Speaker 1: The day began, as days always did, in the main library,
Speaker 1: with a procession of keys and the dignified echo of
Speaker 1: my own shoes on morn marble. I was forty six,
Speaker 1: a nate of all my life, and by now had
Speaker 1: fallen into the rhythm of US eighty study, breeding forraffic,
Speaker 1: sighing through old streets, guls, harmonizing with the rumble of buses,
Speaker 1: the distant perpetual hush of the sea. With the doors closed,
Speaker 1: I moved without hurry, humming snatches of last nights by
Speaker 1: pops on beneath my breath. As I prepared the building
Speaker 1: for another day, I began my rounds and local authors.
Speaker 1: As was habit. People liked to pick up their own,
Speaker 1: and it was my private challenge to arrange the section
Speaker 1: to highlight whichever city memorist of self published a story
Speaker 1: and have recently crossed my desk. My hands stanced on
Speaker 1: the spine's familiar names, home grun tails, and then at
Speaker 1: the end of the chronicle's cluster stood a book I
Speaker 1: didn't recognize. The title was tastefully devst in a pale
Speaker 1: modern type of coming events in our city, a chronicle
Speaker 1: I hesitated. It looked almost too new, considering the familiarly
Speaker 1: scuff neighbors. The cover was a blue justice side of raincloud,
Speaker 1: with no author's name, no publisher, not even a sticker
Speaker 1: denoting genre or donation. Thinking perhaps it was a runaway
Speaker 1: from a carter office pile, I flipped it open dryly.
Speaker 1: Factual paragraphs filled the first page. Tuesday, City Council's Parking
Speaker 1: Subcommittee will convene for a brief session at nine thirty
Speaker 1: a m agenda attached my eyes skimmed. The Riverstone Garden
Speaker 1: Club's annual cutting swap, postponed from last month, will be
Speaker 1: held at the Central Plauza this Thursday at mean noteworthy
Speaker 1: return of a mess Paradise blue and white umbrella found
Speaker 1: on bus RTT seven Elsewhere Friday, Mossley Pier three fifteen
Speaker 1: p m. Jazzbusker name Jillian to play weather report covers
Speaker 1: inside a mild audience applause, local dog breed spaniel to
Speaker 1: knock over tip jar. There was nothing urgent about the writing,
Speaker 1: not a trace of opinion or personality, not even the
Speaker 1: frony cheerfulness that plagues event listings. It was like reading
Speaker 1: a summary from a census officer, or perhaps a bureaucrout,
Speaker 1: hoping above all not to offend. Yet a tickle of
Speaker 1: confusion kept me turning the pages faster. These were all
Speaker 1: still to come. The dates set firmly through the next
Speaker 1: week lay in the near future. I checked my phone's calendar.
Speaker 1: The city council subcommittee was, in fact schedule two days
Speaker 1: from now, but the details the umbrella the spaniel felt
Speaker 1: to minor two lived in to be standard. A gender points,
Speaker 1: no author, no copyright. I checked a back matter, nothing
Speaker 1: but that same clean blue board a calendar. Some new
Speaker 1: committees adea of engagement, But then why was it on
Speaker 1: the shelf, unsigned, not in our logs, and bearing details
Speaker 1: none of the local event organizers had sent us. I
Speaker 1: set the chronicle aside mildly and settled my mind. A practical,
Speaker 1: tired used to library oddities, filed it as a curiosity
Speaker 1: to revisit later. I tidied the shelf, smiled as the
Speaker 1: first staffers arrived, and let the morning's oddness recede. Just
Speaker 1: a little. Work at the main library was all about
Speaker 1: motion and stillness, if you understood what to look for.
Speaker 1: In the heart of the city, the library huddled against
Speaker 1: a small rise, and every morning the sea wind race
Speaker 1: through the twin bronze doors ahead of the first patrons.
Speaker 1: Some like creased through the wroughten disglass dome and danced
Speaker 1: and puddles on the marble floor, landing the place of
Speaker 1: secular sanctity, A still fan stirring. At this hour. The
Speaker 1: city outside was already humming. Office workers streaming across the plaza,
Speaker 1: retirees gathering for their richual chess game delivery byke snaking
Speaker 1: though churning traffic, children with colored back cucks herding toward
Speaker 1: the elementary block away. Our place was quieter, but no
Speaker 1: less busy, a microcosm perhaps for anyone wishing to study
Speaker 1: how city really lives. Libraries collect more than books. If
Speaker 1: you're watching, we got a ghosts and gossip, secret projects
Speaker 1: and public arguments, the day's weather, the trivia of lost keys,
Speaker 1: and foan cats. After the doors unlocked, the ritual began.
Speaker 1: There was b at her usual post by the main desk,
Speaker 1: Bee of the starch collos, silvered hair and a red
Speaker 1: thread through her cardigan, who remembered everything. If memory were
Speaker 1: an Olympic sport, I sometimes thought she'd have a medal
Speaker 1: for each year she'd served. Mourning Love she called, arching
Speaker 1: an eyebrow over her glasses, rotten as cold as yesterday
Speaker 1: City's memory shop, or so I hope Samir zipped in
Speaker 1: before nine Erebud's bobbing, burdened with a laptop and a
Speaker 1: stack of program flyers, got us eighty four likes on
Speaker 1: yesterday's rule of Robin, he announced, gleefully, with the uncrushable
Speaker 1: optimism of his generation. B did you know our old
Speaker 1: map videos trending? In Lisbon? College students trickled and next,
Speaker 1: mostly seeking WiFi, but still enough ask about reference files
Speaker 1: to keep us on our toes. Retirees like missus Pharaoh,
Speaker 1: always with the request for the latest legals. Riller, local
Speaker 1: children blessedly more interested in picture books than devices, at
Speaker 1: least for now, interrupting with shrill, perfectly ordered chaos. And
Speaker 1: mister Covey, king of city trivia, who at some point
Speaker 1: each morning would color an inspecting listener with some bit
Speaker 1: of local history on mist remembered anecdote scribbling attendant notes
Speaker 1: in an old blue spiral. Do you know Covey told
Speaker 1: me once that the city's first silver dollar was spent
Speaker 1: on a cherry popsicle. To day he was scrolling furiously
Speaker 1: beside the community bulletin board, which mapped lost pets and
Speaker 1: their eventful, joyful reunions through a thin haze of push
Speaker 1: pins and ink. The local author's section was eternally in flux.
