1
00:00:10,679 --> 00:00:12,839
Speaker 1: The first words I'm recording are for whoever if any

2
00:00:12,839 --> 00:00:16,399
one finds this, I don't have one. Some One or

3
00:00:16,440 --> 00:00:19,480
something is moving through the northern stacks outside the archive.

4
00:00:20,120 --> 00:00:22,239
I lock the door behind me, slip one of the

5
00:00:22,280 --> 00:00:24,879
old microphone cabinets across it, but the metal scray beckered

6
00:00:24,879 --> 00:00:27,879
far too loud. This room is supposed to be sandproof,

7
00:00:28,480 --> 00:00:30,760
supposed to be a hundred feet from any public entrance,

8
00:00:30,960 --> 00:00:34,039
buried under tons of stone and forgotten paper. Right now

9
00:00:34,079 --> 00:00:36,079
it feels like a jewelry box that might nap open

10
00:00:36,119 --> 00:00:38,280
at any second, no matter how tightly I gret the

11
00:00:38,359 --> 00:00:40,759
key I must bring. Not from paranoia, I wish it

12
00:00:40,759 --> 00:00:42,479
were only that, but because every step I took to

13
00:00:42,520 --> 00:00:44,640
get here round back at me lay it on itself.

14
00:00:45,200 --> 00:00:48,560
The silence isn't safe. It predatory alert for any small trespass.

15
00:00:49,119 --> 00:00:52,200
One fluorescent fixture is humming erratically above the catalog machine,

16
00:00:52,240 --> 00:00:55,200
skipping in and out. Sometimes it catches on ifl like.

17
00:00:55,280 --> 00:00:57,520
It'll go out for seconds at a time, then surge back,

18
00:00:57,600 --> 00:01:00,320
like the shadows andselves are fiddling with the current. If

19
00:01:00,320 --> 00:01:02,159
you breathe deeply here, the place is thick with the

20
00:01:02,200 --> 00:01:04,480
smell of old blue and pulpink, but beneath the mustas

21
00:01:04,519 --> 00:01:07,000
and iron tang a shoppage I never noticed in daylight.

22
00:01:07,560 --> 00:01:10,439
The papers are greasy to the touch. The deeper I get,

23
00:01:10,480 --> 00:01:12,159
the more it feels like the air has built up

24
00:01:12,159 --> 00:01:14,640
its own sediment, left behind by every last book that's

25
00:01:14,680 --> 00:01:18,280
died on thee shells. None of this mattered thirty minutes ago.

26
00:01:18,920 --> 00:01:21,439
Then in the oldest manuscript drawer I found the card.

27
00:01:22,120 --> 00:01:24,280
It battered really thinner than it should be, with the

28
00:01:24,319 --> 00:01:26,519
color bloed out all the way to a pale, potty shade.

29
00:01:26,920 --> 00:01:29,159
The corners have taken on a waxy softness from too

30
00:01:29,200 --> 00:01:32,840
many hands. No recent cards should look like this. The

31
00:01:32,920 --> 00:01:35,200
date stamped at the bottom, though Crouch is in crespread

32
00:01:35,200 --> 00:01:38,319
ink last Friday, less than a week ago, around two

33
00:01:38,319 --> 00:01:41,280
thirty a m. The stamp lines are perfectly forestened to

34
00:01:41,280 --> 00:01:44,519
microscopically a line and touched by time. The patron's name

35
00:01:44,560 --> 00:01:47,040
is in blocks grouped blocked around the edges Rachel Avery.

36
00:01:47,599 --> 00:01:50,680
That's not what's wrong, though the library database lists her

37
00:01:50,680 --> 00:01:54,120
status is deceased. The record is old flagged. Do not

38
00:01:54,200 --> 00:01:57,000
circulate in the system with an incident marker nineteen eighty eight.

39
00:01:57,719 --> 00:02:00,280
I didn't know about her until to night. But her

40
00:02:00,319 --> 00:02:02,439
card's fresh, as if she'd only just checked out her

41
00:02:02,519 --> 00:02:05,040
last book three decades gone. But stamped is present all

42
00:02:05,079 --> 00:02:07,640
the same. I stared for a minute, thinking there had

43
00:02:07,680 --> 00:02:09,759
to be an air, But the thermal slip attached light

44
00:02:09,840 --> 00:02:12,240
is an eyelash, barely clipped as printed with to day's

45
00:02:12,319 --> 00:02:15,080
date and my own staff tag. My thumb shakes as

46
00:02:15,120 --> 00:02:17,479
I run it across a corner. There's a blot there,

47
00:02:17,479 --> 00:02:20,759
A faint oily fingerprint smeared into the word avery. Not

48
00:02:20,840 --> 00:02:23,479
my print. I double checked. It doesn't match the pad

49
00:02:23,520 --> 00:02:25,199
of my nail or the walls of my own thumb.

50
00:02:25,719 --> 00:02:27,080
I worked it on my pants, held it to the

51
00:02:27,159 --> 00:02:30,520
dying ceiling light, but it doesn't fade. I cross reference

52
00:02:30,520 --> 00:02:32,000
to the stamp with the one in the return tray.

53
00:02:32,560 --> 00:02:35,560
The ribbon is dry, but the numbers match perfectly. The

54
00:02:35,599 --> 00:02:37,840
time stamp, the ink pressure, the micro defect in the

55
00:02:37,879 --> 00:02:41,039
fond extrusion there are match. The receipt machine beeps if

56
00:02:41,080 --> 00:02:43,639
you try to override the system. No one's tacked it.

57
00:02:43,680 --> 00:02:45,840
I'd see the ordit log trip, except it can't get

58
00:02:45,840 --> 00:02:48,560
into Tonight's lock. It locks me out each time I

59
00:02:48,639 --> 00:02:51,560
try from somewhere on the other side of the fire door.

60
00:02:51,680 --> 00:02:54,159
I hear a scraping, like books being tugged awkwardly off

61
00:02:54,159 --> 00:02:57,439
their shelves, spines dragging against the shelf. Slip. It's not

62
00:02:57,520 --> 00:03:00,919
an animal, it's too methodical. A rush of three volumes

63
00:03:00,960 --> 00:03:04,199
in sequence, and then nothing. Oh, maybe someone's setting a

64
00:03:04,240 --> 00:03:06,400
trap to draw me out, stacking books as noise until

65
00:03:06,400 --> 00:03:08,919
I lose track of place and time. The last thing

66
00:03:08,919 --> 00:03:11,560
I can think to do is keep speaking. If nothing else,

67
00:03:11,840 --> 00:03:14,080
maybe my voice will echo further than my body does.

68
00:03:14,759 --> 00:03:16,800
If you find this tape. No, someone or something was

69
00:03:16,840 --> 00:03:20,360
here with me. The doors are locked. Only my card

70
00:03:20,400 --> 00:03:23,360
and richell averies should have opened them, except one of

71
00:03:23,439 --> 00:03:26,520
us is dead. Oh, we're both here now in some way.

72
00:03:27,039 --> 00:03:30,639
The scraping start again, closer. At this time, I have

73
00:03:30,719 --> 00:03:33,000
to stop. When I first took the job at went

74
00:03:33,080 --> 00:03:35,960
Up Memorial Library, I imagined had finally found what I wanted,

75
00:03:35,960 --> 00:03:38,879
a santury of order. I was thirty two, less new

76
00:03:38,879 --> 00:03:41,280
to the city, and desperate to ground myself somewhere solid.

77
00:03:41,960 --> 00:03:44,000
Most of my adult life, i'd led a string of

78
00:03:44,039 --> 00:03:46,439
half liviers, promising myself that the next place would be

79
00:03:46,439 --> 00:03:48,759
the right fit. The next sorting system the perfect match

80
00:03:48,759 --> 00:03:52,120
for my clamoring thoughts. The library, it's name more reminiscent

81
00:03:52,120 --> 00:03:54,360
of a mausoleum than of any modern district, sat clouded

82
00:03:54,360 --> 00:03:57,120
in the city's oldest administrative quarta, a block of blood

83
00:03:57,199 --> 00:04:00,680
edges in ancestor, when most buildings angled for attention with

84
00:04:00,719 --> 00:04:03,120
glass or neon, the wind Up wrapped itself in censures

85
00:04:03,159 --> 00:04:06,080
of dark granite entrance, flanked by tarnished bronze lions and

86
00:04:06,159 --> 00:04:08,599
white quartz, stepped worn down into soft dish ships by

87
00:04:08,599 --> 00:04:11,879
two hundred years of careful trampling. On my first official tour,

88
00:04:11,919 --> 00:04:14,360
a trailed behind mister Webber, whose shuffle reminded me of

89
00:04:14,400 --> 00:04:17,480
an absent minded carriage driver, his attention constantly veering off

90
00:04:17,480 --> 00:04:21,079
toward and sinned hazards. Webber was kind in a skittish way,

91
00:04:21,120 --> 00:04:23,240
though he dispensed vice on a kind of roulette. This

92
00:04:23,279 --> 00:04:25,519
wing find that one forbidden for no reason. He'd name

93
00:04:26,160 --> 00:04:28,639
the old files are best left to gather dust. He'd murmur,

94
00:04:28,720 --> 00:04:32,000
finger tips flicking as though chasing often invisible nap. Whenever

95
00:04:32,040 --> 00:04:34,079
a path threatened to skirt the far East corridor. His

96
00:04:34,160 --> 00:04:35,920
voice dropped so low it forced me to lean in.

97
00:04:36,480 --> 00:04:38,839
On my first day running the return's cage. He left

98
00:04:38,879 --> 00:04:41,040
me with a single cryptic warning. If you hear humming

99
00:04:41,079 --> 00:04:43,199
after the clocks chime one, just make sure you are

100
00:04:43,240 --> 00:04:46,240
not the sauce. I laughed, assuming I'd misheard, but the

101
00:04:46,240 --> 00:04:49,639
look on his face gave me pause. Later he apologized,

102
00:04:49,680 --> 00:04:52,000
said new cataloge is often felt spouted until they learned

103
00:04:52,000 --> 00:04:54,360
the pipes and the lights in the ire. I told

104
00:04:54,399 --> 00:04:56,920
myself then that I'd remember the lesson. Every old institution

105
00:04:57,040 --> 00:05:00,399
grows its own erbo myths, my schedule, Sin said, into

106
00:05:00,399 --> 00:05:03,519
a liturgy of small pleasures. I'd arrive an ire before

107
00:05:03,560 --> 00:05:05,959
opening key and through the staff door, and take deliberate

108
00:05:05,959 --> 00:05:08,000
pride in my archive kingdom, as I joke to Ava,

109
00:05:08,120 --> 00:05:11,240
the Knight Janitor, with her wild, spicy stores and uncanny neck,

110
00:05:11,279 --> 00:05:15,120
for appearing wherever my flashlight flackered. Sometimes she'd bring a

111
00:05:15,199 --> 00:05:18,240
thermos and sit in the stairwell as our catalog damaged returns.

112
00:05:18,959 --> 00:05:20,759
I like the hum of her presence, even if her

113
00:05:20,800 --> 00:05:24,839
anecdot's veered strange. The clocks move differently down here, she'd say,

114
00:05:24,879 --> 00:05:27,759
wiping at pins mudg as on her uniform old walls.

115
00:05:27,759 --> 00:05:30,959
Get hungry for secrets hollow, they say. She'd grin at me,

116
00:05:31,000 --> 00:05:33,720
eyes crinkling, but if my face turned too serious, she'd

117
00:05:33,720 --> 00:05:36,519
glance away and pretend to yawn. I chalked her comments up.

118
00:05:36,519 --> 00:05:40,439
The habit Alva was practical, gentle with lost things. Still,

119
00:05:40,560 --> 00:05:42,480
she hated the tunnels that snake behind the stacks near

120
00:05:42,519 --> 00:05:44,800
the basement. Claim they e could roam, the sound bouncing

121
00:05:44,839 --> 00:05:47,759
back not quite when you expected it. By midweek, I'd

122
00:05:47,800 --> 00:05:50,879
sorted hundreds of returns, though battered Barcoid's ticking a law

123
00:05:50,920 --> 00:05:53,279
in the conveyor belt, each one a minor victory, another

124
00:05:53,399 --> 00:05:57,560
tiny thread woven back into the library's great tapestry my realm.

125
00:05:57,759 --> 00:06:00,920
I gained a peculiar satisfaction in knowing exactly where books belonged,

126
00:06:01,120 --> 00:06:04,160
Tracing each unique swaja scratched to its lightest borrower, dating

127
00:06:04,160 --> 00:06:08,000
the catalog until its digital skin gleamed with completeness. At midday,

128
00:06:08,040 --> 00:06:11,600
the library radiated its own gravity, sun filtered reluctantly through

129
00:06:11,600 --> 00:06:13,839
grimy windows in the new wing, picking up the dust

130
00:06:13,879 --> 00:06:16,439
and highlighting the stark divide. One side polished the other,

131
00:06:16,480 --> 00:06:20,439
stubbornly clinging to its previous century. If Frieda's cared, they said, nothing.

132
00:06:21,120 --> 00:06:24,240
Some loved the alcoves above the marble rottenda, labyrinthine lined

133
00:06:24,240 --> 00:06:27,680
with protruding bricks barely supporting their uneven shelves. I loved

134
00:06:27,680 --> 00:06:30,079
it too, loved watching the afternoon light tangle itself in

135
00:06:30,079 --> 00:06:33,199
the blueprints of the past. From time to time, oddities

136
00:06:33,240 --> 00:06:35,480
made me pause the way some binding sweated stickly as

137
00:06:35,519 --> 00:06:37,519
a feat seat from within above, marked on shelf by

138
00:06:37,519 --> 00:06:40,160
the system, yet missing from its aisle for days, only

139
00:06:40,199 --> 00:06:42,120
to reappear in the wrong way without being checked out.

140
00:06:42,839 --> 00:06:46,439
Minor date errors, I told myself, system migrations or careless patrons.

141
00:06:46,920 --> 00:06:49,319
A pigeon database was a mess of half closed user cards,

142
00:06:49,360 --> 00:06:54,079
strange flagged incidents, and duplicated names. I spent tires merging nicknames,

143
00:06:54,079 --> 00:06:57,879
concern in variants, scrubbing the record stirshine. Occasionally, as I

144
00:06:57,879 --> 00:07:00,439
worked late, I heard laughter slip out from between them stacks,

145
00:07:00,480 --> 00:07:03,319
never raucous, always a single sharp giggle or distant snaker,

146
00:07:03,360 --> 00:07:05,399
tanned perfectly to the last sweep of the iron hand.

