgetting. Was it just compulsion or something the council,

1021
00:49:23,559 --> 00:49:26,639
those massed shadowed watchers had left inside me as splendor,

1022
00:49:26,639 --> 00:49:29,559
impossible to dig out. I forced myself to look away

1023
00:49:29,599 --> 00:49:32,960
to break the cycle. Water, I told myself. Water was mundane,

1024
00:49:33,039 --> 00:49:37,119
necessary proof against whatever spectral and reality threatened. I crossed

1025
00:49:37,159 --> 00:49:39,599
to the kitchen, filling a glass, feeling the slap of

1026
00:49:39,599 --> 00:49:42,280
cold against my palm. The act was ordinary, but my

1027
00:49:42,360 --> 00:49:45,199
gaze kept darting back. The drawers outlined a lowed with

1028
00:49:45,239 --> 00:49:48,760
phantom potential reality thinning at the corners. I stayed down

1029
00:49:48,760 --> 00:49:51,000
at my hand, half expecting to find lines of innk

1030
00:49:51,039 --> 00:49:53,679
bleeding from my finger prints. Catalog numbers inscribed a law

1031
00:49:53,679 --> 00:49:56,320
in the creases, but my flesh was only clammy and colorless.

1032
00:49:56,960 --> 00:49:59,400
A sudden noise, ASoft a hythmic tapping started in the

1033
00:49:59,400 --> 00:50:01,840
back of the apart meant maybe the radiator may be

1034
00:50:02,000 --> 00:50:06,079
something more. I froze, listening as the note repeated, quickening

1035
00:50:06,119 --> 00:50:08,639
then slowing until it matched the faint, impossible cadence of

1036
00:50:08,639 --> 00:50:12,440
card catalog draw a siding hum once twice, then bless silence.

1037
00:50:13,199 --> 00:50:15,400
For some reason, my mind leapt all the things that

1038
00:50:15,440 --> 00:50:17,079
have gone missing from my own life in the week

1039
00:50:17,159 --> 00:50:19,760
since the lineyard from my locker at Chipmug. I favored

1040
00:50:19,840 --> 00:50:22,800
emails quietly deleted from my inbooks, odd gaps in my memory,

1041
00:50:23,039 --> 00:50:25,239
like a story whose plot had suffered too many edits.

1042
00:50:25,920 --> 00:50:28,519
On impulse, I retrieved the key and cards, laying them

1043
00:50:28,559 --> 00:50:31,559
in careful order. Atop the desk. The keys lent match

1044
00:50:31,599 --> 00:50:33,639
that of the new annex locks, but its teeth had

1045
00:50:33,679 --> 00:50:36,480
polished bright against their age, the edges catching the lamplight

1046
00:50:36,559 --> 00:50:39,079
with a shimmer, almost alive, as if insisting on attention.

1047
00:50:39,960 --> 00:50:42,159
I turned it over, studying the faint that was pressed

1048
00:50:42,280 --> 00:50:44,360
nearly raced into the old tip binding around its bow.

1049
00:50:44,519 --> 00:50:46,960
Nothing but the word returned, and beneath that a faded

1050
00:50:46,960 --> 00:50:50,760
call number, zerra Removre. I found myself speaking again, as

1051
00:50:50,800 --> 00:50:54,119
if compelled by some invisible proctor. Entry late night, evident

1052
00:50:54,159 --> 00:50:57,880
of return cards, stuck blank, unused, awaiting inscription, key remains

1053
00:50:57,880 --> 00:51:00,880
pull to be returned. I barely reckon ignized my own voice,

1054
00:51:00,920 --> 00:51:05,039
pitch madewy, between exasperation and all. Then, almost against my will,

1055
00:51:05,039 --> 00:51:08,280
oppressed a coud flash and reach for a pen compulsion

1056
00:51:08,519 --> 00:51:10,719
maybe or a demand written into the fibers of the

1057
00:51:10,719 --> 00:51:14,599
building and now into my bones. My hand hovered, palm sweating.