Speaker 1: Every new publisher's shipment brought another confessional city memoir or
Speaker 1: well meaning anthology of local ghost tales. I maintained the
Speaker 1: ever shifting order, like a gardener attending unruly vines, pulling, pruning,
Speaker 1: sometimes lighting. A book disappear beneath the unruly tied of
Speaker 1: self publication and renewed zeal. Recent highlights included the Ice
Speaker 1: Dream Annual, delightfully eccentric handbook for the city's yearly ice
Speaker 1: cream fair with rankings butter pecan still criminally underrated, recommendations
Speaker 1: for proper cone storage, and dubious histories of the fairs
Speaker 1: so called legendary scoop contests. The library, so proud of
Speaker 1: community traditions, almost certainly on more coppace than the events
Speaker 1: planners did. Amidst that living tangle, it occurred to me
Speaker 1: the strange awthorless chronicle was not completely out of place.
Speaker 1: Our shelves swallowed all sorts of oddities and e femoral
Speaker 1: scenes and phantom authorship were as natural as seagulls at
Speaker 1: the pier. It might be just some well intentioned project,
Speaker 1: a city fans experiment, I told myself as I returned
Speaker 1: to the section. Still, something held my attention as I
Speaker 1: straightened the shelf, the barely perceptible chill pulling in my
Speaker 1: chest as I touched the Chronicle's cool, nearly soft cover.
Speaker 1: I left it in place for now. Two days later,
Speaker 1: ere any pretensions to calm curiosity to solve it happened
Speaker 1: just after lunch in the children's when met we through
Speaker 1: a failed attempt of computer troubleshooting. A child o laye
Speaker 1: a Lilah raincoat and hiccups like giggling butterflies burst in
Speaker 1: her arms with a gleeful energy of those who prefer
Speaker 1: indoor voices only as a theory. It's just like the
Speaker 1: book said. The fire came by her statement, rick she
Speaker 1: down the stacks, drawing the attention of her harried mother
Speaker 1: and incidentally everyone else. What book hun? I asked, Kneeling
Speaker 1: to her level, half hoping she'd drift off to report
Speaker 1: on dragons or dinosaurs. She pointed toward local authors the
Speaker 1: Chronicle had been left faced up. The morning had been
Speaker 1: an eventful or so I thought, But when I slid
Speaker 1: the book from the shelf, a new page had materialized, fresh,
Speaker 1: the type crisp as always. Wednesday, eleven fifteen a m.
Speaker 1: It began a visit by local Fire's service engine part
Speaker 1: by side Gate for instructional demonstration at elementary. Unexpected applause
Speaker 1: from roomsby and C that was precisely what the child
Speaker 1: described and what if I remembered had been only announced
Speaker 1: the morning of, but the chronicle's entry had no hint
Speaker 1: of celebration, just flat statement the event as it would
Speaker 1: or had occurred. The hours matched, the details, matched, applause,
Speaker 1: the classrooms apparent waving from the curb twy I reread
Speaker 1: a passage, scanning for evidence of recent editing or forgery,
Speaker 1: anything a clever child or even an enterprising staffer could manage.
Speaker 1: Later that afternoon, Sammer came bursting in from the front desk, laughing,
Speaker 1: you know the lost keys mystery. He waved a ring
Speaker 1: of bath at silver attached to a novelty light bulb
Speaker 1: charm belonged to the man who's always quoting H. G. Wells.
Speaker 1: He dropped it under the magazines. Oh wait, I gingerly
Speaker 1: opened the chronicle again to day's entry return of key's
Speaker 1: light bulb fob lost beneath periodicals by retired lecturer, recovered
Speaker 1: at close of day. Reference staff credited with the systbats.
Speaker 1: Sammer shrugged and bothered. You know how it is, local
Speaker 1: authors always sneaking in here to ull date their books
Speaker 1: fun promotion right like the pop up art shows. Keep
Speaker 1: an eye out for qu or code. Next, I try
Speaker 1: to joke, if the book's writing these in advance, we'll
Speaker 1: have to start taking bets on next week's crosswood clues.
Speaker 1: He grinned and trouble, then ducked back to the reference desk.
Speaker 1: Yet something odd. I'd seen that entry this morning before
Speaker 1: the keys turned up, before anyone claimed to have lost them.
Speaker 1: The details were distinct. This was an amer congratulations lost
Speaker 1: keys found, taped to the bulletin board. It was a prelude.
Speaker 1: On my way to the staff room, a cottbee who
Speaker 1: was just stowing her lunch things, I showed her the chronicle.
Speaker 1: She leaf through with the deliberate care of someone handling
Speaker 1: a possibly valuable, probably tedious relic. Just a glorified calendar,
Speaker 1: if you ask me, she said, you remember those newsletters
Speaker 1: from the eighties Robin miss Eschen's famous biscuit reciped. Although
Speaker 1: she never told us the secret, she'd app the page.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's the same. Some one wants the neighborhood to
Speaker 1: feel small again. But be it always ahead. No one's
Speaker 1: updating in real time. That's youth and cleverness for you.
Speaker 1: Never underestimate the mischief of the city's retired teachers to
Speaker 1: the tenacity of local historians needing a hobby. She closed
Speaker 1: the book and concerned. Her dismissal show settled me, but
Speaker 1: the contradiction only twisted deeper. Parlo Trix didn't have this
Speaker 1: kind of precision, this relentless, ordinary specificity. I stared at
Speaker 1: the shelf for an embarrassing ten seconds, then made a decision.
Speaker 1: Under cover of closing. I slipped the cnocle into my bag,
Speaker 1: its perfect anonymity lending at the faint out of contraband.
Speaker 1: Once at my desk, I turned to the last blank page,
Speaker 1: pressed a mechanical pencil to the low corner, and drew
Speaker 1: dotta just small enough that it might escape notice. I
Speaker 1: dated the margin. If someone anyone were updating the book,
Speaker 1: they'd have to disturb this page, the chronicle slipped easily
Speaker 1: back among the other local oddities the libraries. Night settled
Speaker 1: quietly around me, or in street lights, painting auburne afflections
Speaker 1: on the high windows. The next test I decided would
Speaker 1: be deliberate. For a week, the chronicle was the constant
Speaker 1: shadow of my routine. Each morning, before opening, each evening,
Speaker 1: before closing, I found time to visit local authors, never conspicuously,
Speaker 1: never as if performing an inventory, but always with purpose.
