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Speaker 1: Hello, I'm welcomed stories all the time. Glad you are here.

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Let's get into it a press record for the fifth time.

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Them slick in the tiny baton. My voice jumps as

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I start the hush of the closed library, prickling at

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my neck. It's Nielini, Saturday night. Please save this draft.

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The device flickers recites the date at its soft machine voice.

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Trapped in the staff room, I tucked the recorder close,

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searching for wars that won't make me sound unstable. Though

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I can't pretend I haven't begun to wonder. I want

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a record somewhere, outside those catalog screens, outside paper ledges

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that change between glances. It's been three weeks since they

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started schoffing at Southwards Central Library, and only six days

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since I checked out a book I can't prove exists.

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I was shoving after close were spring numbers to myself,

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left handed, headache from florescent glare. In the sea fiction,

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I found it brittle, green jacket, faint all script, A

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Garden for the Forgotten. Something about the title nagged at me,

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though I couldn't say why. The catalog sticker was faded

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as staff I didn't recognize I thumbed through the pages

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only once, damp inside two thousand seven. I scanned it

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at soft checkout, just to be funny, half expecting the

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system to toss up an error. Instead, the tiny black

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scanner chirped, and the receipt came out my card due

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in seven days. I took it home that night and

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sure if it was some ark, some donation that never

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made it into the collection. I read until too, but

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the story droubled away from me, a girl lost inside

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walls of green, hunting for her sister, sentences flickering out

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mid page. When I returned it, everything shifted, like tilting

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a bookshelf and finding different books behind it. Saturday morning,

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before the building opened, I placed the book on the

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return cards instructed Later at the front desk, the trouble began.

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Broonda from circulation frowned, running her scanner over the barcode

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again and again. This is in iris, she said, are

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you joking? Shulely, the manager on duty looked up my card,

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then the book. We don't carry this title, she insisted,

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ton sliding from confused to faintly annoyed. Trying to prove

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my case, I borrowed their terminal the barcode forty eight

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days was still scouted across the back. I keep it

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into the staff search. The hits return not my check

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out record, but a single line Marius G Status loss

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September two thousand nine, inventory code an armin Is four thousand,

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eight hundred thirty one location sub basement. The record ended

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there except for a pale gray footnote not in collection.

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Ronda called over her shoulder for someone to get the

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gray bean and wave me off. Don't worry, Probably just

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an old transfer, she said. But as she cried all

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the book, I heard a mutter, not again, you just

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have to bend it. Julie's I's met mine, narrower and

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almost warning. You should put this out of your mind. Okay,

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sometimes old stuffer surfaces. Don't poke at it. The staff

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cluster voices warping through the break room class. Didn't they

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clean those out? It's starting again. The gray bin now

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the book vanished into a battered container with no mockings,

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slid under the counter. I opened my audio recorder and

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began hands trembling. This is my record, I told myself.

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If it happens again, if I forget, at least there

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is this. I want to laugh, except the hum of

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the lights overhead is making my head ache throb, and

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every shelf on the fire wall looks like its twelve

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inches further out than before. I stopped the recording, restarted it,

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and tried to think clearly. Nobody else thought it was

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a Nobody else could find a record of the book,

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only a ray staff name from fifteen years ago, the

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librari's own system acting like a closet that keeps swallowing

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your shoes. I remind myself it might be a prank,

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all left over air from before the system got updated,

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But there is no record of me checking it out,

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and the book itself has gone now vind and vanished.

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And as I walked away from the counter, Ronda watched me,

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just long enough to make me wish I'd worked out

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with the book instead. I locked the audio file. I

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want a record of physical, digital, anything, because I can't

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shake the sense that if I let this slide, I'll

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lose more than just a missplace novel. I will lose

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the memory that I was ever confused at all. Sunday morning,

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I sit at the kitchen table, eating stale toast, watching

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the city still new to me, roll up with church

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bells and screen doors. My move to this town was

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a desperate, quietly hopeful was set about it, cartrunk in

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a single suit case, and the promise of a tide

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clerical job at the nearest brunch that to take me.

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The library was supposed to be haven, the way they

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were when I was small, my ticket out of Saturday silence,

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a place save twofold, both real and able to hide

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me amongst the sacks. Southward Central, though, is not the

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codling outpost of my childhood. It's a relic, a patchwork

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of municipal ambition and architectural confusion, sprawling across a whole

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block and sleepy Southward. Its main wing is all crumbling

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beige concrete with a blue glass stone tacked on in

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a ninter's expansion and two squat brick annexys ditch like

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afterthoughts words is there were never enough blueprints to match

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all the emergency exits. My first days are a slidehow

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trying not to look. Last were stocking the returns, moving

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quietly through the two main floors, shelving in the north

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corridor where the fiction covers always gather pale greenish dust

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like pollen. The staff pleasant mostly operate at different rhythms.

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Alborost nods or weary pleasantries, rounder rushes for morning routines,

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eyes always on budget print outs, chuly halking and stern keeps,

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laughter and warning's at equal measure. The rest were lanyard's

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heavy with KEYSA haven't earned mid morning's are slow old

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men in this match suits reading the newspapers, perfectly folded

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children tracing braille alphabet police mats, A regular mister fawn

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always needs large print. Thrillers ses memorize the location, but

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seems to like asking for help. I like running holes

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of the front, helping track down a missing poetry volume

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or two. My bad reads an a leany temporary assistant,

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but a little girl keeps calling me the book finder.

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It makes me smile even in the listless glim shifts,

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but there's an undercurrent. Even on the best days. The

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library is filled with odd corners, arkoves that should be

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too small to hold so many shells always that never

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lead quite to where you expect. When shelving in the

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nine hundreds, sometimes the aisle extends, or the reference stacks

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of a seam alarm the floor, as if a hidden

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door is sealed just so beneath the carpet. One custodal

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worker called it in the maze effect, winking at me.

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The building likes to hide things, she said, almost proud.

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They're ghosts of library. Low or two. At lunch, the

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older staff rolled their eyes about library, eating things. Surely.

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Once responded to missing magazine by saying it's the building.

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If it wants to keep something, you'll never find it.

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At first I assumed it was just metaphor statistical entropy,

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not a warning, but then run to cackle even people.

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Sometimes godspeed if you ever get stuck sorting and beat

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you the jocuny in the air sticky. The orientation was

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even stranger. Monday afternoon, my second week, I was summoned

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to the conference room mandatory for all new hires and yes,

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especially library assistants. Ms Morrissey said, gray hair up in

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a halo classes so thick you could see the stacks

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in the reflection. She moved a brisk pace for her age,

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keys rattling on her line out like tiny bones. We

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started on the main floor, but the orientation quickly diverged

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from where to find the copperard into forbidden law. Mss

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Morris's voice grew pointed, now the basement stacks. Assistants are

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not to venture down unless specifically directed, and only with

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the radio. The stairs to the basement shivered under our weight,

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the walls close and sweating down below. Room after room

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merged into darkness. The map room always locked, lay behind

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in a naturally clean steel toer. Do not enter, SiGe Nailski.

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No items from the map room are to leave the space.

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She insisted. Materials there are delicate, some intention off catalog.

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When I tried the door, it stuck, as if glued.

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The so called red section was barely mentioned. Ms Morrissey

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avoided my eye, lowering her voice. It's a special collection.

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Staff should avoid moving materials from there unless cleared by

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admin or myself. I asked why she hesitated simply put

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provence issues. She pronounced it like an old joke, not

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to be questioned. She handed around laminated security poluses stamped

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with a warning I hadn't seen elsewhere. For certain older

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materials you must log manual track and sheet, she said.

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One sheet mentioned a waver. I asked for what. She

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just smiled, teeth rotted, just paperwork. Old rules for old

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books turnovers high, especially in non administrative rolls, she sighed

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on the way up. Not everyone fits. Some staff don't adjust.

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By the toes en, I felt more bewildered than brief,

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to like I've sat through a faux tale, not an orientation,

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trying to get my bearings. I pressed on with the work,

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determined to prove stable and diligent in the staff lounge,

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I admitted in my diary never allowed how much libraries

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to me as a child, the first place I felt

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safe after my parents split, I hid behind encyclopedias, practice,

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breathing in calm numbers, safe, quiet and visible. I wrote,

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this new job was to be a salve. Instead, each

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day I noticed little things, the way books sometimes returned

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with other branch stamps, labels for places I was sure

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had closed years ago, volumes far too old for the

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holdings list. I chopped it up to donation overflow, or

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bought shipments, but the older staff just exchanged rye glances.

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I couldn't shake a subtle teasing sense, every joking warning,

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every closed off wing was more than routine. Like the

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building itself quartered not just books, but the boundaries of

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what was supposed to be retrievable. I begun keeping notes

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on my phone, half out of boredom, half nervous habit.

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Monday evening, I sat in the break room tapping out

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orientation oddities. Read section why waiver map room always lock staff,

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save Betty, but no be too labeled. Former employees not

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on bulletin board. There's a comfort and pattern. If I

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could log them, maybe I could laugh it off later.

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By week's end, my nerves half warn my line ou dented.

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I told myself this was a place, not a personality.

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Maybe if I shelve with my headphones in, if I

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did not look too closely at the coal numbers that

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slipped two digits overnight, or the way the fiction stacks

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cast all shadows after dusk, I could outlast the strangeness

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like everyone else. But it only took one Friday sorting

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chef for cracks to open wider. That afternoon, I was

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shelving in the b fiction returns cart, overloaded, barkered, gun stubborn.

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As I sorted, I noticed the cart held two books

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not matching any coal number, a batted hard back with

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faded publishers and for a bright blue paperback with a

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nineteen fifty three copyright. I checked the online catalog for

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both no wrecker. Both volumes were present clearly so, but

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nothing matched from the holding spreadsheet. I tried the shelf

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scanner anyway, hoping maybe they were part of a label update.

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No Barco, but a faint pencil note donated nineteen sixty

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nine Airs mac guire. Feeling sheepish, I flagged Rhonda. She

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stared at the blue paperback. Must be a donation that

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never got processed, she said, happens. Don't overthink it. She

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handed me a slip, just shelved them under overflow for now.

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But as she turned away, she called back, if it's

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not in the system by to morrow, just leave it.

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The building will sort it. She didn't sound like she

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was joking. After she left, I checked the inside jackets

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for both. The hardback especially made my scalp tingle. The

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copyright was marked nineteen thirty seven, almost thirty years before

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Southward Central opened. The iesby n number didn't fit any standard.

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It was as if the book had been mislaid before

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the branch even existed. I started tracking. By nightfall, my

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own spreadsheet had six more anomalies books to you, all

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new or extraneous for my branch a home as the

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libraries hush crept back into my head. I started double

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recording everything audio diary for my own sanity spreadsheet for

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something solid. The weirdness didn't stop with the stacks in

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the staff interface. When I pulled receipts for recent checkouts,

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I found strange glitches. Checkouts slept attached to names I

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didn't recognize staff Coode, m Gordon emaher returns to ask

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and Ah and Delaney no code When I asked it.

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The next shift, Julie put her mug down hard old system,

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ignore it iver. I thought maybe they were tempious going

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before my time. One afternoon, I lingered by the old

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staff photoboard. The names didn't match the faces. Names like

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Marish g were never posted. Nobody seemed to remember someone

224
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with those initials. Determined to make sense of it, I

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started documenting every non catalog to find in my phone.

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One night, at my usual kitchen counter, I recorded sought

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at seven books with no entry, same call number as

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lost items from last month. Digital receipts referenced staff no

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longer on payroll, but Admund says sistemer beginning to feel

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like I'm chasing my tail at staff drinks microwave side

231
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are in a basement lunch, someone joked, why don't you

232
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just let the library sort itself out? You try to

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fix things and the vanish anyway. Another shrug, Nothing here

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stays put. No one seemed alarmed. Still, by Saturday, I

235
00:11:45,960 --> 00:11:49,080
had filled three pages in my spreadsheet, each anominally cross reference,

236
00:11:49,120 --> 00:11:51,120
as much for my reassurance as to make something real

237
00:11:51,159 --> 00:11:54,399
from the mounting unease. Day after day, I told myself

238
00:11:54,440 --> 00:11:56,200
it was the overwhelm of new work, the quirks of

239
00:11:56,200 --> 00:11:59,799
a poorly funded institution. Still, every night I checked my recordings,

240
00:12:00,159 --> 00:12:02,879
believing i'd find skips in my own memory, snippets replaced

241
00:12:02,879 --> 00:12:05,600
with static. Part of me wanted to put every oddity

242
00:12:05,600 --> 00:12:08,399
into the system to demand sense. The other part was

243
00:12:08,440 --> 00:12:11,000
already losing track, a stack of on shelf books forgotten,

244
00:12:11,120 --> 00:12:14,879
or an entire cotgun missing right after break. I pretended

245
00:12:14,879 --> 00:12:17,799
to laugh it all off, shelving late one head phone lease.

246
00:12:17,919 --> 00:12:20,240
But each night my certainty unraveled just a little more.

247
00:12:20,919 --> 00:12:23,360
I waited a whole week before tentatively asking any one

248
00:12:23,399 --> 00:12:26,159
about the weird records. First, I tried Julie in the

249
00:12:26,200 --> 00:12:29,320
back office about those old staff codes, mars gee e

250
00:12:29,559 --> 00:12:31,279
Maher all that do you know if any of them

251
00:12:31,320 --> 00:12:34,120
still work here? She kept her eyes glued to a screen.

252
00:12:34,799 --> 00:12:36,960
Never heard of them, Probably just emerged glutch from the

253
00:12:36,960 --> 00:12:39,799
old database. We imported everything after the Leaven built out.

254
00:12:39,960 --> 00:12:43,240
Ignore what you can't fix. I tried cornering Rand at

255
00:12:43,240 --> 00:12:46,399
the returns car. Is there a marus g on staff?

