Speaker 1: Hollo. I'm moalcan stories all the time. Glad you are here.
Speaker 1: Let's get into it.
Speaker 2: The rain started just afternoon, making a calm racket along
Speaker 2: the library's old slate roof. Some afternoons, the rain on
Speaker 2: glass is just background noise. But today I felt it
Speaker 2: in my bones, every drop echoing above my head as
Speaker 2: I wound through the shelves with a neat stack of returns.
Speaker 2: There's a small pleasure in shelving books During a squall.
Speaker 2: The place empties out, the dripping umbrellas pile up by
Speaker 2: the door, and the fluorescent lights flicker a little, as
Speaker 2: if warming the inside against the gathering weather. It's my
Speaker 2: favorite time to stroll the aisles in gentle solitude, a
Speaker 2: lining dewy labels, quietly humming as I breeze past encyclopedias
Speaker 2: and novels that all seem happier for being back where
Speaker 2: they belong. I was sliding a botanical atlas onto the
Speaker 2: highest shelf of the northwest stack, the one closest to
Speaker 2: the street side windows outside the pavement shone, turning every
Speaker 2: puddle into a mirrored coin. Shadows in this room always
Speaker 2: fall long and slim beneath these lamps except to day.
Speaker 2: One caught my eye. I don't remember what made me
Speaker 2: look down. Maybe it was a sense of something out
Speaker 2: of place, or maybe just habit. Either way, I paused,
Speaker 2: hands still gripping the spine, and noticed the tall shadow
Speaker 2: stretching out from the shelf. Except it wasn't just one.
Speaker 2: Where the thick wooden edge ought to have cast a
Speaker 2: single well made shadow, I saw two, splitting at a
Speaker 2: slight but unmistakable angle. Both shadows began at the same spot,
Speaker 2: identical at the origin, then diverged across the floorboards, a
Speaker 2: dark fork pointing farther apart. With every inch I stared,
Speaker 2: no other book shelf, no odd reflections, just the solid
Speaker 2: light of the overheads, and that peculiar double darkness. On
Speaker 2: the second lowest shelf, an encyclopedia with a glossy slip cover,
Speaker 2: caught more light than it ought to have. The lamps
Speaker 2: above glowed dull white, but for a moment light seemed
Speaker 2: to slant from beneath my feet, hitting the book's cover
Speaker 2: and making the gold type shimmer as if lit from
Speaker 2: the floor itself. It glowed not harshly, but gently, as
Speaker 2: though the book itself remembered sunlight that nobody else saw.
Speaker 2: When I blinked, the effect vanished, ordinary, lamplet plastic, nothing special,
Speaker 2: except now I was sure I had seen it. I
Speaker 2: shook my head, passed my hand through the air, and
Speaker 2: tried not to read too much into it. My mother
Speaker 2: always said librarians are only as tired as their most
Speaker 2: ambitious questions, and the honest part of me wanted to
Speaker 2: write it off as a trick of the storm. But
Speaker 2: as I walked back toward the front desk, every other
Speaker 2: shadow seemed a fraction out of place, some sharper than usual.
Speaker 2: A few oddly doubled, an inexplicable patch of darkness snaking
Speaker 2: beneath the study table, despite there being nothing above to
Speaker 2: cast it. Suppressing a nervous smile, I retreated to my desk,
Speaker 2: in the little nook between circulation and periodicals. I have
Speaker 2: a habit, born of training and a touch of superstition,
Speaker 2: of keeping a log book tucked in the top drawer,
Speaker 2: a running record of incidents, odd requests, things to order,
Speaker 2: little gratitudes i'd otherwise forget. Instead of my usual note
Speaker 2: about the weather or a missed library card, I wrote,
Speaker 2: in deliberate script, shadows misbehave to day. I closed the
Speaker 2: drawer quietly, as if the question required privacy, and let
Speaker 2: the rain keep time while I tried to reason with myself.
Speaker 2: There are plenty of libraries in the world, but this
Speaker 2: one has always felt like mine. I grew up five
Speaker 2: streets from the harbor in a peach brick house that
Speaker 2: still stands. My apprenticeship began at sixteen, emptying book returns
Speaker 2: and memorizing the intricate trails through these stacks that seem
Speaker 2: to change even when nothing moves. The building is a
Speaker 2: patchwork lime stone entrance from eighteen eighty nine, or eight
Speaker 2: pillars in the main reading room left behind after the
Speaker 2: fire in fifty four, a squat addition tacked on in
Speaker 2: the eighties for children and reference. No architect in their
Speaker 2: right mind would build this on purpose, which is perhaps
Speaker 2: why it feels so alive. The library stitched out of
Speaker 2: accidents and determination with each decade, leaving its own sense
Speaker 2: of what proper order should be. The mornings are ritual.
Speaker 2: I unlock the walnut door with a key passed down
Speaker 2: through hands I still remember. I prop it open and
Speaker 2: breathe the hush before the world arrives. Most days Marjorie
Speaker 2: is first in bustling through the muggy foy, shaking rain
Speaker 2: from her scarf, always with a clipped morning deer, before
Speaker 2: she vanishes into her kingdom of cataloging. Lewis follows, less
Speaker 2: punctual but always cheerful, a scruffy teenager with a battered
Speaker 2: camera bag and a sixth sense for avoiding tedious tasks.
Speaker 2: The regulars trickle in after Missus Phipps, who told me
Speaker 2: stories before I even believe them, now eighty one and
Speaker 2: ruler of whatever sunny table she claims, a handful of
Speaker 2: fishermen seeking dry benches and yesterday's paper writers staring down
Speaker 2: their own deadlines, school children trailing sopping boots, and questions
Speaker 2: about what's allowed in the reading room. The library is
Speaker 2: a sanctuary, but also a collage. Stained glass casting ever
Speaker 2: shifting patterns in the afternoons, floorboards that creak in different
Speaker 2: keys depending on whether the tides coming in or out.
Speaker 2: Photographs line the walls, the type that fade to sepia
Speaker 2: no matter how often you dust them. I've always admired them,
Speaker 2: but never truly scrutinized the angles. Mostly they serve as
Speaker 2: reminders of how many faces have kept this place alive.