Speaker 1: My private lock kept similarly free of commentary, accumulated pages
Speaker 1: of matched events. Tuesday, Charles Toddon had to be found
Speaker 1: behind periodicals sure enough reported loss on Monday, returned by
Speaker 1: b on Tuesday evening exactly is described a flash poetry
Speaker 1: reading never advertised, somehow documented two days before the first
Speaker 1: flyer appeared. The fall following Saturday's chess tournament result mister
Speaker 1: Polanski defeats mister Covey four gains to three. To speak,
Speaker 1: a final move involving Night was written in a chronicle
Speaker 1: on Thursday Saturday. A disgruntled Covey confirmed it precisely, including
Speaker 1: the argument over the night. Every entry was so well
Speaker 1: humdrum mundane. The book never recorded the grand, the heart,
Speaker 1: rending or improbable. It captured the cities present as unfolding
Speaker 1: as a reality needed ascribe board by Dramer. I began
Speaker 1: testing boundaries. First, I confided in Samir and be during
Speaker 1: a lunch break. You know, if the Chronicles saw died
Speaker 1: listing things it wanted to see, maybe we could cook
Speaker 1: something exciting out of it. What if, just for fun,
Speaker 1: we hoped a lot of the seagulls would finally get
Speaker 1: into the rotten at Samyr, will you leave a French
Speaker 1: fright or two by the back windows for their encouragement? Samyr, laughing, agreed.
Speaker 1: We kept it up for a day, an informal campaign,
Speaker 1: subtle as possible, bits of food outfully abandoned, a post,
Speaker 1: a joke, fire reading, seagulls welcome. This waited debauchery and
Speaker 1: classic fiction. The Chronicle, however, remained indifferent, no enchry for
Speaker 1: road birds, and predictably, no invasion occurred, though the pigeons
Speaker 1: were interested. It started to dawn on me the book
Speaker 1: didn't accord me a speculation or even desire. Something subtler
Speaker 1: was at work. Next, I ran the books, barked there
Speaker 1: was none, Then search the catalog for coming events as
Speaker 1: city Chronicle, and all variations thereof nothing. I checked the
Speaker 1: acquisition locks, the donors lists, every sloppily typed tap sheet
Speaker 1: that sometimes arrived taped to the underside of donated boxes.
Speaker 1: Still nothing. Mister Covey approached me one afternoon as I
Speaker 1: loved return paperbacks, that oldly book. I'm sure I remember
Speaker 1: it different title though, maybe the Tidings of Spring. Wasn't
Speaker 1: it always in the section? He fussed, his tie, frowning.
Speaker 1: It always knows my sandwich day at Bertholi's. Aw tell't there?
Speaker 1: What do you mean always knows? He looked momentarily lost,
Speaker 1: as if the answer hovered outside the reach of language.
Speaker 1: I mean, whenever I check, it's there A little note.
Speaker 1: Mister Covey's favorite Rieus Swiss, Thursday at noon near Cascheron,
Speaker 1: due to its comforting. Can't remember ever seeing the author.
Speaker 1: In fact, can't quite recal when I first found it here.
Speaker 1: I press, Did you ever borrow or check it out? No? No,
Speaker 1: it never leaves the shelf. Some books jest stay put,
Speaker 1: don't they? His memory seemed to twist further a miner
Speaker 1: vertigo as he tried to pin down the history. He left,
Speaker 1: looking relieved, but confused. The phase of observation shifted to
Speaker 1: gentle confrontation with the uncanny. I tried removing the chronicle completely,
Speaker 1: a quiet experiment performed as I closed up for the night.
Speaker 1: I slipped into the staff rooms secure cabinet, locked it,
Speaker 1: and WoT the library's perimeter in the mild lather of
Speaker 1: gilts and anticipation. The next morning, amid the clatter of
Speaker 1: returned books, I found the chronicle back where it had
Speaker 1: always been, on the shelf, open, midst bine, presenting to
Speaker 1: day's entry, forecast, overcast, interior rotten to rebuff by maintenance
Speaker 1: first time patron requesting architectural monographs to enter before tene
Speaker 1: m with blue umbrella. When the next patron arrived, requesting
Speaker 1: exactly that, I felt my scalp Titan B stopping nearby,
Speaker 1: just muttered morning corcabwa people read and drifted on. When
Speaker 1: I pulled up the CCTV log, the cameras betrayed nothing
Speaker 1: but a brief static wash during the hours of the
Speaker 1: book's absence, no tampering, no movement, just an empty digital
Speaker 1: whole time collapsed in two frames. I was beginning to
Speaker 1: feel as though the books even handed and partial prose
Speaker 1: was less comfort than a riddle. It was never sensational.
Speaker 1: It only got the details right, and always before they happened.
Speaker 1: Shuffling into the staff room, I found be reorganizing the
Speaker 1: periodicals by date, one of her small personal rebellions against
Speaker 1: our new interitive browsing system. I summoned my courage, sitting
Speaker 1: carefully across from her, the chronicle open atop my own
Speaker 1: log and notes be it, I said, I need you
Speaker 1: to look at these. My tone surprised me, half conspiratorial,
Speaker 1: half embarrassed. She set aside with stack, peered over the
Speaker 1: chronicle and read through a sequence of entries. She lingered
Speaker 1: on the one with my pencil date and the tiny dot,
Speaker 1: yes today, page now over written with new events, the
Speaker 1: dots still visible in the margin. That's odd, she murmured.
Speaker 1: He didn't show this to any one after he marked it.
Speaker 1: No key was with me. The writing appears fresh every morning,
Speaker 1: but the physical detail remained. Whoever wore whatever is doing
Speaker 1: this is not by hand. These normally shot finger tapped
Speaker 1: the desk. She seemed to withdraw somewhere inside herself, the
Speaker 1: way old trees retreat before late eyes. I remember something,
Speaker 1: she said, foyst dropping long time ago, maybe the year
Speaker 1: they tore up Main Street for the new system, we
Speaker 1: had a book like this. It wasn't called a chronicle.
Speaker 1: It might have been a day book, or even a scrap.
Speaker 1: It kept up with the town. I can't remember reading
Speaker 1: it for pleasure. It just lived there on the shelf.