256
00:12:46,399 --> 00:12:49,279
The code keeps popping up. Randa's mouth twitch, a smile

257
00:12:49,360 --> 00:12:52,440
not quite reaching her eyes. Probably meant for the branch

258
00:12:52,440 --> 00:12:54,720
out by the hospital or storage. Sometimes you get other

259
00:12:54,759 --> 00:12:56,960
branch returns mixed in, even though this say not to.

260
00:12:57,080 --> 00:12:59,639
You'll get used to it. At first, I thought maybe

261
00:12:59,639 --> 00:13:02,039
everyone was too busy, so I tried my own research.

262
00:13:02,799 --> 00:13:05,000
In a crumbling personnel bind outside the break from three

263
00:13:05,039 --> 00:13:08,039
inches thick decades of names, I found them. Gennaro High

264
00:13:08,120 --> 00:13:11,799
Day two thousand seven, no separation date, just a pencil underline,

265
00:13:12,240 --> 00:13:16,039
a blank space for departure, no ferto. I found old

266
00:13:16,039 --> 00:13:19,360
defas yellowed, half completed, staffless, crossed out with no reason,

267
00:13:19,679 --> 00:13:22,639
job codes and a mid number. A mess, but not

268
00:13:22,720 --> 00:13:25,320
the deliberate kind I was looking for. I spent a

269
00:13:25,399 --> 00:13:28,720
lunch ire on the city Archives side, scrolling microfilm staff bulletins.

270
00:13:28,960 --> 00:13:32,320
But marisge wasn't there. By the second week, I checked

271
00:13:32,360 --> 00:13:35,080
the internal announcement logs and found nothing. No transfer, no

272
00:13:35,240 --> 00:13:38,320
health leave, no farewell. Note her name only popped up

273
00:13:38,320 --> 00:13:40,519
in dead end corn as the bottom of obsolete ledges

274
00:13:40,600 --> 00:13:43,320
on link to any email. Every mentioned bruttle and shadowed.

275
00:13:43,879 --> 00:13:47,639
My questions earned me careful stirs. Twice in the staff lounge,

276
00:13:47,720 --> 00:13:49,639
as I was flipping through check and stats, I caught

277
00:13:49,679 --> 00:13:52,759
two coworkers with spring in the hallway. The conversation cut

278
00:13:52,799 --> 00:13:55,399
off the moment I stepped closer the new girls looking

279
00:13:55,399 --> 00:13:59,159
for missing people again. It's fine. The system always fixes itself.

280
00:13:59,600 --> 00:14:02,080
The next day, shelving periodicals in a section near a

281
00:14:02,159 --> 00:14:03,960
narrow locked door, I tested the knob out of idle

282
00:14:04,000 --> 00:14:08,279
curiosity just to thought an old sign tape healing read

283
00:14:08,399 --> 00:14:11,639
red section offer a staff Only the font didn't match

284
00:14:11,679 --> 00:14:13,519
anything else in the building, and the paint was the

285
00:14:13,600 --> 00:14:16,879
kind of red that looks almost brown and polite. That afternoon,

286
00:14:17,080 --> 00:14:20,000
an older custodial worker caught me eyeing the sign. She

287
00:14:20,039 --> 00:14:22,960
set her mop sigh, voice soft. You don't want to

288
00:14:22,960 --> 00:14:25,879
move anything in there, LEVI bye. When I arched my brow,

289
00:14:26,000 --> 00:14:28,159
she gestured at her own temple as if searching for

290
00:14:28,200 --> 00:14:31,080
the word not everything comes back if you shift things.

291
00:14:31,080 --> 00:14:35,080
People learned the hobbway. She looked away just a tip.

292
00:14:35,759 --> 00:14:37,919
After she left. I tried to find red section on

293
00:14:37,960 --> 00:14:41,120
the building plans. The diagrams posted in the break room

294
00:14:41,159 --> 00:14:44,159
shored every room carefully numbered except in the are marked supplies.

295
00:14:44,799 --> 00:14:46,559
But in the archive I found a sheet from the

296
00:14:46,679 --> 00:14:49,360
as red sections crolled in pencil, a narrow, pointing off figure.

297
00:14:49,480 --> 00:14:53,519
It annotated special shelving inventory closure. In more recent plans,

298
00:14:53,639 --> 00:14:56,759
that sliver of space wasn't shown at all. The irresistible

299
00:14:56,799 --> 00:14:59,600
lore of the forbidden. After close, stomach tight, I made

300
00:14:59,600 --> 00:15:02,159
my way to the area. The hallway swallowed all those

301
00:15:02,200 --> 00:15:04,720
sound of carpet, thick lighting flickering in a blurroy almost

302
00:15:04,759 --> 00:15:07,720
pinkish cast. The shelving in red section was a old

303
00:15:07,720 --> 00:15:10,759
a d boak, not the modern steel. Physically, the room

304
00:15:10,799 --> 00:15:13,399
was wider than exterior walls would suggest. The path between

305
00:15:13,480 --> 00:15:17,559
rose diverge, then converged impossibly again. Labels hung half peeled,

306
00:15:17,639 --> 00:15:20,519
let as faded to smudges nineteen fifty eight nineteen sixty

307
00:15:20,559 --> 00:15:24,480
four were drawn. The quiet was oily resistant. I found

308
00:15:24,480 --> 00:15:26,519
a cluster of books whose checkout coats trailed off into

309
00:15:26,600 --> 00:15:30,480
legible black marks and one copy STEMP simply MG. After

310
00:15:30,559 --> 00:15:33,399
a round through the rouse, heart pounding, I locked every buckoed,

311
00:15:33,480 --> 00:15:36,320
even the ones that wouldn't scan. Most flagger as do

312
00:15:36,440 --> 00:15:40,279
not circulate. A handful returned blank screen's end curiously, the

313
00:15:40,320 --> 00:15:44,279
same personnel co Maris G. I left quickly. The light

314
00:15:44,320 --> 00:15:46,519
flickered as I backed out, the bulb's humped teeth, grating

315
00:15:46,600 --> 00:15:49,440
the smell and odd winter green like old Adhess. When

316
00:15:49,440 --> 00:15:52,120
I checked my diary entried at night, I hesitated how

317
00:15:52,200 --> 00:15:54,000
much of what I'd seen was real and how much

318
00:15:54,080 --> 00:15:57,200
was me letting stores in a string of impossible details.

319
00:15:57,879 --> 00:16:00,240
One night, as rain rattled the windows, I finished a

320
00:16:00,279 --> 00:16:02,960
late shift, stuck in the reading room. Her return had

321
00:16:03,000 --> 00:16:05,080
appeared on the desk of Fat Navy hard back its

322
00:16:05,120 --> 00:16:08,960
buying gold to Boston Alien. No bock out. Instead, the

323
00:16:09,000 --> 00:16:11,440
jacket bore a handritten tag and fade of Fountain penskrit

324
00:16:11,440 --> 00:16:15,120
owns History nineteen seventy three. The library circulation began in

325
00:16:15,159 --> 00:16:18,519
nineteen seventy seven. This couldn't belong here. I checked the shelf,

326
00:16:18,559 --> 00:16:21,440
computer keyed in every number on the inside cover. One

327
00:16:21,480 --> 00:16:25,120
catalog hit transferred from Basement B two confused. I comb

328
00:16:25,200 --> 00:16:28,720
the master staff directory. There is no be too. Our

329
00:16:28,720 --> 00:16:30,679
basement is a single level, at least on every plan

330
00:16:30,759 --> 00:16:33,639
I've seen, but the system lock printed date stamped claim.

331
00:16:33,679 --> 00:16:36,120
The last return was a Basement B two, nineteen eighty four,

332
00:16:36,200 --> 00:16:39,399
finalized by r Ann Delaney. I stared at that scan's

333
00:16:39,399 --> 00:16:42,440
signature for five minutes before logging it. The handwriting was

334
00:16:42,480 --> 00:16:45,159
identical to the label on the spine. That night, as

335
00:16:45,159 --> 00:16:47,320
I closed up wheeling the cart by the red section,

336
00:16:47,480 --> 00:16:49,879
I heard a distant sound like heavy furniture scraping below.

337
00:16:49,960 --> 00:16:52,960
Muffle forces bled through the slats in the vent. I

338
00:16:53,039 --> 00:16:55,279
told myself it was plumbing or the custodial crew on

339
00:16:55,320 --> 00:16:58,200
some late project. Yet as I keyed out, my hands

340
00:16:58,200 --> 00:17:00,240
went cold. They urged to call some one, any one.

341
00:17:00,399 --> 00:17:04,200
Nearly overwhelming, My notes became frantic, document annotate, Try not

342
00:17:04,279 --> 00:17:06,960
to add what you can't prove. I wanted so badly

343
00:17:07,039 --> 00:17:09,680
for the strangers to be explainable, but all I had

344
00:17:09,680 --> 00:17:12,799
were often books, vanished names, and rooms that could not exist.

345
00:17:13,480 --> 00:17:15,319
The final stroll came when I watched a page and

346
00:17:15,359 --> 00:17:17,720
drop a book in the night returns. There was no

347
00:17:17,799 --> 00:17:19,759
one by the door, only the thunk of the hue.

348
00:17:20,279 --> 00:17:22,759
By morning, the book was gone. Randa said, the building

349
00:17:22,799 --> 00:17:26,319
sorts it for us. She was chewing gum, unfaced. I

350
00:17:26,400 --> 00:17:28,720
went out to the slot, nothing but curled receipts, none

351
00:17:28,720 --> 00:17:31,680
more recent than a year ago. I stopped, then, staring

352
00:17:31,720 --> 00:17:33,960
at the pale shadow of myself reflected in the glass mouth,

353
00:17:33,960 --> 00:17:36,759
open fingers pressed to the door. I knew in that

354
00:17:36,880 --> 00:17:40,039
moment that I would have to go deeper the next week. Desperate,

355
00:17:40,079 --> 00:17:42,160
I cornered to mess Morrisey again, as she sit dark

356
00:17:42,200 --> 00:17:44,720
tee in the reference alcove. Can I trouble you for

357
00:17:44,799 --> 00:17:48,599
staff map? She pressed her lips, thin, gay shrewd. Is

358
00:17:48,680 --> 00:17:52,519
this about the basement, she asked softly. I nodded. Ever

359
00:17:52,559 --> 00:17:55,440
heard of his staff member called Marischi. She didn't answer

360
00:17:55,559 --> 00:17:59,000
for a long time, instead tracing the room of her muck. Finally,

361
00:17:59,079 --> 00:18:02,079
in a conspiratorial hush, she said, the building's be knolted

362
00:18:02,160 --> 00:18:05,559
many times, sometimes on purpose, sometimes as an accident of budget.

363
00:18:06,039 --> 00:18:07,720
She fished a ring of keys from her pocket and

364
00:18:07,799 --> 00:18:09,720
hut one lawn brass key and said it in my

365
00:18:09,799 --> 00:18:12,440
palm the iff you insist on poking about tick care.

366
00:18:12,519 --> 00:18:14,400
The floor plans are in the old staff archives. Be

367
00:18:14,440 --> 00:18:16,559
sure to put them back exactly as found, and don't

368
00:18:16,559 --> 00:18:19,119
mention this to the others. Some of us remember differently.

369
00:18:19,680 --> 00:18:22,279
After I rows alone, I used the spekey to access

370
00:18:22,319 --> 00:18:25,640
to locked staff archives past the supply cabinets in a

371
00:18:25,680 --> 00:18:28,599
carton labeled nineteen seventeen eight nineteen ninety three Yadmen I

372
00:18:28,640 --> 00:18:31,640
sifted through brittle folders at the bottom under a mained

373
00:18:31,640 --> 00:18:34,079
in its orders was a massive intricate drawing issue in

374
00:18:34,160 --> 00:18:36,160
nineteen eighty five, but raised it and added to so

375
00:18:36,240 --> 00:18:38,720
many times the paper fell quilt like, pieced together from

376
00:18:38,759 --> 00:18:42,680
smaller maps. It shall prickled over me. The master plan

377
00:18:42,759 --> 00:18:45,720
included a space below the annotated basement sub basement traced

378
00:18:45,759 --> 00:18:48,480
up with dotted lines. The sub basement was twice the

379
00:18:48,519 --> 00:18:50,960
size of the rest of the building. My site never

380
00:18:51,000 --> 00:18:53,640
had any permit for such a space. Not just that

381
00:18:53,720 --> 00:18:56,279
between the marked corridors was a shaded block red section.

382
00:18:56,880 --> 00:18:58,680
In one corner of the old floor plan was a

383
00:18:58,680 --> 00:19:01,039
scold at endem do not mean anything from red section

384
00:19:01,119 --> 00:19:05,359
after catalog closure return reck closed nineteen ninety seven sound

385
00:19:05,359 --> 00:19:07,240
which did in a plastic sheath was a half crumpled

386
00:19:07,240 --> 00:19:09,920
page of grainy time stumped black and white photos a

387
00:19:09,960 --> 00:19:12,319
series of workers descending a thin spiral stair in the

388
00:19:12,359 --> 00:19:16,079
supply room. The final photo was the stairwell empty. The

389
00:19:16,160 --> 00:19:18,799
dates damp read two thousand and nine, no one re

390
00:19:18,880 --> 00:19:22,000
emerging on the back of the sheet. In spidery blacking,

391
00:19:22,160 --> 00:19:25,440
someone had ridden one center recos rovert. Only our civet

392
00:19:25,519 --> 00:19:29,200
memory persists. Locked door behind, I dropped the key's hand, shaking.