147
00:07:06,000 --> 00:07:09,600
Weber dismissed these as pied. Settling over would raise her eyebrows,

148
00:07:09,720 --> 00:07:12,319
then changed the subject, humming half remember tunes that seemed

149
00:07:12,319 --> 00:07:15,160
to fill the void. The laughter left behind. Yet in

150
00:07:15,199 --> 00:07:18,319
those first weeks, the world still felt rational. The soothing

151
00:07:18,360 --> 00:07:21,360
shuffle of index cards, the metallic time of microfilm spools,

152
00:07:21,399 --> 00:07:23,560
the crinkle of tissue paper book jackets. Under myth I'm

153
00:07:23,560 --> 00:07:26,279
also ordinary, so perfectly within my power to name maintain

154
00:07:26,839 --> 00:07:28,959
in the heart of the archive, the familiar texture of

155
00:07:28,959 --> 00:07:32,319
paper and pays seemed eternal. I thought then that order

156
00:07:32,360 --> 00:07:34,560
was the natural state of things, waiting only for a

157
00:07:34,600 --> 00:07:37,759
diligent archivists to uncover it. That sense held me safe,

158
00:07:37,839 --> 00:07:39,759
even when sensible caution would have told me to look

159
00:07:39,759 --> 00:07:41,959
closer at the stains nobody could clean from the cellar

160
00:07:42,079 --> 00:07:44,519
ledger room, or the way my own reshelving cut rolled

161
00:07:44,519 --> 00:07:46,399
a little further into the dark each night before I

162
00:07:46,439 --> 00:07:50,639
locked up. After every closing, I walked the perimeter, checking doors,

163
00:07:51,040 --> 00:07:53,720
riding crooked frames, breathing in the faint, acidic comfort of

164
00:07:53,720 --> 00:07:56,560
books as they sighed into stillness. If something more a

165
00:07:56,600 --> 00:07:59,560
lurk behind those silent rose, I never let myself notice.

166
00:08:00,120 --> 00:08:02,839
Not then. It was on a Thursday, nearing the end

167
00:08:02,879 --> 00:08:04,920
of my month long probation, that I decided to tackle

168
00:08:04,959 --> 00:08:08,399
the East Wing arcove. It was a project overdue by years.

169
00:08:08,480 --> 00:08:10,920
If the low book was telling the truth. The air

170
00:08:11,000 --> 00:08:13,360
in that corner smelled layered old dust, rain that never

171
00:08:13,399 --> 00:08:16,720
quite left, mingled with metallic kints of rotting iron. Most

172
00:08:16,759 --> 00:08:19,120
staff avoided it, but I was proud of my tenacity.

173
00:08:19,759 --> 00:08:21,920
If a shelf baked resorting at minnight, I was the

174
00:08:21,920 --> 00:08:24,279
one to field de call. The room was a knoll

175
00:08:24,319 --> 00:08:27,199
of old tables and bulky returns carts, many piled with

176
00:08:27,199 --> 00:08:29,720
books whose due dates belonged to an erarotary phones and

177
00:08:29,759 --> 00:08:33,279
greening signatures. As I rolled the first car decide, I

178
00:08:33,360 --> 00:08:36,480
noticed something peculiar pocket sized stack of recent returns, all

179
00:08:36,519 --> 00:08:38,679
stamped at two thirteen a m. A time of night

180
00:08:38,679 --> 00:08:41,159
the system was meant to be locked and stuff strictly offshift.

181
00:08:41,799 --> 00:08:44,080
It was the Friday anomaly, as my brain named it.

182
00:08:44,720 --> 00:08:47,840
Four volumes, one poetry, one memoir, one local sens's record,

183
00:08:47,840 --> 00:08:50,720
and a brittle dog eared copy of Shirley Jackson, all

184
00:08:50,759 --> 00:08:53,399
logged in on time by the machines un forgiven timestamp.

185
00:08:54,039 --> 00:08:56,159
Each book's return was paired with a patron coat and

186
00:08:56,240 --> 00:08:58,519
nested string of numbers left over from the library's first

187
00:08:58,559 --> 00:09:01,879
digitization project. But poke through I saw something more. Nearly

188
00:09:01,919 --> 00:09:03,960
all of the patron I d were tagged as inactive.

189
00:09:04,120 --> 00:09:07,879
I retired all for three deceased. I recognized Rachel Avery's

190
00:09:07,919 --> 00:09:10,320
name first cataloged is dead more than thirty years ago.

191
00:09:10,399 --> 00:09:12,559
But there were two of those William H. Dorset d.

192
00:09:12,720 --> 00:09:15,600
Nineteen seventy two and see how Huxley file flagged for

193
00:09:15,679 --> 00:09:19,120
account Halt nineteen sixty Ford the newest of the returns,

194
00:09:19,159 --> 00:09:22,399
though at a post attacked in its cover, carefully hand written,

195
00:09:22,519 --> 00:09:25,480
it read only stack three B. She never left. The

196
00:09:25,559 --> 00:09:28,679
sentence was underlined twice. There was no sign of the

197
00:09:28,679 --> 00:09:31,279
author's name, just to read as connected lines scribbled across

198
00:09:31,320 --> 00:09:34,080
the page margin. I set the notice eye. Feeling a

199
00:09:34,159 --> 00:09:37,519
nagging prickle beneath my ribs, I decided the simplest dancer

200
00:09:37,559 --> 00:09:39,639
was some boredic staff, a plain, a long prank, or

201
00:09:39,679 --> 00:09:42,519
a chronically careless clock refusing to close out our dated files.

202
00:09:43,120 --> 00:09:45,360
Yet when I checked against my own loggins, I found

203
00:09:45,360 --> 00:09:47,679
a disturbing pattern. Every Friday for the last three months,

204
00:09:47,720 --> 00:09:49,759
the set of books had been registered at precisely two

205
00:09:49,759 --> 00:09:52,759
thirteen a m all to the same silent Obb's lead accounts.

206
00:09:53,399 --> 00:09:56,200
No new books began at that time. Every transaction involved

207
00:09:56,200 --> 00:09:59,240
a return, never a checkout, and always the name Avery

208
00:09:59,279 --> 00:10:02,879
appeared somewhere in ledger, drifting like a watermark behind the text,

209
00:10:03,240 --> 00:10:05,440
the phrase and the post. It gnawed at me. She

210
00:10:05,559 --> 00:10:09,120
never left who I thought of first of Rachel, but

211
00:10:09,159 --> 00:10:12,519
then recalled up Pagean's rarely if ever lingered this later fifield.

212
00:10:13,120 --> 00:10:15,519
The east wing was supposedly used for us at storage

213
00:10:15,559 --> 00:10:18,399
or emergency drills. It's only functioning lies dewy rigged from

214
00:10:18,399 --> 00:10:21,039
a forgotten brake panel. There had been talk of closing

215
00:10:21,080 --> 00:10:23,679
off the area for repairs after a pipe burst year's back,

216
00:10:23,840 --> 00:10:27,360
but the city never funded. That afternoon, I approached ofv A,

217
00:10:27,480 --> 00:10:30,000
hoping for a dose of perspective. I found her by

218
00:10:30,000 --> 00:10:32,639
the North's service elevator, jobbling her supply caddy with a

219
00:10:32,679 --> 00:10:35,639
stack of worn out door nuts Stack three B. She

220
00:10:35,720 --> 00:10:38,879
repeated the words brittle in her mouth. That's an old part.

221
00:10:38,960 --> 00:10:41,240
I thought it was woald off for what flooding or something?

222
00:10:41,840 --> 00:10:45,080
I nodded. But there are logs, book returns, odd time stamps,

223
00:10:45,120 --> 00:10:47,399
a couple names, keep hopping up names not supposed to

224
00:10:47,440 --> 00:10:50,320
be current. Her hand hovered over the elevated button, and

225
00:10:50,320 --> 00:10:53,159
the bones in her wrist flex under thinskin for a moment,

226
00:10:53,240 --> 00:10:55,679
all her breezy, she have seemed to wane. I used

227
00:10:55,720 --> 00:10:58,720
to clean that area years ago, she said, almost too softly.

228
00:10:59,360 --> 00:11:01,919
Doors back there, germ on their own shells, move, mobs,

229
00:11:01,919 --> 00:11:05,240
get stuck behind things. She shook herself, forced to laugh.

230
00:11:05,799 --> 00:11:08,480
But it's useless now. Nobody should be shelving that deep anymore.

231
00:11:08,960 --> 00:11:11,960
I pressed her lightly about the note, but she excused herself,

232
00:11:12,120 --> 00:11:15,559
muttering about a full checklist to finish before her ship ended. Later,

233
00:11:15,639 --> 00:11:18,519
in Webber's office, I raised the subject again, masking my

234
00:11:18,600 --> 00:11:22,480
growing paranoia as idle curiosity about old library logistics. He

235
00:11:22,519 --> 00:11:25,480
blinked rapidly, the fine white hair at his temple's prickling uprate.

236
00:11:26,159 --> 00:11:29,279
Some ledges exist to keep memories, he said, fiddling with

237
00:11:29,279 --> 00:11:32,200
a cracked pen lid. Others exist to bury them. Don't

238
00:11:32,200 --> 00:11:34,879
go poking in the oldest ones. Ellen, let the secrets keep.

239
00:11:35,320 --> 00:11:38,360
I nodded, but didn't promise the phrase. She never left.

240
00:11:38,399 --> 00:11:41,759
Flooped to my head, still unsettled. I spent that evening

241
00:11:41,759 --> 00:11:44,840
retracing every Friday Night's stamp in the digital lock. The

242
00:11:44,919 --> 00:11:48,080
more I searched, the deeper the patter ran. The Friday returned,

243
00:11:48,120 --> 00:11:50,320
stretched all the way back to the system's first barcode

244
00:11:50,320 --> 00:11:54,519
migration in nineteen eighty six. Prior to that, in scattered ledges,

245
00:11:54,600 --> 00:11:57,080
I found closed initials and lines through which Rachel Avery's

246
00:11:57,120 --> 00:11:59,080
name kept surf saying like a splinter court. In the

247
00:11:59,080 --> 00:12:02,240
heel of the archives men, several entries were missing, whole

248
00:12:02,279 --> 00:12:05,639
page's blank columns race or inked over. At the time,

249
00:12:05,720 --> 00:12:08,600
I assumed water damage or clerical laziness, but something felt

250
00:12:08,639 --> 00:12:12,440
too methodical about the gaps. Certain nights, the security systems

251
00:12:12,519 --> 00:12:14,879
video feed was listed as a corrupted or not found.

252
00:12:15,759 --> 00:12:18,799
Entire VHS drawers were missing, replaced by handrid and memos

253
00:12:18,799 --> 00:12:22,440
citing system upgrades. On the nights when impossible checkout occurred,

254
00:12:22,480 --> 00:12:24,240
the system always showed a loss of power for at

255
00:12:24,320 --> 00:12:26,600
least twenty minutes, then snapped back to life when the

256
00:12:26,600 --> 00:12:29,600
clock exactly were set to two thirteen a m. Working

257
00:12:29,639 --> 00:12:32,919
late became my habit. Webber signed off after six each night,

258
00:12:33,120 --> 00:12:35,240
leaving me with the duplicate key in vague remind us

259
00:12:35,279 --> 00:12:38,039
to a lock up tight. I buried myself in the logs,

260
00:12:38,080 --> 00:12:40,919
pulling faded blueprints from the archives off limits sub basement

261
00:12:41,480 --> 00:12:43,639
Bello plans mapped out the east wing with a maze

262
00:12:43,639 --> 00:12:47,000
of rooms, reading corners, partial galleries, a locked founder study,

263
00:12:47,080 --> 00:12:49,799
and several phases of closed stacks that on all modern

264
00:12:49,879 --> 00:12:53,679
prints simply weren't there. Sections now showed a solid plaster

265
00:12:53,879 --> 00:12:57,559
allegedly covered over during the nineteen sixty seven renovations. I

266
00:12:57,639 --> 00:13:00,000
read these plans as if they might explain the library's living,

267
00:13:00,080 --> 00:13:03,559
shifting shape. I became convinced that entire rooms had vanished,

268
00:13:03,559 --> 00:13:07,480
their doors and contents subsumed behind falls walls. Several referenced

269
00:13:07,519 --> 00:13:10,399
diagrams suggested fence and corridors that if Friol should have

270
00:13:10,440 --> 00:13:12,240
let up behind the book lift in the westock have

271
00:13:12,279 --> 00:13:14,360
a space now felled with low metal shelves, and reference

272
00:13:14,440 --> 00:13:18,480
encyclopedias that nobody bothered to touch. My fascination crossed out

273
00:13:18,519 --> 00:13:21,799
after IROs using my stuff access, I trailed the pattern

274
00:13:21,799 --> 00:13:24,559
of the phantom checking times two thirteen a m. Every Friday.

275
00:13:25,159 --> 00:13:27,480
One night, just before three, with my hot pounding in

276
00:13:27,559 --> 00:13:29,720
my ears, I re endered the restricted stacks under the

277
00:13:29,720 --> 00:13:32,919
guise of tracking a missing cereal. The corridor seemed different

278
00:13:32,960 --> 00:13:35,840
at night. I tried mapping my route using colored tape

279
00:13:35,840 --> 00:13:37,840
on the corners, but each time I circled back to

280
00:13:37,879 --> 00:13:40,320
my starting point, my tape was missing or replaced with

281
00:13:40,360 --> 00:13:43,080
a different color. On my third circuit, I noticed a

282
00:13:43,080 --> 00:13:45,639
shelf of Friends of the Library cookbooks out of place,

283
00:13:45,720 --> 00:13:48,279
sitting near the biography section where the blueprints suggested a

284
00:13:48,320 --> 00:13:51,759
concealed door should be. That same night, while reviewing feeds

285
00:13:51,759 --> 00:13:53,840
on the archavel's security monitor, one of a quiver of

286
00:13:53,919 --> 00:13:56,519
near obsolete, green tinted screens, I caught movement in which

287
00:13:56,559 --> 00:13:59,519
should have been a dead corridor. A figure shoulders hunched

288
00:13:59,559 --> 00:14:01,919
too still, face obscured by a low tilt, and Profoks

289
00:14:01,960 --> 00:14:03,919
carried anomo of books through a staff to all that,

290
00:14:04,000 --> 00:14:06,799
according to every physical check, was completely blocked off on

291
00:14:06,879 --> 00:14:10,759
both sides by shelves and loose stone. The monitor flickered again, scrambled,

292
00:14:10,799 --> 00:14:13,080
and that person banished. Just as the minute counter snapped

293
00:14:13,080 --> 00:14:16,240
to two footeen a m I checked a card transaction lock,

294
00:14:16,320 --> 00:14:19,399
a book registered as returned against Avery's code, exactly when

295
00:14:19,440 --> 00:14:23,639
the footage blurred. Sleep escaped me entirely. I began recording

296
00:14:23,679 --> 00:14:26,440
regular memos, hoping to organize my thoughts before I unraveled.

297
00:14:27,000 --> 00:14:29,039
The act of speaking them out granted me at first,

298
00:14:29,080 --> 00:14:30,879
but as knights bled together my own voice in the

299
00:14:30,919 --> 00:14:34,720
emptiness seen the poor substitute for certainty. Every morning, tiny

300
00:14:34,759 --> 00:14:37,519
traces of Knight persisted, a cold sweat, phantom footsteps sitched

301
00:14:37,519 --> 00:14:40,639
with echoes that wouldn't stop ringing. The library responded as

302
00:14:40,679 --> 00:14:43,639
if testing my resolve. Someone rearranged the books on my

303
00:14:43,720 --> 00:14:46,039
rousheving cat while I stepped away for a cup of tea.