Speaker 1: I check it now and then, just to see if
Speaker 1: it still knew about my brother's birthday or my uncle's
Speaker 1: in from a spawling night. She looked up, her gaze
Speaker 1: suddenly young. Nobody thought of it as mysterious. We didn't
Speaker 1: talk about it, just part of the library, the way
Speaker 1: the clock is. Did anyone ever ask where it came from?
Speaker 1: She shook her head. Staff logs from before my time
Speaker 1: was body. Even then, I doubt anyone tried hard to explain.
Speaker 1: If it vurnished, you just waited until another one appeared,
Speaker 1: with some different title or a new cover, but always
Speaker 1: the same habit. It was never about great events, comforting
Speaker 1: and not intrusive, like small tides that keep the shore
Speaker 1: in order. I suddenly wanted to see every receipt the
Speaker 1: library had ever received, every record ever scrolled in the
Speaker 1: margins together, being a huddled over a gray box files,
Speaker 1: pulling out brittle staff logs and ancient inventories here and there,
Speaker 1: margin alia volume missing, replaced by new slim blue from
Speaker 1: donation box. Events section The Diary of Town predicts pet
Speaker 1: contests when a maybe pank In the nineteen seventies, Little
Speaker 1: Event's book only ever notes errands and reunions. Never serious
Speaker 1: news touched up weekly, no outhorn file. None of the
Speaker 1: forms suggested panic were even concerned. The phenomenon was accepted,
Speaker 1: if seldom articulated, a sliver, always embedded in the city's
Speaker 1: quiet routine, never commanding much more attention than event, rattling
Speaker 1: along in the stax. My understanding was widening, unmurmuring from expectation.
Speaker 1: This was not a book, or not only a book.
Speaker 1: It was a role, one that adapted to whatever object
Speaker 1: or perhaps traditioned the library provided its presence, stretched back decades,
Speaker 1: may be farther, morphing with each RhE uttling quietly chronicling
Speaker 1: the beats of daily city life. I felt unexpectedly smaller,
Speaker 1: not afraid, but thread into generations of solent generational acquiescence. Whatever.
Speaker 1: This force was stable, unremarkable, and so patient as to
Speaker 1: go barely noticed my own questions were now reverberating with
Speaker 1: the tune of a much oldis on The book had
Speaker 1: always been here, yet it could not be captured, dated,
Speaker 1: or can find a moving point on an invisible map.
Speaker 1: That night, after the last click of the doors and
Speaker 1: my soft footsteps through the echoing vestibule, I found myself
Speaker 1: glancing at the chronicle, considering new ways to corner the
Speaker 1: unexplained what if it was at the artifact, but the context,
Speaker 1: the setting? Did the object matter or just the attention
Speaker 1: a sort of civic critual. I called Samer after closing,
Speaker 1: explaining enough to awaken his vast appetite for a good
Speaker 1: puzzle without sending him into the realms of late night conspiracy.
Speaker 1: Want to try a proper experiment, I asked. He arrived
Speaker 1: the next morning, balancing two black coffees, more aspirational than successful,
Speaker 1: Eyes wide with anticipation, We met in the staff workroom,
Speaker 1: where I produced an underscript pale green notebook, purchased the
Speaker 1: previous afternoon and marked only with my initials in the
Speaker 1: inside cover, vatterly bland and ensigned our task, I said,
Speaker 1: is symbol, will leave this next to the chronicle, and
Speaker 1: attended After closing, the chronicle itself gets the rare honor
Speaker 1: of our loft cabinet. I gained. Let's see if the
Speaker 1: phenomenon travels. Love it. Samuel pulled out a phone, already
Speaker 1: opening his notes, app control sample isolation. Now we're talking
Speaker 1: hard science. Do you want to set an intention? I demurred.
Speaker 1: Let's be as blank as possible, no labels, no context.
Speaker 1: Will shelve the new note codjacent to where the chronicle
Speaker 1: usually sits, then secure the original after closing. We performed
Speaker 1: the operation. A blank nobuquint on the shelfs by note
Speaker 1: nothing to draw attention the original chronicle into its usual refuge.
Speaker 1: The staff for room has always settled into a hush.
Speaker 1: I try to sleep, my brain worrying cooler, now less
Speaker 1: troubled by fear than by the awkward sense of tickling anticipation.
Speaker 1: The next morning, well before opening, I raced through my
Speaker 1: other duties to the local author's shelf, heart executing surprising
Speaker 1: color senics. The notebook was where we left it and molested.
Speaker 1: I felt a silly pinch of disappointment until I cracked
Speaker 1: it open. There in the center of the first page,
Speaker 1: someone of something had written in that same prim unsentimental type. Thursday,
Speaker 1: seven forty five. A m librarian to return missfel geography monograph,
Speaker 1: samoes whar's miss MATCHSOCKX and spills coffee on his shoes.
Speaker 1: Pet store owner to donate stack of patter magazines to
Speaker 1: periodicals by nan. Each event was ordinary, each rested perfectly
Speaker 1: in a chain of credible minuchi. I checked the clock
Speaker 1: seven forty three. Ten minutes later, Sammua entered, one pound
Speaker 1: like dock in than the other, grinning holding a coffee
Speaker 1: whose laid was sticking slightly. We don't say it, he warned,
Speaker 1: showing one shoe with a spreading brown blot. By late morning,
Speaker 1: the pet store owner stopped by with a dozen found
Speaker 1: out magazines for the community. Of course, lots of nice
Speaker 1: dog pictures and no irregulars love the puzzles, she beamed,
Speaker 1: oblivious to the larger context. We checked the true chronicle
Speaker 1: locked in the cabinet. The entire time was unchanged for once.
Speaker 1: Samir was visibly rattled. I starting to the edges of
Speaker 1: the ordinary. Okay, Robin, he whispered, Either you trained a
Speaker 1: highly motivated him, or we have something else. The book's
Speaker 1: just a vessel. It's not the object, HiT's the slot,
Speaker 1: the roll, But who are what is doing the writing?
Speaker 1: We returned both books to the shelf, side by side
Speaker 1: mid morning. Now, instead of conflict, the two began updating together,
Speaker 1: sometimes echoing entries, sometimes riffing on separate realities, each with
Speaker 1: the same dry voice. It was as if the City's story,
Speaker 1: whatever his true nature, chose its medium according to our attention.
Speaker 1: More at up procedures, a document wanted always to exist,
Speaker 1: no matter the form. The shift, in my understanding, was palpable,
Speaker 1: equal parts exhilaration and humility. The chronicle the phenomenon, did
Speaker 1: not serve its own purpose, didn't hint a prophecy or power. Instead,
Speaker 1: it quietly gave shape to the rhythms of the ordinary.