Speaker 2: At the heart of the labyrinth of stacks, there's a
Speaker 2: battered wooden ladder, scuffed by generations of cautious or not
Speaker 2: so cautious climbing. A few wobbly stools populate the aisles
Speaker 2: for the less adventurous, and every so often someone manages
Speaker 2: to get the ladder wedged between two rose where it
Speaker 2: simply does not belong. I'm convinced it my grates back
Speaker 2: on its own overnight. Then there's the locked corridor at
Speaker 2: the back, that door marked Archives staff. Only it sits
Speaker 2: on its own, hunched in the dimmest stretch of hallway,
Speaker 2: beneath buzzing lights, with a faint, ever present smell of
Speaker 2: pressed paper and something colder like wet stone. The only
Speaker 2: key is on my ring, and in fifteen years I
Speaker 2: can count on one hand how many times I've had
Speaker 2: to use it. Daily, the routines, repeat, deliveries carried in
Speaker 2: through the loading bay, the sound of Marjorie's teaspoon clacking
Speaker 2: against her mug at ten, spontaneous book recommendations passed between strangers.
Speaker 2: I make the morning coffee, because no matter what else,
Speaker 2: librarianship is still small acts of ceremony. By mid afternoon,
Speaker 2: the children's corner buzzes with low voices, the world outside
Speaker 2: dimming into fog or sunlight as the weather decides. The building,
Speaker 2: for all its quirks, is the center of certain inside,
Speaker 2: these walls dry against the rain. The answers are supposed
Speaker 2: to outlast the questions. At least that's always been the expectation.
Speaker 2: But as I sat at my desk, log book half closed,
Speaker 2: unsettled by the memory of that by furcated shadow, a
Speaker 2: little voice pressed in. Maybe the answers here were never
Speaker 2: as reliable as I'd believed. I tried to put the
Speaker 2: incident from my mind, though it followed me like a
Speaker 2: tag end of dream Habit drove me through the afternoon.
Speaker 2: After lunch, Marjorie handed me a stack to shelve in
Speaker 2: the reference section. The rain had petered out, drawing beams
Speaker 2: of uncertain light through the arched windows. I grabbed the ladder,
Speaker 2: intending to reach the tallest shelf, and dragged it to
Speaker 2: the back wall. Glancing down, I noticed the ladder's shadow
Speaker 2: curling across the warped boards. At a glance, the shape
Speaker 2: was familiar upright, rails broad at the base, but this
Speaker 2: time it pointed north, sharp and shore, counter to where
Speaker 2: noon soul light would ever reach. The windows here face
Speaker 2: east and south. The overhead bulbs run in disciplined lines overhead,
Speaker 2: none of it should make a shadow fall sideways, let
Speaker 2: alone true north. I shifted the ladder a few feet
Speaker 2: just to be sure, and watched the shadow double briefly
Speaker 2: overlapping itself for an instant. The two silhouettes intersected, then
Speaker 2: flicked apart, one merging with the leg of a distant
Speaker 2: antique reading chair. As I pressed my hand down between
Speaker 2: the shadows, half expecting a chill, there was nothing but
Speaker 2: cool air and scuffed wood. Both shadows felt identical, just
Speaker 2: simple absence of light, though my eyes insisted on seeing
Speaker 2: twinned darkness. Lewis wandered over from the next aisle, drawn
Speaker 2: by the squeak of my boots. You are right back there.
Speaker 2: You keep looking at the floor like you lost something.
Speaker 2: I hesitated, embarrassed. Have you ever noticed funny things about
Speaker 2: the shadows here? He grinned, the sort of knowing smile
Speaker 2: teens reserved for adult having a moment. What like ghosts?
Speaker 2: Did some one put you up to this? I almost laughed,
Speaker 2: except that I was watching the shadows split again as
Speaker 2: the overhead lamp flickered. No, just sometimes I think the
Speaker 2: shadows move around on their own. Lewis cast a glance
Speaker 2: at the floor. Pretty sure it's just the bulbs. I
Speaker 2: got a hot line to facilities. I'll tell them to
Speaker 2: check the wiring again. But even as he said it,
Speaker 2: his face softened. Could be the weather, I mean, fog
Speaker 2: does weird things with light. Right. Deciding to risk sounding foolish,
Speaker 2: I tried my last ally. Missus Phipps sat near by
Speaker 2: with her memoirs, humming. When I asked if anything ever
Speaker 2: felt different about the room when it rained. She peered
Speaker 2: at the wall, as if considering a secret funny How
Speaker 2: the shadows always seemed boldest on rainy days, she mused,
Speaker 2: like stories waiting to be told. My grandfather swore some
Speaker 2: days you could tell the next day's fortunes just by
Speaker 2: how the light fell through these stacks. Whether she was
Speaker 2: indulging me or sharing something real, I couldn't tell. What
Speaker 2: struck me was that none of the other regulars remarked
Speaker 2: on the oddness at all. I felt newly alone with
Speaker 2: my observation, no longer simply seeing something odd, but realizing
Speaker 2: for the first time that some contradiction was quietly making
Speaker 2: itself at home here. Not a defect, not a trick
Speaker 2: of fatigue, something persistent, subtle, and wholly uninterested in being disregarded.
Speaker 2: I found myself, almost against my old instincts, deeply curious.
Speaker 2: The next few days were the most attentive of my
Speaker 2: professional life. I started a private log tucked beneath the
Speaker 2: check out drawer, a running record of every inconsistency I
Speaker 2: could spot. Each time I thought my mind was tricking me,
Speaker 2: i'd return an hour later and find another puzzle waiting.