1058
00:51:15,159 --> 00:51:17,280
What did it want to inscribe a name or to

1059
00:51:17,320 --> 00:51:20,599
erase it? Whose memory with this small atbind or free

1060
00:51:20,960 --> 00:51:23,880
would adding my own name grant absolution or only sink

1061
00:51:23,880 --> 00:51:27,079
me deeper? As I watched an auncers seemed to crystallize,

1062
00:51:27,159 --> 00:51:29,880
detached from any whisper, but echoing in the hush. The

1063
00:51:29,920 --> 00:51:32,880
cords went for absolution or for gill. There were the

1064
00:51:32,880 --> 00:51:34,920
wreck at, each one potential a place holder for all

1065
00:51:34,960 --> 00:51:37,840
the city would not allow itself to remember. For every

1066
00:51:37,840 --> 00:51:41,000
erased patron, every vanished staffer, a card waiting to be named.

1067
00:51:41,639 --> 00:51:43,519
The right was to risk being held, to preserve, to

1068
00:51:43,559 --> 00:51:47,400
be cataloged forever. A thunderclap, real thunder, for once, broke

1069
00:51:47,440 --> 00:51:50,920
the stillness, rattling the window glass. I started pen dropping

1070
00:51:50,960 --> 00:51:54,079
from my finger tips. A storm street level, and honest

1071
00:51:54,119 --> 00:51:57,559
at last began its march. Rain hammered the city, erasing

1072
00:51:57,559 --> 00:51:59,920
the outlines of street lights, sweeping dust and memory alike

1073
00:52:00,039 --> 00:52:03,280
off the pavement. The brask key was warm, almost pulsing

1074
00:52:03,800 --> 00:52:06,480
on sudden impulse. I closed my hand around it. A

1075
00:52:06,639 --> 00:52:08,559
wash of image is too quick for a recognition, spill

1076
00:52:08,639 --> 00:52:11,039
from my mind. Books set on fire, then knocked out,

1077
00:52:11,159 --> 00:52:13,920
file sealed, and bearer. Doctor Rudman's hands pressed flood against

1078
00:52:13,920 --> 00:52:17,039
Elijahs spine, missess every side glance of warning, the bright,

1079
00:52:17,239 --> 00:52:19,440
colorless eyes of the council peering from behind a wall

1080
00:52:19,440 --> 00:52:22,280
of time. A sharp, sudden, grief knife threw me for

1081
00:52:22,280 --> 00:52:25,000
all those loss to the catalog, their living traces erased,

1082
00:52:25,039 --> 00:52:28,199
survival repurpose as perservation. I set the key down and

1083
00:52:28,199 --> 00:52:31,519
flipped through the index cards, nearly shaking my own name.

1084
00:52:31,559 --> 00:52:34,159
Did it belong on? One was that the councils plan

1085
00:52:34,280 --> 00:52:36,480
all along to see the city with keepers, each holding

1086
00:52:36,519 --> 00:52:39,079
their own fragment of the impossible record, each fitted to

1087
00:52:39,119 --> 00:52:41,440
lose pieces of themselves here by year until their absence

1088
00:52:41,440 --> 00:52:44,760
grew unremarkable. In the burst of storm light, the library's

1089
00:52:44,760 --> 00:52:48,559
fasad bloom faint at the window, stone red and shining, impossible.

1090
00:52:48,599 --> 00:52:51,559
My father overlooked a parking lot, not that block, but

1091
00:52:51,679 --> 00:52:54,079
for just a moment the illusion hell the library, rising

1092
00:52:54,119 --> 00:52:56,360
and falling at the edges of the night. Then it

1093
00:52:56,400 --> 00:52:58,679
was gone, and my own pale face returned, drawn, And

1094
00:52:58,679 --> 00:53:01,480
then in the glass the words returned in a rush,

1095
00:53:01,719 --> 00:53:03,519
as if I were back in the stacks at midnight.

1096
00:53:04,159 --> 00:53:06,800
Return the key, keep the record, do not open the doors.

1097
00:53:07,480 --> 00:53:10,639
But this time there was another phrase, quieter, stuttered behind

1098
00:53:10,639 --> 00:53:14,480
the familiar refrain of signature, perhaps or benediction, preserve or perish.