393
00:19:29,799 --> 00:19:32,440
The floor under my feet felt deeply, fundamentally wrung, like

394
00:19:32,480 --> 00:19:34,240
something below might pulse and dragged me down At that

395
00:19:34,240 --> 00:19:36,720
if I so much as shifted weight, the walls around

396
00:19:36,759 --> 00:19:38,720
the ark I've seen to bulge, just for a moment,

397
00:19:38,759 --> 00:19:41,200
as if the whole structure exhaled. This was in a

398
00:19:41,240 --> 00:19:45,240
cataloging error. The problem was not digital or administrative by

399
00:19:45,240 --> 00:19:48,599
the product of my clumsy inexperience. It was real, hidden

400
00:19:48,680 --> 00:19:51,359
under our feet, a system of vanished recos, forgotten staff,

401
00:19:51,400 --> 00:19:54,680
forbidden rooms anchor to physical logic no longer obeyed. The

402
00:19:54,759 --> 00:19:57,519
last line on one blippriant re access not permitted after

403
00:19:57,519 --> 00:20:00,200
a last inventory. All records were self correct with than

404
00:20:00,240 --> 00:20:03,359
forty eighth there. If I left it alone, maybe whatever

405
00:20:03,440 --> 00:20:05,680
was happening would swallow itself and me, and no one

406
00:20:05,720 --> 00:20:08,279
would care. But I thought of marriage g and the

407
00:20:08,359 --> 00:20:11,079
vanished books, and the low grating sound of something large

408
00:20:11,079 --> 00:20:14,119
sliding into place far below the library's kind face. I

409
00:20:14,160 --> 00:20:16,880
would have to go deeper still. The next ascent I

410
00:20:16,960 --> 00:20:19,480
knew might not let me back. I would have to

411
00:20:19,480 --> 00:20:22,480
go deeper still. The next ascent I knew might not

412
00:20:22,559 --> 00:20:26,240
let me back. I didn't sleep that night. I lay awake,

413
00:20:26,359 --> 00:20:28,759
looping the record of soft Playback. Were listening to my

414
00:20:28,759 --> 00:20:31,559
own thin voice, naming dates, staff codes, stray book titles,

415
00:20:31,559 --> 00:20:34,440
my attempts to anchor myself. I tried to forget the

416
00:20:34,480 --> 00:20:36,960
waxy feel of the master blueprint. The warning scrolled along

417
00:20:37,039 --> 00:20:40,359
its margins, but it crawled beneath every thought. By dawn,

418
00:20:40,440 --> 00:20:43,160
my heart thud had like an overdue notice. I found

419
00:20:43,200 --> 00:20:46,400
myself staring at the ceiling, reciting red section said basement

420
00:20:46,480 --> 00:20:50,119
catalog closure, until my throat grew raw. Mid morning, as

421
00:20:50,119 --> 00:20:52,119
the city creaked awake and the back addy garbage truck

422
00:20:52,160 --> 00:20:54,880
bellowed away, I forced myself through a routine. Shoes on line,

423
00:20:54,960 --> 00:20:58,119
now double checked, red thermis in hand, my reflection in

424
00:20:58,119 --> 00:21:01,039
the lobby's warped brass lifts didn't reassure me. The work

425
00:21:01,079 --> 00:21:03,960
badge Inane is wrecked in gole on Borough time. Inside

426
00:21:03,960 --> 00:21:06,759
the library, the main floor was bright, too ordinary, full

427
00:21:06,759 --> 00:21:10,160
of familiar coughs and printer jams. I forced myself to

428
00:21:10,200 --> 00:21:13,160
return to surface. Dude's shlving non fiction, answering her regular

429
00:21:13,160 --> 00:21:16,319
smuttered question about into library loans, nodding at Rhonda's complained

430
00:21:16,319 --> 00:21:20,160
about broken return spins. But under the fluorescence, every surface

431
00:21:20,160 --> 00:21:22,319
felt slightly out of focus, the edges of the ordinary

432
00:21:22,400 --> 00:21:25,519
rippling at my peripheral vision. The copy machine jammed, and

433
00:21:25,599 --> 00:21:27,440
the help many flashed an error. I had never seen

434
00:21:27,559 --> 00:21:31,240
no operator on file m G minus fifty seven. I blinked,

435
00:21:31,240 --> 00:21:34,119
and the screen cleared itself. I slipped away at break,

436
00:21:34,240 --> 00:21:36,319
ducking into the staff lounge with my half warm tea.

437
00:21:36,880 --> 00:21:38,960
Julia was at the table, working through a set of

438
00:21:38,960 --> 00:21:42,799
overgee reminders with a greasy red pencil. She barely looked up,

439
00:21:43,359 --> 00:21:46,720
botting a rebellion as she asked dryly, we're just hiding

440
00:21:46,720 --> 00:21:50,440
from Saturday Rush. I tried for casual. You ever find

441
00:21:50,440 --> 00:21:53,559
weird stuff in the arquet's old plans or whatever? Julie

442
00:21:53,559 --> 00:21:57,319
squeezed her pencil, eyes guarded you shouldn't be rifling in there,

443
00:21:57,880 --> 00:22:00,680
how lips twisted into a half grin. Most of that's

444
00:22:00,759 --> 00:22:03,559
just bureaucracy anyway. Half the old maps contradict each other,

445
00:22:03,640 --> 00:22:06,519
and the foundation settled so many times we stopped comparing them.

446
00:22:06,599 --> 00:22:10,279
Why has Morrissey got you searching for foundation cracks? Just curious?

447
00:22:10,319 --> 00:22:13,720
I managed. I wondered then, just how much July remembered

448
00:22:13,720 --> 00:22:15,799
about old staff or lost books, and how much she'd

449
00:22:15,880 --> 00:22:20,079
let herself forget. She shrugged. People get obsessed with this place,

450
00:22:20,160 --> 00:22:23,200
catalog errors, little mysteries. But you do your work, put

451
00:22:23,200 --> 00:22:25,440
things back where you found them. It doesn't follow you home.

452
00:22:26,000 --> 00:22:28,119
Her gaze locked on mine, clear as an exit sign.

453
00:22:28,720 --> 00:22:32,160
Don't chase old ghosts, Neelini, there's enough real work. My

454
00:22:32,240 --> 00:22:35,160
phone buzzed a Cattalov notification for a missing reference atlas.

455
00:22:35,799 --> 00:22:39,680
The code attached last scene section our pending. I didn't answer.

456
00:22:40,279 --> 00:22:42,480
Shirley gathered her papers and swept from the room, her

457
00:22:42,480 --> 00:22:45,160
silhouette flickering in the glass panel like a reflection from

458
00:22:45,160 --> 00:22:48,640
another building. Entirely after lunch, I drifted over to the

459
00:22:48,640 --> 00:22:51,720
staff ock has under the pretense of organizing old DVD cases.

460
00:22:52,359 --> 00:22:54,359
My hands shook as I opened the cabinets, but I

461
00:22:54,400 --> 00:22:57,680
no longer trusted what candid as evidence. Ledgers faded while

462
00:22:57,680 --> 00:23:00,000
you looked at them, and digital files white themselves clean.

463
00:23:00,680 --> 00:23:03,359
I copied what I found blueprints old staffless into my

464
00:23:03,400 --> 00:23:06,480
online notebook, jotting every odd annotation in a shaky hand.

465
00:23:07,119 --> 00:23:09,799
A routine cotship brought me past the locked red section door.

466
00:23:10,400 --> 00:23:13,359
The sign was impossibly a deeper read end. Before I

467
00:23:13,440 --> 00:23:15,680
knelt and pressed my palm against the seam in the carpet,

468
00:23:16,240 --> 00:23:18,440
there was a draft seeping from below, faint but real,

469
00:23:18,599 --> 00:23:20,920
like a ventilation current in reversed, something breathing out of

470
00:23:20,920 --> 00:23:23,559
the stacks instead of in. By then it was all

471
00:23:23,599 --> 00:23:25,400
I could think about, the whole under the foundation, the

472
00:23:25,440 --> 00:23:27,640
shelf after shelf of them misplaced memory, the logic that

473
00:23:27,720 --> 00:23:29,720
sometimes you could return a book and lose yourself in

474
00:23:29,759 --> 00:23:34,480
the process. Was it superstition or something engineered who decided

475
00:23:34,519 --> 00:23:37,200
that record should vanish or that certain stuff would never

476
00:23:37,200 --> 00:23:40,000
get their photo on the wall. A patron interrupted my

477
00:23:40,039 --> 00:23:44,079
thoughts as student fidgety, returning about a biography. Sorry, there's

478
00:23:44,119 --> 00:23:46,720
weird writing in this one. She slid the book across

479
00:23:46,759 --> 00:23:50,279
the counter and I turned the pages along the inside margin.

480
00:23:50,359 --> 00:23:54,680
Someone at scribbled, barely visible beneath library memory weights. My

481
00:23:54,759 --> 00:23:58,519
skin prickled. I loved the return, typing slowly, half daring

482
00:23:58,599 --> 00:24:01,240
the computer to flash up marrist g a sname, or

483
00:24:01,279 --> 00:24:04,640
another lost staff code. This time the screen simply blinked

484
00:24:04,640 --> 00:24:07,640
and confirmed the return, no anomaly, though the sistant time

485
00:24:07,680 --> 00:24:10,960
stamped it as nineteen ninety six. I stared, then refreshed.

486
00:24:11,039 --> 00:24:13,640
Now it was twenty twenty two. Again, the clock over

487
00:24:13,640 --> 00:24:16,960
the reference death ticked on all afternoon. I shoved and

488
00:24:17,000 --> 00:24:19,880
re arrange here, straining for any unusual noises scraped from

489
00:24:19,880 --> 00:24:22,279
below the suit, scrape of paper over carpet, even a

490
00:24:22,319 --> 00:24:25,920
shifting whiff of old spices were glue. Nothing yet the

491
00:24:25,920 --> 00:24:28,240
sense of being watched Paul's stronger the later it got.

492
00:24:28,880 --> 00:24:30,960
The motion sensors in the basement flicked the lights on

493
00:24:31,039 --> 00:24:33,640
and off, even when empty. In a far alcove, I

494
00:24:33,680 --> 00:24:37,200
heard muffled shuffling, like someone shoving behind a wall. After

495
00:24:37,240 --> 00:24:40,559
closing in the echoing hush, I lingered at the circulation desk.

496
00:24:41,240 --> 00:24:43,440
Wanda worked by with her purse tucked under one arm,

497
00:24:43,480 --> 00:24:45,640
waving to me, you don't stay late if you can

498
00:24:45,680 --> 00:24:48,720
help it. She warned gets weird after the lights off.

499
00:24:49,200 --> 00:24:52,720
The phrase could have meant anything or everything. Once the

500
00:24:52,759 --> 00:24:54,960
last patron felt it out and the main Entr's thumbshot,

501
00:24:55,079 --> 00:24:57,480
I made my way, heart rattling to the supply closet.

502
00:24:58,000 --> 00:25:00,079
The key m mess Morrissey had given me was cold,

503
00:25:00,079 --> 00:25:01,839
and upon the kind of heavy brass he could use

504
00:25:01,880 --> 00:25:04,920
to anchor a fishing line, and possibly old fashioned. The

505
00:25:04,960 --> 00:25:06,960
door opened thus with a click, then yielding, as if

506
00:25:07,000 --> 00:25:10,599
the lock recognized not just metal but intention. Inside beneath

507
00:25:10,640 --> 00:25:13,079
stray boxes of persisting forms and the canteen from a

508
00:25:13,079 --> 00:25:15,680
coat at your Self Era, there was a handle half concealed.

509
00:25:16,319 --> 00:25:19,119
I pried back a warp shelf behind it. The dust

510
00:25:19,119 --> 00:25:22,200
swolled thickly around a shadowy stair spiral lane, steep and

511
00:25:22,359 --> 00:25:24,480
leading somewhere deeper than the should have fit below ground level.

512
00:25:24,960 --> 00:25:29,759
I paused. I press record Neelini after ius circulation close

513
00:25:30,000 --> 00:25:32,480
entering service stair supply cause it if this is the

514
00:25:32,559 --> 00:25:35,960
last entry. I stopped through it dry a going in

515
00:25:36,720 --> 00:25:38,920
each step down the spiral stone, my sinuses with a

516
00:25:38,920 --> 00:25:41,400
mintow tail, as if diving into a deep still lake.

517
00:25:42,160 --> 00:25:44,240
It was colder than the rest of the building and

518
00:25:44,279 --> 00:25:47,000
As I descended, the sound of the bebuffaded into absolute hush.

519
00:25:47,079 --> 00:25:50,160
No distant cars, no gurgle from all plumbing. My phone

520
00:25:50,200 --> 00:25:53,559
lost signal. Before the third curve, I continued, one hand

521
00:25:53,599 --> 00:25:55,920
on the wall, feeling the brick damp, and at the

522
00:25:55,920 --> 00:25:58,680
bottom the stair flared out into a corridor. Walls kicked

523
00:25:58,720 --> 00:26:01,039
with paint the color of water blood peeling in sheets

524
00:26:01,880 --> 00:26:05,400
century old light fixtures hung overhead bulbs flickering dem orange.

525
00:26:05,839 --> 00:26:07,880
The air pressed down with the hush of sealed barkhouse,

526
00:26:07,920 --> 00:26:11,079
no mold, no decay, just a heavy paper, dry stainess,

527
00:26:11,079 --> 00:26:13,960
as if tiny here was held in abeyance. I moved

528
00:26:13,960 --> 00:26:17,599
forward with slow steps on either side. Metal doors shimmered,

529
00:26:17,680 --> 00:26:20,160
labeled in stints of paint, BETO reference, storage A B,

530
00:26:20,240 --> 00:26:25,000
two staff lockers, unfamiliar titles. The corridor folded around itself,

531
00:26:25,039 --> 00:26:29,279
geometry stretched, perspicuous buckle. The walls bulged in, then receded,

532
00:26:29,440 --> 00:26:32,039
corridors tightening and then opening again with each step, as

533
00:26:32,039 --> 00:26:34,640
though someone had assembled the space from half remembered schematics.