Speaker 2: On Wednesday morning, I came in before the regulars and
Speaker 2: found a reference volume, a fat medical index, laying on
Speaker 2: the central table, the way we always leave it for
Speaker 2: daily uses. As the sun had just crawled above the
Speaker 2: roof tops, lights streamed through the east windows, casting crisp,
Speaker 2: pewtered shadows on the linoleum, but the shadow of the
Speaker 2: index fell backwards toward the northwest corner. I walked around
Speaker 2: it several times. The overhead fixtures, those old plastic tubes
Speaker 2: hadn't moved from their rows in twenty years. I even
Speaker 2: checked the bulbs. Still the shadow fell inexplicably toward the
Speaker 2: storage closet, displaying sharper and then softer as the weather
Speaker 2: outside changed. Later that afternoon, as the light turned golden,
Speaker 2: I found the same book, casting two shadows as I
Speaker 2: carried it across the floor. The effect was brief, but
Speaker 2: when I turned quickly it was there, one shadow trailing
Speaker 2: my left arm, the other flickering over my right, neither
Speaker 2: matching the actual position of lamp or window. When the
Speaker 2: moment passed, only one shadow remained, as if I had
Speaker 2: imagined the doubling. But I wrote it down in my
Speaker 2: notebook all the same. By Thursday, my curiosity had sharpened
Speaker 2: into a kind of experiment. I carefully observed as I
Speaker 2: reshelved a stack of children's books in the sunburst shaped corner.
Speaker 2: The room is designed with overhead fixtures splayed like spokes.
Speaker 2: Light normally falls from above, but as I stooped to
Speaker 2: pick up a fallen book, I saw the covers glimmer,
Speaker 2: illuminated by some subtle radiance from below the shelves themselves.
Speaker 2: I checked the sockets, nothing was amiss, yet for an instant,
Speaker 2: every brightly colored animal on the covers flashed as though
Speaker 2: a flashlight glowed on the floor beneath them. The children
Speaker 2: near by were too absorbed in their own stories to notice.
Speaker 2: I waited, blinked, and it faded, replaced with ordinary, serviceable light.
Speaker 2: The oddities expanded beyond light. The locked door to the
Speaker 2: archives would, worn and cool to the touch, casts only
Speaker 2: the faintest shadows. One rainy morning, I noticed it projecting
Speaker 2: a perfect rectangle, not on the scuffed linoleum, but on
Speaker 2: to the wall opposite, where there is no conceivable light
Speaker 2: source to justify it. I tilted my head, watched it
Speaker 2: fade from clarity to invisibility, and felt at that moment
Speaker 2: a childish thrill of possibility humming under my skin. I
Speaker 2: did my best to quietly pull my trusted circle. Lewis,
Speaker 2: ever the rationalist, credited the coastal fog. You get these
Speaker 2: weird light columns off the water, he shrugged. Seen it
Speaker 2: in photos. Whole city blocks vanish and show up somewhere else.
Speaker 2: Marjorie was more practical. It's probably the bulbs, she said,
Speaker 2: handing me a replacement tube, or maybe a wiring issue.
Speaker 2: I had a friend whose pantry glowed for a fortnight
Speaker 2: after a short in the old breaker. If we want
Speaker 2: a new line approved, I can put in a request.
Speaker 2: Neither seemed truly concerned. But missus Phipps, when pressed, leaned
Speaker 2: sideways on a cane, evaluating me as if guessing what
Speaker 2: flavor of story I wanted to hear. Rumors Always she
Speaker 2: replied old superstitions about buildings that wander. My great uncle said,
Speaker 2: these rooms sometimes drift at night. Always made me giggle
Speaker 2: as a child. She patted my hand. But a building
Speaker 2: as only as strange as those watching it. As an afterthought,
Speaker 2: I turned to the photographs on the wall. I had
Speaker 2: always thought them comforting, black handed, white reminders of the
Speaker 2: building's endurance, But on this day I examined them closer,
Speaker 2: comparing them to the floor plan rolled up in the
Speaker 2: office cabinet. One nineteen fifty's photo displayed the main stacks
Speaker 2: running at a peculiar angle by secting a wall I
Speaker 2: knew to be load bearing and undisturbed in every blueprint
Speaker 2: I had seen. I stared at the lines, tried to
Speaker 2: trace the perspective, puzzled over how the shelves could physically
Speaker 2: occupy that specific slice of space. Another photograph, perhaps from
Speaker 2: a decade later, showed the old circulation desk at what
Speaker 2: should be the wrong orientation, its worn countertop facing the
Speaker 2: southern windows, Yet the picture's background displayed the unmistakable glass
Speaker 2: work of the east. No record of a major interior
Speaker 2: remodel appeared in the digital catalogs, nothing to suggest such
Speaker 2: a shift. Doubts deepened with every review. On several mornings,
Speaker 2: I found small objects, a battered step stool, the rolling
Speaker 2: cart used for heavy dictionary runs, resting in places nobody remembered,
Speaker 2: leaving them between closing and opening. Sometimes an entire aisle
Speaker 2: subtly changed its arrangement. Marjorie shrugged it off to the
Speaker 2: wind coming off the sea, But the more I paid attention,
Speaker 2: the clearer pattern became. These inconsistent shifts occurred only in
Speaker 2: certain aisles, only after rainy, foggy nights. The contradiction was
Speaker 2: no longer limited to vision. It crept into the spatial,
Speaker 2: the historic, into the substance of the building itself. Friday
Speaker 2: brought a new kind of experiment. Tired of vague suspicions,
Speaker 2: I arrived before sunrise, intending to map the space on
Speaker 2: my own terms. I took a blank pad from the
Speaker 2: supply cabinet, drew a rough outline of the library as
Speaker 2: I remembered it. Then set out to chart the dimensions
Speaker 2: By walking from the double doors at the main entrance.
Speaker 2: I paced a straight line to the reference desk, counting
Speaker 2: my steps measuring the standard distance between stacks as I passed.
Speaker 2: The first route matched expectations roughly twenty four paces, But
Speaker 2: as I moved deeper, the aisles started to wriggle beneath
Speaker 2: my attention. The long fiction aisle ran further than I remembered,
Speaker 2: the mystery books seemed to double back just before the
Speaker 2: map called for a turn. I tried to make sense
Speaker 2: of it by drawing a rectangle, then filling it with
Speaker 2: the proper number of inner shelves and reading tables, but
Speaker 2: every time I turned to line up the hands with
Speaker 2: the desk, the path misaligned. A counterclockwise circuit around the
Speaker 2: main room ate up more steps than a clockwise loop.