Speaker 1: The city's doings once and losses, made legible each day,
Speaker 1: knew every time, but stable as the tide. It wasn't
Speaker 1: about exploitation, and it never hinted at drama. If anything,
Speaker 1: my tests only illuminated the books intent to keep the
Speaker 1: world small, gentle, and reliably detailed. I close my own
Speaker 1: notebad that evening, with hands that tremble for more than caffene,
Speaker 1: we were, I realize, brushing up against something embedded not
Speaker 1: just in the city, but in the structures of routine
Speaker 1: memory and communal habit. The book wrote itself for, or
Speaker 1: perhaps let itself be written by the city's on going
Speaker 1: need to be known. Novus remembered a miniature by those
Speaker 1: who cared to look and those who didn't. And when
Speaker 1: I returned to the shelf, the two books sat poised
Speaker 1: as if in dialog, ready as ever to record not
Speaker 1: only what would happen, but what we together believed aught to.
Speaker 1: Samur and I stood in the echoing silence of the
Speaker 1: morning library, the tea books, one slim blue spine, the
Speaker 1: other pale green, sitting side by side on the shelf,
Speaker 1: as though they'd always belonged together. The sun's rays had
Speaker 1: just begun to finger their way across the marble, picking
Speaker 1: out the familiar and perfections of the rottender, illuminating the
Speaker 1: faint swhirl of dust in the cold air. The city's
Speaker 1: day was beginning us where busses starting their slow crawl,
Speaker 1: chop shutters sighing, open distant color already plotting its first meal.
Speaker 1: But here, for a moment, I was conscious of another
Speaker 1: kind of beginning, the hush before a thought enters the world.
Speaker 1: I touched the spine of the new book, then of
Speaker 1: the Chronicle beside it. Neither was warm nor cool, juss
Speaker 1: nor more yet somehow more than what it seemed. Behind me,
Speaker 1: samyrk Shaled, I heard him shift this week. She is
Speaker 1: chirping faintly on the tile, so he said, in a
Speaker 1: voice pitched to the book shelves, and no one else.
Speaker 1: What now, The honest answer, I had no plan for
Speaker 1: all the tests, the love books, the late night conjectures.
Speaker 1: I felt as if we stood at the lip of
Speaker 1: her mystery that only grew wide to the closer I leaned,
Speaker 1: and that, rather than frustrating me, left mildly energized, as
Speaker 1: though for the first time in years, the familiar boundaries
Speaker 1: of city life had parted just wide enough to glimpse
Speaker 1: something never charted in a manual or stuff newsletter. My
Speaker 1: instinct was action, not passivity. So for once I let
Speaker 1: curiosity decide our next step. Let's see how deep this
Speaker 1: pattern really goes, I said, Not just in here. I'm
Speaker 1: starting to think this isn't about the Chronicle at all.
Speaker 1: Maybe it never was before. The library filled with the
Speaker 1: ordinary pulse of patrons and conversation. We moved to the
Speaker 1: basement archives, a warren of concrete and clattering pipes. The
Speaker 1: stacks as anonymous as any government warehouse, yet rich with
Speaker 1: the city's deferred memories. This was where we kept the newspapers,
Speaker 1: the council minutes, donated scrap books, boxes of correspondence. Is
Speaker 1: that rarely so daylight. Our search was a dance between
Speaker 1: digital slight and no old score great Samy on the
Speaker 1: scanned index me and the brittle folders labeled in librarian script,
Speaker 1: Council Business, nineteen sixties, scrap Land, City Society, and sorted.
Speaker 1: We searched for any mention, any at all, of mysterious books,
Speaker 1: city chronicles, self of dating journals, or so much as
Speaker 1: a whisper about predestint events. Patterns once who are tuned
Speaker 1: to them, start emerging everywhere. Several times in the stacks
Speaker 1: I found references that, in ordinary circumstances might have seemed innocuous.
Speaker 1: There was a nineteen o three newspaper piece at the
Speaker 1: reading room. The Diary of the days continues to amuse
Speaker 1: and bermuse, recording small doings as if the city itself
Speaker 1: kept a journal in a box of CP tone photographs.
Speaker 1: A council minute from nineteen seventeen mentioned the community locker
Speaker 1: documenting minus evic occasion's returned umbrellas the birthday bouquet delivered
Speaker 1: to the Maize cat, with no record of the loge's location, author,
Speaker 1: or eventual fate. Later wedge between duty rosters and fading polaroids,
Speaker 1: I found a pamphlet from a nineteen fifty nine library
Speaker 1: open house listing attractions children may visit the Mystery Book
Speaker 1: for tomorrow's happenings price to whoever finds the missing marbles.
Speaker 1: Annotations in the margin, probably by board staffer read book
Speaker 1: said Danny would find them in Missess Fox's back. He did.
Speaker 1: I grew bolder. Our library's walls seemed to breathe with
Speaker 1: a patternacy, so rhythm of appearance and disappearance, but always
Speaker 1: always the book o one of its iterations serving as
Speaker 1: a hope for the gentle footnoted Okonov's city life. One
Speaker 1: thread nagged at me. For all these references, there was
Speaker 1: never a physical artifact that survived. No old diary of
Speaker 1: the days, no preserved community log. The names, the covers,
Speaker 1: even the handwriting varied, But somehow the object itself never
Speaker 1: lingered long enough to be cataloged or boxed away as
Speaker 1: a relic, a changed shape, then slipped once more into
Speaker 1: utilitarian anonymity. Maybe samr said at my elbowed, it doesn't
Speaker 1: want to be kept. Maybe it can't be stored or archive.
Speaker 1: It's got to stay present, or it disappears. I don't
Speaker 1: think it's about wanting, I replied, thumbing through another sack
Speaker 1: of brittle paper. I think it's about belonging. It has
Speaker 1: to be public, as if it can only exist when
Speaker 1: it's open, when it's part of some Camino pattern. He
Speaker 1: grinned his skepticism so fierce a few days ago, now
Speaker 1: flavoring his words with wonder, a sort of living app
Speaker 1: but made out of people's routines, or I said, memory
Speaker 1: me physical, not by accident, but by need. That thought
Speaker 1: of need giving form to the effemo would not leave me.