534
00:26:35,319 --> 00:26:38,960
Inside the first storage room, endless shelves stimulate, holding rows

535
00:26:39,000 --> 00:26:42,000
of books not on any current catalog. Each bind bore,

536
00:26:42,079 --> 00:26:45,599
handing number not a barcode. Some covers appeared and touched,

537
00:26:45,640 --> 00:26:48,599
others were warped, title newly ellegible. I ran a finger

538
00:26:48,599 --> 00:26:50,640
along a shelf and felt thus cut my skin thick

539
00:26:50,680 --> 00:26:53,480
of the non enemy fore shelving. One book shelved with

540
00:26:53,480 --> 00:26:56,480
lonely pride. I dared to pull it out. The trellised city,

541
00:26:56,599 --> 00:27:00,400
no copyright, no publisher inside the dedication to those who

542
00:27:00,440 --> 00:27:03,960
keep what must not be named a post it ghost, yellowed, clunted.

543
00:27:03,960 --> 00:27:06,640
The last page m G staff leisure updated, did not

544
00:27:06,680 --> 00:27:10,240
reshelve closure protecoll nineteen ninety seven. Where was Maris G.

545
00:27:11,880 --> 00:27:14,319
The nose pointed again and again to the same year's

546
00:27:14,400 --> 00:27:17,400
names and instructions, repeating like a flawed refrain. As I

547
00:27:17,440 --> 00:27:20,319
explored further, I saw other signs of habitation more recent

548
00:27:20,319 --> 00:27:23,279
than the dust. A paper coffee cup, half filled lid,

549
00:27:23,279 --> 00:27:26,720
peeled sigh, a folder of chicken slips dated within the

550
00:27:26,759 --> 00:27:29,279
past month, filled with names I'd never met, signatures that

551
00:27:29,279 --> 00:27:31,279
bled out at the end, as if the signers were

552
00:27:31,319 --> 00:27:34,400
bleeding into the page. I moved through three more rooms,

553
00:27:34,519 --> 00:27:36,839
each stranger than the last. Teach shelved with book stamped

554
00:27:36,839 --> 00:27:40,359
only with dates, no titles or with stickers marked e race.

555
00:27:41,119 --> 00:27:43,279
At the end of one passage, propped against a file

556
00:27:43,359 --> 00:27:45,799
cabinet was a book cut for rosen midr shelving an

557
00:27:45,960 --> 00:27:48,400
entire bottom row filled with red label volumes that all

558
00:27:48,440 --> 00:27:51,920
looked identical and heavy. Something recalled inside me. I closed

559
00:27:51,920 --> 00:27:54,039
the door behind me, careful not to touch any of

560
00:27:54,039 --> 00:27:57,640
the spines. Then ahead, the corridor nodded itself into a

561
00:27:57,640 --> 00:28:00,799
space that clearly hadn't seen recent entry. At its heart,

562
00:28:00,880 --> 00:28:02,559
in the shadow of a swaying bulb, the door to

563
00:28:02,599 --> 00:28:05,400
the red section waged framewarp to sign half cracked. The

564
00:28:05,440 --> 00:28:07,359
name was stinseled in a faunt I'd only seen in

565
00:28:07,359 --> 00:28:10,279
the deepest corners of the old blueprints. My hand shook

566
00:28:10,279 --> 00:28:12,839
as I approached the door. Should not have fit here.

567
00:28:12,880 --> 00:28:15,079
The wall had only been a thin partition above, Yet

568
00:28:15,079 --> 00:28:17,359
here hewed wider than any sea nut stairs, the wood

569
00:28:17,359 --> 00:28:19,880
older and ducker, the handle bronze and warm under my touch.

570
00:28:20,640 --> 00:28:23,079
I listened nothing, just the thread of sounds, daddic and

571
00:28:23,119 --> 00:28:26,240
hissing from further within. With effort, I pressed my shoulder

572
00:28:26,279 --> 00:28:28,960
to the door. It opened in a sigh, not a creek.

573
00:28:29,599 --> 00:28:32,200
The room within was impossible, not broad, but deep, ale

574
00:28:32,200 --> 00:28:35,599
after ale, vanishing into shadow. Some shells ran in a grid,

575
00:28:35,680 --> 00:28:38,599
others twisted off kilter, not lining up with floor or ceiling.

576
00:28:39,160 --> 00:28:41,839
It smelled of bitter dust, old ink, the mineral sweetness

577
00:28:41,839 --> 00:28:45,960
of forgotten paper. The carpet was flattened, almost slick in places,

578
00:28:46,119 --> 00:28:48,119
as if too many cots had rolled the same path.

579
00:28:48,799 --> 00:28:51,440
I prowled the first aisle. Here the books ran in

580
00:28:51,519 --> 00:28:54,599
coded notations, labels, peeling off mid name, lock, pending, review,

581
00:28:54,680 --> 00:28:58,000
nine and g unreturned, each volume heavier than it should be,

582
00:28:58,039 --> 00:29:01,119
as if something weighed the covers halfway down A return

583
00:29:01,160 --> 00:29:03,039
cut stood lid and a top. It a buttted ledger,

584
00:29:03,119 --> 00:29:05,400
red band, blank except for a scold note closure. Do

585
00:29:05,400 --> 00:29:08,440
you not remove? As I edged past, the room shifted,

586
00:29:09,079 --> 00:29:11,680
I swear the aisles moved, crowding me, funneling me deeper.

587
00:29:12,240 --> 00:29:15,200
From somewhere behind a row, A shuffle of footfalls, then faintly,

588
00:29:15,279 --> 00:29:18,599
the almost human kidtence of a cough. I froze, breath, shallow,

589
00:29:19,119 --> 00:29:22,200
a voice, papery behind the stacks. Don't move, what's settled.

590
00:29:22,720 --> 00:29:25,920
It was barely audible, neither male nor female, just old brittle.

591
00:29:26,519 --> 00:29:29,640
I retreated a step, trying to orient myself The path

592
00:29:29,680 --> 00:29:33,079
behind me seemed longer than moments before. My senses buckled

593
00:29:33,079 --> 00:29:35,960
against the layer. It's mellsmok paper, something wetter beneath it,

594
00:29:36,119 --> 00:29:39,079
like old moss. I reached for my phone, trying to

595
00:29:39,079 --> 00:29:41,240
set upin on my location, in no service, not even

596
00:29:41,279 --> 00:29:44,440
a flicker of Wi FI. I retraced my steps, heart hammering,

597
00:29:44,920 --> 00:29:47,880
but each turn, each aisle seemed to bend away from memory.

598
00:29:48,400 --> 00:29:51,160
Had I taken this row before? Had the red labeled

599
00:29:51,160 --> 00:29:53,599
cart always been at this angle? Spine out instead of up?

600
00:29:54,079 --> 00:29:56,880
The overhead bulbs poles rhythmically in a pattern I couldn't name.

601
00:29:57,440 --> 00:30:00,279
I pressed myself into a corner, breathing against cutderber hosts.

602
00:30:01,000 --> 00:30:03,319
In my ear, the faintest echo a woman's voice, saying,

603
00:30:03,559 --> 00:30:06,960
returned for closure. Don't forget. It was not quite Mare's name,

604
00:30:07,519 --> 00:30:10,880
but it was something. It was too much. I forced

605
00:30:10,880 --> 00:30:14,119
myself to walk back. The path opened from me, almost

606
00:30:14,160 --> 00:30:16,920
abrupt in its mercy. Through the final door, I stumbled

607
00:30:16,960 --> 00:30:19,359
right into stairwall shadow, the warmth of my own palm

608
00:30:19,359 --> 00:30:21,319
on the railing, the smell of the upper floor spilling

609
00:30:21,359 --> 00:30:24,640
down in faint traces, leminous infectant nucleue, the living world

610
00:30:24,680 --> 00:30:28,559
above I shuddered, fighting down a shiver. The ledger, the

611
00:30:28,599 --> 00:30:32,000
hidden records, the submerged rooms. Something in this place. Control forgetting,

612
00:30:32,240 --> 00:30:34,440
not away. Rage is one lost transaction at a time,

613
00:30:34,640 --> 00:30:37,079
leaving only the adline of what had been. And if

614
00:30:37,119 --> 00:30:38,720
I went back, if I risked one more descent, I

615
00:30:38,799 --> 00:30:40,799
might not be Neleni at all. Not by the time

616
00:30:40,799 --> 00:30:44,119
I surfaced. Maybe none of them were back at the

617
00:30:44,160 --> 00:30:46,519
top of the stairwell. The overhead light flick once twice.

618
00:30:47,079 --> 00:30:49,680
My phone's clock insisted a single ire had passed, but

619
00:30:49,720 --> 00:30:51,839
when I checked the lobby clock it was nearly closing.

620
00:30:52,359 --> 00:30:54,559
I ducked into the staff bathroom, scrolling a quick note

621
00:30:54,559 --> 00:30:57,279
into my audio diary subbasement reel, where it section not

622
00:30:57,359 --> 00:31:00,240
myth ledger there too. Shelves don't line up, not safe

623
00:31:00,279 --> 00:31:02,720
to linger, Must check personnel records, must find out who

624
00:31:02,799 --> 00:31:05,000
was missing. I looked in the mirror and saw not

625
00:31:05,119 --> 00:31:07,000
just my own face, but a hint of someone at

626
00:31:07,000 --> 00:31:10,680
my shoulder gun. When I turned, I blinked not. Then

627
00:31:11,319 --> 00:31:14,000
the library's double doors croned as the last staff felted

628
00:31:14,079 --> 00:31:18,440
home wander cold Neelini all locked up. I nodded, shook,

629
00:31:18,680 --> 00:31:21,240
staggered out onto the front steps. City dusk numby my skin,

630
00:31:21,920 --> 00:31:24,319
night pressed in every street like a pale beacon. Shadows

631
00:31:24,319 --> 00:31:26,759
clustered at the windows behind me. I swore there in

632
00:31:26,759 --> 00:31:28,799
the hush, I saw movement in the upper stacks of

633
00:31:28,799 --> 00:31:31,319
figure was shelding, moving with the gate that was nearly familiar.

634
00:31:31,880 --> 00:31:34,640
I would try again tomorrow. But as I walked home,

635
00:31:34,799 --> 00:31:36,960
keys clenched, I could not shake the center or someone

636
00:31:36,960 --> 00:31:39,799
else's memory. Some one gun from the rolls, wandering the

637
00:31:39,880 --> 00:31:42,160
edges of the light. I woke to the sound of

638
00:31:42,160 --> 00:31:44,759
my phone vibrating across the bedside table, jittering against a

639
00:31:44,759 --> 00:31:48,279
wadded cattalot print out Sunday sun pulled across my window,

640
00:31:48,519 --> 00:31:50,559
wrong in its angle, as if more than a single

641
00:31:50,640 --> 00:31:53,759
night had passed, knuckles white. I sat up, part pack

642
00:31:53,799 --> 00:31:56,359
with dull ache before my feet. At the fore the

643
00:31:56,359 --> 00:31:59,039
library's sub basement shone behind my alleids, the corridors that

644
00:31:59,119 --> 00:32:01,559
bent and shifted, that desk of ledgers, the reflection of

645
00:32:01,640 --> 00:32:03,119
some one who might have been me in a blank

646
00:32:03,119 --> 00:32:06,079
glass of a staff picture frame. Coffee scalded my tongue

647
00:32:06,079 --> 00:32:08,279
on the first ship. I set down my mug and

648
00:32:08,359 --> 00:32:11,279
plugged in the audio acorder. The recording from the night

649
00:32:11,319 --> 00:32:13,960
before was there but brittle static leaden chopped into harsh

650
00:32:13,960 --> 00:32:18,160
splinters beneath my own voice Nalini after iris circulation closed,

651
00:32:18,200 --> 00:32:20,400
If this is it? And then a rattling swell like

652
00:32:20,440 --> 00:32:22,880
the interior of a moving van interrupted in a raised

653
00:32:23,559 --> 00:32:25,960
The glance at my calendar told me it was midday Monday.

654
00:32:26,559 --> 00:32:29,039
My body was heavy, muscles sore as if I'd run miles.

655
00:32:29,720 --> 00:32:31,920
In the bathroom mirror, a bruise blossom at my wrist,

656
00:32:32,000 --> 00:32:34,960
not visible. Before I pulled up my phone. Three new

657
00:32:34,960 --> 00:32:38,440
texts from Rhonda timestem scattered over the missing ires. Call

658
00:32:38,480 --> 00:32:41,119
em when you see this. Ye still at sick. We

659
00:32:41,240 --> 00:32:43,640
need the desk covered. N A. M. Julie says, come

660
00:32:43,680 --> 00:32:46,359
in when you're up for it. No mention of my absence,

661
00:32:46,640 --> 00:32:48,799
no scolding for vanishing two shifts in a row, just

662
00:32:48,799 --> 00:32:51,000
a sense that time had alighted, scouted up from under

663
00:32:51,039 --> 00:32:53,400
my life. My note book, at the spot where I'd

664
00:32:53,440 --> 00:32:56,160
left off copying blueprint dimensions was blank for the day before,

665
00:32:56,799 --> 00:32:59,000
no writing, not even an indent were my pen had

666
00:32:59,039 --> 00:33:02,279
pressed yet the INCLM my pomrade section scribbled in a

667
00:33:02,279 --> 00:33:04,160
panic was smeared, as if I had been sweating in

668
00:33:04,240 --> 00:33:07,079
my sleep. I swung my legs off the bed, finding

669
00:33:07,119 --> 00:33:09,000
my shoes were muddy with a stain at one heel

670
00:33:09,039 --> 00:33:12,000
I couldn't name. Half Way through a cautious breakfast, I

671
00:33:12,079 --> 00:33:14,799
checked my work email. Hope you're feeling better, as discussed

672
00:33:14,839 --> 00:33:16,960
your desk schedules of date had come in for orientation

673
00:33:17,079 --> 00:33:20,359
with a mess Morrissey before resuming stacks. No mention of

674
00:33:20,359 --> 00:33:23,039
the sub basement on missing time or the locking door,

675
00:33:23,200 --> 00:33:26,720
only Adman's relentless cheerfulness. The linger and taste of iron

676
00:33:26,720 --> 00:33:28,559
in my muff reminded me of breathing too deeply in

677
00:33:28,559 --> 00:33:32,039
the narrow hidden passages under the floor. Resolute, I repacked

678
00:33:32,039 --> 00:33:34,519
my back audio recorder phone. A copy of the blueprint

679
00:33:34,559 --> 00:33:37,440
had managed to swipe my staff badge's sticker had peeled

680
00:33:37,440 --> 00:33:40,160
half way off the dragged in its place faint scratch

681
00:33:40,200 --> 00:33:43,720
marks shaped like initials energy. I'd never noticed them before.