304
00:14:46,480 --> 00:14:50,320
The spines awkwardly mashed together spelled out rooms, change people too,

305
00:14:50,879 --> 00:14:54,120
an accident a board page, except only two people were

306
00:14:54,159 --> 00:14:56,360
left in the building that night, myself and Nova his

307
00:14:56,480 --> 00:14:59,440
Warshi'd been fixing a leak in the supply closet. Once

308
00:14:59,480 --> 00:15:01,360
the child's LI Library card fell from a file I

309
00:15:01,440 --> 00:15:04,679
was searching. It bore Avery's block printed name, but the

310
00:15:04,679 --> 00:15:07,039
front was scraped over with dozens of walled faint mark's

311
00:15:07,080 --> 00:15:09,679
layer on layer of finger prints, all pressed into the cart,

312
00:15:09,720 --> 00:15:11,720
as if the surface had been handled over and over

313
00:15:11,799 --> 00:15:15,279
by the same relentless hand. Paranoi made me stronger, clearer.

314
00:15:15,879 --> 00:15:18,759
I started at hunting obsessively for the rules underpinning the pattern.

315
00:15:19,240 --> 00:15:21,639
When I flicked through the digital checkout log for Friday nights,

316
00:15:21,679 --> 00:15:24,480
I saw in brutal detail how stretching back decades the

317
00:15:24,480 --> 00:15:27,559
same handful of retired names kept surfacing at impossible iOS.

318
00:15:28,320 --> 00:15:30,879
Sometimes a gap of a few months pass with no activity,

319
00:15:30,919 --> 00:15:33,200
Then multiple returns would queue, all at once, always their

320
00:15:33,279 --> 00:15:35,559
time stump, perfectly aligned to a hidden minute, never a

321
00:15:35,600 --> 00:15:38,559
second before or after. By now it was obvious reach

322
00:15:38,600 --> 00:15:42,679
ol Avery wasn't the only impossible borer. Files expanded. William

323
00:15:42,720 --> 00:15:45,320
Dassett's name appeared every handful of years, always on a

324
00:15:45,320 --> 00:15:48,919
battered copy of a nineteen sixty city directory. See Il

325
00:15:49,039 --> 00:15:51,840
Huxley returned in spirits flagging books long since taken out

326
00:15:51,840 --> 00:15:55,440
of rotation. Growing desperate, I double checked security logs for

327
00:15:55,480 --> 00:15:58,360
those nights. They'd all been marked corrupted by whom I

328
00:15:58,399 --> 00:16:01,120
couldn't learn. When Floe dug the issue for Weber, he

329
00:16:01,159 --> 00:16:04,120
shouked old systems full of ghosts. We upgrade when we can.

330
00:16:04,639 --> 00:16:07,679
He brushed aside my suggestion of contacting I t muttering

331
00:16:07,720 --> 00:16:10,960
again about all business and funding woes. That week, I

332
00:16:11,000 --> 00:16:13,240
borrowed master key under the pretense of surveying the West

333
00:16:13,240 --> 00:16:16,799
Wing archives for Mold. At midnight flashlight grips so tidy

334
00:16:16,840 --> 00:16:19,159
my pomiced, I traced a routed mapped where forgotten blueprint

335
00:16:19,200 --> 00:16:22,679
show days stack tree beet they shouldn't exist. Corridors twisted

336
00:16:22,720 --> 00:16:26,039
as I walked, seeming to lengthen then double back. Signs

337
00:16:26,080 --> 00:16:29,759
pointed in circles. Once rounding a wide pillar, I found

338
00:16:29,759 --> 00:16:32,559
myself facing the same reference desk could passed five minutes before.

339
00:16:32,559 --> 00:16:34,679
At the pencils atop it rearranged in star shaped that

340
00:16:34,720 --> 00:16:37,480
I hadn't left the men. Every so often I heard

341
00:16:37,519 --> 00:16:40,279
a faint shuffling, pages flapping, then a lower metallic scrape,

342
00:16:40,279 --> 00:16:42,879
as if someone moved carts just out aside. I was

343
00:16:42,919 --> 00:16:44,960
sure that the stacks were empty, Yet the ethic, and

344
00:16:45,039 --> 00:16:47,000
with the sense of presents just behind the next corner,

345
00:16:47,080 --> 00:16:49,480
never quite letting me catch my breath or glimpse the source,

346
00:16:50,200 --> 00:16:54,480
sleep vanished entirely. Members became frantic. Record after record muttered

347
00:16:54,480 --> 00:16:57,360
into my phone. When the holes were empty, my mind,

348
00:16:57,600 --> 00:17:00,559
once sharp, began to fray, every routurn, every stump slip,

349
00:17:00,600 --> 00:17:02,799
every oddic glitch, feeding into my annoying conviction at the

350
00:17:02,840 --> 00:17:05,559
library was more alive than dead. The Friday after I

351
00:17:05,599 --> 00:17:07,799
found the note about Stack three B, I felt certain

352
00:17:07,799 --> 00:17:11,759
it was not legend, something where someone looked beyond a boundary.

353
00:17:11,799 --> 00:17:14,599
Only a few staffed aared approach, I stopped just short

354
00:17:14,599 --> 00:17:17,559
of losing myself in paranoia. The next clue came from

355
00:17:17,599 --> 00:17:20,720
a deep dive into the oldest catalog metadata digital fossil record,

356
00:17:20,759 --> 00:17:23,119
clinging to the styles and quirks of clocks long gone.

357
00:17:23,599 --> 00:17:26,440
The entries were phantom locations aligned with the set of invisible,

358
00:17:26,519 --> 00:17:29,960
error prone markers in the database. Rooms listed under three

359
00:17:30,000 --> 00:17:33,000
B founders reading nook or secondary gallery with fizzle out

360
00:17:33,039 --> 00:17:34,759
if you tried to call them up for mapping. All

361
00:17:34,759 --> 00:17:37,799
that remained was a cruey looped, tasky strain room not found.

362
00:17:38,440 --> 00:17:41,759
A week later, the dam broke. I'd returned one last time.

363
00:17:41,839 --> 00:17:43,359
I told myself to see if I could trace the

364
00:17:43,400 --> 00:17:46,799
actual mechanism that erased rooms and people alike. It began

365
00:17:46,920 --> 00:17:49,759
with a clue almost too obvious, a misshell fiction title

366
00:17:49,799 --> 00:17:51,920
stamped as returned not just to day, but according to

367
00:17:51,920 --> 00:17:54,839
the lock, on dozens of different dates, all in Avery's hand.

368
00:17:55,559 --> 00:17:58,039
I spent an iro trace in call numbers, finding dead ends.

369
00:17:58,160 --> 00:18:00,200
Seal of closets and dry wall were wining and doough

370
00:18:00,200 --> 00:18:02,400
should have been near the back of the east wing

371
00:18:02,519 --> 00:18:04,880
between a pair of fic encyclopedia as welded together as

372
00:18:04,880 --> 00:18:06,880
a camouflage. I tugged at what I hoped was an

373
00:18:06,880 --> 00:18:09,440
aunncho shelf. The wall clicked to the soft scrape i'd

374
00:18:09,440 --> 00:18:12,000
come to dread. The shelf pivot it swinging outward on

375
00:18:12,039 --> 00:18:14,119
hidden rollows. I'd have sworn one there a moment before.

376
00:18:14,680 --> 00:18:17,720
Behind it yawned a slender doorway, nearly invisible in the dark.

377
00:18:18,440 --> 00:18:21,640
I switched on my phone's flashlight and stepped inside. The

378
00:18:21,680 --> 00:18:24,440
space was minne, a single bowl, still faintly glowing above

379
00:18:24,440 --> 00:18:26,480
the thread birst study carol, surrounded by a ring of

380
00:18:26,480 --> 00:18:29,640
old appointment pinned wise shaped to cock board. Someone had

381
00:18:29,680 --> 00:18:31,359
left a battered pack of mints and a sheaf of

382
00:18:31,440 --> 00:18:35,119
yellowed notebook paper in the desk. The air was thick, chemical,

383
00:18:35,200 --> 00:18:38,599
as if time itself lingered here, viscous and inescapable. The

384
00:18:38,640 --> 00:18:41,160
desk drawers were filled with personal effects, a fountain pen,

385
00:18:41,240 --> 00:18:44,279
a student ideasue to Rachel Avery Exploration nineteen eighty nine,

386
00:18:44,319 --> 00:18:47,759
several index cards and three different hands, one in large

387
00:18:47,759 --> 00:18:50,279
blocking letters, spelled my own log in initial z M

388
00:18:50,400 --> 00:18:52,319
C beside Avery's, as though the two of us had

389
00:18:52,319 --> 00:18:55,440
been processed in the same returns for years. The library

390
00:18:55,519 --> 00:18:57,519
check and slept bore the current day and my staff.

391
00:18:57,559 --> 00:19:00,359
I d printed in a machine puffect strip hinned to

392
00:19:00,359 --> 00:19:02,799
the corkboard beside the desk, a reading list to columns

393
00:19:02,839 --> 00:19:06,720
and symbols. I didn't recognize page numbers, arcs, intersecting lines

394
00:19:06,759 --> 00:19:09,279
with crypto caros and coded dates most Jude, years after

395
00:19:09,319 --> 00:19:13,400
Avery's recorded death. One entry written shakily read, if you

396
00:19:13,480 --> 00:19:16,799
find this, you are already keeping her place. Scattered receipts were

397
00:19:16,799 --> 00:19:19,640
stamped and counter stamped Avery, replacing my initials on half,

398
00:19:19,759 --> 00:19:22,720
as if someone had forged both our hands. Pocketing the

399
00:19:22,720 --> 00:19:24,680
reading list, I turned to leave, but the shelf no

400
00:19:24,720 --> 00:19:27,279
longer opened behind me. Where I'd entered was now a

401
00:19:27,319 --> 00:19:29,599
wall of dark paneling with only a small latch, which

402
00:19:29,599 --> 00:19:32,920
clicked uselessly in my grasp. Panick scratched at my throat.

403
00:19:33,440 --> 00:19:35,720
For a moment, I considered screaming. Then I remembered the

404
00:19:35,720 --> 00:19:38,119
insulation of the stacks, the way sounds seemed to absorb

405
00:19:38,160 --> 00:19:41,400
broader than travel, Adrenaline rising, I ran my hands over

406
00:19:41,440 --> 00:19:43,960
the hidden wall, searching for a seam. I'll over anything.

407
00:19:44,599 --> 00:19:48,559
None revealed themselves. The desk lamp flickered, casting an uneven

408
00:19:48,519 --> 00:19:50,319
egg shaped pool of light in the reading list, the

409
00:19:50,359 --> 00:19:52,920
old staff badge, the codenobic, with its unreadable lists of

410
00:19:53,000 --> 00:19:55,319
names and dates, several marked with the crude dex une,

411
00:19:55,359 --> 00:19:59,440
matching today's patrons. A minute passed beneath the carol, I

412
00:19:59,440 --> 00:20:02,279
found a bundle of loose leaf echoes, bound with faded tape.

413
00:20:02,759 --> 00:20:05,640
They were internal reviewed notes, description of a ghosted returned,

414
00:20:05,839 --> 00:20:09,039
recitations of how to recognize stamp errors, strange directives for

415
00:20:09,119 --> 00:20:13,319
staff to ignore self resolving anomalies. I realized, shivering, that

416
00:20:13,400 --> 00:20:15,240
Avery had been here, not just a memory, but a

417
00:20:15,279 --> 00:20:19,200
clok like me, processing not books but ghap's absences. Some one,

418
00:20:19,240 --> 00:20:21,839
I thought wildly, was updating her file with new returns.

419
00:20:21,839 --> 00:20:25,440
Even now, in some columns, my staff initials appeared matched

420
00:20:25,440 --> 00:20:27,599
to borrow codes, as though my hand itself had stumped

421
00:20:27,599 --> 00:20:31,960
the night's transactions. Behind my head, the es seemed to ripple. Footsteps,

422
00:20:31,960 --> 00:20:34,319
one set, then two, shudder down the corridor. Outside the

423
00:20:34,359 --> 00:20:37,720
sealed door. The ear brightoned mechanical leaped in my chest.

424
00:20:38,440 --> 00:20:40,000
I pressed my ear to the thin wood, but the

425
00:20:40,000 --> 00:20:42,720
patter made little sense, slower, then rapid, then crawling away.

426
00:20:43,359 --> 00:20:45,359
Once a faint voic hummed a note that lingered and

427
00:20:45,400 --> 00:20:48,920
twisted into silence. With the reading list and records in hand,

428
00:20:49,039 --> 00:20:51,160
I sunk on to the Carol's battered chair, shaking. Sir

429
00:20:51,200 --> 00:20:54,519
Hard my Tea chatted. I realized, with sharpsik certainty that

430
00:20:54,559 --> 00:20:58,799
the wayne had vanished. Rooms changed people too. The library,

431
00:20:58,880 --> 00:21:01,640
I thought was never trusually mapped. I drew in a

432
00:21:01,680 --> 00:21:04,160
thin breath of air, making myself examine the notes left

433
00:21:04,160 --> 00:21:06,720
in the drawer. There were references in code of column

434
00:21:06,759 --> 00:21:09,599
headings for a keeper's illustrations of a circle with intersecting

435
00:21:09,720 --> 00:21:13,039
arrows and an underlying note repeating erasures in sure system

436
00:21:13,079 --> 00:21:16,359
health do not question. Next to it a faded instruction sheet.

437
00:21:16,400 --> 00:21:18,119
How to force a return through the system if a

438
00:21:18,119 --> 00:21:21,680
patron couldn't be found. One ledger described the diversion process,

439
00:21:21,759 --> 00:21:24,119
how only the internal review group could issue strike through,

440
00:21:24,240 --> 00:21:27,519
removing a patron from public view and presumably from active memory.

441
00:21:28,079 --> 00:21:30,759
The names of the reviews weren't listed, only brief colored

442
00:21:30,759 --> 00:21:33,000
phrases and marks. Never a person, always a set of

443
00:21:33,039 --> 00:21:37,079
initials echoed through the records. I sat very still outside.

444
00:21:37,200 --> 00:21:40,400
Those same footsteps returned slower now. I slipped by phone

445
00:21:40,440 --> 00:21:43,440
load to the floor, activating its audio recording app. The

446
00:21:43,480 --> 00:21:46,599
microphone humms, then picked up muffled voices, clipped almost digitized

447
00:21:46,599 --> 00:21:49,759
by age. The archive is still hungry. She's lasted longer

448
00:21:49,799 --> 00:21:52,720
than the last one. At least they always try to

449
00:21:52,720 --> 00:21:55,720
map a way out. It never works. How many left,

450
00:21:56,319 --> 00:21:58,519
it doesn't matter. If the ledge is clean, we close

451
00:21:58,599 --> 00:22:02,279
the loop, and when she is gone, rooms change people too.