Speaker 2: The last aisle before the archives folded on to itself,
Speaker 2: putting me nearly three shelves farther along than I should
Speaker 2: have been. Frustration and fascination intertwined. I even tried a
Speaker 2: trick from childhood, following the string end of a tape
Speaker 2: measure staking one spot as an anchor and tracing the
Speaker 2: perimeter by hand. No matter how meticulously I measured, the
Speaker 2: tape ended either too short or too long, depending on
Speaker 2: my direction. At times I'd emerge in a slightly different
Speaker 2: spot than my chart predicted. Was I losing my mind?
Speaker 2: Or had I failed to notice these quirks after so
Speaker 2: many years? I went to Marjorie, trying to keep my tone.
Speaker 2: Even have you ever moved any of the shelves without
Speaker 2: noting it in the log? I asked? She considered, no, dear,
Speaker 2: nothing major, just the odd footstool or display rack. The
Speaker 2: shelves never feel quite level. But that's just an old
Speaker 2: building for you. She gave me a curious glance. If
Speaker 2: you're worried about the structure, I can call facilities again.
Speaker 2: Not yet, I muttered, feeling not relief, but an urgent
Speaker 2: need to press further. Measuring light and shadow hadn't explained anything. Now.
Speaker 2: The very layout fought explanation, the space itself refusing to
Speaker 2: resolve into a perfect grid. My first theory that faulty
Speaker 2: lamps or tricks of sunlight were to blame collapsed under
Speaker 2: the sheer number of internal contradictions. If anything, the library
Speaker 2: felt as though it played by different rules. Whenever I
Speaker 2: paid close enough attention, a sudden hunch caught hold of me.
Speaker 2: If this building had always been a patchwork, a product
Speaker 2: of continual change, might there be answers in its deepest archives.
Speaker 2: The question sent a ripple through my chest. Wasn't it
Speaker 2: possible that some one long ago had planted a seed
Speaker 2: for this strangeness? By dusk, the rain returned, trailing fog
Speaker 2: between the street lights. I waited for the last visitor
Speaker 2: to leave, double checking that Marjorie and Lewis were gone
Speaker 2: for the night. I fished out my ring of keys
Speaker 2: and turned the smallest, stubbiest one, the kind nobody bothers
Speaker 2: to replace to the lock on the archive's door. The
Speaker 2: air behind it was tinged with cool, metallic dampness, the
Speaker 2: smell of shelved years. The archives are a room apart
Speaker 2: stone blocks, low ceiling, a scattering of light from a
Speaker 2: bulb resisting obsolescence. I made my way past boxes of
Speaker 2: microfilm and decade old property ledgers, eyes stinging a little
Speaker 2: from the must. At the far end, behind a carton
Speaker 2: of battered encyclopedias, I found the trunk had only seen
Speaker 2: once before. It was stamped with appealing sticker harrow e
Speaker 2: d architect post fire renovation. My hands shook a little
Speaker 2: as I pried aside the heavy lid, half expecting moldering
Speaker 2: blueprints and brittle receipts. Inside a sheaf of faded blueprints,
Speaker 2: corners curling like dried leaves, and a small leather bound
Speaker 2: notebook scored with graphite trails and anxious script. The first
Speaker 2: luoprint was entirely ordinary, an outline of the reading room
Speaker 2: with proper dimensions and neat grids. But beneath it the
Speaker 2: next plan had been overlaid with looping pencil lines, spirals
Speaker 2: twisting out from corners, arrows, and notations scrawled in darker pencil.
Speaker 2: I traced the shapes, some kind of impossible extensions penciled
Speaker 2: where no wall existed, ladders tapering off into non Euclidean curves.
Speaker 2: Some sketches showed staircases that doubled back on themselves, upwards
Speaker 2: becoming downwards, landings fanning into improbable triangles. One blueprint had
Speaker 2: a reading room window jammed at an angle that would
Speaker 2: open onto a solid wall. I opened the notebook, squinting
Speaker 2: at nervous handwriting. Margins were filled with breathless notations, shadowless
Speaker 2: room invites light from every angle. Space must listen, not
Speaker 2: command another. Scribbled aside, careful dimensions may beguilingly exchange in
Speaker 2: three places. The phrase e under the floorboards, repeated always
Speaker 2: in harsher handwriting. On the inside back cover. A final
Speaker 2: note read, let the fog teach the angles. The realization
Speaker 2: came on slowly, as if the archive had to approve it.
Speaker 2: These were not accidents. The anomalies, the overlapping shadows, the
Speaker 2: restless aisles, the photographs that outgrew history, were not failings
Speaker 2: of upkeep. They pointed toward a deliberate vision, a design
Speaker 2: that had quietly subverted ordinary geometry. As I turned the
Speaker 2: last page, my heart beat not with dread, but a
Speaker 2: peculiar joy. It was as if the building had been
Speaker 2: waiting to show itself, to reveal the possibility that edges
Speaker 2: were for wondering, not merely for fencing the world in
Speaker 2: the contradictions, the inexplicable shadows, the space that refused to
Speaker 2: obey were not malfunctions, but perhaps the lasting imprint of
Speaker 2: an architect who believed such wonders were possible. I leaned
Speaker 2: against the trunk, closing the notebook gently, and thought, what
Speaker 2: if this library was built to hold more than books?
Speaker 2: What if all along it was meant to shelter, gentle, impossibilities,
Speaker 2: quiet invitations to curiosity, seated in wood and stone where
Speaker 2: only the watchful would ever notice. Holding Harrow's notebook, I
Speaker 2: waited for some shift, revelation, washing out all the strangeness,
Speaker 2: or perhaps that tidy click of explanation libraries are meant
Speaker 2: to supply. Instead, I felt only the grain of the
Speaker 2: leather beneath my fingers. The quiet air in the archives,
Speaker 2: pressing in the last bulb above me, flickered, making the
Speaker 2: blueprints seem to ripple at the edges. Harrow's sketches, those
Speaker 2: impossible stairwells and self colliding corridors refused easy sense, and
Speaker 2: yet they mirrored what I had already intuited. The contradictions
Speaker 2: weren't accidental blemishes or quirks of age. They were central,
Speaker 2: as if the building itself wanted to host slippages that
Speaker 2: called the mind to attention, not for comfort but for surprise.