682
00:33:44,359 --> 00:33:47,640
Outside clouds gathered over the southward roof line. My walk

683
00:33:47,680 --> 00:33:49,640
to the library seemed to take twice as lawn every

684
00:33:49,680 --> 00:33:52,960
block tinged with alarm and misalignment. Cars idled at the

685
00:33:52,960 --> 00:33:55,359
intersection a second too lawn. Old ladies in the steep

686
00:33:55,400 --> 00:33:57,519
of the bakery, watching me pass, and pursed their lips

687
00:33:57,559 --> 00:34:00,240
as though sniffing out the knee. When I stepped inside

688
00:34:00,240 --> 00:34:03,400
the main branch, the change was immediate. The lobby's color

689
00:34:03,440 --> 00:34:05,880
scheme had shifted, not the pale blue mats I remembered,

690
00:34:05,880 --> 00:34:07,960
but a worn red runner stretch to the desk kicked

691
00:34:08,000 --> 00:34:10,599
as if its centuries of rat The placards and the

692
00:34:10,599 --> 00:34:13,559
walls now carried I coms for information commons and annexed

693
00:34:13,559 --> 00:34:16,480
three sections I had never seen nor had referenced. At

694
00:34:16,480 --> 00:34:19,880
the central circulation, Rhonda's hair was cut short, her glass's

695
00:34:19,920 --> 00:34:22,800
new frame marbled green. She waved from behind the desk,

696
00:34:22,880 --> 00:34:26,199
her greeting and familiar welcome back Neelini new lock of

697
00:34:26,239 --> 00:34:28,920
Combo's on your ID. As she passed, I caught a

698
00:34:28,920 --> 00:34:31,639
flicker from her lanyard beneath the plastic a business card,

699
00:34:31,679 --> 00:34:35,519
a circulation supervisor and another line and its coordinator. The

700
00:34:35,559 --> 00:34:38,039
staff roster updated on the TV above the lone desk,

701
00:34:38,199 --> 00:34:40,400
scold names with a half dozen editions I'd never met,

702
00:34:40,519 --> 00:34:43,320
s Cherney, F. BOGIERO, M. Gordon, and a handful missing,

703
00:34:43,440 --> 00:34:46,719
including Duly. In my peripheral vision, the wall seemed to

704
00:34:46,719 --> 00:34:49,039
pulse outward, fattening with a density of shells. I'd never

705
00:34:49,079 --> 00:34:52,480
shelved corners. I'd never dusted. The map room, once cordoned

706
00:34:52,480 --> 00:34:55,079
off then lot, was now local heritage, its metal door

707
00:34:55,119 --> 00:34:58,079
replaced by glass. I passed through the morning drift of

708
00:34:58,079 --> 00:35:01,719
returning patrons, startled by smaller minsitions, irregular gone, replaced by

709
00:35:01,719 --> 00:35:04,400
someone else's family. The little girl who called me a

710
00:35:04,440 --> 00:35:07,960
book finder no longer looked up. Mister Fawn, always waiting

711
00:35:07,960 --> 00:35:11,199
for large prints, was nowhere to be seen. In his place,

712
00:35:11,480 --> 00:35:13,679
a young man with bottle thick glasses rifled through a

713
00:35:13,719 --> 00:35:16,559
sack of and cut newspapers. In the break room, a

714
00:35:16,639 --> 00:35:19,519
mug sat with the name written a marker Nilini, but

715
00:35:19,599 --> 00:35:24,239
the handwriting wasn't mine. I sat heavily palmstitching. The audio recorder,

716
00:35:24,360 --> 00:35:26,679
when played was just static for the past two days.

717
00:35:26,719 --> 00:35:30,199
The list of an omely scrubbed my spreadsheet opened displayed

718
00:35:30,239 --> 00:35:32,840
only headers, the unres caught in a haze, interspersed time

719
00:35:32,840 --> 00:35:35,880
stemps from last year. I scrolled hot tripping until I

720
00:35:35,920 --> 00:35:38,239
saw a single logged note inserted in the wee eyes

721
00:35:38,280 --> 00:35:40,920
before the missing night check red ledger and staff room.

722
00:35:41,159 --> 00:35:43,880
I slept out glancing at the security mirrors. My face

723
00:35:43,880 --> 00:35:46,440
caught twice, once in a way that didn't quite line up.

724
00:35:46,960 --> 00:35:49,440
Whoever had reset my locker had left a folded note,

725
00:35:49,519 --> 00:35:51,960
staff meeting at noon, please return. All would drawn out

726
00:35:51,960 --> 00:35:54,800
as promptly. Even the shells themselves seemed to barrow. The

727
00:35:54,880 --> 00:35:57,480
histories corners bulked out with non fiction titles I'd never

728
00:35:57,559 --> 00:36:00,360
inventoried fiction runs that ended abruptly and restarted under a

729
00:36:00,400 --> 00:36:03,559
new coal numbers. The supply closet door was now latched

730
00:36:03,559 --> 00:36:06,920
with a keyp at, its paint and touched unease grew claws.

731
00:36:07,679 --> 00:36:10,119
My pocket buzzed with the message no sense were only

732
00:36:10,159 --> 00:36:12,880
the words annex sneeds were shelving B two with a

733
00:36:12,920 --> 00:36:17,679
keykoat attached. My skin prickled D two, the level that

734
00:36:17,760 --> 00:36:20,960
never existed, now referenced openly. I made my way down

735
00:36:21,000 --> 00:36:23,639
the main corridor, passing coworkers who should have been strangers,

736
00:36:23,760 --> 00:36:26,840
all nodding too familiarly. At the elevator, the button for

737
00:36:26,880 --> 00:36:29,800
minus two glold a deep secret of orange. No one

738
00:36:29,840 --> 00:36:31,760
seemed to mind as I pressed it, not even as

739
00:36:31,760 --> 00:36:33,880
the door shut on an older woman, I didn't recognize

740
00:36:33,880 --> 00:36:36,920
her as nearly closed, humming under her breath. The descent

741
00:36:37,039 --> 00:36:39,440
was too smooth. The elevator music due into a frequency

742
00:36:39,440 --> 00:36:42,360
I could barely register. When the doors slid open, I

743
00:36:42,360 --> 00:36:45,440
found myself in a brightly lit, low ceiling, tannex metal shelves,

744
00:36:45,480 --> 00:36:49,280
gray carpeting, Brin's mark, transferred older organomic chairs piled high.

745
00:36:49,639 --> 00:36:52,800
The air smelled of disinfectant and something fainter, sweet but wrong.

746
00:36:53,400 --> 00:36:56,119
Crossing the floor, I retrieved a bin of withdrawn materials

747
00:36:56,119 --> 00:36:59,559
for order inside red bound ledgers, a handful of ancient

748
00:36:59,639 --> 00:37:02,440
children books, and a battered blank library car tucked under

749
00:37:02,440 --> 00:37:06,480
a folded ledger page. The handwriting stiff measured read mGy

750
00:37:06,559 --> 00:37:09,719
closure pending do not file. I was sweating, heart shivering

751
00:37:09,719 --> 00:37:12,480
in my chest. The only other sun was the single

752
00:37:12,519 --> 00:37:14,760
echo of staff member shelving books in the next room,

753
00:37:14,760 --> 00:37:18,039
caught wheels squeaking ehithnically. A tap on my shoulder jarred

754
00:37:18,039 --> 00:37:21,840
me back. The custodian, same sharp eyes as ever, uniform,

755
00:37:21,840 --> 00:37:24,880
a different color, set down a small envelope mail from

756
00:37:24,960 --> 00:37:27,800
Archives for you. Inside the envelope was a length of

757
00:37:27,800 --> 00:37:30,079
red thread and a single brass key, identical to the

758
00:37:30,079 --> 00:37:33,400
one Ms Morrissey had leant before. But Polish knew there

759
00:37:33,440 --> 00:37:36,559
was a carved map room direct access. Don't let it

760
00:37:36,639 --> 00:37:40,639
drift inked over the signature. The initials were Energy. I

761
00:37:40,679 --> 00:37:44,119
climbed the silver stairs, clear headed, pulse, thundering at the top.

762
00:37:44,159 --> 00:37:46,000
I forced the map room lock key, guiding home as

763
00:37:46,000 --> 00:37:49,320
if cut yesterday. The room was familiar, yet off maps

764
00:37:49,320 --> 00:37:52,599
were pinned in different patterns. The case containing proper directors removed,

765
00:37:52,840 --> 00:37:56,360
replaced with legal sized folders split by decades inside the

766
00:37:56,400 --> 00:37:59,320
low drawer beneath the brittle folder marked City Memory Initiative

767
00:37:59,400 --> 00:38:02,639
nineteen eighty seven minutes one thousand, nine hundred ninety six

768
00:38:02,800 --> 00:38:04,719
lay the same blueprint I had found before, but this

769
00:38:04,840 --> 00:38:08,639
time added sections were overlaid in computer print controlled archival

770
00:38:08,679 --> 00:38:11,559
Erasure project Southwards Central Library. It was stamped at the header,

771
00:38:11,639 --> 00:38:14,840
followed by Mayell signed off some project numbers. Something in

772
00:38:14,880 --> 00:38:18,039
my stomach twisted, not superstition, not hallucination. Here inc to

773
00:38:18,119 --> 00:38:20,679
public project sprouting from the stacks beneath my feet a

774
00:38:20,719 --> 00:38:23,639
loss experiment with a name. Permits were clipped to the

775
00:38:23,639 --> 00:38:27,159
margins sub Basement expansion approved nineteen eighty five minutes. Six

776
00:38:27,440 --> 00:38:30,840
personnel denied keyk art access except special project coordinator Energy.

777
00:38:31,480 --> 00:38:35,280
Long lists of funding allocation's local history, discretionary memory reformatting

778
00:38:35,280 --> 00:38:39,280
where footrace alongside ominously blocked out sections below a yellow

779
00:38:39,320 --> 00:38:42,039
sticky if itxed more recently, don't let the records reattach

780
00:38:42,119 --> 00:38:45,320
basement entry's lock after a ledger signed, some one at

781
00:38:45,320 --> 00:38:48,199
some point had tried to make forgetting official city policy.

782
00:38:48,760 --> 00:38:51,760
I sat on the caldalnoleum, hands trembling, piecing it together.

783
00:38:52,360 --> 00:38:56,280
Suffwood wasn't just disorganized. At some point, it had volunteered

784
00:38:56,320 --> 00:38:58,400
its dangled memory for burial, As if history could be

785
00:38:58,400 --> 00:39:01,840
scrub smither than concrete. This sub basement expanded, the red

786
00:39:01,880 --> 00:39:05,880
section assembled, the erased names cued, and oblivion. If names leapt, vanish,

787
00:39:06,159 --> 00:39:08,280
or receded, well, that was all part of the design.

788
00:39:08,880 --> 00:39:11,360
Each missing protocol or vanished memory costs some one with

789
00:39:11,440 --> 00:39:14,960
something dearly thun the spat against the window. I tucked

790
00:39:14,960 --> 00:39:17,079
the blueprint into my jacket and locked the map room

791
00:39:17,159 --> 00:39:20,280
using a new key pocked in the brass. Every gesture

792
00:39:20,280 --> 00:39:22,719
made the world seem to tell to her settle on

793
00:39:22,840 --> 00:39:24,519
my way back a mess more as you found me

794
00:39:24,559 --> 00:39:27,239
in the reference stacks for voice, warier than ever I

795
00:39:27,280 --> 00:39:28,880
see you found the blue prints I had hoped they

796
00:39:28,880 --> 00:39:31,840
would help. She surveyed the annex, as if the walls

797
00:39:31,880 --> 00:39:34,960
themselves could hear. You realize, don't you that the library

798
00:39:35,000 --> 00:39:38,519
won't let you dig too deep? I swallowed. She studded

799
00:39:38,519 --> 00:39:40,960
my face. It's not meant to be cruel. In the

800
00:39:40,960 --> 00:39:42,719
early days, we thought we could at it what the

801
00:39:42,760 --> 00:39:45,639
town remembered, the local errors, fail projects, things best left

802
00:39:45,639 --> 00:39:48,920
to mark. But papers stubborn and so's place. She glanced

803
00:39:48,920 --> 00:39:51,000
at the scar on my wrist, a small sadness in

804
00:39:51,039 --> 00:39:53,599
her eyes. If you want to go deeper, you do

805
00:39:53,679 --> 00:39:57,239
it at your own risk. I started myself. The missing

806
00:39:57,280 --> 00:40:01,159
thy said the staffhemerist, GI, the vanish, the odd barcoats.

807
00:40:01,320 --> 00:40:03,639
Is there a way out for them? Her lips pressed.

808
00:40:03,679 --> 00:40:06,639
Then sometimes the records do revert, but you must not

809
00:40:06,679 --> 00:40:08,840
try to return what isn't yours. If the ledgers out

810
00:40:08,840 --> 00:40:11,119
of order, the erasure is partial. They the system, the

811
00:40:11,159 --> 00:40:13,159
walls call it. What you want to take a price.

812
00:40:13,880 --> 00:40:16,840
She slipped a small silver notebook into my hand. Write

813
00:40:16,880 --> 00:40:19,559
down what you see. Don't depend on electronic records. Don't

814
00:40:19,639 --> 00:40:22,480
let your only proof be to catalog. She patted my

815
00:40:22,599 --> 00:40:25,639
arm and moved on. I slouet, shrinking against the shifting stacks.