Speaker 1: It seemed almost too poetic, Yet I kept finding variations
Speaker 1: of it as our research widened. We took a break
Speaker 1: after two hours, a finger as dusted with the memory
Speaker 1: of a century. I need a coffee in context, so
Speaker 1: an impulse, I've phoned the number of the local seaside
Speaker 1: nursing home missus Jensen, a retired head librarian whom he
Speaker 1: always claimed could fact check your own heartbeat, had been
Speaker 1: in the library since World War Room and Turn was
Speaker 1: known for her flawless recal of local oddities. We met
Speaker 1: in a sun drenched lounge, her chair angled toward a
Speaker 1: strip of wild flowers bobbing outside the window. She seemed
Speaker 1: to study me carefully, a library badge and note bad
Speaker 1: in hand, then cocked her head shrewd and kindly. So
Speaker 1: you want to know about the mystery lock, she said,
Speaker 1: before I'd found the words. I nodded, caught between sheepishness
Speaker 1: and hope. She reminisced the sunlight picking out sparks in
Speaker 1: her hair. It began before me. Really. Every few years,
Speaker 1: or maybe every ten, there'd be a book on the
Speaker 1: shelf that seemed to know when someone planned to hold
Speaker 1: a big sale, or when the path outside needed gravel again.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it was a blue cover, sometimes red. For a
Speaker 1: while it was titled was next for Us? Then just
Speaker 1: to Morrow's Less. I asked whether people ever try to
Speaker 1: explain it. They didn't, She said. They took it as
Speaker 1: a comfort, something to steady the days. Back then. People
Speaker 1: didn't crave explanations so much as routines. Occasionally a visitor
Speaker 1: with marvel, but more often it was locals drawn to
Speaker 1: it between errands, checking the passage, nodding or chuckling, then
Speaker 1: moving on. Did anyone ever take it away, archive it,
Speaker 1: destroy it? She shook her head decisively. No one. It
Speaker 1: never left, or maybe if it did, there'd be a gap,
Speaker 1: and soon enough another anonymous book would take its place.
Speaker 1: The real trick was no one ever remembered doing anything
Speaker 1: about it. It just was the city's heartbeat, as seen by
Speaker 1: a typewriter. Her use of the word heartbeat struck me.
Speaker 1: I thanked her and promised a report back, though for
Speaker 1: what I wasn't certain. Back at the library's reference desk,
Speaker 1: the day was humming along on its ordinary tracks. Mister
Speaker 1: Covey was deep in conversation with a pair of visiting tourists,
Speaker 1: outlining the three unique city mascots the council had chosen
Speaker 1: over the decades. And yes the duck was real, and
Speaker 1: yes it skipped. I watched as he excused himself, wandered
Speaker 1: toward local authors, and plucked the chronicle from it shelf.
Speaker 1: Our eyes met. He held the book aloft, waddling it
Speaker 1: as if in answer to a question I hadn't voiced
Speaker 1: still chronicling things before they happen, are you? He said?
Speaker 1: I tell people it's just clever guessing. But he trailed off, shrugging.
Speaker 1: Either way, it always gets the lunch special at Bertholi's
Speaker 1: before I do. He winked the World's mischief in his
Speaker 1: wedded face. Covey, have you ever actually met anyone who
Speaker 1: writes in it? Not once, he'd at the page. If
Speaker 1: I had, I'd probably ask them if I'm going to
Speaker 1: win the trivia night this week. But you know, Robin,
Speaker 1: I almost prefer not knowing. There's a kindness in how
Speaker 1: boring it is. Life's too short for predictions about funerals
Speaker 1: or break ups. I like knowing where my sandwich will be.
Speaker 1: The notion hovered between us. The chronicles entries covered only
Speaker 1: what the city would want to keep, never sorrow, never disaster,
Speaker 1: never the kinds of events that made headlines. It recorded
Speaker 1: the flap of wings, the recovered scarf, the chessboard skirmishes.
Speaker 1: The entry seemed to function as itself, not powerful, precisely,
Speaker 1: but appropriate. A stream of patrons flowed past a teenager
Speaker 1: in a red beanie glancing at the chronicle before dismissing it.
Speaker 1: He all just obeyed this for some kind of library game, right,
Speaker 1: he said, pocketing his phone, But later he admitted sheepishly
Speaker 1: that last week it had fore told where his friend's
Speaker 1: lost phone would be found in the fiction section, stuck
Speaker 1: in a return book the shelving periodicals near by. Chinda,
Speaker 1: on our discussion, the chronicle makes me feel like the
Speaker 1: library is watching, just gently, not in a spooky way,
Speaker 1: more sense that what we do, what we lose, even
Speaker 1: silly things matter their wrecker. Not for history books, just
Speaker 1: for us. Sammeyr, who'd been circulating with a pile of
Speaker 1: return books, stop long enough to mutter, I still think
Speaker 1: some local historian is having us on. But if it's
Speaker 1: a trick, it's the longest running one I've seen. He
Speaker 1: must have fed the thought into his social channels, because
Speaker 1: by Lunch's steady trickle of replies were appearing. Students, residents,
Speaker 1: even a city council member had commented. The actions ranged
Speaker 1: from amused skepticism. There's no way that book exists. You're
Speaker 1: making it up for p RT. Knowing delight to best
Speaker 1: place to check if you want to find lost Lunch
Speaker 1: books is never wrung. The most interesting effect, however, was
Speaker 1: more subtle. People started acting with the chronicle in mind.
Speaker 1: I overheard a woman, stylishly dressed with the patients of
Speaker 1: a chess grand master, consulting her phone, peering at the chronicle,
Speaker 1: then tucking her green scarf into her bag. It says
Speaker 1: the scarf will be found in the rot and a Friday,
Speaker 1: she said to her friend, surveying the marble floor, as
Speaker 1: if the day had already enfolded on Friday. Sure enough,
Speaker 1: she discovered the scarf there herself, a slight small curving
Speaker 1: her mouth. It was happening, slowly, quietly. The chronicle was
Speaker 1: not merely recording what occurred, but gently writing the city script.
Speaker 1: The distinction between observation and influenced blur, the way old
Speaker 1: recipes are a shaped by the cooks who follow them.