Speaker 2: By the time I locked the archives and climbed up stairs,
Speaker 2: the rain had stopped, a peach dust glowed beyond the windows.
Speaker 2: I set Harrow's papers delicately at my desk, heart, skipping
Speaker 2: between hope and bafflement. A design, not a floor. I
Speaker 2: wanted to see it in action, test its limits, find
Speaker 2: its source. I didn't sleep easily that night. My mind
Speaker 2: flickered with images of shadows splitting, of the ladders twisting,
Speaker 2: and those quicksilver notations. Let the fog teach the angles,
Speaker 2: whose fog? Whose angles? And I wondered could I find
Speaker 2: the place where the contradiction grew strongest. The following morning,
Speaker 2: I was first in beating even the city's gulls to
Speaker 2: the square. I carried Harrow's notebook in my bag like
Speaker 2: a talisman. The library had a hush, as if waiting
Speaker 2: to see what I'd do. Instead of unlocking the usual
Speaker 2: doors and powering the lights, I wandered through aisles less traveled,
Speaker 2: comparing blueprint to reality. Harrow's designs sprawled wildly, a reading
Speaker 2: room meant to be at once at the heart and
Speaker 2: at the edge, strange corners where the lines doubled back,
Speaker 2: making room for a shadowless space. He'd circled in emphatic,
Speaker 2: wobbly pencil. I traced his annotations, matching sketches to the
Speaker 2: odd alcoves half swallowed by stacks. Several spots felt promising,
Speaker 2: the little windowless cove behind biographies, the bend in the
Speaker 2: reference aisle, where whispers always seemed louder by half. Still
Speaker 2: none felt quite like what I imagined. The shadows there persisted, split,
Speaker 2: sometimes fading at corners, but never truly absent. It was
Speaker 2: in the far western quarter, where the original stone meets
Speaker 2: the less romantic nineteen eighties dry wall, that I found
Speaker 2: a crease between two shelves, an alcove so narrow i'd
Speaker 2: always walked past without registering it as a room behind
Speaker 2: the travel books. Pressed up against the last row of
Speaker 2: foreign language dictionaries. The gap looked like a shelf left
Speaker 2: out by mistake, except Harrow's blueprint said otherwise. Here a
Speaker 2: space labeled reading niche slash no orientation was marked with
Speaker 2: a spiral the same hand that pennied Shadowless. I pulled
Speaker 2: aside a wabbling trolley of atlases and slipped into the hollow. Immediately,
Speaker 2: the light changed subtly at first, then pervasively, as if
Speaker 2: the overheads diffused themselves between the atoms of air rather
Speaker 2: than beaming down from a single point. There was a
Speaker 2: small wooden bench unused in years, angled strangely, so that
Speaker 2: neither wall felt perpendicular to any other. I looked down
Speaker 2: where there ought to have been the lattice of shadows
Speaker 2: from the window, or the split forearms of the bench,
Speaker 2: There was almost nothing. My shoes rested on a blond
Speaker 2: patch of wood, not even that faint gray underfoot that
Speaker 2: usually marks the edge of a room. I exhaled, moved
Speaker 2: my hand to drape it over the bench's surface, and
Speaker 2: found that even my arm seemed softened at the edge,
Speaker 2: as though the boundary between solid and empty blurred in
Speaker 2: this little pocket. I set a paperback on the shelf,
Speaker 2: squinting hard for evidence of its passing in light. At first,
Speaker 2: a faint dimness suggested its presence, but as I focused,
Speaker 2: even that faded. When I shifted the book aside. The
Speaker 2: neighboring books did not leave a gap, but seemed improbably
Speaker 2: to ease together, almost as if the shelf had healed itself.
Speaker 2: I blinked, rubbed my eyes, and tried again. Each time
Speaker 2: I set a book down and picked it up, the
Speaker 2: marks of displacement vanished the moment my attention wavered. Was
Speaker 2: it a trick of memory? Or something more profound a room,
Speaker 2: refusing to commit to a single arrangement. A voice from
Speaker 2: the next aisle startled me. You know we keep the
Speaker 2: WiFi router back there, right, Lewis. He peered around the corner,
Speaker 2: knocking a loose National geographic to the floor to day's hoodie.
Speaker 2: Sported a print of a color wheel, bisected by a
Speaker 2: question mark fitting what are you doing finding ghosts? I
Speaker 2: beckoned him in Louis, look at this? Just humor me,
Speaker 2: he edged in, holding his camera. Ever, the skeptic but
Speaker 2: not immune to my mounting excitement. Looks like the weirdest
Speaker 2: nook in the whole place. He snapped a couple of photos,
Speaker 2: lighting super flat in here you got a lamp tucked
Speaker 2: away or something? No lamp here. Watch this shelf, I instructed,
Speaker 2: don't take your eyes off it. I picked up a
Speaker 2: large travel guide, one of those door stopper editions with
Speaker 2: bright laminated covers. The row contracted subtly, the ends drifting closer.
Speaker 2: At least that's how it felt, though if pressed, I'd
Speaker 2: have doubted myself. I set the book back. What do
Speaker 2: you see? Lewis stared, then frowned. Looks regular. Wait, no,
Speaker 2: didn't you pick it up from the end. He reached out,
Speaker 2: ran his fingers along the spines. These two are pressing together,
Speaker 2: almost like there wasn't a book missing at all from
Speaker 2: your point of view. Now stay standing there, I'm going
Speaker 2: to step over by periodicals. I slipped out through the
Speaker 2: narrow entrance, made a wide arc through the main room,
Speaker 2: and peeked through one of the larger shelves, catching a
Speaker 2: sight line to the same space. From this vantage, the
Speaker 2: nook seemed wider, almost as if there was a whole
Speaker 2: extra tier of shelving, where by reason, there should only
Speaker 2: be a bench. Lewis called out, Hey, what there? The
Speaker 2: shelves just shifted. Did you move something? A familiar thrill,
Speaker 2: half a grin, half the prickle of unexplained delight ran
Speaker 2: through me. Now let's compare notes. I scrawled a quick
Speaker 2: floor plan, with Lewis describing what he saw from within
Speaker 2: the nook and me sketching the layout as perceived from
Speaker 2: different corridors. Our maps never quite aligned. Our disagreements weren't
Speaker 2: just in angles or order. They spoke of impossible change,
Speaker 2: the same piece of shelving appearing in real time to
Speaker 2: occupy different spaces depending on the observer's position in the building.