816
00:40:26,320 --> 00:40:28,280
I took the rest of my shift shoving, moving from

817
00:40:28,320 --> 00:40:31,679
Annix three to Heritage. The air was thicker than I remembered,

818
00:40:31,719 --> 00:40:34,840
as if way down by falk. Twice I misshelved a book,

819
00:40:34,880 --> 00:40:36,559
only to find its snap back on to the cart

820
00:40:36,599 --> 00:40:39,320
moments later. The buck could now one number off. The

821
00:40:39,360 --> 00:40:41,880
fiction aisle at the far end lengthened unexpectedly flanked with

822
00:40:41,920 --> 00:40:44,440
the extra rows every fifth title replaced by a red

823
00:40:44,440 --> 00:40:47,039
stick ord wodrown. A group of teens lingered near the

824
00:40:47,079 --> 00:40:50,119
staff only door, peering down it scene I caught only

825
00:40:50,199 --> 00:40:52,920
fragments heard it used to go further. My grandma said

826
00:40:52,920 --> 00:40:55,880
there were two basements. She swears. A younger boy flicked

827
00:40:55,880 --> 00:40:57,920
a penny at the wall. It bounced and then scattered

828
00:40:57,920 --> 00:41:00,760
beneath the nearby shelf, vanishing into sh shadow I hadn't

829
00:41:00,800 --> 00:41:04,480
seen before. With the library closed and the security lights buzzing,

830
00:41:04,559 --> 00:41:08,000
I gathered my notes, one section heavier than before, blueprints,

831
00:41:08,119 --> 00:41:10,920
the silver notebook, brusqu key, and my badge, now bearing

832
00:41:10,960 --> 00:41:14,480
a faint stamp provisional pending. I sat in the staff lounge,

833
00:41:14,559 --> 00:41:17,800
fingers absent mindedly twisting the red thread check the red

834
00:41:17,880 --> 00:41:22,039
ledger in staff room, my note commanded. I obeyed. Near

835
00:41:22,119 --> 00:41:24,840
the back wall and the cabinet usually home to staff handbooks,

836
00:41:24,920 --> 00:41:27,559
was a narrow gap. I slipped the brass key into

837
00:41:27,559 --> 00:41:30,239
his lock and ease the panel aside. Inside sat the

838
00:41:30,239 --> 00:41:33,440
red ledger, spine cracked, every page oddly weighted, entrant cross

839
00:41:33,440 --> 00:41:36,920
Hashton's script half smudged into palimpsyst. Staff names were cud,

840
00:41:37,000 --> 00:41:40,800
some cross, some only just legible. Each row included details,

841
00:41:40,880 --> 00:41:43,800
but processed, even erased a page and removed sea suphell,

842
00:41:44,400 --> 00:41:48,280
and always the coded closure date marked either returned or unresolved.

843
00:41:48,880 --> 00:41:51,280
My own name appeared at the bottom, nearly kny provisional

844
00:41:51,760 --> 00:41:54,920
closure column blank. I snapped the book shot, tucking the

845
00:41:55,000 --> 00:41:57,880
ledger into my jacket. The world's spun a fraction, the

846
00:41:57,920 --> 00:42:00,760
lounge lights blinking. As I stood the door to the

847
00:42:00,800 --> 00:42:03,639
staff lunge. Seen further away was corridor longer like in

848
00:42:03,679 --> 00:42:07,119
a dream. Resolved, I made my decision. I would enter

849
00:42:07,159 --> 00:42:10,039
the sub basement of deliberate descent, not the stumbled trespass

850
00:42:10,039 --> 00:42:13,159
of before. I packed the brass key, silver notebook, my

851
00:42:13,199 --> 00:42:15,920
own blank LI library card, and stepped into the supply closet.

852
00:42:16,559 --> 00:42:20,199
The spiral stairs awaited. I made my way downward, flastlight

853
00:42:20,239 --> 00:42:23,239
train ahead, the geometry slipping as before, stairs, coiling deeper,

854
00:42:23,280 --> 00:42:25,639
wall squeezed tight, the earthening and then thickening until it

855
00:42:25,679 --> 00:42:28,559
stuck to my skin. The red section's door was ajar,

856
00:42:28,639 --> 00:42:32,239
as if expecting me inside. The architecture strained all sense.

857
00:42:32,960 --> 00:42:35,400
Shelves warped and stretched. Books hangled in a danse game

858
00:42:35,400 --> 00:42:38,719
of perspective. With each step, the corridor seemed to riovenez

859
00:42:38,760 --> 00:42:42,039
around me, shoving boo carts into new formations, sometimes thanking me,

860
00:42:42,199 --> 00:42:44,559
sometimes forming a dead end. I would link to find open.

861
00:42:45,079 --> 00:42:48,719
The sun came quickly, shelving, then pencil scratching, almost ordinary.

862
00:42:49,360 --> 00:42:51,320
At the far end of a shifting aisle, a shadow

863
00:42:51,320 --> 00:42:54,440
trembled between metal and wood. I sealed myself in a perch,

864
00:42:54,559 --> 00:42:57,559
ledger pressed tight to my chest. Closer the shadow or

865
00:42:57,639 --> 00:43:00,800
less dragged outline of woman chintuck close sh broad beneath

866
00:43:00,800 --> 00:43:04,400
a tattered stout sweater. Hands worked methodically reshoving a cut

867
00:43:04,400 --> 00:43:07,599
lined with ledgers and foul boxes. The face, when it

868
00:43:07,639 --> 00:43:09,840
turned pale, blurred, as if the world wouldn't commit to

869
00:43:09,880 --> 00:43:13,639
resolving it, yet undeniably present courage, something familiar, I drew

870
00:43:13,639 --> 00:43:16,400
in my breath and sure if I should speak, Maris.

871
00:43:16,960 --> 00:43:20,559
A blink, then the shadow shivered. The handstilled, one finger

872
00:43:20,559 --> 00:43:22,960
pressed to the spine of a ledger who's left. This

873
00:43:23,079 --> 00:43:26,119
time the voice was neither echoed nor hallucination, for Adbert

874
00:43:26,199 --> 00:43:29,320
marbled with static, a mid range contralto slurring into the hush.

875
00:43:30,039 --> 00:43:32,039
It's new any I work up stairs? I found your

876
00:43:32,119 --> 00:43:35,079
name in the records. I the words sounded foolish as

877
00:43:35,119 --> 00:43:38,079
they left me. The figure half smiled, head tilted back

878
00:43:38,800 --> 00:43:40,920
always someone new. What is it you hope to fix?

879
00:43:41,519 --> 00:43:44,719
I hesitated. There are missing books, names, some of you

880
00:43:44,840 --> 00:43:48,360
never returned. They they erased too much. They always erased

881
00:43:48,360 --> 00:43:51,599
too much. The words ached. What is it you want

882
00:43:51,719 --> 00:43:54,760
records restored? Or only your own name? And blurred? I

883
00:43:54,800 --> 00:43:57,199
want the truth cataloged. I want people able to find

884
00:43:57,199 --> 00:44:00,760
what was lost. My knees threatened to buckle. I want

885
00:44:00,760 --> 00:44:02,519
to know if I can return to who I was before,

886
00:44:02,639 --> 00:44:05,559
or if you if anyone can round us. A's drifted

887
00:44:05,559 --> 00:44:08,039
in and not a focus, Maris. If it was heard,

888
00:44:08,079 --> 00:44:10,679
extended a hand, palm up in. It was a blank

889
00:44:10,760 --> 00:44:13,679
libery card. I just frayed with handling. What would you

890
00:44:13,719 --> 00:44:16,559
do with the ledger, Sign your name, riskclosure, or shove

891
00:44:16,559 --> 00:44:19,199
it and let it rot. If I sign, do I stay?

892
00:44:19,840 --> 00:44:22,639
I whispered, or do I just join the ones? Nobody

893
00:44:22,639 --> 00:44:26,159
remembers he sign, and the record hardens. Someone always stays,

894
00:44:26,199 --> 00:44:28,880
another assistant, another page, but nobody leaves with what they

895
00:44:28,920 --> 00:44:31,920
mean to. She released the card, letting it flutter to

896
00:44:31,920 --> 00:44:35,280
the floor. And if you reshove the ledger unfinished, more

897
00:44:35,320 --> 00:44:39,480
gets lost, rooms, books, faces, even exits. I shook, caught

898
00:44:39,519 --> 00:44:42,519
between wanting to run and knowing I must stand what

899
00:44:42,599 --> 00:44:45,239
happens if I walk away? Her eyes, if they were

900
00:44:45,239 --> 00:44:48,719
eyes narrowed. The building will keep reaching foreclosure until it

901
00:44:48,719 --> 00:44:50,400
gets what it wants. May be this time it will

902
00:44:50,400 --> 00:44:52,679
be satisfied with a book, a single page. Maybe it

903
00:44:52,719 --> 00:44:55,079
swallows a wing or shifts a whole memory. It is

904
00:44:55,079 --> 00:44:59,559
a hungry place around us. The wall's flexed echoes bloom,

905
00:44:59,559 --> 00:45:02,719
father died, the stack's voices faintly arguing, someone sobbing the

906
00:45:02,719 --> 00:45:05,760
scuff of a cart, rolling, then vanishing mid note. My

907
00:45:05,840 --> 00:45:09,360
fingers curled around the blank card. I unclapped the silver notebook,

908
00:45:09,400 --> 00:45:12,360
flipping to the cleanest page left one by one, I

909
00:45:12,400 --> 00:45:15,400
wrote down what I knew names lost, years, collapsed, books

910
00:45:15,400 --> 00:45:19,000
misplaced were erased at each name. Maris g he maher

911
00:45:19,159 --> 00:45:21,960
r n Delaney. I inked a square, not closing the line,

912
00:45:22,039 --> 00:45:25,760
refusing the final period. Maris watch hunched, as if pressed

913
00:45:25,760 --> 00:45:28,920
in by whatever force kept her chained here right fast,

914
00:45:29,039 --> 00:45:32,599
she rasped, I did. In writing, I could feel the

915
00:45:32,639 --> 00:45:35,679
ledger resisted, pages heavier, then lighter, in pulling into patterns

916
00:45:35,679 --> 00:45:38,400
that moved at the edge of sight. As I transcribed,

917
00:45:38,440 --> 00:45:40,880
the shelves re arranged themselves. In my peripheral vision, the

918
00:45:40,920 --> 00:45:44,639
library grinding for its layers, testing the edges of forgetting. Suddenly,

919
00:45:44,719 --> 00:45:47,519
an electricity shuddered through the room. A light near the

920
00:45:47,599 --> 00:45:51,119
ceiling guttered and failed. The air thickened, pressure mounting until

921
00:45:51,119 --> 00:45:54,039
my ears popped. Maris spasmed, as if jerked back by

922
00:45:54,039 --> 00:45:57,480
an invisible leash. Don't let the ledger closer, she stammered,

923
00:45:58,119 --> 00:46:01,840
Not unfinished, not while you remember. I fumbled the red thread,

924
00:46:01,920 --> 00:46:04,719
the card, the notebook, all dropping to the floor. The

925
00:46:04,800 --> 00:46:07,599
ledge is spine opened, pages flipping in a windless rush,

926
00:46:07,760 --> 00:46:10,719
cataloging Juris one after another. Ink andr inked in a

927
00:46:10,760 --> 00:46:14,840
thousand hands my own name surface, then slipped away all

928
00:46:14,880 --> 00:46:17,960
around spectrol figures flickered, a library staff not present since

929
00:46:18,000 --> 00:46:20,880
before I was born. Elders and children, each pressing fingers

930
00:46:20,880 --> 00:46:23,960
to lips, urging silence, or holding up were drawn slips

931
00:46:24,000 --> 00:46:27,760
like badges. One started to speak, but his words disintegrated,

932
00:46:27,800 --> 00:46:31,199
paper fraying in an invisible wind. I lunged forward, yanking

933
00:46:31,239 --> 00:46:33,440
the ledger from the shelf, its spine burning in my hands,

934
00:46:33,480 --> 00:46:36,639
as if charged with static. What do I do? I

935
00:46:36,719 --> 00:46:39,800
demanded of the room of Maris, the thousand echoing histories,

936
00:46:40,440 --> 00:46:42,840
Marius fading now her outline, loss in the gloomery, each

937
00:46:42,880 --> 00:46:45,920
from my shoulder, fingers missing by the second. Shelve it

938
00:46:45,920 --> 00:46:49,119
on your terms. Don't file yourself. The pressure belt like

939
00:46:49,159 --> 00:46:51,920
crushing my ears, the aisles shrinking, books sliding from shells,

940
00:46:51,960 --> 00:46:55,360
as if every lost memory rebelled at once. I braced myself,

941
00:46:55,519 --> 00:46:57,800
knelt on the warped carpet, and yent the red thread

942
00:46:57,800 --> 00:47:00,280
tight through the ledge's clasp, binding the last page. Not

943
00:47:00,320 --> 00:47:03,320
only I could and tie. The stack of spectral staff swirled,

944
00:47:03,360 --> 00:47:07,360
dissolving into red haze. Everything collapsed inward, then burst outward.

945
00:47:08,039 --> 00:47:10,559
My own name I could back at me, muffled to syllables,

946
00:47:10,599 --> 00:47:12,800
slurred by distance, nearly ne a flare of heat, the

947
00:47:12,840 --> 00:47:16,400
taste of dust, and then silence. I pitched forward, arms

948
00:47:16,400 --> 00:47:19,840
aching leger pester my chest. The shells were empty round me,

949
00:47:19,920 --> 00:47:22,079
the carpet now the stale gray from above, a ghost

950
00:47:22,119 --> 00:47:24,719
and print of the stacks in my face. The blank

951
00:47:24,760 --> 00:47:27,800
cut pulsed in time with my heartbeat. Above. A hatch

952
00:47:27,800 --> 00:47:30,800
in the ceiling cracked open. White lights built through, sharp

953
00:47:30,800 --> 00:47:33,719
and antiseptic, accompanied by the distant pus of a staff announcement,

954
00:47:33,800 --> 00:47:37,280
all hands closing in ten minutes. I staggered up, Leijer,

955
00:47:37,360 --> 00:47:39,639
wedged under my arm and holed myself through the hatch.