452
00:22:02,920 --> 00:22:06,200
My heart stuttered. Whoever they were reviewers keeper's ghosts? They

453
00:22:06,200 --> 00:22:08,799
were closing in. I scrolled a shaky note, if I

454
00:22:08,799 --> 00:22:11,440
don't return, check Avery's files. Delivered this to a web

455
00:22:11,519 --> 00:22:13,720
but con sealed the envelope, mocking it with an emergency

456
00:22:13,759 --> 00:22:16,880
stamp from the carrol drawer. The footsteps faded, their echoes

457
00:22:16,960 --> 00:22:19,720
lingering like stains in the dark. The reading list to

458
00:22:19,799 --> 00:22:22,519
departure map may be glowed faintly under the flickering light.

459
00:22:23,160 --> 00:22:25,799
I lifted my phone recorded my voice once more, flat

460
00:22:25,799 --> 00:22:27,960
with exhaustion. If you find this memmo, I may be

461
00:22:28,000 --> 00:22:30,400
part of the system. By now, rooms change and people

462
00:22:30,480 --> 00:22:33,119
due to Did anyone escape before me? I tucked the

463
00:22:33,240 --> 00:22:35,720
envelope into the corner of the carrol, praying the library

464
00:22:35,759 --> 00:22:38,759
would not erase all trace. Then I lapsed into silence.

465
00:22:38,839 --> 00:22:41,319
The faint hum of voices and books closing in the patterns,

466
00:22:41,319 --> 00:22:44,160
and the shells rearranging behind my back. I drew my

467
00:22:44,160 --> 00:22:46,480
feet up on the batter chair. Niakop's rising tight under

468
00:22:46,519 --> 00:22:48,400
my chair, and the muffled scrape of footsteps now a

469
00:22:48,440 --> 00:22:51,319
recurring pulse outside my prison. There was no clock in

470
00:22:51,359 --> 00:22:54,680
the carrol. I tried counting Beth's vetting, myself sink into

471
00:22:54,680 --> 00:22:57,640
the tatter Upholsteres chemical stinc just to anchor something real.

472
00:22:58,200 --> 00:23:01,440
The oppressed clothes wolf thick, and so with mildew, my

473
00:23:01,519 --> 00:23:04,200
brains crumbling, picked out the little dramas littering the desk.

474
00:23:04,279 --> 00:23:06,799
A snap pencil Avery's i d card, a single step

475
00:23:06,839 --> 00:23:08,839
of a waxy lipsic crolling in a pengroove, as if

476
00:23:08,880 --> 00:23:10,799
it had never been touched, and she left it behind.

477
00:23:11,480 --> 00:23:14,519
I unfolded her reading liss again, picking apart each symbol.

478
00:23:15,039 --> 00:23:18,400
There were arcs with double slashes, maybe ruts, in page

479
00:23:18,480 --> 00:23:21,880
numbers written in pairs. One column alternated between to day's

480
00:23:21,920 --> 00:23:24,519
date and several near future fridays, as though time itself

481
00:23:24,599 --> 00:23:27,160
was being tallowed up for return. In the margin, a

482
00:23:27,240 --> 00:23:30,279
circling arrow held my own initial stamp once then except

483
00:23:30,279 --> 00:23:32,720
then rewritten, almost as if before i'd found this place.

484
00:23:32,759 --> 00:23:35,680
Someone already knew I would. A pencil triangle pointed at

485
00:23:35,680 --> 00:23:38,640
the phrase if lost, repeat once, then seek the salad shelf.

486
00:23:39,559 --> 00:23:42,480
I traced the carol's surface for clues. The desk draw

487
00:23:42,480 --> 00:23:46,759
glided out, reluctantly, bumping some invisible catch inside a library

488
00:23:46,839 --> 00:23:49,759
gavel stamped with the Cities insignia, and beneath it a

489
00:23:49,759 --> 00:23:52,359
packet of yellow in cards, some bearing just faint rectangles

490
00:23:52,359 --> 00:23:54,880
of araistic A glue, others with Avery's looping print, or

491
00:23:54,920 --> 00:23:58,640
impossibly my own recent handwriting letters, formed exactly as I wrote,

492
00:23:58,680 --> 00:24:02,799
mighty in the morning returns. The room's boundaries pulsed. I

493
00:24:02,839 --> 00:24:05,160
pressed harder at the wall where I had entered, feeling

494
00:24:05,160 --> 00:24:09,119
not plaster but layer of paper, cold, lumpy, irregular against

495
00:24:09,160 --> 00:24:11,319
my knuckles. It wrasped, like the skin of a century's

496
00:24:11,359 --> 00:24:14,160
old book. The shells had shifted. I recognized none of

497
00:24:14,200 --> 00:24:17,319
the spines visible from the carrol. Instead, a series of

498
00:24:17,359 --> 00:24:19,759
door was now branched into darkness at odd angles, Their

499
00:24:19,759 --> 00:24:22,720
fresholds roomed with pencil cold numbers and half raised initials.

500
00:24:23,319 --> 00:24:27,039
Adrenaline returned sharper. Now. I snapped my prone's flashlight on

501
00:24:27,079 --> 00:24:29,559
and placed a battered reading list in my pocket. If

502
00:24:29,599 --> 00:24:32,200
Avery left hints, maybe she charted a rout out, or

503
00:24:32,240 --> 00:24:35,039
at least a trail worth following the cow. Single wheat

504
00:24:35,039 --> 00:24:37,880
bulb flickered overhead, then blinked out, abruptly, pitching the room

505
00:24:37,880 --> 00:24:40,000
into a navy gloom, broken only by my weak led

506
00:24:40,759 --> 00:24:43,799
my bred double pulse kicking hard against my throat. I

507
00:24:43,839 --> 00:24:46,039
stood an inch toward the rightmo's door, kerefro not to

508
00:24:46,039 --> 00:24:48,079
lose my place. With the heavy packet of evidence tupped

509
00:24:48,119 --> 00:24:51,599
under my arm. At the threshold, I paused listening. The

510
00:24:51,640 --> 00:24:54,720
outer footsteps had stopped. A new sound crept in the

511
00:24:54,720 --> 00:24:57,440
faint siseration of pages rough in somewhere nearby a compress

512
00:24:57,599 --> 00:25:01,079
papery's eye, like someone methodically turning one old folio after another.

513
00:25:01,759 --> 00:25:04,559
I reached for the door knob, cold and slippery. As

514
00:25:04,559 --> 00:25:06,720
I twisted it, my fingers caught a splinter chip in

515
00:25:06,720 --> 00:25:08,920
the brass, and were as pressed into the grind, caught

516
00:25:08,960 --> 00:25:12,200
the edge of my attention, returning complete filat risk. I

517
00:25:12,200 --> 00:25:14,640
should have stepped back, retreated, but the air behind me

518
00:25:14,680 --> 00:25:16,880
thick and amberbly, as if verging me onward rather than

519
00:25:16,880 --> 00:25:19,960
aw The door creaked softly as it opened, revealing a

520
00:25:20,000 --> 00:25:22,359
corridor that didn't match any odmapped. The stacks here re

521
00:25:22,480 --> 00:25:25,799
arranged themselves in hearing bone chevrons. Books snuggled three deep

522
00:25:25,839 --> 00:25:29,079
in cubby holes along the floor. The carpets squelched under foot,

523
00:25:29,200 --> 00:25:32,359
sticky as if from ancients built glue or ink. Flickering

524
00:25:32,359 --> 00:25:35,160
egged sign pulse weakly. Far ahead above it, a discarded

525
00:25:35,160 --> 00:25:37,559
fire alarm plate hung askew, and a single piece of

526
00:25:37,559 --> 00:25:40,559
book tape fluttered in the artificial breeze. The reading this

527
00:25:40,759 --> 00:25:43,279
triangle arrows seemed to indicate the throat left turn, so

528
00:25:43,400 --> 00:25:46,279
I ushed forward, as raking for Indeck's marks or carved initials,

529
00:25:46,359 --> 00:25:49,599
anything to break out the anonymous sness. The corridor bent

530
00:25:49,680 --> 00:25:52,920
took two hard turns. A half secured panel of dry

531
00:25:52,920 --> 00:25:55,559
well jutted out in the gloom. I skirted it, holding

532
00:25:55,559 --> 00:25:57,880
my breath at the sensation that the very walls leaned inward,

533
00:25:57,920 --> 00:26:01,119
breathing bove forest and bulbs in time with the flickering

534
00:26:01,119 --> 00:26:03,640
exit signed a slow a Hithwick Morse two pattern to

535
00:26:03,680 --> 00:26:06,759
be random. Midway down, a pair of batterts sneak azole

536
00:26:06,880 --> 00:26:09,559
canvas one brandless peeped up from behind a rotating card

537
00:26:09,599 --> 00:26:13,359
of microfilm reels. My chest locked, hot battering into my ribs.

538
00:26:14,079 --> 00:26:16,200
I opened my mouth to call out, but nothing escape

539
00:26:16,200 --> 00:26:19,079
but air edging closer. I nudged the cup of matto.

540
00:26:19,839 --> 00:26:22,400
The shoes were empty, their towns thrust forward, a glads

541
00:26:22,440 --> 00:26:25,680
frayed as if abandoned midstep. Next to them, a library

542
00:26:25,680 --> 00:26:27,880
card Reachel Avery's Again, or a ghosts of It floated,

543
00:26:27,920 --> 00:26:30,799
puddled in a shadow, half embedded in gummy dust. I

544
00:26:30,839 --> 00:26:34,720
crutched and picked it up. This one cold slick, its reverse.

545
00:26:34,720 --> 00:26:38,480
I'd read Keeper's Race, but Reader's Restore. A scraping sound

546
00:26:38,480 --> 00:26:41,079
bloomed behind me, a wire basket being wheeled a limestone.

547
00:26:41,680 --> 00:26:44,400
I whirled, clutching the card and found only darkness pulsing

548
00:26:44,440 --> 00:26:46,640
the corridor behind me. Subtly different to me, bend a

549
00:26:46,640 --> 00:26:50,079
missing shelf, Their rooms change people. Two frays took on

550
00:26:50,160 --> 00:26:52,519
a shape beneath the skin of the maize, alive and mutual.

551
00:26:53,160 --> 00:26:56,279
Pushing ahead, I found myself at a banking of catalog drawers,

552
00:26:56,359 --> 00:26:59,920
each handle labeled with a montagne. My fingers drifted along them.

553
00:27:00,000 --> 00:27:03,319
September nineteen eighty eight Jean two thousand three February nineteen

554
00:27:03,319 --> 00:27:07,200
seventy two. One drawer resisted. I braced u palm against

555
00:27:07,200 --> 00:27:09,839
the old oak and tugged hard. The inside held not

556
00:27:09,920 --> 00:27:13,279
paper slips, but dozens of pocket sized photographs, most black

557
00:27:13,319 --> 00:27:16,319
and white faces blurred if features worn away by time,

558
00:27:16,359 --> 00:27:18,480
except in the lower right corner, where someone huding my

559
00:27:18,480 --> 00:27:21,519
own initials, and then beneath that the looping black letters

560
00:27:21,759 --> 00:27:25,599
Avery a Clada interrupted my stare down the corridor. A

561
00:27:25,640 --> 00:27:27,559
new edge of yellow light appeared, the kind that came

562
00:27:27,559 --> 00:27:31,599
from staff offices, florestened insire shadows moved against it too,

563
00:27:31,880 --> 00:27:34,880
maybe three shapes and rapid furtive motion. I held my

564
00:27:34,920 --> 00:27:38,200
breath and pressed back behind the open drawer, heart leaping voses,

565
00:27:38,279 --> 00:27:42,240
rose cliff fragments. She won't last, not at this threshold.

566
00:27:42,519 --> 00:27:45,240
Who were late rikers will slip. We have to mark her.

567
00:27:45,839 --> 00:27:50,359
Avery's case was different, exception spiral. My hands trembled through

568
00:27:50,359 --> 00:27:52,319
the gap in the drawer. I spotted staff badge, a

569
00:27:52,359 --> 00:27:54,640
crisp new card and boss with my name dropped among

570
00:27:54,680 --> 00:27:56,599
the photos, as if I'd left it the months before.

571
00:27:57,160 --> 00:28:00,279
An icicle of fear splintered in my chest. I already

572
00:28:00,319 --> 00:28:04,839
mapped this route, failed return again. The voices receated. I

573
00:28:04,880 --> 00:28:07,559
pocketed the badge and pressed further into the stacks, fingers

574
00:28:07,559 --> 00:28:10,799
white against the spines. Walls now pulsed out words, then in,

575
00:28:10,960 --> 00:28:14,039
as though drawing their next breath. I pressed against a recess,

576
00:28:14,119 --> 00:28:17,160
forcing myself not to close my eyes. A faint giggle

577
00:28:17,160 --> 00:28:19,759
wound its way through the stack, sauvas maybe, or a

578
00:28:19,839 --> 00:28:22,519
memory of her voice trailing off into threaded, metallic groan

579
00:28:22,559 --> 00:28:24,720
that sounded like a shelf shifting beneath the bearable way

580
00:28:25,440 --> 00:28:28,599
Above me, something stirred, a flotto like pages ruffling overhead.

581
00:28:29,160 --> 00:28:31,440
With now're left to go, I flattened the reading Less

582
00:28:31,480 --> 00:28:33,480
against my chest, whispering too it as if it could

583
00:28:33,519 --> 00:28:36,079
lead me free, hoping against hope that somewhere some eggs

584
00:28:36,119 --> 00:28:38,440
It waited still at the words from the post. It

585
00:28:38,480 --> 00:28:41,440
echered louder than any footstep. She never left. I wondered

586
00:28:41,440 --> 00:28:44,839
how either she now caught with unchanging walls, my own initials,

587
00:28:44,880 --> 00:28:48,240
the noose ghost. The light stammered overhead, and dark closed

588
00:28:48,279 --> 00:28:50,640
and again, so absolute I could almost smell its hunger.

589
00:28:51,240 --> 00:28:53,480
I moved through the new corridor, with the Readingless pressed

590
00:28:53,480 --> 00:28:55,599
flat in my palm, each step giving beneath my weight

591
00:28:55,640 --> 00:28:58,599
in that slow sinking way of old institutional carpet. The

592
00:28:58,640 --> 00:29:01,599
next turn brought me into a vault shaped disclosure, spines

593
00:29:01,640 --> 00:29:04,759
bowing over my head, the air denser than ever On instinct,

594
00:29:04,839 --> 00:29:07,279
I ducked shoulders, hunching, even though nothing brushed my hair.

595
00:29:07,839 --> 00:29:10,720
The walls pressed forward so close that I recognized individual

596
00:29:10,720 --> 00:29:13,319
with spits of paper, torn corners, initials, and graphite. A

597
00:29:13,359 --> 00:29:15,759
drip of something like candle wax crusted into a gutter.