1099
00:53:14,880 --> 00:53:17,559
I rose pushed the desk chair back, nearly knocking it

1100
00:53:17,599 --> 00:53:20,639
on to the floor. I wanted, suddenly, wildly to cast

1101
00:53:20,639 --> 00:53:23,039
the key out the window, to burn the card's dash,

1102
00:53:23,159 --> 00:53:25,199
to step into the hallway and pound on my neighbor's door,

1103
00:53:25,360 --> 00:53:27,079
begging them to wake, to break the spell with the

1104
00:53:27,119 --> 00:53:29,880
careless laughter of the ordinary world. But I knew, when

1105
00:53:29,880 --> 00:53:32,639
the memory of the Council's warnings stung sharp in my adrooms,

1106
00:53:32,639 --> 00:53:34,559
that the library secrets had always had a way of

1107
00:53:34,599 --> 00:53:38,239
finding their way home. Instead, body trembling, I picked up

1108
00:53:38,280 --> 00:53:40,400
the recorder, checked its tiny red light, and forced my

1109
00:53:40,480 --> 00:53:43,679
voice to shuddering air. This is the last entry, I said.

1110
00:53:44,400 --> 00:53:46,239
The key's here at the card's way. If any one

1111
00:53:46,280 --> 00:53:48,559
hears this, if you know the layout of your own house,

1112
00:53:48,760 --> 00:53:51,320
if you remember all the faces that work, count yourself lucky.

1113
00:53:51,360 --> 00:53:54,440
If your library is missing books, keep walking. Some part

1114
00:53:54,440 --> 00:53:56,360
of me, cold as that first night in the stacks,

1115
00:53:56,480 --> 00:53:59,559
knew I shouldn't hesitate any longer, not for my own sake,

1116
00:53:59,559 --> 00:54:02,639
can not for cities. I pocketed the key, gathered the

1117
00:54:02,639 --> 00:54:05,280
cards and the recorder, and, ignoring the scream of muscle

1118
00:54:05,320 --> 00:54:08,239
memory to stay, walked out into the corridor. The cities,

1119
00:54:08,320 --> 00:54:11,119
hum barely registered wearing batted the foyse glass the familiar

1120
00:54:11,199 --> 00:54:13,400
scent of wet concrete, grounding me just enough to sue

1121
00:54:13,400 --> 00:54:16,400
the worst of the vertigo pavements like shoes soaking. I

1122
00:54:16,440 --> 00:54:18,800
trudged onun block after block, guided not by any plan

1123
00:54:18,880 --> 00:54:21,079
but by the subtle, compulsive nudge that had over the

1124
00:54:21,079 --> 00:54:24,679
weeks were blazed instinct. Every street corner felt nearly tilted.

1125
00:54:24,719 --> 00:54:27,199
The geography of my walk to the library subtly altered.

1126
00:54:27,800 --> 00:54:29,599
By the time I reached the block three a M

1127
00:54:29,800 --> 00:54:31,559
not a so all in sight, the storm had softened

1128
00:54:31,559 --> 00:54:33,800
to a drizzle, wind weaving ceous patterns in the air.

1129
00:54:34,440 --> 00:54:37,239
The library's exterior was the same, unware or uncarrying of

1130
00:54:37,280 --> 00:54:40,559
trespis redstone and all the brass fixtures nearly polished, as

1131
00:54:40,559 --> 00:54:43,239
if for a ceremony. The maintenance entrance, one I had

1132
00:54:43,239 --> 00:54:46,440
never used after iris, did slightly a jar, security light humming.

1133
00:54:46,960 --> 00:54:49,800
It should have been locked, but as I stepped forward,

1134
00:54:49,800 --> 00:54:51,840
the door yielded with a low SiGe, swinging open to

1135
00:54:51,880 --> 00:54:54,760
reveal the just long corridors, the smell of institutional copt

1136
00:54:54,760 --> 00:54:57,320
in lemon oil, and theyond the prison morpled coolness of

1137
00:54:57,360 --> 00:55:01,199
too many books into lithospace. I hesitated on the threshold hands.