Speaker 2: Lewis was, for the first time I'd known him at
Speaker 2: a loss. Okay, that's not right, your messing with me. Yeah,
Speaker 2: no tricks, I assured I'd have to be how DEENI
Speaker 2: to move shelves this fast and you saw nobody else here.
Speaker 2: We retraced our steps, tested three more times. Each time
Speaker 2: the shelf, the bench, even the stretch of worn floorboards
Speaker 2: shifted slightly between our two accounts. Yet if we stood
Speaker 2: together in the same spot, our perceptions snapped into alignment,
Speaker 2: a fixed shared reality. Only a part did the discrepancies multiply.
Speaker 2: Lewis slumped against the bench, hugging his camera bag. All right,
Speaker 2: you win. This is officially the weirdest place I've ever volunteered.
Speaker 2: We sat in the knook's odd hush, letting the light
Speaker 2: soak quietly between us. I wondered if Harrow had imagined
Speaker 2: this experiment a future visitor using perception itself as a
Speaker 2: measuring stick, finding that the space changed not with force
Speaker 2: or will, but with the gentle act of noticing. After work,
Speaker 2: I gathered my courage and returned with a tape measure,
Speaker 2: trying to capture the shifting distances from one angle the
Speaker 2: alcove measured barely five feet across from the other side,
Speaker 2: nearly seven the tape unspooling just past where plaster met
Speaker 2: the frame. I measured again, got a third and fourth number.
Speaker 2: There was no pattern, no rhyme or reason other than
Speaker 2: consistency in quiet disobedience. The space, it seemed, wanted to
Speaker 2: be mutable, negotiable, perhaps depending on who asked and how.
Speaker 2: I stopped attempting to rationalize it. Instead, I embraced a
Speaker 2: new method documentation. If this was a phenomenon design to
Speaker 2: be witnessed, not explained, then it was time to gather proof,
Speaker 2: not to satisfy a municipal inspector, but to share with
Speaker 2: those who could still wonder. So I enlisted Lewis properly.
Speaker 2: I need you to run a little experiment. Set up
Speaker 2: your camera with a tripod one angle here another in
Speaker 2: the children's alcove. Take time stamps, stay in frame, photograph
Speaker 2: the same spot every hour, lit up at the prospect.
Speaker 2: Deal maybe we'll catch a shadow creature on tape. His
Speaker 2: irreverence was part humor, part defense, but at the edges
Speaker 2: of his skepticism, curiosity had begun to take root. He
Speaker 2: spent the better part of Friday darting between shelves, ducking
Speaker 2: school groups and the one mother with a stroller who
Speaker 2: appeared to use the library as a maze to lull
Speaker 2: her napping toddler each hour, click whir. When we reviewed
Speaker 2: the photos that night, huddled at the staff computer after closing,
Speaker 2: it took several passes for us to see the oddities.
Speaker 2: The first batch were normal rows of shelves, light pooling
Speaker 2: along the east wall, the children's mural peeking around a column.
Speaker 2: But as the day wore on without any one moving furniture,
Speaker 2: without any storms or surges, Lewis's photos showed subtle shifts.
Speaker 2: A shelf that stood in the morning beside the travel
Speaker 2: guides vanished behind the dictionaries by late afternoon. In one photo,
Speaker 2: an aisle stretched glaringly longer books at the farthest end
Speaker 2: somehow compressed. Another showed a corridor that seemed to bend
Speaker 2: in the center, not a fish eye distortion, but an
Speaker 2: actual kink in the straight path, A barely perceptible dog
Speaker 2: leg that didn't exist in the next frame. Most eerie
Speaker 2: of all in three photos taken during a brief afternoon squall,
Speaker 2: the light itself pooled at odd angles, as if blooming
Speaker 2: from the scene between floor and shelf, rather than descending
Speaker 2: from the lamps. This isn't possible, Lewis muttered, scrolling back
Speaker 2: and forth. Somebody's pranking us. You sure, Marjorie didn't swap
Speaker 2: the carts. Carts didn't move, I said, we'd have heard
Speaker 2: that shelf has over two hundred books. Nobody moves it alone,
Speaker 2: let alone without notice. We checked the cataloging software. The
Speaker 2: records confirmed every book in its place, none checked out
Speaker 2: or reshelved in either section, but the photographic evidence insisted
Speaker 2: the shelves and their contents wandered freely. That night, I
Speaker 2: hunted up the security footage. The library's single battered camera
Speaker 2: appeared at the main corridor, cycling through grainy black and
Speaker 2: white loops. Most of what it caught could pass for
Speaker 2: regular operation, visitors passing chairs, scraping light fading as the
Speaker 2: evening advanced, But around midnight, during a brief flicker of
Speaker 2: the storm, something changed. The feed jittered for two minutes,
Speaker 2: shelves blurring at the edges for a handful of frames.
Speaker 2: The nearest stack simply vanished, replaced by a pale rectangle
Speaker 2: of bare wall before blinking suddenly back in place. I
Speaker 2: watched it three times, pulse thrumbing in my throat. The
Speaker 2: footage didn't comfort me with answers. It expanded the question.
Speaker 2: Was this caused by electricity, whether camera error, or was
Speaker 2: it the library itself? Demonstrating a living, breathing kind of possibility.
Speaker 2: The next morning, Marjorie cornered me during coffee. You've been
Speaker 2: running about measuring things, Lewis, is all nerves and giggles,
Speaker 2: you covering for a rodent outbreak. I shook my head,
Speaker 2: tongue tied, just routine checks. She tipped her head skeptically.