598
00:29:16,359 --> 00:29:18,519
The light was fungal, fitful, as though the bulbs drew

599
00:29:18,559 --> 00:29:21,319
the current from memory alone. A chill tickled my nape,

600
00:29:21,359 --> 00:29:23,559
and I realized I was bracing for the next escalation,

601
00:29:23,680 --> 00:29:26,119
half expecting to see Avery a self materialize around the

602
00:29:26,200 --> 00:29:28,119
end of a range of bookshelves, a polite smile, a

603
00:29:28,160 --> 00:29:31,160
bundle of overduo novels clutched to her ribs. But nothing

604
00:29:31,240 --> 00:29:34,119
arrived except my own distorted shadow, slanting and stretching as

605
00:29:34,119 --> 00:29:37,079
the fixture over my head buzzed and waned, each foots

606
00:29:37,079 --> 00:29:39,279
to roll through hollow spaces deeper than the visible floor

607
00:29:39,279 --> 00:29:41,240
plant could ever contain, echoing out and back in a

608
00:29:41,279 --> 00:29:44,640
cross fire of invisible passageways. I checked the coded notes

609
00:29:44,680 --> 00:29:47,519
on Avery's reading lists, squinting at her Triangles and circles

610
00:29:47,799 --> 00:29:50,279
matching the markings were brass shelf labels gleaned faintly in

611
00:29:50,319 --> 00:29:53,720
the haze. At the next intersection, the four slope shallowly upward,

612
00:29:53,759 --> 00:29:56,119
unexpected in a basement, given that everything should have leveled

613
00:29:56,160 --> 00:29:59,319
out long ago. Here books were sorted not alphabetically, but

614
00:29:59,359 --> 00:30:02,000
instead by year spines, none newer the nineteen ninety three.

615
00:30:02,519 --> 00:30:05,039
I ran a shaky finger across the shelf marked accessions

616
00:30:05,119 --> 00:30:07,400
nineteen seventy seven, nineteen eighty seven to none of which

617
00:30:07,440 --> 00:30:10,079
should have survived so many purges, Yet here they'd been left.

618
00:30:10,160 --> 00:30:13,400
Cover's warped labels culling. My breath, condensed in the cold,

619
00:30:13,440 --> 00:30:16,319
caught silvery in the play of dying fluorescence. A door

620
00:30:16,359 --> 00:30:18,680
at the corridor wass then trembled imperceptibly, as though someone

621
00:30:18,720 --> 00:30:21,319
had touched a knob from the other side. Before I

622
00:30:21,319 --> 00:30:23,880
could second guess myself, I moved towards buttes, making the

623
00:30:23,920 --> 00:30:28,000
faintest tacky sand. I paused, listened. There was movement within

624
00:30:28,079 --> 00:30:30,400
a scrape, and moderate the shadowy hush of something being

625
00:30:30,440 --> 00:30:33,200
past hand to hand. I pressed a knuckle firmly to

626
00:30:33,240 --> 00:30:35,599
the reading list remembered the cryptic map. If you reached

627
00:30:35,599 --> 00:30:39,160
the lost office, do not speak, do not refuse. Inching forward,

628
00:30:39,279 --> 00:30:42,279
I took in details. The door was a relic waist.

629
00:30:42,359 --> 00:30:45,160
I pushed plates in ancient library. Stencils wore nearly illegible.

630
00:30:45,720 --> 00:30:48,680
Underneath the battered window, A tape placard read reference internal

631
00:30:48,759 --> 00:30:52,119
use only Avery's symbol. The circle triangle had been gouged

632
00:30:52,119 --> 00:30:55,079
softly into the grain. When a lean closer, the door

633
00:30:55,119 --> 00:30:57,759
gave under my hand, not pushing open, but inhaling, swinging

634
00:30:57,799 --> 00:31:01,480
inward with no resistance. Rightly knife through the gloom, bleaching

635
00:31:01,559 --> 00:31:05,319
my eyes. I went in with eyelids narrowed, straining for forocus.

636
00:31:05,960 --> 00:31:07,599
The room within could have been an office from any

637
00:31:07,640 --> 00:31:10,720
nineteen ages film, beige pained peeling in wide flat patches,

638
00:31:10,759 --> 00:31:12,759
the copper hulking in the corner. A trio of battered

639
00:31:12,839 --> 00:31:16,319
rolling chairs around a laminate table. Folders stacked into careful,

640
00:31:16,359 --> 00:31:19,920
deliberate towers filled almost every surface, many stamped for view, complete,

641
00:31:20,079 --> 00:31:23,319
others open and gaping, half crammed with returned slips. The

642
00:31:23,359 --> 00:31:25,920
air smelled wrong, those and lace with cleaning fluid, thick

643
00:31:25,960 --> 00:31:28,839
with something mineral. I only realized there wasn't a lone.

644
00:31:28,839 --> 00:31:31,279
When a cough cut the silence. At the head of

645
00:31:31,279 --> 00:31:33,920
the table, saw three figures in nondescript suit's faces blowed

646
00:31:33,960 --> 00:31:36,559
by shadow edges, disintegrating at the edges where my vision

647
00:31:36,599 --> 00:31:40,119
failed to resolve. Their features never quite snapped into focus,

648
00:31:40,160 --> 00:31:43,440
sometimes annular, sometimes rounded, coats melting at the cuss into

649
00:31:43,480 --> 00:31:47,039
the table's grain. They spoken murmurs, never raising their voices,

650
00:31:47,079 --> 00:31:50,440
tapping on calculators and old check in locks. Beside them,

651
00:31:50,440 --> 00:31:53,960
two standing figures salted slits into piles. One's nails were

652
00:31:53,960 --> 00:31:56,240
bitten nearly to the quick. The other's gold wedding band

653
00:31:56,279 --> 00:31:59,799
rotated restlessly as she worked. A third figure lingered quietly

654
00:31:59,799 --> 00:32:03,000
at the the filing cabinet, his face invisible postureself familiarly

655
00:32:03,000 --> 00:32:06,559
felt a lurching blink of recognition. Weber no taller, broader

656
00:32:06,599 --> 00:32:08,640
in the shoulders, but his hands carried the same tire

657
00:32:08,680 --> 00:32:12,079
turmo the librarian's muscle memory. I took a step backward,

658
00:32:12,200 --> 00:32:14,200
but a fourth presence blocked the door. A blow person

659
00:32:14,200 --> 00:32:16,839
with hair drawn tightly back, clipworred clasped to her chest.

660
00:32:17,559 --> 00:32:20,960
She didn't meet my gaze. Instead, she whispered, you miss

661
00:32:21,039 --> 00:32:24,200
your last meeting, Ellen, are you returning or renewing? My

662
00:32:24,240 --> 00:32:27,519
feet rooted to the spot. What what is this? A

663
00:32:27,599 --> 00:32:31,119
ridiculous question, but I'd lost the talent for pretense. None

664
00:32:31,160 --> 00:32:34,119
of the figures at the table answered immediately. Instead, the

665
00:32:34,160 --> 00:32:36,799
woman at the door motioned me in her name badge

666
00:32:36,880 --> 00:32:40,559
barely lodgible read ce LH. Hoxley, the designation on the

667
00:32:40,559 --> 00:32:43,200
folded corner of her badge master ghosted patron. Court had

668
00:32:43,240 --> 00:32:46,759
seen on dozens of returns. Patrons can't stay past their turns,

669
00:32:46,839 --> 00:32:48,880
she said, voice even and soft, as if I'd asked

670
00:32:48,880 --> 00:32:52,000
about over g finds. Shelves can really for a while,

671
00:32:52,079 --> 00:32:54,279
but at some point you're either lost or you were

672
00:32:54,319 --> 00:32:57,119
made a keeper. At that, her eyes flicked up and

673
00:32:57,160 --> 00:32:59,480
a glimpse of brightness crowling behind her pupils the same

674
00:32:59,599 --> 00:33:01,759
date to cl I'd seen in the old catalog screens.

675
00:33:02,480 --> 00:33:05,799
I shook my head. I don't avery her name keep surfacing.

676
00:33:06,440 --> 00:33:09,000
I gestured at the notebook, my words stumbling out, the books,

677
00:33:09,000 --> 00:33:12,640
the rooms that move, the arraysed patrons, Why me? She shrugged.

678
00:33:13,319 --> 00:33:15,480
Every so often one of he gaps the audit. The

679
00:33:15,480 --> 00:33:18,000
wreckos want to balance. They always do. If a slot's

680
00:33:18,039 --> 00:33:20,960
left open, the library finds a replacement. One at the

681
00:33:20,960 --> 00:33:23,400
table stowed a shadow pitch larger than his frame, folding

682
00:33:23,440 --> 00:33:26,519
a batted folder shut. Rachel Avery was one of us,

683
00:33:26,599 --> 00:33:29,759
He said, she made her wrecor too visible, transfer too

684
00:33:29,759 --> 00:33:32,559
many gaps, She left, hints Ellen, but she also closed

685
00:33:32,559 --> 00:33:35,279
a circuit. At this the figures at the table resumed

686
00:33:35,240 --> 00:33:38,000
shuffling papers, speaking now in rapid clacks and sibilant warnings,

687
00:33:38,039 --> 00:33:40,640
too quick for me to pass. I thought, no, I

688
00:33:40,720 --> 00:33:42,319
knew the very err in the room pulls in time

689
00:33:42,400 --> 00:33:45,680
with their words. I stumbled backward, almost tripping over my

690
00:33:45,680 --> 00:33:48,839
own boots, but the corridor behind me had sealed. The

691
00:33:48,880 --> 00:33:51,680
woman at the door moved aside just enough. Too much

692
00:33:51,720 --> 00:33:54,799
knoledge can't be returned, she murmured, half to herself, half

693
00:33:54,839 --> 00:33:57,680
as if ticking through a regulation. A seldom click drew

694
00:33:57,680 --> 00:33:59,599
my attention to the window. Inside the pane, A mirrored

695
00:33:59,599 --> 00:34:02,079
surfish showed the stacks behind me, Only now they looped

696
00:34:02,079 --> 00:34:05,279
away in directions my eyes couldn't quite follow up over sideways,

697
00:34:05,440 --> 00:34:07,720
as if the architecture was inverting itself. Even as I

698
00:34:07,759 --> 00:34:11,199
watched list in hand, I desperately tried to match symbols

699
00:34:11,239 --> 00:34:13,679
to doorways, tracking Avery's glyphs as she left a treasure

700
00:34:13,719 --> 00:34:16,599
hunt to salvation. A second voice rose dry as the

701
00:34:16,639 --> 00:34:19,559
pages in the older shelf returned to process. Ellen that

702
00:34:19,639 --> 00:34:22,079
of the collection thans you to echo. It's your choice.

703
00:34:22,559 --> 00:34:25,559
A world searching for an opening. On the desk, a

704
00:34:25,679 --> 00:34:28,440
register slid half off its pad, scattering a dozen cars

705
00:34:28,440 --> 00:34:31,400
onto the floor. One landed at my feat Rachel Avery's

706
00:34:31,480 --> 00:34:34,000
A print faded, and beside it mine eat m C,

707
00:34:34,280 --> 00:34:36,159
stamped not with today's date, but one ten years in

708
00:34:36,199 --> 00:34:40,000
the future. My chest crushed with cold. The figures watched,

709
00:34:40,119 --> 00:34:42,559
or seemed to you, their faces tinting with something like regret.

710
00:34:43,239 --> 00:34:46,800
The archives still hungry, the woman repeated, you know too much,

711
00:34:46,880 --> 00:34:50,719
you stay or reraise On impulse, I seized Rachel's card

712
00:34:50,719 --> 00:34:53,800
and pressed it to Avery's reading list. The symbols danced

713
00:34:53,800 --> 00:34:57,920
dimly in the sputtering fluorescent glow. I remembered a triangle circled,

714
00:34:57,920 --> 00:35:00,360
then the spine with the chip corner the penciled from

715
00:35:00,360 --> 00:35:04,280
her instructions. Instead of yielding, the walls now seemed to convulse,

716
00:35:04,480 --> 00:35:06,760
the ceiling, groaning tiles popping in and out, as if

717
00:35:06,800 --> 00:35:09,880
the library reconsidered my path with every choice. I duck

718
00:35:09,920 --> 00:35:12,679
low and darted toward the exit sign its bonn. As

719
00:35:12,679 --> 00:35:14,800
I neared its position, swapping from left to right and

720
00:35:14,880 --> 00:35:17,920
higher to lower, my stomach swooped nau suspinning up as

721
00:35:17,920 --> 00:35:20,840
the endpoints slipped from reach. One of the keeper's mail

722
00:35:20,960 --> 00:35:23,239
in distinct except for a heavy gold watch, gave chase

723
00:35:23,320 --> 00:35:26,039
shoes squeaking on chip flanolium. As the walls themselves bulged,

724
00:35:26,199 --> 00:35:29,320
forming shelves when one had been seconds earlier. The list

725
00:35:29,320 --> 00:35:32,400
averies and coded directions snapped to clarity, followed the numbers,

726
00:35:32,400 --> 00:35:34,280
ignored the doors that flick could take only what you

727
00:35:34,280 --> 00:35:38,000
can carry. In memory, adrenaline surging, I scanned the coal numbers.

728
00:35:38,719 --> 00:35:41,039
Ninety two point one Avery stood at shoulder height, a

729
00:35:41,119 --> 00:35:43,519
dust filmed shelf without any books, only a stack of

730
00:35:43,599 --> 00:35:46,000
yellow returned slips in a single pen, the same brand

731
00:35:46,000 --> 00:35:49,719
as mine. A crash behind me, another keeper now blocked

732
00:35:49,719 --> 00:35:52,320
the leftmost door, their shadows stretching arms that stretched to

733
00:35:52,360 --> 00:35:55,360
herd me back the path before me, branch shifting. If

734
00:35:55,400 --> 00:35:58,599
I chose wrong, I would double back forever. I pressed

735
00:35:58,599 --> 00:36:01,480
against the farther wall, ignoring in a looming shelf. My

736
00:36:01,559 --> 00:36:04,639
shoulder caught the darkness tearing at my sleeve. A cart

737
00:36:04,719 --> 00:36:08,599
rolled past, propelled by no visible hand, its arrangements spelled

738
00:36:08,639 --> 00:36:13,480
in battered volumes, read between no returns, encouragement of fret.

739
00:36:14,079 --> 00:36:16,239
I lunched after it, the cut rolling into a half

740
00:36:16,280 --> 00:36:18,559
lit stairwell, stopping abruptly as the light of a flickered

741
00:36:18,559 --> 00:36:21,639
into solidity. Before the keepers could close in, I squeezed

742
00:36:21,639 --> 00:36:23,440
into the stairwell, the door swinging after me with the

743
00:36:23,480 --> 00:36:26,679
teeth rattling slam. The geography blurred for a split second,

744
00:36:26,679 --> 00:36:29,599
then snapped into new focus. A strip of tail and

745
00:36:29,639 --> 00:36:31,760
a foot wide and yellowed marked a path I didn't

746
00:36:31,760 --> 00:36:35,239
recall from any evacuation map. The stairwells banister wobbled in

747
00:36:35,239 --> 00:36:37,519
my grip, called a steel left in winter air, and

748
00:36:37,599 --> 00:36:40,440
somewhere below, a harmonic wobble like a ringing bell, suggested

749
00:36:40,440 --> 00:36:43,320
that someone or something had set the steps, vibrating in anticipation.