1138
00:55:01,239 --> 00:55:04,760
None were cold, and something like anticipation. I called out, tentative,

1139
00:55:05,519 --> 00:55:08,760
any one here. No answer, no echo, not even from

1140
00:55:08,800 --> 00:55:12,960
the smallest, dustriest corner. My footsteps sounded louder than I remembered,

1141
00:55:13,079 --> 00:55:16,000
each one, another tick, echoing down the history of midnight walks.

1142
00:55:16,480 --> 00:55:18,360
I moved through the staff corridor, the key in my

1143
00:55:18,400 --> 00:55:21,800
pocket nearly vibrating, now tugging at bone and intention. At

1144
00:55:21,800 --> 00:55:23,639
the edge of the old reference fault, the world seemed

1145
00:55:23,679 --> 00:55:26,639
to tolt. The corridor just ahead, which should have ended

1146
00:55:26,639 --> 00:55:29,119
in a lot five door, now spilled open into a short,

1147
00:55:29,199 --> 00:55:31,639
ragged stretch, a final reminder of all the discrepancies the

1148
00:55:31,679 --> 00:55:35,000
blueprints could never settle. I pressed forward, the storm pressing

1149
00:55:35,000 --> 00:55:37,119
at my heels from behind, and found myself in the

1150
00:55:37,119 --> 00:55:39,119
sub basement, once more, at the vault of ledgers and

1151
00:55:39,119 --> 00:55:43,280
brick and erased names. The passage was alive, Shadows pressed

1152
00:55:43,280 --> 00:55:45,519
together in the angles, breathing and retreating, just out of

1153
00:55:45,559 --> 00:55:48,760
reach of the nearest bowl. In the hush, faint whispers

1154
00:55:48,760 --> 00:55:51,280
straysed my path, not quite words, but a tide of intention.

1155
00:55:51,920 --> 00:55:54,800
The space recognized me. I realized that the building's memory

1156
00:55:54,840 --> 00:55:57,239
as hungry as mine. Foreclosure for the return of what

1157
00:55:57,320 --> 00:55:59,800
had been borrowed. I stopped in front of the panel,

1158
00:55:59,800 --> 00:56:02,159
with it as cutch and plate still hung, swinging slightly

1159
00:56:02,159 --> 00:56:04,719
on a listened screw. I took out the bras key.

1160
00:56:05,239 --> 00:56:08,679
It no longer felt heavy, just inevitable. My hand steady

1161
00:56:08,719 --> 00:56:12,280
now faded to the lock. The cylinder turned with uppersistance,

1162
00:56:12,519 --> 00:56:15,639
the mechanism clicking open most mooly than ever before. The

1163
00:56:15,679 --> 00:56:18,480
brickdon wall, which once guarded the annex, ibrated like the

1164
00:56:18,519 --> 00:56:20,599
echo of far off thunder or a line of patients,

1165
00:56:20,639 --> 00:56:23,519
finally fraying. A seam opened, the passage in side, lit

1166
00:56:23,519 --> 00:56:26,119
with a waxy buttery luminosity, as if lined with a

1167
00:56:26,159 --> 00:56:29,199
thin white gloss of old report covers, reflecting memory. I

1168
00:56:29,199 --> 00:56:33,440
stepped inside, carved and recorder in hand. The air was thicker, denser,

1169
00:56:33,519 --> 00:56:35,840
weighed down by all the words never spoken or uck out,

1170
00:56:35,880 --> 00:56:38,360
the names that ceased to circulate in the city's consciousness.