Speaker 2: But let me be whisking away to her catalog. But
Speaker 2: curiosity is contagious. By late afternoon, Marjorie returned, plucking at
Speaker 2: her cardigan. Some of the rare books in reference. Did
Speaker 2: you check the barcodes? I swear yesterday I shelved the
Speaker 2: late poems in poetry, But to Day's log says it's
Speaker 2: in mythology. She looked worried, as if she'd lost not
Speaker 2: just a book but her bearings. I pulled up the database,
Speaker 2: two entries for the same volume, same barcode, same call number.
Speaker 2: Checked into two different sections at almost the same time.
Speaker 2: Neither one was listed as missing or out for repair.
Speaker 2: We swapped a glance that said, wordlessly, this isn't simply
Speaker 2: about wiring or where. I decided it was time to
Speaker 2: show others. Missus Phipps, always game for a puzzle, accepted
Speaker 2: my offer to tour the photo wall more closely. She
Speaker 2: leaned on my arm, sharp eyes flicking over the black
Speaker 2: and white parade of faces and stairwells. You see there,
Speaker 2: she pointed to an image taken after the fire, probably
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty five. That window in the center. There's no
Speaker 2: such view now, that solid stone on both sides. I
Speaker 2: leaned closer. The window sat awkwardly, neither a line to
Speaker 2: the original blueprints nor to the present layout. Yet the
Speaker 2: image was untouched, neither retouched nor distorted. The four of us, me,
Speaker 2: Marjorie Lewis, and Missus Phipps stood each quietly holding a
Speaker 2: different memory of the building's shape. I asked gently, if
Speaker 2: you picture the old check out desk, where was it?
Speaker 2: Exactly south wall, said Marjorie, without hesitation. By the east,
Speaker 2: just under the window, argued Missus Phipps. Archly Lewis grinned
Speaker 2: I always thought it was where the magazines go. Now
Speaker 2: I was left none the wiser except to mark that
Speaker 2: each answer contradicted the others with politeness rather than certainty.
Speaker 2: The building, it seemed, was content to support three overlapping
Speaker 2: truths at once. The contradictions spread out in every direction,
Speaker 2: captured in photographs, hinted at in the digital catalog, flickering
Speaker 2: in memory. It was no longer just that the physical
Speaker 2: space slipped its leash. It was that history, evidence, even
Speaker 2: the consensuous reality among careful witnesses, could never quite be
Speaker 2: pinned down within these walls. Restless that evening, with the
Speaker 2: feeling of a question growing rather than shrinking, with every
Speaker 2: scrap of data, I left the library's main lights off
Speaker 2: and sat by the window, watching the harbor lights blink on.
Speaker 2: The rain had lifted, but fog pressed in from the sea,
Speaker 2: threading between the lamp posts like a slow tide, memory,
Speaker 2: fo footage, space. Something tied these together, a logic personal
Speaker 2: to the building itself. I found myself revisiting Harrow's notes,
Speaker 2: searching for a clue, not just in geometry but in intention.
Speaker 2: The following morning brought a rare visitor, an envelope from
Speaker 2: the local historical Society, responding to my quiet request for
Speaker 2: information on E. D. Harrow. I walked down the coastal
Speaker 2: road to retrieve it. Curious if the man who planted
Speaker 2: these contradictions had left breadcrumbs for my baffled present day
Speaker 2: self to follow. Their records were a patchwork a yellowed
Speaker 2: society newsletter profiling Harrow, fresh from a suspension by the
Speaker 2: Planning Board for his espousal of dimensionally unstable public architecture,
Speaker 2: a photograph of him as a thin faced young man
Speaker 2: in wire rimmed spectacles, grinning before a half built stairwell.
Speaker 2: He was described as brilliant, generous with his time, and
Speaker 2: not entirely tethered to one reality. Some articles praised his
Speaker 2: vision for post fire or building as an invitation to imagination.
Speaker 2: Others called it fever dream nonsense, impossible to build except
Speaker 2: in the sketches of the adult. Most tantalizing was a
Speaker 2: quote from an old interview. A library must not only
Speaker 2: hold books. It must invite the possibility that not everything
Speaker 2: can be shelved. The infinite may lodge in every corridor,
Speaker 2: Let its spaces lean toward curiosity, not certainty. Fascinated, I
Speaker 2: arranged to visit the Historical Society's reading room that afternoon,
Speaker 2: where two elderly docents who remembered him offered yet more
Speaker 2: conflicting testimonies. One described a meticulous perfectionist, another an eccentric
Speaker 2: whose blueprints never matched the building as built, But when
Speaker 2: asked about rumors, they exchanged a look half playful, half uneasy.
Speaker 2: Always said the fog did it. The first muttered, old
Speaker 2: sea air bends the rooms, doors wandering where you don't
Speaker 2: leave them, same as sailors misreading the coast. The second
Speaker 2: recalled her aunt a clerk during the renovations, swearing that
Speaker 2: a locked door opened onto a new hallway one spring morning,
Speaker 2: never to be found again. Nothing stays set, not truly,
Speaker 2: she mused, if the building welcomes possibility. These were metaphors
Speaker 2: I suspected, or perhaps more than metaphors, local law, blending
Speaker 2: fog and fact until neither quite claimed the upper hand.
Speaker 2: Walking home, passing rows of houses perched like gulls above
Speaker 2: the sea, I thought of Harrow's certain scribbles in his
Speaker 2: note book, his explicit desire for a space that refused
Speaker 2: to confine. Understanding the contradictions weren't bugs in the system.
Speaker 2: There were invitations, graceful, persistent protests against any final flattening answer.
Speaker 2: Over the next few days, my investigation shifted less an
Speaker 2: autopsy more participation. Gathered Lewis, Marjorie, and Missus Phipps for
Speaker 2: tea before opening hours. I told them openly, I don't
Speaker 2: think the oddities are mistakes. I think Harrow tried something
Speaker 2: may be succeeded at creating a space not for answers,
Speaker 2: but for the experience of encountering possibility itself. Lewis, fidgeting
Speaker 2: with a lens cap, objected, but it's a public building.
Speaker 2: People want stability, right, doors stay put. How can you
Speaker 2: run a library where the shelves slip around? Missus Phipps interjected,
Speaker 2: her tone gentle. Maybe that's the point. Certainty's fine until
Speaker 2: you need a mystery. Why not make room for both.