750
00:36:43,880 --> 00:36:47,239
Panick walled with calculation. I come to the reading list

751
00:36:47,280 --> 00:36:51,400
Avery's lost desperate map triangle double slash exit at the

752
00:36:51,400 --> 00:36:54,440
red line. Her handwriting was spiky, impatient, impossibly familiar, as

753
00:36:54,440 --> 00:36:57,159
if I'd ridden it myself. The clatter of pursuit rose

754
00:36:57,199 --> 00:37:00,159
behind me as printed downward, breath tearing my throat. As

755
00:37:00,159 --> 00:37:03,360
the echo of fritfuls entangled in the architecture, I glimpsed

756
00:37:03,360 --> 00:37:05,679
through the stable grill. Another room sat, as if from

757
00:37:05,679 --> 00:37:08,639
decades ago, staff in old fashioned gray smocks, bushing carts,

758
00:37:08,639 --> 00:37:11,159
a long carpet. It rolled with dust. The door at

759
00:37:11,159 --> 00:37:13,519
the next landing swung wide as I arrived, opening onto

760
00:37:13,559 --> 00:37:15,920
a service hall that was both familiar and changed for us,

761
00:37:15,960 --> 00:37:18,079
and cones of light struggled against the haze, and a

762
00:37:18,159 --> 00:37:20,480
painted and no admittance sign peeled at the edges, shifting

763
00:37:20,480 --> 00:37:23,239
beneath my gaze like something alive. I stumbled out a

764
00:37:23,280 --> 00:37:26,599
hot jackammering for the briefest instant I thought I'd escaped,

765
00:37:26,679 --> 00:37:29,960
that ordinary rules could reassert themselves. At the end of

766
00:37:30,000 --> 00:37:32,719
the passage, a staff elevator, when I remembered rarely working,

767
00:37:32,719 --> 00:37:35,159
stood with its door stuck half way a jar. I

768
00:37:35,199 --> 00:37:37,840
slept through, praying the machinery would remember how to behave.

769
00:37:38,559 --> 00:37:42,719
The elevator's interior was cool, metallic, echoing a faded inspection

770
00:37:42,760 --> 00:37:46,280
ticket read last maintained in nineteen eighty seven. Beneath someone

771
00:37:46,320 --> 00:37:48,480
had stuck a library bockered, no book code, just the

772
00:37:48,519 --> 00:37:51,599
initials RAW. I pressed the deep button for grand, holding

773
00:37:51,599 --> 00:37:55,159
Avery's card between my knuckles. The lift move was stately reluctance,

774
00:37:55,199 --> 00:37:57,920
the gears gnashing faintly, as if gnawing on their own history.

775
00:37:58,360 --> 00:38:01,679
The ride up was excruciating. The little cage stopped lurch,

776
00:38:01,840 --> 00:38:05,280
then finally ascended rickishing through layers of memory and architecture.

777
00:38:05,920 --> 00:38:08,559
I pressed myself into the Father's corner, the cords sweating

778
00:38:08,559 --> 00:38:11,119
in my palm, the readingless damp from my grip. The

779
00:38:11,159 --> 00:38:13,440
doors potted half, then by degrees, and dumped me into

780
00:38:13,440 --> 00:38:15,679
a cold corridor, stripped of books, led only by a

781
00:38:15,719 --> 00:38:18,920
single exit sign. Standing at the end was Goldstein, the

782
00:38:19,039 --> 00:38:21,599
night security guard, hands folded all cowardly in front of

783
00:38:21,599 --> 00:38:24,559
his belt. His eyes tracked mine. The iris is sharpen

784
00:38:24,559 --> 00:38:28,000
alertlets pressed into a single, unbroken line. He moved forward,

785
00:38:28,039 --> 00:38:30,599
offering his arm as if to steady me. For a moment,

786
00:38:30,679 --> 00:38:32,480
I thought hoped he might be real, a tether to

787
00:38:32,480 --> 00:38:35,440
something uncomplicated. You are not supposed to be done here,

788
00:38:35,519 --> 00:38:39,280
he said to an extraordinarily mild suppose to call for help. Eno.

789
00:38:39,920 --> 00:38:42,039
His voice echoed weirdly in the tile, picking up a

790
00:38:42,039 --> 00:38:45,119
metallic wine. I got lost. I managed to startle to

791
00:38:45,159 --> 00:38:48,039
smooth the tremor in my voice. I was following, trying

792
00:38:48,039 --> 00:38:50,360
to map. The rooms kept changing. There were people keepers,

793
00:38:50,400 --> 00:38:53,400
I think. He nodded the gesture just a touch too slow.

794
00:38:54,000 --> 00:38:55,840
A lot of stuff lose their way at night. Too

795
00:38:55,880 --> 00:38:58,400
many aunty eyes, All the old bliprints bleed into each other.

796
00:38:59,039 --> 00:39:01,800
He kept his tone hushed, as if citing a library regulation.

797
00:39:02,440 --> 00:39:04,480
But if you walk the wrong circles for too long,

798
00:39:04,639 --> 00:39:07,079
you run into old business that can be hard to undo.

799
00:39:07,840 --> 00:39:09,880
I tried to step past, but he leaned in close

800
00:39:09,960 --> 00:39:11,440
enough for me to see the ghost of a tier

801
00:39:11,480 --> 00:39:13,239
in his left fiarlo but an old injury, the kind

802
00:39:13,239 --> 00:39:16,519
security guard's collect You didn't take anything from the review

803
00:39:16,559 --> 00:39:19,119
room to jew Tea asked, too interested in my answer.

804
00:39:19,760 --> 00:39:22,199
I pressed the reading list into my coatslining, feeling the

805
00:39:22,199 --> 00:39:24,519
outline of Avery's card and my own badge in my pocket.

806
00:39:25,119 --> 00:39:27,920
My mouth dried, just found old files that I lied

807
00:39:28,119 --> 00:39:31,400
not very well. Goldstein turned, motioning for me to follow

808
00:39:31,480 --> 00:39:34,320
him down the slanting corridor. He never looked back, his

809
00:39:34,360 --> 00:39:37,079
silhouette stiff and blurred at the edges. Under the harsh florescence.

810
00:39:37,800 --> 00:39:40,400
As we walked, he dropped hints soft Pobe's disguise as

811
00:39:40,440 --> 00:39:43,079
small talk. I've ever show you the s up slur.

812
00:39:43,199 --> 00:39:45,000
I always thought she stuck to the main level. She

813
00:39:45,039 --> 00:39:48,119
was one of the good ones. Miss her sometimes, I hesitated,

814
00:39:48,199 --> 00:39:51,400
recalling ofvs warnings, doors jamming, laughy. That came too late.

815
00:39:52,280 --> 00:39:54,599
She told me about the hollow walls, I said quietly.

816
00:39:55,119 --> 00:39:58,679
Goldstein's had tilted incrementally clock stop for some people. But

817
00:39:58,719 --> 00:40:00,800
the stacks always know your time. It pays to keep

818
00:40:00,800 --> 00:40:03,400
your recors clean if you want out. He stopped beside

819
00:40:03,400 --> 00:40:06,119
a battered side door leading to the staff lounge. The

820
00:40:06,159 --> 00:40:09,000
corridor had slunk away, fading into a slice of darkness.

821
00:40:09,679 --> 00:40:12,920
What's your plan now, he asked, voice thinning. I blinked

822
00:40:12,920 --> 00:40:16,199
suddenly and certain. I just want to get out. He

823
00:40:16,280 --> 00:40:19,400
watched me with a frank measured weight. Be careful not

824
00:40:19,440 --> 00:40:22,039
to leave anything behind, he advised, as if it mattered

825
00:40:22,599 --> 00:40:26,000
patron history. Swallow a lot, names, dates, habits, It finds room,

826
00:40:26,199 --> 00:40:28,880
not much. It gives up willingly. For a sick moment,

827
00:40:28,920 --> 00:40:31,519
I wondered if he'd bar my way. He motioned toward

828
00:40:31,559 --> 00:40:34,000
the stairwell and I hurried past, not daring to glance

829
00:40:34,000 --> 00:40:36,920
over my shoulder. The first thing that struck me outside

830
00:40:36,960 --> 00:40:39,599
was the damness of the morning air, cools biting, laced

831
00:40:39,639 --> 00:40:42,280
with a scent of pavement and exhaust. For a moment,

832
00:40:42,360 --> 00:40:44,559
I just stood there, the city's noise deafening after so

833
00:40:44,639 --> 00:40:48,119
much silence. I looked around four o'clock, the time on

834
00:40:48,199 --> 00:40:50,400
my phone, blinking in an aut four fifty five a m.

835
00:40:50,480 --> 00:40:53,159
And then set off for my apartment, myleg shuddery mine,

836
00:40:53,199 --> 00:40:56,199
refusing to quiet inside, I shut the door and sagged

837
00:40:56,239 --> 00:40:59,360
against it, sweat blooming cold under my shirt. The apartment

838
00:40:59,360 --> 00:41:02,480
was nancurry, I told myself. It had always felt temporary,

839
00:41:02,519 --> 00:41:04,960
a holding pattern until I decided whether the city suited me.

840
00:41:05,000 --> 00:41:08,119
But to night its reticence unerved me. Something was off.

841
00:41:08,239 --> 00:41:10,199
My copy of claud Atlas on the kitchen table was

842
00:41:10,239 --> 00:41:12,760
now in the bedroom of rifty clock, and the waalticked backwards.

843
00:41:12,960 --> 00:41:15,199
My spare keys hung in the wrong place, flipped on

844
00:41:15,280 --> 00:41:17,719
their ring. A framed photo on my desk, once a

845
00:41:17,719 --> 00:41:20,079
shot of myself and old friends, was now missing half

846
00:41:20,079 --> 00:41:22,480
its faces, fobbed, gone flat where faces should have been.

847
00:41:22,840 --> 00:41:25,079
I prowled for rooms as if they might rearrange themselves

848
00:41:25,119 --> 00:41:28,159
behind my back. My heart started with every new item

849
00:41:28,199 --> 00:41:30,840
that failed to settle properly in memory. I checked my

850
00:41:30,880 --> 00:41:34,119
phone's call log. Nothing since midnight, no mis alerts, no

851
00:41:34,239 --> 00:41:39,360
set messages. My computer's notifications were silent. The connections, once

852
00:41:39,360 --> 00:41:42,239
so ordinary, now suggested a breaking or a force forgetting

853
00:41:42,760 --> 00:41:44,559
Sleep darted away if I so much as pressed my

854
00:41:44,599 --> 00:41:47,480
eyes closed. When bleak gray dawn muscled its way through

855
00:41:47,480 --> 00:41:49,840
my blinds, I forced myself to get up brew coffee.

856
00:41:50,280 --> 00:41:52,400
The taste was sirre in ways I couldn't explain. I

857
00:41:52,480 --> 00:41:55,239
kept swallowing, as if consciousness alone could push away whatever

858
00:41:55,239 --> 00:41:58,360
the library I had worked into my bones still unsteady.

859
00:41:58,400 --> 00:42:00,760
A showered brushed my teeth, dressed out of habit, and

860
00:42:00,880 --> 00:42:04,079
left for work. At the library's entrance, my badge stuck

861
00:42:04,079 --> 00:42:06,360
in the scanner for the first time ever, blinking red.

862
00:42:06,880 --> 00:42:09,920
The guard at reception frowned, scanning the staffless without recognition.

863
00:42:10,519 --> 00:42:13,039
Do you have a work ordered? Tasked voice, polite, bored.

864
00:42:13,679 --> 00:42:18,159
I offered my name. He squinted, scrolling, Sorry, nothing matching.

865
00:42:18,320 --> 00:42:21,639
Maybe check with h R. I stepped aside, watching patron

866
00:42:21,639 --> 00:42:24,760
shuffle through the high old doors. None looked at me directly.

867
00:42:24,800 --> 00:42:27,039
The gazes drifted to my left side, skipping over me,

868
00:42:27,079 --> 00:42:30,039
as if the light between us divided unevenly. Even when

869
00:42:30,039 --> 00:42:32,599
I cleared my throat, no one flinched, no one paused.

870
00:42:33,159 --> 00:42:34,800
I felt as though I had been were cataloged as

871
00:42:34,800 --> 00:42:37,320
a mere as much a presence, and the periphery easily dismissed.

872
00:42:37,880 --> 00:42:40,039
At my locker, I twisted the dial and its one

873
00:42:40,039 --> 00:42:44,119
open without resistance. The shelf was empty, My extra sweater,

874
00:42:44,280 --> 00:42:47,159
stashed umbrella, even the small stash of kof Drop's all gone.

875
00:42:47,599 --> 00:42:51,559
Alva's locker, once beside mine, stood open, utterly bare. I

876
00:42:51,599 --> 00:42:55,679
tried her number, disconnected. Not even a dial toned, just

877
00:42:55,719 --> 00:42:58,440
a dull, mechanical beat, the universal mocker of an abandoned

878
00:42:58,440 --> 00:43:01,840
line in the break room whereber brush passed as down,

879
00:43:02,159 --> 00:43:05,079
either recognize in nor acknowledging me, treating my physical presence

880
00:43:05,119 --> 00:43:06,719
as little more than the shadow left by a late

881
00:43:06,760 --> 00:43:10,039
shift worker. His posture was identical to how I remembered,

882
00:43:10,079 --> 00:43:12,039
but his manner had thinned remote in a way I

883
00:43:12,039 --> 00:43:15,440
doubted I could have invented. Staff drifted through, glancing past

884
00:43:15,440 --> 00:43:18,639
me with cheerful indifference. At no point did throat clearing

885
00:43:18,760 --> 00:43:22,079
or a mumbled greeting drawn notice. I trace the edges

886
00:43:22,119 --> 00:43:24,400
of my stuff badge, thumbing the corners, half hoping for

887
00:43:24,440 --> 00:43:26,159
a mistake in the lamination or a clue in the

888
00:43:26,159 --> 00:43:30,480
expiration date. Nothing. By mid day, my anxiety had evolved

889
00:43:30,480 --> 00:43:32,480
into scraping at the inside of my head of persistence,

890
00:43:32,480 --> 00:43:35,320
spiny discomfort, like static fuzzing the space between my thoughts.

891
00:43:36,079 --> 00:43:38,880
Near the circulation desk, a slip of paper caught my eye.

892
00:43:39,280 --> 00:43:41,239
It had been slid undo the c returned hatch, its

893
00:43:41,280 --> 00:43:43,039
out shewed up, as though some one had fidgeted with

894
00:43:43,039 --> 00:43:46,239
it before committing. On its narrow ruled lines, A message

895
00:43:46,320 --> 00:43:50,800
hyperton read, don't forget your return date. The phrase felt surgical,

896
00:43:50,840 --> 00:43:52,840
cutting through my fatigue with the precision of an order.