956
00:47:40,360 --> 00:47:42,760
The daylight bit not library golden, but blue white from

957
00:47:42,800 --> 00:47:46,119
new aled. The room I entered was unfamiliar, more modern

958
00:47:46,159 --> 00:47:49,440
than any library space. I remembered a glass wall framed

959
00:47:49,440 --> 00:47:52,360
the distant city squat versions of the circulation desk, staff

960
00:47:52,360 --> 00:47:55,880
by faces that felt assemble from memory, not acquaintance. Julie

961
00:47:56,000 --> 00:47:58,199
was there, but younger, in her twenties, hair and grayd

962
00:47:59,000 --> 00:48:02,840
She looked up, smiling, then frowned, you're new or new first? Eh?

963
00:48:03,400 --> 00:48:06,480
She pointed at my lanyard. It still read it temporary,

964
00:48:06,480 --> 00:48:09,800
but the sticker was gone, replaced by raised letters provisional.

965
00:48:10,320 --> 00:48:13,000
A crowd of staff bustle were stocking, glancing side, was

966
00:48:13,039 --> 00:48:15,800
at me, but never quite meeting my eyes. Return all

967
00:48:15,840 --> 00:48:18,920
with drawn materials promptly, their voices chimed an eerie harmony.

968
00:48:19,440 --> 00:48:21,679
I tempted to hand over the ledger, but my hands

969
00:48:21,719 --> 00:48:23,960
passed through their stack of paper work, as if through mist.

970
00:48:24,679 --> 00:48:27,159
One staff member, a young man, i'd my badge, then

971
00:48:27,199 --> 00:48:29,800
looked away quickly. He should put that back where you

972
00:48:29,840 --> 00:48:32,719
found it, he muttered, Put it back in things settle.

973
00:48:33,320 --> 00:48:35,159
I pressed into the new annex. What was once the

974
00:48:35,199 --> 00:48:38,559
map room, now a conference pod. Every corner was both

975
00:48:38,599 --> 00:48:41,960
familiar and estranged. Books lay in piles, but their titles

976
00:48:42,039 --> 00:48:45,400
ran backward, was jumbled. The air was itching the clean

977
00:48:45,480 --> 00:48:48,320
the smells all wrong, chemical pine and fresh plastic. None

978
00:48:48,360 --> 00:48:50,960
of the green dust paper wrought comfort I once relied on.

979
00:48:51,639 --> 00:48:55,800
I waited, watching for any change. Nothing did. My personal

980
00:48:55,800 --> 00:48:59,360
items the audio recorder, phone, silver notebook were absent. My

981
00:48:59,440 --> 00:49:02,920
lockage lay a coat I didn't recognize. The only constant

982
00:49:02,960 --> 00:49:04,679
was the weight of the red ledger under my arm,

983
00:49:04,679 --> 00:49:07,159
and a blank library car, now scarred with a single

984
00:49:07,199 --> 00:49:10,360
pale streak on a hunch. I stole into the heritage

985
00:49:10,360 --> 00:49:12,480
corner another new edition, this one filled with clippings and

986
00:49:12,519 --> 00:49:16,199
bruttle out of order microfilm. No one stopped me in

987
00:49:16,239 --> 00:49:19,119
a back display case a framed sheet Staff m General

988
00:49:19,280 --> 00:49:23,000
Service two thousand seven Loss record and complete. I blink.

989
00:49:23,079 --> 00:49:25,119
Tried to read it again, but the glass grew fog,

990
00:49:25,280 --> 00:49:28,119
the text fading. Every time I tried to mention Marius's

991
00:49:28,159 --> 00:49:30,360
name to co work out, the word dissolved, syllable splitting

992
00:49:30,360 --> 00:49:32,840
and sticking in my throat. When I tried to log

993
00:49:32,880 --> 00:49:35,480
into my staff account, the pass what was invalid. After

994
00:49:35,519 --> 00:49:37,840
three tries, the system locked me out, a single line

995
00:49:37,840 --> 00:49:41,719
of text blinking status pending. During an afternoon shift, I

996
00:49:41,760 --> 00:49:44,360
found myself shelving in a room that hadn't existed yesterday.

997
00:49:44,920 --> 00:49:47,840
The call number runs stopped as an impossible code, A

998
00:49:47,880 --> 00:49:50,400
patron approach asking for the book, a garden for the forgotten.

999
00:49:50,960 --> 00:49:53,480
I looked for it, but it wasn't on fire. I

1000
00:49:53,519 --> 00:49:55,559
began to sense a patter in every attempt to anchor

1001
00:49:55,599 --> 00:49:58,000
the truth. Every act of recording or naming trigger to

1002
00:49:58,079 --> 00:50:02,599
counteraction stack order Chaine dates in my note, but reindis themselves,

1003
00:50:02,719 --> 00:50:05,320
names faded or thickened with new pemmacks. The audio diary

1004
00:50:05,360 --> 00:50:08,679
coffin static over its own entries. The longer I remained,

1005
00:50:08,719 --> 00:50:11,360
the more to concrete details of my own memory bled backwards,

1006
00:50:11,519 --> 00:50:14,880
overwriting and overwriting, until the holes themselves began to close.

1007
00:50:14,920 --> 00:50:17,679
In that night, in my small apartment, I tried to

1008
00:50:17,679 --> 00:50:20,320
play back in the recorder each file from the last

1009
00:50:20,360 --> 00:50:24,559
forty eight. Eyes began mid sentence, overlap with older entries, paused, resumed,

1010
00:50:24,639 --> 00:50:27,320
stuttered in a voice ten years younger than mine. I

1011
00:50:27,440 --> 00:50:30,440
checked my note book. Every name except mine had run

1012
00:50:30,480 --> 00:50:33,559
together in a nod of a lligiblink. With panic rising,

1013
00:50:33,679 --> 00:50:37,199
I scrolled the facts again, dates, rooms, lost names, pressing

1014
00:50:37,199 --> 00:50:40,199
the pen so hard and nearly burst, I set alarms

1015
00:50:40,199 --> 00:50:42,480
to wake me every two hours, afraid that sleep would

1016
00:50:42,480 --> 00:50:45,480
erase the rest. Each time I opened my eyes, I

1017
00:50:45,639 --> 00:50:47,840
checked the arms of my chair, needing the tactile truth.

1018
00:50:47,920 --> 00:50:50,039
The grooves I had whittow of myself scratched beside the

1019
00:50:50,079 --> 00:50:53,320
second for trial physical and changed. In the morning, the

1020
00:50:53,400 --> 00:50:57,000
marks had blurred. Things outside the library were changing as well.

1021
00:50:57,559 --> 00:50:59,519
A boarded up shop appeared on the corner that last

1022
00:50:59,559 --> 00:51:02,519
week had been a bakery. My street's trust pickup vanished

1023
00:51:02,519 --> 00:51:05,480
one morning, never to return. I ran into the little

1024
00:51:05,519 --> 00:51:07,679
girl from Children's but she had a different name and

1025
00:51:07,719 --> 00:51:10,719
her mother didn't recognize me at all. On my next shift,

1026
00:51:10,719 --> 00:51:13,639
the lobby clock ran backward for ten minutes. A news

1027
00:51:13,639 --> 00:51:16,400
clipping on display listed the library centennial as two years prior,

1028
00:51:16,440 --> 00:51:19,599
impossible given the dates in my own records. Old coworker

1029
00:51:19,639 --> 00:51:23,039
smiled and familiar smiles, all carrying matching red threaded bookmarks,

1030
00:51:23,079 --> 00:51:25,599
though none acknowledged them. The staff for a croom had

1031
00:51:25,599 --> 00:51:28,159
faint new editions, a pin board of lost and found badges,

1032
00:51:28,280 --> 00:51:30,800
many bearing blank spots where names should be. A fotover

1033
00:51:30,840 --> 00:51:32,800
staff party. My own face blurred in the edge of

1034
00:51:32,840 --> 00:51:35,480
the frame, yet when I stared at it, I remembered

1035
00:51:35,480 --> 00:51:37,920
being there sort of. Or was it someone else who'd

1036
00:51:37,920 --> 00:51:41,119
warn my badge that night? Days ran together the library,

1037
00:51:41,119 --> 00:51:44,239
shifting each time I attempted to pin it down. Between shifts,

1038
00:51:44,280 --> 00:51:46,400
I tried to find a mess Morrissey, but no one

1039
00:51:46,440 --> 00:51:49,280
seemed to remember her. The cubby previously home to her

1040
00:51:49,360 --> 00:51:52,400
Thermos held on the unclaimed library cards, each blank on

1041
00:51:52,400 --> 00:51:55,679
one side street faintly with red refusing to yield. I

1042
00:51:55,719 --> 00:51:58,480
carried the red ledger with me each day. Its present

1043
00:51:58,519 --> 00:52:01,599
seemed to tell a reality, a heavy, unwieldy anchor. I

1044
00:52:01,639 --> 00:52:03,679
added to it, note in the pattern of e raised names,

1045
00:52:03,679 --> 00:52:06,920
map changes, even tracking my own increments of forgetting. But

1046
00:52:07,000 --> 00:52:09,960
the more I wrote, the more the ledger fed back enters, multiplying,

1047
00:52:10,000 --> 00:52:13,559
growing denser, entire pages repeating themselves, old staff names popping

1048
00:52:13,599 --> 00:52:16,760
up Marischi, r. N. Delaney, even my own, with the

1049
00:52:16,800 --> 00:52:20,159
status Revere marked in an anxious hand. Fearing what would

1050
00:52:20,159 --> 00:52:22,199
happen if I stopped, I set out to retrace the

1051
00:52:22,239 --> 00:52:24,400
path to the sub basement, seeking the stair inside the

1052
00:52:24,400 --> 00:52:27,360
supply closet. By the closet had been replaced by vending

1053
00:52:27,400 --> 00:52:30,119
machine and a wall of publicly posted memos new staff

1054
00:52:30,239 --> 00:52:33,920
entrance basement closed for renovation, access pending, there was no

1055
00:52:34,039 --> 00:52:37,239
visible way down. Late in the afternoon, I snucked behind

1056
00:52:37,280 --> 00:52:39,280
the book drop, searching for any sign of the hatch

1057
00:52:39,360 --> 00:52:42,039
or stairwell. As I pressed my palms to the wall,

1058
00:52:42,199 --> 00:52:45,039
I felt a shift the same gentle exhil a sliver

1059
00:52:45,159 --> 00:52:48,199
of shadow, coal less part seem part handle. With the

1060
00:52:48,239 --> 00:52:52,239
tips of two fingers, I tugged an arrow spiral stair unfolded.

1061
00:52:52,360 --> 00:52:55,519
Its were cuckolder than anything in the building above. Notebook

1062
00:52:55,519 --> 00:52:57,559
in one hand, ledger in the other, are leaned into

1063
00:52:57,559 --> 00:53:01,119
the passage, the air called than before, a press close.

1064
00:53:01,840 --> 00:53:04,480
I counted its steps, breath tight. At what should have

1065
00:53:04,480 --> 00:53:07,480
been thirty three, the count faltered. The stairs doubled back

1066
00:53:07,519 --> 00:53:10,599
on themselves, twisting into corridors and felling at each wrong angle.

1067
00:53:11,199 --> 00:53:13,519
My flasklight caught a glint, then a shape, the library

1068
00:53:13,559 --> 00:53:15,480
cup with a single book atop it, a garden for

1069
00:53:15,519 --> 00:53:18,400
the forgotten, spine, split bookmark, woven of red thread through

1070
00:53:18,440 --> 00:53:21,960
its center. I lifted the book, hot thumping. Inside was

1071
00:53:22,000 --> 00:53:25,159
a check out slip and name date pending. The slipboard,

1072
00:53:25,159 --> 00:53:27,960
traces of multiple signatures, each crossed out we replaced with

1073
00:53:28,000 --> 00:53:31,559
others ghosted into the page. A final line year turn.

1074
00:53:31,760 --> 00:53:34,480
Only one name may hold. The scuff of another set

1075
00:53:34,519 --> 00:53:37,239
of footsteps echoed behind me, a shape nothing more. Passing

1076
00:53:37,239 --> 00:53:39,840
with a ledger in hand, I could not speak, could

1077
00:53:39,880 --> 00:53:43,960
only listen as their footsteps faded, aisles collapsed, corridor shrinking,

1078
00:53:44,920 --> 00:53:47,599
a press forward, dizzy. At the end of the path,

1079
00:53:47,760 --> 00:53:50,079
the familiar door of the red section opened without touch.

1080
00:53:50,760 --> 00:53:53,920
Inside all was motioned, ledgers cycling through hands both seen

1081
00:53:53,960 --> 00:53:56,840
and seen, stacks rising and falling. Old staff I d

1082
00:53:56,920 --> 00:54:00,199
discarded in heaps on the central table, waited the book,

1083
00:54:00,239 --> 00:54:02,400
the card, the silver notebook, all arranged as if for

1084
00:54:02,400 --> 00:54:05,159
a ritual. The air twisted with low voices and endless

1085
00:54:05,159 --> 00:54:09,400
recitation of lost titles, sea states, missing persons, my own

1086
00:54:09,480 --> 00:54:12,000
names circled the room. In a current of static. I

1087
00:54:12,079 --> 00:54:14,280
dropped the ledger on to the table. Page is fluttering.