Speaker 2: Marjorie fixed her tea bag with a scowl. If it
Speaker 2: encourages a hunt for lost books, that's my job. Security
Speaker 2: sorted for the next decade. We laughed, but the truth
Speaker 2: was new between us, an active, living knowledge that the
Speaker 2: library's quidity lay not in security, but in its gentle
Speaker 2: jostling of expectations. The next day, I revisited the shadowless nook.
Speaker 2: This time, instead of measuring or documenting, I simply sat,
Speaker 2: with the sky clear and the sun making motes flicker
Speaker 2: in the air. I watched people drift in, a pair
Speaker 2: of students in search of a quiet spot, a new
Speaker 2: parent nursing her baby, in the periodicals, Marjorie updating the
Speaker 2: catalog at the desk. From my hidden vantage, I glimpsed,
Speaker 2: as if for the first time, the building as an organism,
Speaker 2: corridors swelling and contracting, with footsteps, light, leaning in different
Speaker 2: directions for every reader, each visitor perceiving the hole anew
Speaker 2: It struck me then, with bright recognition and a flush
Speaker 2: of awe, that this was the fulfillment of Harrow's vision,
Speaker 2: an architecture that did not command, but quietly invited. Space
Speaker 2: must listen, not command. The notebook's words ringing truer now
Speaker 2: than when first read. The contradictions were the building doing
Speaker 2: what stories do, offering enough search for comfort, but never
Speaker 2: so much as to silence curiosity. I paged to the
Speaker 2: end of Harrow's note book. There written in the margin
Speaker 2: as an epigraph, I found a final clarity. Let the
Speaker 2: world outside believe, let the world within wonder. A library
Speaker 2: should never answer every question. For a moment, it felt
Speaker 2: as if the building itself exhaled the spells of doubling shadows,
Speaker 2: vanishing shelves, impossible corridors. They were not flaws, not errors
Speaker 2: in need of repair, but a gentle, enduring hospitality for
Speaker 2: the quietly impossible, a geometry of invitation, making space for
Speaker 2: mystery beside every certainty. I sat in that reading nook,
Speaker 2: one of myriad possible nooks, and allowed myself the rarest
Speaker 2: of luxuries, the contentment of not knowing and the joy
Speaker 2: of noticing. The days after, I moved through the library differently,
Speaker 2: my attention shifting from suspicion to affection For every subtle defiance,
Speaker 2: With the fear of error replaced by the thrill of anticipation,
Speaker 2: the building vibrated with possibility. Strangers arriving for the first
Speaker 2: time sometimes hesitated, pausing, uncertain before a turn, or confused
Speaker 2: by an aisle that seemed to lead both away from
Speaker 2: and toward the exit, But most like the children, adapted quickly.
Speaker 2: They skipped between chairs, laughing at new corners, delighted as
Speaker 2: if each discovery had been left just for them. With
Speaker 2: my colleagues, language softened, Marjorie, once indignant, developed a fondness
Speaker 2: for reorganizing the poetry shelves so they may wander a little.
Speaker 2: Everyone needs to stretch. Lewis, still prone to skepticism, acquired
Speaker 2: a growing catalog of favorite impossible shots. Missus Phipps spent
Speaker 2: afternoons in whatever sun patch the building allowed her that weak,
Speaker 2: spinning stories that blended memory with mischief. As for me,
Speaker 2: the act of cataloging became a different pursuit, less about
Speaker 2: pinning books to places, more about chronicling the gentle on
Speaker 2: going miracle of a place designed to make curiosity a
Speaker 2: permanent resident. Occasionally I found myself in a knook I
Speaker 2: could not remember ever existing before, a window seat flushed
Speaker 2: with late afternoon light, or a bench that appeared outright new.
Speaker 2: I let each unexplained corner teach me to move less
Speaker 2: by habit and more by attention. Years ago, I thought
Speaker 2: the library's mission to be one of answers of mapping
Speaker 2: the unknown into the known. Now I saw something else,
Speaker 2: that our greatest spaces are those which shelter the unknown,
Speaker 2: not as threat but continual invitation. This morning, early I
Speaker 2: settled into a reading nook edged in sunlight. One that,
Speaker 2: to my memory, hadn't existed until yesterday. Book in hand,
Speaker 2: mug cooling beside me, mild dust playing in the golden air.
Speaker 2: I opened my note book but found I had little
Speaker 2: left to record except a question written not in frostration,
Speaker 2: but in the hope of further discovery. How much of
Speaker 2: me is shaped by the spaces I moved through? And
Speaker 2: how much of these spaces is shaped by my curiosity?
Speaker 2: I gazed out at the stacks, the shelves, the gentle
Speaker 2: drift of voices between fiction and non fiction, and wondered
Speaker 2: how many other buildings in this town or any other,
Speaker 2: have quietly bent to the curious heart, paying attention. How
Speaker 2: often had I missed the chance to notice a room
Speaker 2: doubling back, a shadow pausing at a fork, a window
Speaker 2: letting in light from a source the world outside can't explain.
Speaker 2: Maybe the library had all along been sustaining possibility, not
Speaker 2: resolving contradictions, but enacting them. Perhaps the purpose of such
Speaker 2: places is not to still questions, but to deepen the
Speaker 2: pleasure of asking them. I watched a small child run
Speaker 2: to hug a shelf, convinced she'd found a secret tunnel.
Speaker 2: I caught Marjorie's smile as she rearranged the displays just so,
Speaker 2: as if aligning them with some private melody. For the
Speaker 2: first time, I saw the library as its truest self,
Speaker 2: not static, but gently, persistently attuned to those prepared to
Speaker 2: notice what cannot quite be cataloged. Perhaps every cherished place, library, home,
Speaker 2: class room, corner store carry some fragment of this invitation,
Speaker 2: waiting for the curious to slip through and join the dance.
Speaker 2: I set down my pen, feeling the light of possibility
Speaker 2: warm on my face, and listened, content in the heart
Speaker 2: of the library that would never, by design answer every question.
Speaker 1: And that is the end. Thank you for listening, and
Speaker 1: I will see you in the next one.