Speaker 1: Sammer picked up on this before I did. He coined me,
Speaker 1: amid a row of three wheel book cats, speaking softly, Robin,
Speaker 1: what if we're all a little bit the author, like
Speaker 1: the thing, writes down what's probable, what everyone expects, and
Speaker 1: then because everyone expects it, we make it happen. I
Speaker 1: mould this all afternoon, letting the ida settle as I
Speaker 1: checked her tone books. We shelved ancient biographies and ferried
Speaker 1: a sullen tabby from the reference desk, and of the
Speaker 1: local tale for the chronicle. No doubt, above the clatter
Speaker 1: and hum of the public afternoon patterns emerged. Entries in
Speaker 1: the Chronicle were more detail, more plump, or trivia. When
Speaker 1: the library had been busier. On the rest low day,
Speaker 1: the writing shrank to its paris bones, almost hesitant, as
Speaker 1: though less certain of the day's outcome. My log grew.
Speaker 1: The more people thought about the book, discussed it, or
Speaker 1: anticipated its next entry. The richer the writing became. When
Speaker 1: interest flagg defaded, became vague, content to let the days
Speaker 1: pass in a haze. The paradox was sharp, as ever,
Speaker 1: did the book document what was to come? Or did
Speaker 1: the city, taking its cue from the book, nudge's days
Speaker 1: into the passet mapped. I started seeing the Chronicle's pattern everywhere,
Speaker 1: not just in the book itself, but in city traditions,
Speaker 1: the rhythm of the market, the quirks of the annualized
Speaker 1: cream fair. The rituals didn't need anyone to direct them.
Speaker 1: They happened because enough people believed they simply would Fueled
Speaker 1: by the suspicion, I threw myself into research. I looked
Speaker 1: not only for references to self writing books, but for
Speaker 1: parallel phenomena bizarre ledgers, tan locks, mysterious ledges, and university
Speaker 1: reading rooms. A contact at a library brought an old classmate,
Speaker 1: now in charge of a small public house in Dubbin,
Speaker 1: showed a brief from news email os is a black
Speaker 1: note claimed to appear every August. Nothing special. Tavern trivia
Speaker 1: bets warnings about running out of stet, but every year
Speaker 1: folks say it knows when the pub kroll will end early,
Speaker 1: or which pipe bursts first. A librarian and rural Japan reply,
Speaker 1: we have occasional mention of future juless and communal Bathous
Speaker 1: is never a formal event, just a list of predictions
Speaker 1: about towels, misplaced shoes, meeting as that happens described. Most
Speaker 1: think it's the work of old women with nothing better
Speaker 1: to do. In each case, the books or logs or
Speaker 1: less never named an author, never predict a disaster. This
Speaker 1: status's real phenomena was always soft for kloric, a threat
Speaker 1: of ordinary human behavior that shifted to fit its setting,
Speaker 1: but never lost the quality of the city or community,
Speaker 1: quietly writing itself into the world. It was not a trick,
Speaker 1: nor was it exactly magic. It was a way of
Speaker 1: making daily life fledgible, habitable, less lonely. Fueled by the
Speaker 1: weight of these discoveries, I delved into the neglected corners
Speaker 1: of the city archive, searching for a deeper beginning, a
Speaker 1: seed from which the chronicle and its kin might have sprawn.
Speaker 1: In a bat of volume of handrad to Monkish notes
Speaker 1: from the old city priory, I found a reference to
Speaker 1: a calendar that writes its own feasts. In the margin
Speaker 1: a scroll, Brother Amos says, the book tells only what
Speaker 1: the feast will provide, enough for miracles, only menus. No
Speaker 1: physical calendar survived, of course, perhaps it had been recopied endlessly,
Speaker 1: its content less important than the act itself. A folktale
Speaker 1: collected in the eighteen eighties toll of a public store
Speaker 1: teller who read from a small brown book of city
Speaker 1: days were reciting events a new bench to be placed
Speaker 1: at the elder's gate, child to bring plums for the midday.
Speaker 1: The book, as in my chronicle, was never signed. No
Speaker 1: one could verify whose hand wrote it, but the expectation
Speaker 1: the certainty of its entries was enough for the townspeople
Speaker 1: to accept each forecast as gentlefy. The pattern was always
Speaker 1: the same. The book allist appeared only in public, open
Speaker 1: settings of library at tavern a market place, never in
Speaker 1: the homes of the lonely, never for secret profit, always
Speaker 1: in a company of others, dreaming together about what tomorrow
Speaker 1: should bring. Enrolled by the paradox, I tried another experiment.
Speaker 1: One afternoon, after the lunch rush, I wandered out a
Speaker 1: city square, where the wind tangle, the scarves, and the
Speaker 1: pigeon conclaves made their endles parliament. I left a blank journal,
Speaker 1: plain and unsigned, on a stone bench, with only a
Speaker 1: small index car tucked inside. Please record tomorrow's small events.
Speaker 1: I left it in place for nearly a week, quietly
Speaker 1: observing no entries appeared. A few passes by, flepped it open, shrugged,
Speaker 1: and returned it to the bench. A pair of children
Speaker 1: drew smiley faces on the inside cover, but nothing more.
Speaker 1: I took the book home then, understanding the magic of phenomenon,
Speaker 1: or whatever strange neck this was demanded the library. It
Speaker 1: craved the weight of communal attention, the shelf, the role
Speaker 1: the gentle hum of patients moving through thinking about tomorrow,
Speaker 1: not for themselves alone, but for everyone resolved. I returned
Speaker 1: the notebook to the local author's shelf, right beside the
Speaker 1: two existing self writing books. The next morning, its first
Speaker 1: page was neatly inscribed in the new dry Voice. Wednesday,
Speaker 1: city contracted to patromusaic tiles outside rottenda, visiting child to
Speaker 1: present drawing of library, lion to be bread delivery, delayed
Speaker 1: volunteers to organize impromptu story time, nothing profound but perfectly
Speaker 1: in the city's register. By noon, each occurrence had come
Speaker 1: and gone, and for the first time in weeks, I
Speaker 1: felt homesick for the familiar strangeness that had always been here,
Speaker 1: only now newly seen. That night, I sat at the
Speaker 1: reference disk after closing file folders of my elbow and
Speaker 1: fatigue refusing to lift the finished locking the stacks, and
Speaker 1: joined me, sliding stiffly into the chair opposite mine. Samuel
Speaker 1: lingered among the shadowed computers, notebook in hand, pretending to
Speaker 1: check the evening's new ride. I was, but really poised
Speaker 1: for the Deney mane of Us could quite name. Miss
Speaker 1: a Covey. On his way out for the evening, slumped
Speaker 1: in a chair, Robin, He said, is there an answer yet,
Speaker 1: or are you going to tell us our whole city
Speaker 1: is run by a ghost? Be smiled, glancing over. Don't
Speaker 1: tease her. The city runs on smaller ghosts than that,
Speaker 1: like hope. Samya, emboldened by weeks of experiments and the
Speaker 1: sense that we nudge something truly remarkable, turned to me expectantly.