897
00:43:53,360 --> 00:43:55,559
I turned the slip over in my hand, confirming there

898
00:43:55,599 --> 00:43:59,400
was no signature, no identifying mark. My stomach twisted with

899
00:43:59,440 --> 00:44:02,119
the cold threat. I stuffed it into my pocket, with

900
00:44:02,159 --> 00:44:05,360
Avery's list pulse rising in my chest. For the rest

901
00:44:05,360 --> 00:44:08,079
of the afternoon, I drifted half present, enamored, like a

902
00:44:08,119 --> 00:44:10,400
patron searching for a but that might never have existed.

903
00:44:11,000 --> 00:44:13,880
I tried the catalog system. My login failed to recognize me.

904
00:44:14,000 --> 00:44:16,000
I found no record of myself in the morning's clock

905
00:44:16,000 --> 00:44:19,079
and ledger. I tried to page back through transactions for

906
00:44:19,159 --> 00:44:21,079
the prior week. Each time the system spat out of

907
00:44:21,079 --> 00:44:25,559
permission deny. I called Weber's extension. He answered, voiced genail,

908
00:44:25,599 --> 00:44:28,559
but distracted. Yes, can I help with the reference order?

909
00:44:29,159 --> 00:44:33,239
I offered my name, feeling the absurdity close around my nerves. Sorry,

910
00:44:33,440 --> 00:44:36,000
must be a tempt I don't remember. He hung up

911
00:44:36,000 --> 00:44:39,480
with soft finality. Nothing stable remained save for the echoes

912
00:44:39,480 --> 00:44:41,920
of last night's maize, the soft sliding books, the indelible

913
00:44:42,000 --> 00:44:45,079
hungry stare of the keepers, apharies, and coated instructions, burning

914
00:44:45,079 --> 00:44:47,920
a slow scar into my memory. It was evening before

915
00:44:47,920 --> 00:44:49,599
I slipped into what I was now sure would be

916
00:44:49,599 --> 00:44:53,119
my lust shift. Everyone worked around me. No one addressed

917
00:44:53,119 --> 00:44:56,000
me or asked for assistance. I watched the clock drift

918
00:44:56,000 --> 00:44:58,760
toward closing, then slipped through the main stacks one final time,

919
00:44:58,920 --> 00:45:01,320
recording my findings to the recorder i'd kept head and

920
00:45:01,360 --> 00:45:04,440
in my coat. My voice sounded raw, thinner, fainter than

921
00:45:04,440 --> 00:45:08,079
I'd remembered memo for internal records. I whispered into the

922
00:45:08,119 --> 00:45:11,480
mike Ellen Marie Cartwright catalogias since January Ivan covered a

923
00:45:11,519 --> 00:45:13,880
recurring anomally Friday returns logged in the names of the

924
00:45:13,920 --> 00:45:16,840
seas pittrons, staff records, altered or arrays hidden rooms that

925
00:45:16,880 --> 00:45:19,440
loop back on themselves Rachel. Every elate staff member or

926
00:45:19,440 --> 00:45:22,599
pittron still circulates. Staff who looked too lawnful out of record.

927
00:45:22,679 --> 00:45:26,559
Several names lost, including recent genitorial, however not present on

928
00:45:26,599 --> 00:45:29,880
current lists. Current access has been revoked. Evidence includes slips,

929
00:45:29,960 --> 00:45:32,800
reading less, slash map, and audio's availlance. My badge is

930
00:45:32,800 --> 00:45:35,639
now unrecognized in all systems. Weber and Goldstein unsure of

931
00:45:35,719 --> 00:45:38,480
complicit or only tools will attempt to deposit files in

932
00:45:38,519 --> 00:45:40,800
the main ledge of privileged endurers. If not, some one

933
00:45:40,840 --> 00:45:43,719
will find this or not. I ended the recording and

934
00:45:43,760 --> 00:45:46,159
placed the device deep in a forgotten shelf in reference,

935
00:45:46,320 --> 00:45:48,599
praying the shelf would resist the churne of changing rooms

936
00:45:48,599 --> 00:45:51,000
for just a little while. On the way out, I

937
00:45:51,079 --> 00:45:53,880
checked the Westdok House one last time. The wheels of

938
00:45:53,880 --> 00:45:56,880
a cart creaked in the shadows. A faint laugh too reedy.

939
00:45:56,920 --> 00:45:58,840
Two shrill drifted from the basement hulk one before I

940
00:45:58,880 --> 00:46:01,440
could turn. My last act before leaving was to open

941
00:46:01,519 --> 00:46:03,239
the envelope I'd mail to myself in the hope that

942
00:46:03,320 --> 00:46:06,559
some artifact might at last memory inside a cat showed

943
00:46:06,559 --> 00:46:09,440
Avery's grip, tight, almost childlike. You can bleach a name

944
00:46:09,480 --> 00:46:11,880
from paper, but the echo lingers return. What you carry

945
00:46:12,400 --> 00:46:14,079
in the corner. A day to day is stamped in

946
00:46:14,119 --> 00:46:17,639
crisp bread. I walked home under dirtyach sodium light, passing

947
00:46:17,639 --> 00:46:20,960
through a city that seemed just one degree misaligned. Strangers

948
00:46:20,960 --> 00:46:23,199
failed to meet my gaze, and shop windows reflected a

949
00:46:23,199 --> 00:46:25,480
blur out where my outline should have been. To night,

950
00:46:25,559 --> 00:46:27,519
the world is quiet, the city's living weight kept at

951
00:46:27,519 --> 00:46:30,360
bay by one slin door. I sit at my kitchen table,

952
00:46:30,360 --> 00:46:33,199
listening to the room settler around me. My reflection in

953
00:46:33,239 --> 00:46:37,000
the black window is lighter, almost vaporous. I left Avery's list,

954
00:46:37,079 --> 00:46:39,400
reading each cryptic mark in search of reassurance that I

955
00:46:39,400 --> 00:46:42,639
haven't been wholly lost. A sharp tap a business envelope

956
00:46:42,679 --> 00:46:45,559
slides under my door, my name typed and below it

957
00:46:45,639 --> 00:46:48,800
shall life retain through twenty twenty four. The card inside

958
00:46:48,880 --> 00:46:51,840
is rough, weathered. Its edge is softened by too many hands.

959
00:46:51,960 --> 00:46:54,719
The inco navery slashell and still damp despite so much time.

960
00:46:55,280 --> 00:46:57,800
It features a single return date thirteen days from now,

961
00:46:57,960 --> 00:46:59,920
and a dense mirror of finger print in a pattern

962
00:47:00,079 --> 00:47:03,000
that almost but not quite matches my own. I stand

963
00:47:03,000 --> 00:47:05,639
and pace the apartment. The carpets weave, catching at my toes.

964
00:47:05,679 --> 00:47:09,159
The little ridge is rearranged. I try to recall what's missing,

965
00:47:09,239 --> 00:47:12,760
but memory sifts itself strange. In a flicker, I remember

966
00:47:12,800 --> 00:47:16,000
my favorite Maga's blue, then as chits ceramic brown. The

967
00:47:16,039 --> 00:47:18,840
fridge hams takes on a dying wasp rhythm and then resolves.

968
00:47:19,599 --> 00:47:22,280
Anxiety propels me back toward the library, Yet I turn

969
00:47:22,320 --> 00:47:24,280
its compulsion over in my mind. I walk back to

970
00:47:24,320 --> 00:47:27,119
a place that will not hold my name. Instead, I

971
00:47:27,159 --> 00:47:30,039
log onto the library website from my phone. I search

972
00:47:30,079 --> 00:47:33,800
for Rachel, every nothing for myself. No result, yet a

973
00:47:33,840 --> 00:47:36,280
new reader e slash A is stamped as eligible for

974
00:47:36,280 --> 00:47:38,920
a return. A single chill breath leaks out of me.

975
00:47:39,519 --> 00:47:41,159
My hand shake as I unplugged, a router of the

976
00:47:41,199 --> 00:47:43,920
digital world, narrowing a ecko of thinky shuffing ripple of

977
00:47:43,960 --> 00:47:47,119
the stacks, while follows I can only describe as a

978
00:47:47,119 --> 00:47:49,480
soft confusion, a dropping away, a warping of what I know.

979
00:47:50,159 --> 00:47:53,079
Every noise in the corridor outside my apartment feels incriminating,

980
00:47:53,119 --> 00:47:55,960
the tread of shoes, the uncertain shudder of the elevator cable,

981
00:47:56,000 --> 00:47:59,159
the muted voices at Odd Iyer's. I forget, briefly the

982
00:47:59,280 --> 00:48:01,920
order of my own birth date. My tongue struggles over

983
00:48:01,960 --> 00:48:05,159
my family's names. Perhaps Alva or some one like Kurt

984
00:48:05,159 --> 00:48:08,320
once called this feeling being made an echo room scene smaller,

985
00:48:08,480 --> 00:48:11,159
the window tin deeper, the claw hands reversed their circuit,

986
00:48:11,199 --> 00:48:14,519
and then, just as suddenly recovered, I clutched a car,

987
00:48:14,679 --> 00:48:16,960
checking it for a rasure, for proof that I remained headed.

988
00:48:17,519 --> 00:48:20,880
But each time the Kish Sharborough living cut. I suppose

989
00:48:20,960 --> 00:48:22,719
this is my shelf life, for the duration I can

990
00:48:22,719 --> 00:48:25,360
stay visible before the library draws me back for processing,

991
00:48:25,480 --> 00:48:28,480
either as a keeper or a gap. Tomorrow, I know

992
00:48:28,719 --> 00:48:30,599
I'll wake and find at least one thing out of place,

993
00:48:30,599 --> 00:48:33,920
one book returned, one photograph blurred, one colleague's name gone.

994
00:48:34,599 --> 00:48:37,000
Even now, the night blooms with the scent of old books,

995
00:48:37,159 --> 00:48:39,559
musty and mournful, as though the stacks themselves have sunk

996
00:48:39,599 --> 00:48:44,119
under my skin. I record last message. My voice, tinyon playback,

997
00:48:44,360 --> 00:48:47,000
seems almost not mine. If you hear this, the system

998
00:48:47,000 --> 00:48:50,239
works if you remember me, return what you carry. I

999
00:48:50,320 --> 00:48:53,519
finished the memo, listening to the quiet. My eyes absorbed

1000
00:48:53,519 --> 00:48:56,599
the dim shifting reflection in the kitchen glass. I crossed

1001
00:48:56,599 --> 00:48:59,079
the threshold from the living to the in between. At

1002
00:48:59,119 --> 00:49:01,400
some point in the night, the hallway outside murmurs with

1003
00:49:01,440 --> 00:49:04,480
footsteps no louder than a page turning. The card slides

1004
00:49:04,519 --> 00:49:07,840
beneath my door. I bend and pick it up, embossed

1005
00:49:07,840 --> 00:49:11,239
in black shelf life beneath the patron name Avery slash

1006
00:49:11,280 --> 00:49:14,519
shell in active. I drift to the window. The city

1007
00:49:14,519 --> 00:49:17,920
sinks toward dawn. In the building's reflection. For one thin's eye,

1008
00:49:17,920 --> 00:49:20,480
I coms a figure shifting among all volumes, her hand

1009
00:49:20,519 --> 00:49:23,320
on mine, tuck close to the spines. I go back

1010
00:49:23,360 --> 00:49:26,719
to the library. This time the staff entrance yawns before me,

1011
00:49:26,920 --> 00:49:30,679
open and expectant. My steps do not echo. The security

1012
00:49:30,679 --> 00:49:32,800
glass blows at my approach. I tap in, and the

1013
00:49:32,880 --> 00:49:36,239
returns disk flickers. I walk the back aisles. No one looks.

1014
00:49:36,400 --> 00:49:38,920
No one startles at the sight of me on screen

1015
00:49:39,039 --> 00:49:41,840
if he shows an empty corridor, though I've just walked it.

1016
00:49:42,039 --> 00:49:44,800
Within the archive, one shelf stands ajar on my shelf.

1017
00:49:44,840 --> 00:49:47,960
I know now there in a Dussu's cradle waits a crisp,

1018
00:49:47,960 --> 00:49:50,800
blank card stamp with both our names, Avery, slash Ellen.

1019
00:49:51,239 --> 00:49:53,559
For a moment, I hesitate, Then I slit the evidence

1020
00:49:53,679 --> 00:49:56,480
envelope inside, nestling the list, the badge, the keys that

1021
00:49:56,559 --> 00:49:59,400
once fit a locker. The card absorbs my warmth, as

1022
00:49:59,400 --> 00:50:02,920
if ingesting each token as slow comfitting. Static rises as

1023
00:50:02,960 --> 00:50:05,199
the old PA system hums in a hollowed up for coverhead.

1024
00:50:05,719 --> 00:50:07,920
I record my name one more time, into the thin

1025
00:50:08,000 --> 00:50:11,559
and dark. The microphone buzz is the file saves from

1026
00:50:11,639 --> 00:50:14,800
the stack's far end. A woman's voice, distant, lilting serve

1027
00:50:14,840 --> 00:50:18,119
and whispers, thank you for returning just in time. I

1028
00:50:18,199 --> 00:50:21,440
close my eyes. In the hush between shelves, the universe

1029
00:50:21,440 --> 00:50:24,840
contracts to catalog entry, its stats blinking and not for circulation.

1030
00:50:25,519 --> 00:50:28,679
The next chef will come, The next keeper waits. Perhaps

1031
00:50:28,760 --> 00:50:31,360
for a while, I'll be lost among the living, perhaps

1032
00:50:31,400 --> 00:50:35,920
not Somewhere. Books are being shelved, Somewhere, someone is listening,

1033
00:50:36,679 --> 00:50:39,559
somewhere at the return de creeps closer. Yet the moment

1034
00:50:39,599 --> 00:50:43,039
does not release me into oblivion, opeses. Instead, the silence

1035
00:50:43,039 --> 00:50:45,280
teems with expectation, A hush chin to the static last

1036
00:50:45,320 --> 00:50:47,400
hum of the buildings ald in too calm, each molecule

1037
00:50:47,400 --> 00:50:49,480
of air strong tight across the fullness of the stacks.

1038
00:50:50,159 --> 00:50:52,360
I realize I am waiting for something. But even as

1039
00:50:52,400 --> 00:50:55,159
I pause, the world around me subtly asserts its own rules.

1040
00:50:55,679 --> 00:50:58,719
Footsteps of familiar cadence measured echoing from the upper level,

1041
00:50:59,360 --> 00:51:02,079
somewhere above the mechanical fruit of the lift gulps. And

1042
00:51:02,119 --> 00:51:04,519
I picture the elevator, its doors breathing open and shut

1043
00:51:04,519 --> 00:51:07,559
as if weighing. Emission voices cull down the stairwell. Sniffers

1044
00:51:07,599 --> 00:51:09,760
of staff patter at the rattle of a return's cart,

1045
00:51:10,239 --> 00:51:12,239
But when I strain to hear it, the content eludes me.

1046
00:51:12,920 --> 00:51:14,920
They seem to what pass just out of step of mine.