1088
00:54:14,880 --> 00:54:17,079
A single line formed at the top shelf or signed

1089
00:54:17,079 --> 00:54:19,679
He'd choose the urge to sign my name surged a

1090
00:54:19,679 --> 00:54:22,239
flush of relief. I promised that things would settle even

1091
00:54:22,239 --> 00:54:25,599
if I vanished with the rest. But Marius's words echoed then,

1092
00:54:25,719 --> 00:54:27,599
and I recalled the string of a RaSE faces, each

1093
00:54:27,639 --> 00:54:31,000
one's signing forclosure, each one lost by morning. If I

1094
00:54:31,000 --> 00:54:33,440
filed the ledger, I might gain peace, or simply replace

1095
00:54:33,480 --> 00:54:36,360
a missing page with my own. Instead, I turned to

1096
00:54:36,400 --> 00:54:39,960
the silver notebook. Its page is bent. I wrote every anomaly,

1097
00:54:40,039 --> 00:54:43,360
every fracture of memory, every erase or shifted detail, a

1098
00:54:43,440 --> 00:54:47,360
single entry from myself, employee Nellini, present, memory, intact, pending.

1099
00:54:47,920 --> 00:54:50,039
I wrapped the red thread three times around the ledger's

1100
00:54:50,079 --> 00:54:52,760
bind and slaid it unfinished into the gap between table

1101
00:54:52,800 --> 00:54:58,760
and stack. In that moment, the room twisted shows rutchard, skyward, ledges, gush, smoke, names,

1102
00:54:58,800 --> 00:55:01,079
rickshet off the walls, and vanis into specks of shadow.

1103
00:55:01,679 --> 00:55:03,920
My heart beat spiked, my hands blistered from the cold.

1104
00:55:04,559 --> 00:55:07,079
One by one, the spectral figure screamed, then blinked away.

1105
00:55:07,079 --> 00:55:10,119
No more files open, no more returns penned in the

1106
00:55:10,159 --> 00:55:13,000
door behind me, slam shut. Light pulled up my feet,

1107
00:55:13,000 --> 00:55:15,920
the grand fever with words I couldn't read. I pressed

1108
00:55:15,920 --> 00:55:19,360
myself operate, Exhausted, clutching the silver notebook and the blank card,

1109
00:55:19,599 --> 00:55:22,079
now stamped with a date to day, I scrambled for

1110
00:55:22,159 --> 00:55:24,679
the hatch, dragging myself up through the spiral stair into

1111
00:55:24,679 --> 00:55:26,400
the sound of rowing book carts in the bray of

1112
00:55:26,400 --> 00:55:29,519
the closing announcement, immerged in the staff lounge, with the

1113
00:55:29,519 --> 00:55:31,480
fading sunlight catching the side of my face in the

1114
00:55:31,519 --> 00:55:35,079
security mirror. Three minutes before closing, and the world had reset,

1115
00:55:35,119 --> 00:55:37,840
no annex, no new staff, only the layout. I remembered.

1116
00:55:38,440 --> 00:55:42,000
My badge was plain again, nearly any temporary assistant. The

1117
00:55:42,039 --> 00:55:45,039
library hummed with the brittle, wavering silence. Corners too bright,

1118
00:55:45,079 --> 00:55:48,159
others too dark. My phone vibrated with a message from

1119
00:55:48,199 --> 00:55:51,079
Ronda you closing to night, broutine, casual, as if I

1120
00:55:51,079 --> 00:55:53,800
had never missed a day. In my jacket, the silver

1121
00:55:53,800 --> 00:55:55,760
notebooks edg just bit into my palm and saw it.

1122
00:55:55,880 --> 00:55:59,000
Every page was still filled with names, records, the anomalies

1123
00:55:59,000 --> 00:56:01,800
I had tracked, now a mo unwritten. I pressed the

1124
00:56:01,840 --> 00:56:04,360
red ladder and finished into the staff safe, locked it

1125
00:56:04,480 --> 00:56:06,599
and slid the key into my pocket, never to hand

1126
00:56:06,599 --> 00:56:10,199
it over. I rewound my audio recorder. The last entry

1127
00:56:10,239 --> 00:56:12,960
played Nelini after hours, if this is my lasted, and

1128
00:56:13,039 --> 00:56:16,480
then silence. I walked to the exit, scanning the shells

1129
00:56:16,480 --> 00:56:19,440
for anything out of place. The fiction section ran through

1130
00:56:20,000 --> 00:56:22,760
the nine hundreds lay in disturbed. There was no red

1131
00:56:22,760 --> 00:56:26,800
section signed anywhere, no spiral stair, no visible hatch. Just

1132
00:56:26,840 --> 00:56:29,360
the library, ordinary and stubborn, as it should have been

1133
00:56:29,400 --> 00:56:32,480
all along. Everything was still for a moment. The only

1134
00:56:32,519 --> 00:56:35,400
sound the hum of old electricity through the walls. In

1135
00:56:35,480 --> 00:56:38,199
that calm, I breathed in dust disinfectant to the ghosts

1136
00:56:38,199 --> 00:56:40,039
of her sharper ozen that might once have been static

1137
00:56:40,079 --> 00:56:43,079
from a ruptured catalog. I closed my notebook, slipped the

1138
00:56:43,079 --> 00:56:45,360
blank library card deep into his pocket, and turned the

1139
00:56:45,400 --> 00:56:48,079
staff badge over in my hand. The last thing I

1140
00:56:48,079 --> 00:56:49,960
saw as I stepped up was my own faint reflection,

1141
00:56:50,280 --> 00:56:53,000
mouth shut as searching a single lann lingering status of

1142
00:56:53,079 --> 00:56:56,159
pendant for a breathless instant. I stood in the staff lobby,

1143
00:56:56,159 --> 00:56:58,199
as if expecting the world to riple again, to show

1144
00:56:58,199 --> 00:57:01,559
some fundamental scar or future. My chest ached sharply with

1145
00:57:01,599 --> 00:57:03,480
confusion and left of a fear, my hand tight in

1146
00:57:03,519 --> 00:57:05,760
the coal key in my pocket. The finality of the

1147
00:57:05,760 --> 00:57:08,920
staff lounged just fluorescent light, chipmunks and a faded flier

1148
00:57:08,960 --> 00:57:10,880
about over too fine stare of me to hope nothing

1149
00:57:10,880 --> 00:57:13,039
had ever happened, that I had never gone below at all,

1150
00:57:13,599 --> 00:57:16,360
But I knew better. I felt the ledge's absence as

1151
00:57:16,440 --> 00:57:19,360
roar as a missing tooth. I forced my breathing into rhythm,

1152
00:57:19,440 --> 00:57:21,840
stepping out among lies still proceeding as if the library

1153
00:57:21,920 --> 00:57:24,960
had never shifted. Chili waved from the copier, not a

1154
00:57:25,000 --> 00:57:27,480
hint in her eyes of the subterranean maze or its casualties.

1155
00:57:28,159 --> 00:57:30,920
Staff moved up and down. The corridors, were rolling couts,

1156
00:57:30,960 --> 00:57:34,760
smiling their professional half smiles. Even the buildings hush felt new,

1157
00:57:34,760 --> 00:57:37,480
as if freshly printed, ready to overwright, whatever memory I

1158
00:57:37,559 --> 00:57:40,440
risked voicing. When I passed the old supply closet, there

1159
00:57:40,480 --> 00:57:42,960
was no spiral stare, no sign of breech, only the

1160
00:57:43,000 --> 00:57:45,639
janitor's cat, the mock bucket, and some one's forgotten coat.

1161
00:57:46,280 --> 00:57:48,280
I brushed my fingers along the door fram caught a

1162
00:57:48,280 --> 00:57:50,920
trace of coal, but nothing more. The wall met my

1163
00:57:50,960 --> 00:57:54,320
touch with a steady, ordinary resistance. I was desperate to

1164
00:57:54,320 --> 00:57:58,039
recount the ordeal to Anchorage oddity with wharrows at my locker.

1165
00:57:58,079 --> 00:58:00,320
I thumbed open the silver notebook, flipping for each entry.

1166
00:58:00,360 --> 00:58:02,679
Still there but oddly fixed, the ink, refusing to blur

1167
00:58:02,840 --> 00:58:05,639
or fade no matter how hard I looked, it stubbornly

1168
00:58:05,679 --> 00:58:09,440
displayed what I'd written, names, codes, map skews, and inventory

1169
00:58:09,480 --> 00:58:13,119
of losses. A relic perhaps, or a barrier holding back

1170
00:58:13,119 --> 00:58:15,039
the pressure of a ranger for a few more cycles.

1171
00:58:15,719 --> 00:58:18,280
Ronda's message blinked on my screen. I'll be late tomorrow,

1172
00:58:18,320 --> 00:58:21,079
can you cover opening. There was no mention of lost time,

1173
00:58:21,280 --> 00:58:23,159
no flicker of suspicion about where I'd been or what

1174
00:58:23,199 --> 00:58:25,519
I'd done. Even the watch on my wrist read the

1175
00:58:25,559 --> 00:58:28,079
time I expected, as if the eye was nested cleanly together.

1176
00:58:28,119 --> 00:58:30,800
After all the distortion. The old clock above the lunge

1177
00:58:30,880 --> 00:58:34,440
chiped backward once briefly, then resumed. For a moment I

1178
00:58:34,480 --> 00:58:38,039
wondered if it was warning or coincidence. My skin prickled.

1179
00:58:38,639 --> 00:58:41,440
I pocketed the notebook, folded my badge securely behind it.

1180
00:58:42,079 --> 00:58:44,079
The urage to withdraw from the buildings gentle from me

1181
00:58:44,199 --> 00:58:46,280
was immense, but another part of me recognized a new

1182
00:58:46,280 --> 00:58:49,599
pattern emerging. Nothing would remain static now, not the structure,

1183
00:58:49,719 --> 00:58:53,280
not the rosters, not even myself. The library would always

1184
00:58:53,280 --> 00:58:55,679
try to digest the stray, to file every curiosity in

1185
00:58:55,719 --> 00:58:58,159
appending or resolve, and it would never close every gap.

1186
00:58:58,599 --> 00:59:02,880
A knock sounded from the side door. I turned mess Morsey,

1187
00:59:03,079 --> 00:59:05,480
or someone who wore her ship or hat to fraction sharper,

1188
00:59:05,559 --> 00:59:07,920
the shoulders more angular, the eyes darker passed me in

1189
00:59:07,960 --> 00:59:10,760
the lobby. She didn't acknowledge the keys of the liijo

1190
00:59:10,880 --> 00:59:13,639
or the gap between memories, but her hand brushed mine

1191
00:59:13,679 --> 00:59:15,639
for a heart beat too long as she collected her mail,

1192
00:59:15,719 --> 00:59:17,440
and the slip of paper left in the counter read

1193
00:59:17,480 --> 00:59:20,079
only care for what you try to fix. On my

1194
00:59:20,119 --> 00:59:23,159
final walk through the stacks, I counted call numbers, check spines,

1195
00:59:23,280 --> 00:59:26,719
and gently reshelved the night's last returns. Several books now

1196
00:59:26,719 --> 00:59:29,440
bore narrow red stickers, nothing overt, but just enough to

1197
00:59:29,440 --> 00:59:31,800
catch a glint in the lamp. Play on a whim.

1198
00:59:31,840 --> 00:59:34,079
I reached for one, a bat of volume. When I

1199
00:59:34,119 --> 00:59:36,760
scanned it, the catalog confirmed in place, in no missing,

1200
00:59:36,920 --> 00:59:40,199
no anomalies. Yet on the inside cover a penciled notation

1201
00:59:40,320 --> 00:59:43,719
read R. N. Delaney nineteen eighty four. I pushed the

1202
00:59:43,719 --> 00:59:47,119
cart toward the central desk. As Rohnder reappeared. She jerked

1203
00:59:47,119 --> 00:59:49,639
her thumb at the fore end. See the new display

1204
00:59:49,760 --> 00:59:52,760
someone swapped at the local history feature. Looks good. Actually,

1205
00:59:53,320 --> 00:59:55,199
where I expected to find the olds and ten il

1206
00:59:55,239 --> 00:59:57,599
posters was now a modest case marked in memory loss

1207
00:59:57,599 --> 01:00:01,320
staff inside little more than a pie of blank library cars,

1208
01:00:01,360 --> 01:00:04,840
a vintage staff vest and a letter opener. No names,

1209
01:00:05,000 --> 01:00:08,079
no photographs, just a brass plaque, freshly engraved to those

1210
01:00:08,119 --> 01:00:11,079
who shelf too deep. I ran my finger over the cards.

1211
01:00:11,840 --> 01:00:14,119
Each one was bone playing, most with a faint line

1212
01:00:14,119 --> 01:00:17,119
of rare, some smudged at the edge. I checked my

1213
01:00:17,159 --> 01:00:19,280
own pocket, half fear in my card to have joined them,

1214
01:00:19,320 --> 01:00:21,920
but found it safely tucked in the notebook. I slid

1215
01:00:21,960 --> 01:00:24,800
the display cases glass, a sliver open. For a moment,

1216
01:00:24,960 --> 01:00:28,599
my reflection flickered over the emptiness inside. Then as quickly

1217
01:00:28,760 --> 01:00:31,480
was gone, the library closed with its usual ritual of

1218
01:00:31,519 --> 01:00:34,000
final announcement, the shuffle of keys, the distant yawn of

1219
01:00:34,039 --> 01:00:37,480
automatic doors. Rund offered a ride, which I refused with

1220
01:00:37,519 --> 01:00:39,960
a strained smile, careful not to betray the trembling relief

1221
01:00:40,000 --> 01:00:42,639
that the building's persistent memory might simply let me exit

1222
01:00:42,639 --> 01:00:45,679
to night outside. The night air fell crisper than before,

1223
01:00:45,760 --> 01:00:47,639
sharper in the tongue, as though the wall beyond the

1224
01:00:47,679 --> 01:00:50,599
library had waited for me to return. I turned back

1225
01:00:50,599 --> 01:00:54,000
for an instant. In every window, the fluorescent cloth cast

1226
01:00:54,039 --> 01:00:57,079
faint rectangular shadows bent like open ledges, stretching shelf after

1227
01:00:57,159 --> 01:01:01,360
shelf into darkness. And that is the end. Thank you

1228
01:01:01,400 --> 01:01:06,199
for listening, and I will see you in the next one.