Speaker 1: I realized them what had changed, not the book, not
Speaker 1: the events, but my own sense of their place in
Speaker 1: the world. I think the chronicle isn't magic or prophecy,
Speaker 1: I said sorely. It's a shape that appears wherever enough
Speaker 1: people wish to know what tomorrow might bring, where we
Speaker 1: hope and expect together, even when it's just about hats
Speaker 1: and scarves and sandwiches. The writing becomes more detailed as
Speaker 1: more people consulted, lest so when ignored. The entries don't
Speaker 1: create the future, but they do quietly affirm it. Maybe
Speaker 1: we all contribute without knowing it, not as individuals, but
Speaker 1: as something communal. Mister Covey chuckled, always the skeptic. So
Speaker 1: we're all ghost writers for our own future. Maybe we are,
Speaker 1: said Samya, in places where we care enough to look
Speaker 1: maybe tomorrow needs to be written down to become real.
Speaker 1: Being amused the ritual matters, the act of looking. Maybe
Speaker 1: every city has its own versions, sometimes a book, sometimes
Speaker 1: a song, or a tradition, something that helps people feel
Speaker 1: the days are strong together instead of just falling apart.
Speaker 1: We sat like that for a while, companionable in our
Speaker 1: unknowing on the spine facing shelf. The books reposed humming
Speaker 1: in their attention, as if the act of being considered
Speaker 1: made them flicker into full o being. Other explanations floated up,
Speaker 1: suggestions from the corners of my mind, in the worlds
Speaker 1: or in scholars Perhaps the books were psychic artifacts, the
Speaker 1: recidue of busy minds, as one historian of folk or
Speaker 1: Miight print it, It could be a thought, a form
Speaker 1: of collective precognition. As we live in patterns, so we
Speaker 1: anticipate together broadcasting gentle hopes that some public heart or
Speaker 1: book makes material. Or perhaps, as the linguists propose, its
Speaker 1: only prophecy in the shallowest sense of self fulfilling script
Speaker 1: created when the expectation of routine is so strong it
Speaker 1: leaves a footprint visible to those who know to look.
Speaker 1: I could not say which or if any was true.
Speaker 1: I only knew that I'd stopped asking the chronicle to
Speaker 1: explain itself, and started to see that the act of participating,
Speaker 1: of checks, of arranging, andsuring was the phenomenon's real core.
Speaker 1: The chronicle's pages never recorded calamity or pain. The gathered
Speaker 1: community the way strong tea takes the flavor of its leaves,
Speaker 1: not by striving, but by sitting quietly, drawing meaning out
Speaker 1: from them undane. As the days rolled forward, I noticed
Speaker 1: city happenings in a new way, each contest, each lost,
Speaker 1: and found every small miss abam, the marble floor, or
Speaker 1: communal moment in the square scene invested with fresh weight,
Speaker 1: as though each event stitched together another thread in the
Speaker 1: city's shared fabric. Acts that might once have struck me
Speaker 1: as random or forgettable were now eliminated, possibly foretold, possibly fixed,
Speaker 1: but are refutably present. Samyr, no longer a skeptic, caught
Speaker 1: me pausing near the chronicle each afternoon. I would remark
Speaker 1: new prophecy for tomorrow. Robin we chuckled, but underneath I
Speaker 1: suspected he too, watched the small currents differently, not quicker
Speaker 1: to notice, slower to dismiss b was otherwise unchanged, except
Speaker 1: for an added lightness to her cataloging the briefest while
Speaker 1: stealing across her lips whenever she touched local authors, as
Speaker 1: if greeting an old friend now understood in some deeper way.
Speaker 1: Mister Covey's stories grew richer, his confidences in the city's
Speaker 1: trivia more pronounced, as though the knowledge that the Chronicle
Speaker 1: was part of an old, vast pattern granted him lessons
Speaker 1: to embellish even further. Yet, even with all this, our
Speaker 1: routines held steady. The libraries bell still mark the hour.
Speaker 1: The same morning shift still swap news about traffic and
Speaker 1: whether the city's harm unchanged, except that we felt more
Speaker 1: attentive to it. I no longer needed the Chronicle to
Speaker 1: feel reassured, only curious, a curios to now as familiar
Speaker 1: as the sound of my shoes on marble at dawn
Speaker 1: or the creak of the stacks in afternoon sunlight. The
Speaker 1: Chronicle's presence was not disruptive. It honored the smallness of
Speaker 1: daily leving, reminding me that the tiniest expectation, when shared,
Speaker 1: it could become a thread drawn through the fabric of
Speaker 1: many lives. Nearer closing, on a gray Tuesday. I took
Speaker 1: a moment as our shelve near returns, gazing them onto
Speaker 1: the well worn wood, hands familiar with the smoothing motions
Speaker 1: of order. My gaze lingered on the chronicle. His cover
Speaker 1: held no answers, just the potential tomorrow opened to anyone
Speaker 1: who cared enough to read. And in that hush, comfortable
Speaker 1: and communal, it occurred to me to wonder, not for
Speaker 1: the last time, if a city's smallest happenings could quietly
Speaker 1: write themselves into being, what other realities might become material
Speaker 1: through our noticed anticipation. What else lay between belief of fact, possibility,
Speaker 1: and record, waiting for us to look close enough to
Speaker 1: see it written in? Perhaps in a world of practicalities
Speaker 1: and for notes, the best mysteries are not meant to
Speaker 1: be solved, but in how it lived and written together
Speaker 1: a little at time, the impossible, so often feared or denied,
Speaker 1: had become at least here gentle thread, and a woven
Speaker 1: tapestry of the ever day and the every day, anointed
Speaker 1: by communal care and curiosity, quietly numinous. In return, I
Speaker 1: closed up for the night the chronicles cover, catching the
Speaker 1: last golden fragment of light as I wandered with all
Speaker 1: the long affection and an expended wonder of a city's
Speaker 1: keeper who was truly shaping the script Hoss, the book,
Speaker 1: or the living space between