1171
00:56:39,000 --> 00:56:41,159
In that strange light, the cards felt almost waitless, each

1172
00:56:41,199 --> 00:56:43,199
one a blank, waiting for its story as a rasure

1173
00:56:43,480 --> 00:56:47,119
or its impossible return. Opposite the alcove shelf upon shelf

1174
00:56:47,159 --> 00:56:50,239
of ledgers and carved files rose the same cold edge

1175
00:56:50,320 --> 00:56:53,159
chair remained and disturbed the air about it, trembling gently

1176
00:56:53,199 --> 00:56:55,960
with the vibration of unseen breaths. The whir of a

1177
00:56:56,039 --> 00:56:59,159
ventilation found an anachronism spun up, and the entire room

1178
00:56:59,239 --> 00:57:02,400
scene to inhale. I felt no compulsion to sit, only

1179
00:57:02,440 --> 00:57:05,559
to witness and thensan like a book closing. In the

1180
00:57:05,559 --> 00:57:09,079
far corner. A shape stepped forward London reflected the lamplight,

1181
00:57:09,639 --> 00:57:11,320
too tall to be any one but a memory of

1182
00:57:11,320 --> 00:57:14,239
massas Sevre, or maybe doctor Rudman, or perhaps something older.

1183
00:57:14,239 --> 00:57:16,760
A figure sheeted than a sash of black face, still masked.

1184
00:57:17,400 --> 00:57:20,039
You have come back. The voice and toned. It was

1185
00:57:20,039 --> 00:57:22,840
not quite male or female, ancient or young, but soft,

1186
00:57:22,920 --> 00:57:27,039
decisive and archivist voice. Tours cannot remain open forever. Preservation

1187
00:57:27,159 --> 00:57:30,239
is a method, not mercy. I found myself speaking tone

1188
00:57:30,239 --> 00:57:32,719
small and stubborn. He sent to the home. You sent

1189
00:57:32,800 --> 00:57:36,159
it after me. The mass tilted, assessing, as if considering

1190
00:57:36,199 --> 00:57:39,320
whether to show kindness. It belongs here, so do you,

1191
00:57:39,360 --> 00:57:42,719
if you choose it. I shook my head. No. By

1192
00:57:42,719 --> 00:57:45,840
once day, no more names on your cards. The figure

1193
00:57:45,840 --> 00:57:47,880
looked at the recorder, then to the blunt card in

1194
00:57:47,920 --> 00:57:51,320
my hand. It is not a punishment. They replied so quietly.

1195
00:57:51,400 --> 00:57:53,760
I doubted it was for my ears alone. Some one

1196
00:57:53,800 --> 00:57:55,960
must keep the forgetting to know and not remember. This

1197
00:57:56,039 --> 00:57:59,119
is how cities survived themselves. The wind, that odd rush

1198
00:57:59,159 --> 00:58:02,159
of displaced their flared again. I caught for a moment

1199
00:58:02,199 --> 00:58:04,639
the fleeting souluits of others. Masts blowed around the edges,

1200
00:58:04,719 --> 00:58:08,119
hands clutching boxes, trays heavy with yet more cards, each

1201
00:58:08,159 --> 00:58:10,920
seemed to flicker in and out of existence. You may

1202
00:58:11,000 --> 00:58:13,639
leave the archive, is said, but you will return it,

1203
00:58:13,880 --> 00:58:15,920
or you will not be able to sleep, or eat

1204
00:58:16,079 --> 00:58:17,880
or love without the taste of mold and memory on

1205
00:58:17,960 --> 00:58:21,960
your tom sodom. Foolish tears stun my eyes. I could

1206
00:58:22,000 --> 00:58:24,559
not keep it, I knew, but it felt like surrender

1207
00:58:24,559 --> 00:58:27,159
to give it up. So simply, as if sensing the tension,

1208
00:58:27,199 --> 00:58:29,880
the figure stepped aside, exposing atop a low plint about it,

1209
00:58:30,079 --> 00:58:32,599
half broken returns lot, the kind never used in any

1210
00:58:32,599 --> 00:58:36,480
public facing library. Its mouth gaped in endless patience. Darkness

1211
00:58:36,519 --> 00:58:40,039
behind darkness. I moved forward, card and key together and

1212
00:58:40,079 --> 00:58:42,920
fitted them through with one shaking hand. As soon as

1213
00:58:42,920 --> 00:58:46,119
I did, all noise inside and out ceased. The library

1214
00:58:46,159 --> 00:58:49,639
heart hidden as it had always been exhaled. I turned breathless.

1215
00:58:50,239 --> 00:58:52,440
The masked figure had vanished, as had all the others.