1047
00:51:15,000 --> 00:51:18,800
Their presence is slipping past, never intersecting. A compression in

1048
00:51:18,840 --> 00:51:20,800
the air follows each, as if my being here is

1049
00:51:20,840 --> 00:51:24,159
a gentle distortion, scene accounted, but always slightly beside the point.

1050
00:51:24,719 --> 00:51:27,119
I surrender to a compulsion that tags and pulls beneath

1051
00:51:27,119 --> 00:51:30,559
my thoughts. My hands drift over the shelf spines reading

1052
00:51:30,599 --> 00:51:33,920
titles no one has bored for decades. My badge, when

1053
00:51:33,920 --> 00:51:36,159
I check its back, now bears a gray heap bleached

1054
00:51:36,159 --> 00:51:37,960
shadow across my photo, with a face fading, but the

1055
00:51:38,039 --> 00:51:41,039
name burned ark by time and circulation. I wander deeper

1056
00:51:41,039 --> 00:51:43,199
into the stack, so where that I am both searching

1057
00:51:43,280 --> 00:51:46,440
and being shepherded. Light from the Claire story windows throws

1058
00:51:46,480 --> 00:51:49,360
speckled shadows, a hedge shifting, oily mootes moving in faint wind.

1059
00:51:49,360 --> 00:51:53,559
That isn't there The smell, an intensifying tangle of paper, oil, distemper,

1060
00:51:53,639 --> 00:51:56,559
and autumn leaves baked to dust. A sense of unfinished

1061
00:51:56,559 --> 00:51:59,960
business accumulates before each turn. Memory rings at the air

1062
00:52:00,199 --> 00:52:02,239
of the present, of his laughter trailing behind a broom

1063
00:52:02,239 --> 00:52:05,320
bristling with static, Whereb's muttered warnings fraying in the chiller air,

1064
00:52:05,480 --> 00:52:08,880
gull sends even a praising stare. For a moment bitterness

1065
00:52:08,880 --> 00:52:11,239
we was in me, resentment at the leave taking, erasure

1066
00:52:11,239 --> 00:52:13,360
of the transformation of every solid thing in this place

1067
00:52:13,400 --> 00:52:16,679
into fluid shadow. What was it all for? I want

1068
00:52:16,719 --> 00:52:19,760
to ask, what does this library extract? In the tally?

1069
00:52:20,320 --> 00:52:23,320
The answer arrives from bidden, not as comfort, but as consent.

1070
00:52:24,119 --> 00:52:26,800
Every shelf, every slap, ever vanished name, each towers itself

1071
00:52:26,800 --> 00:52:29,599
against a ledge of memory. To remember, to map, to

1072
00:52:29,639 --> 00:52:31,639
resist is in a self, a form of cataloging, a

1073
00:52:31,679 --> 00:52:35,719
record against erasure. However brief, I cannot keep from gathering fingers,

1074
00:52:35,719 --> 00:52:38,159
brushing in boss call numbers, telling each ghostly mark that

1075
00:52:38,159 --> 00:52:41,159
could be a pass keeper's last trace. I realize with

1076
00:52:41,280 --> 00:52:43,639
a frisso of exhausted or that mine muscle look much

1077
00:52:43,639 --> 00:52:46,719
the same. I heard the building shuders, the faintest tremor

1078
00:52:46,800 --> 00:52:49,519
rattling the shelf below my hand. A series of fuests

1079
00:52:49,559 --> 00:52:52,559
and tubes stutter into sequence, down the long corridor, beyond light,

1080
00:52:52,639 --> 00:52:55,800
marching into the bowels of the archive. The stacks expand

1081
00:52:55,960 --> 00:52:58,880
corridor after corridor, and spilling toward a door invisible in daylight,

1082
00:52:59,559 --> 00:53:02,079
obedi to a logic I do not quite apprehend. My

1083
00:53:02,159 --> 00:53:04,119
feet bring me step by step to the base of

1084
00:53:04,119 --> 00:53:06,480
a stair, down again, and then through a narrow hallway

1085
00:53:06,480 --> 00:53:09,079
painted with all fire retardant signs and ancient fawn trees.

1086
00:53:09,760 --> 00:53:11,880
It's here, in the truest heart of the archive that

1087
00:53:11,960 --> 00:53:16,079
I find the review room reconstituted. It is waiting the door.

1088
00:53:16,159 --> 00:53:18,320
Ajar lets out the tiny as whimperer as I nudge

1089
00:53:18,320 --> 00:53:21,159
it open. This tin the keepers are there, not fantoms,

1090
00:53:21,280 --> 00:53:23,800
but as occupants bod is casting proper shadows in the

1091
00:53:23,800 --> 00:53:27,159
saturated light. Weber stands at the window, his hands folded

1092
00:53:27,159 --> 00:53:29,679
over a battered file box, gold stamp polishes a brass

1093
00:53:29,760 --> 00:53:33,119
nameplate in the nearest desk, his gaze distant. Two others

1094
00:53:33,119 --> 00:53:35,480
I do not know, one woman knitting, another straightening a

1095
00:53:35,519 --> 00:53:38,239
pile of juice, lips, pay me no special mind. A

1096
00:53:38,320 --> 00:53:41,400
hush descends, formal as any annual meeting. At first I

1097
00:53:41,440 --> 00:53:44,599
attempted to threaten, to demand a reversal, but A see

1098
00:53:44,639 --> 00:53:47,400
at last that none of them are in control. Weber

1099
00:53:47,400 --> 00:53:49,559
lifts his chin as I enter, his voice missing its

1100
00:53:49,639 --> 00:53:53,159
usual deference. It cycles, Ellen, it has always cycled. We

1101
00:53:53,239 --> 00:53:55,199
keep track even where we do not wish to. Our

1102
00:53:55,239 --> 00:53:57,760
hands only carry the records. None of us directs the pattern.

1103
00:53:58,239 --> 00:54:00,639
He gestures, almost an apology to the day. Square laid

1104
00:54:00,639 --> 00:54:02,679
out with reverent care, lies the envelope by left in

1105
00:54:02,719 --> 00:54:06,199
the shelf days before they have found it. The pippers,

1106
00:54:06,280 --> 00:54:09,119
the encoded list, my badge, all are neatly arranged as

1107
00:54:09,199 --> 00:54:12,519
art fact, awaiting accession, patient and seepy order. I did

1108
00:54:12,519 --> 00:54:15,519
as I was told by say quietly. I returned everything

1109
00:54:15,519 --> 00:54:18,559
that was not mine to keep Coolstein notts, carefully settling

1110
00:54:18,559 --> 00:54:21,719
the nameplate atop the files. Some things must pass on

1111
00:54:21,920 --> 00:54:25,199
allan names, numbers, sometimes even acts of hope. Otherwise something

1112
00:54:25,239 --> 00:54:28,039
were settles in rooms that never open, memory that dies

1113
00:54:28,079 --> 00:54:30,599
in the walls. There is no threat in his words.

1114
00:54:30,760 --> 00:54:34,079
Only attendant is born of exhaustion. Each of them, I see,

1115
00:54:34,239 --> 00:54:36,199
is a kind of echo, a tattered layer of intention

1116
00:54:36,280 --> 00:54:38,800
glued to the great thrum of the library's need. I

1117
00:54:38,880 --> 00:54:40,599
watch as the knitting woman tucks the end of her

1118
00:54:40,599 --> 00:54:43,559
third away, the simple act conveying more finality than any speech.

1119
00:54:44,320 --> 00:54:47,480
Why me, I ask, realizing it matters even if I

1120
00:54:47,480 --> 00:54:51,960
suspect the answer. Weber's mouth twists because you remembered to

1121
00:54:52,039 --> 00:54:54,639
leave a record, that something we need between orishas the

1122
00:54:54,679 --> 00:54:56,960
library opposed a true blank. Ye gave it something to

1123
00:54:56,960 --> 00:55:01,119
catalog yourself, your loss. Sometimes that's enough, My folks blurs.

1124
00:55:01,840 --> 00:55:05,559
What happens now? Colstein looks up. If you continue, you

1125
00:55:05,679 --> 00:55:08,360
help keep balance. Sometimes you slip back into the outside,

1126
00:55:08,440 --> 00:55:11,239
forgotten by all but these walls. Sometimes you are lost altogether,

1127
00:55:11,320 --> 00:55:14,840
another slip pasted over nothing more than avoid between Frody returns.

1128
00:55:15,400 --> 00:55:17,840
He glances briefly at the card's stamp. If both my

1129
00:55:17,920 --> 00:55:21,280
name and averies the continuity to parry, and if I refuse,

1130
00:55:22,000 --> 00:55:25,280
he shrugs gently. Then you one listened, not a keeper,

1131
00:55:25,360 --> 00:55:27,800
not even a gap in time. The library finds another,

1132
00:55:27,880 --> 00:55:31,039
and you become a rumor haunting the reference shells. This time,

1133
00:55:31,119 --> 00:55:34,400
the stillness between us is not hostile, not paralyzing. I

1134
00:55:34,440 --> 00:55:36,960
feel the possibility of choice. However, slight in away, the

1135
00:55:37,000 --> 00:55:39,159
overhead light hams, and the pages on the desk flutter

1136
00:55:39,199 --> 00:55:42,519
beneath invisible drafts. A distant claning breaks the spell, the

1137
00:55:42,519 --> 00:55:45,920
elevator summoning some one from the upper floors. The others

1138
00:55:45,960 --> 00:55:48,199
look up, already prepared for their part in the cycle.

1139
00:55:48,800 --> 00:55:51,360
Webber hands me the envelope. A transfer of custody is

1140
00:55:51,400 --> 00:55:55,199
sacred as any exchange. The knitting woman rises, smoothing her skirt.

1141
00:55:55,880 --> 00:55:58,800
She regards me with sympathy, not unlike other's old playful glint.

1142
00:55:59,360 --> 00:56:03,000
Add your list the main ledger ellen. She instructs, don't

1143
00:56:03,039 --> 00:56:06,599
keep secrets lost the sire. I take the envelope, weighing

1144
00:56:06,639 --> 00:56:09,719
at once more. When I open, at one final tremulous time,

1145
00:56:09,719 --> 00:56:11,639
I see Avery's hand is marked a new instruction in

1146
00:56:11,679 --> 00:56:14,880
the inner flap let rooms. Change is needed, return when cold.

1147
00:56:15,400 --> 00:56:17,440
They wait and speaking. As I moved to the ledger

1148
00:56:17,480 --> 00:56:20,199
at the desk, I lay my badge atop the register,

1149
00:56:20,400 --> 00:56:22,800
pen the reading list, slide the envelope beneath the glasp.

1150
00:56:23,440 --> 00:56:25,840
The sense of doom does not arrive, only relief, call

1151
00:56:25,920 --> 00:56:28,760
and subdued. For an instant, I hold the old card,

1152
00:56:28,840 --> 00:56:31,400
feeling the paper's fiber roughened edge, dig into my palm.

1153
00:56:31,679 --> 00:56:34,079
Every memory weighs upon me, the rooms, the laughter, and

1154
00:56:34,119 --> 00:56:36,320
the lost staff, the ways the stacks yielded and then

1155
00:56:36,360 --> 00:56:38,760
bent me to their design. I press my thumb to

1156
00:56:38,800 --> 00:56:41,239
the cart and keyp fingerprint not carrying if it's mine

1157
00:56:41,280 --> 00:56:43,719
or Averary's, not caring if the system reads it is

1158
00:56:43,719 --> 00:56:47,480
an entry or an exit. Goldstein softens we all carry

1159
00:56:47,480 --> 00:56:50,800
our own due dates Ellen. His expression is tired but kind,

1160
00:56:51,440 --> 00:56:54,320
The library is persistent but not cruel. He'll return when

1161
00:56:54,360 --> 00:56:57,920
needed or not. I nod. There is nothing to add,

1162
00:56:58,559 --> 00:57:02,039
no shapestone enough to hold the story longer. The others rise,

1163
00:57:02,079 --> 00:57:05,760
tiding the last drifts of paper, straightening files. As I exit,

1164
00:57:05,840 --> 00:57:08,280
Weber offers me a gentle, absent smile, the sort that

1165
00:57:08,280 --> 00:57:12,159
would outlast a hundred catalogs. The corridor outside feels lighter

1166
00:57:12,159 --> 00:57:15,280
than before. I understand now the act of returning, no

1167
00:57:15,360 --> 00:57:17,840
matter the pain, The loss of specificity is what ancors

1168
00:57:17,880 --> 00:57:20,440
are living to. The archive keeps, shelf and memory bound together.

1169
00:57:21,119 --> 00:57:24,039
It is absence, yes, but also a final gentle order.

1170
00:57:24,639 --> 00:57:27,079
I step from the room, envelope clasped in hand, and

1171
00:57:27,159 --> 00:57:29,280
the library receives me with a fresh current of air,

1172
00:57:29,360 --> 00:57:32,840
warm and almost frequent. The shelves are as they must be, solid,

1173
00:57:32,960 --> 00:57:36,480
shifting memory made material. As I cross the threshold, the

1174
00:57:36,519 --> 00:57:39,199
bouquet of Mustin and coenvelops me in a final bittersweet

1175
00:57:39,239 --> 00:57:42,519
embrace the world outside so newly and certain telts and

1176
00:57:42,559 --> 00:57:45,760
to focus through the old glass doors. I step outside,

1177
00:57:45,840 --> 00:57:48,159
bearing nothing except the car of the thinnest memory of

1178
00:57:48,159 --> 00:57:51,199
a voice in the stacks. The city is just waking, cold,

1179
00:57:51,239 --> 00:57:54,280
silver light seeping between buildings. As I move through the

1180
00:57:54,280 --> 00:57:57,840
empty streets, a clarity settles. I will keep cataloging in

1181
00:57:57,880 --> 00:58:01,039
my way. I will remember offs laughter, Golsan's warning, Weber's

1182
00:58:01,039 --> 00:58:03,800
absent minded care. I know now that memory is its

1183
00:58:03,840 --> 00:58:06,719
own return, however brief. I carry the faint print of

1184
00:58:06,719 --> 00:58:08,880
the archive with me, the cast texture impressed on my

1185
00:58:08,960 --> 00:58:12,400
skin that night, as sleep finally overtakes me. My dreams

1186
00:58:12,400 --> 00:58:14,719
and spool and quiet libraries, rooms larger on the inside.

1187
00:58:14,840 --> 00:58:17,119
Names are going from slip to slip. I do not

1188
00:58:17,239 --> 00:58:20,199
fear the return. When the time comes, I will answer

1189
00:58:20,199 --> 00:58:23,000
the call and pass between the shelves. A faint voice

1190
00:58:23,039 --> 00:58:25,760
will whisper thanks, and I will turn back one last

1191
00:58:25,760 --> 00:58:28,920
time to slop my cart where it belongs, and somewhere

1192
00:58:29,000 --> 00:58:32,800
quietly and without announcement, the ledger will balance, the library

1193
00:58:32,840 --> 00:58:35,159
will wait. Shelf life renewed.