1216
00:58:53,079 --> 00:58:56,280
The ledges seemed less substantial, the compulsion to catalog, to name,

1217
00:58:56,320 --> 00:58:58,880
to record, the ceaseless sacreft of minutely from my shoulders.

1218
00:58:59,519 --> 00:59:02,159
The rooms temperature rose a single degree, or perhaps the

1219
00:59:02,239 --> 00:59:05,199
chill inside me had relented behalf. I found my way

1220
00:59:05,239 --> 00:59:08,159
out by instinct, not by plan, corridors now finding their old,

1221
00:59:08,360 --> 00:59:11,960
mundane shapes. The brusque was gone, my pockets whollow, save

1222
00:59:12,039 --> 00:59:14,519
for the battered recorder is taped nearly done. In the

1223
00:59:14,599 --> 00:59:16,960
last drags of the storm, I stepped back into the world,

1224
00:59:17,039 --> 00:59:19,840
letting the door close behind. That night's sleep came for

1225
00:59:19,880 --> 00:59:22,880
the first time in months. My dreams were dull, restless,

1226
00:59:22,880 --> 00:59:25,519
as shuffle of cause, the flutter of library tate doctor Rudman,

1227
00:59:25,559 --> 00:59:27,840
watching hopeful and broken eye from behind a rolling cut.

1228
00:59:27,840 --> 00:59:29,880
But I work with a sense of separateness, the awareness

1229
00:59:29,880 --> 00:59:32,440
that whatever awaited in the spaces between stacks belonged to

1230
00:59:32,480 --> 00:59:36,679
the library, not to me. My days carried forward. I tried,

1231
00:59:36,719 --> 00:59:40,559
mostly successfully to live. I wandered city blocks, sometimes unable

1232
00:59:40,559 --> 00:59:43,199
to remember why. I come to a certain intersection, I

1233
00:59:43,239 --> 00:59:45,880
greeted old friends, sometimes groping for their names, as if

1234
00:59:45,880 --> 00:59:48,480
they were tucked too deep in some forbidden archive. But

1235
00:59:48,559 --> 00:59:50,639
the ache of compulsion, the hunger to record, to name,

1236
00:59:50,679 --> 00:59:53,280
to preserve, waned, and the gaps in myrical grew less urgent,

1237
00:59:53,400 --> 00:59:57,039
less sharp. Only rarely did to fear return a hand

1238
00:59:57,079 --> 00:59:59,199
brushing my shoulder on a crowded street. The echo of

1239
00:59:59,280 --> 01:00:01,800
cull numbers I without meaning, a box of old clippings

1240
01:00:01,840 --> 01:00:04,920
appearing unasked at my doorstep, and hours later vanishing again

1241
01:00:04,960 --> 01:00:08,719
without explanation. The library I heard, cordoned off its deepest wings.

1242
01:00:09,239 --> 01:00:12,239
The council, if it persisted, operated even further in the margins.

1243
01:00:12,840 --> 01:00:16,119
No one spoke doctor Rudman's name, not any more. Rumors

1244
01:00:16,159 --> 01:00:20,239
of transfers to sudden resignations trickled into silence. The collective,

1245
01:00:20,280 --> 01:00:23,360
forgetting so carefully administered, grew lighter, but never quite let go.

1246
01:00:24,000 --> 01:00:26,159
On evenings, when the wind died, the city took on

1247
01:00:26,199 --> 01:00:28,719
a listening posture, as if the old patterns might repeat.

1248
01:00:29,440 --> 01:00:32,239
I sometimes pressed record again, a nervous take, and recited

1249
01:00:32,280 --> 01:00:34,800
my own warning one more time, for no one but myself.

1250
01:00:34,880 --> 01:00:39,519
Run from hidden rooms, ignormous placed keys, let the catalog's missing,

1251
01:00:39,559 --> 01:00:42,840
Stay lost. I never saw the key again. The cards

1252
01:00:42,880 --> 01:00:45,559
remain blank. The burden or the temptation of inscription at

1253
01:00:45,639 --> 01:01:03,880
last passed on to others.