The robot vacuum's triumphant beeps echo through the halls, bringing the Librarian out of her reverie. It has finished deciphering the code. With good timing, too: reaching into the cardboard box, the Librarian notices that not a single Science Fiction item remains.
Placing the final sheet of parchment on top of the rest, she brushes off the new motes of dust on her person, stands from her office desk, and saunters back to the Science Fiction shelf with an air of apparent serenity.
But, in truth, she is distracted.
Her final story, that Dystopia Smile, still lingers in her mind. Is it because she wrote it in first person? Surely not-she had written in first person countless times before and it had never left a trace on her psyche. Was it the setting, then? Or perhaps the characters? She thinks about the protagonist: a smitten, betrayed man. How could he love a machine with such intensity? And how, then, could he also come to despise it so quickly, so profoundly?
Stopping at the door, she closes her eyes and tries to picture it. Exhilarating love, burning hatred. But what could she ever love so brazenly? Who could ever be the source of such deep hatred? What does that feel like? Why is she even considering such things?
The robot vacuum beeps again, as if insisting, though it is probably just functioning on a timer. "LET'S GET TO WORK :)" appears once more on its LED screen, and the keypad on the metallic box lights up as the robot uses its connection to enter a sequence of digits.
M1R.1.A.M. The box opens with a click. Of course, the Librarian thinks: now that the story is written and part of the Library, the robot is able to fish that word out of its memory bank.
Looking inside, all she finds are pictures. A bartender and her client, mid-toast. Two women taking a selfie with a sandwich. Three pilots standing next to a stunning spaceship-two holding back tears and the third wearing a bittersweet smile. A man with glasses, reaching out to the blurry, neon outline of a woman.
The moment she picks each picture up, it crumbles into dust. She knows this is only to be expected, but it still stirs something deep in her stomach: not the familiar desire to write, but something else altogether. There are plenty of words she could choose to give this feeling a name-she is the Librarian, after all-but none seem quite right. Regret? Nostalgia? Longing?
In the end, she chooses not to call it anything at all. To give it a name would mean to acknowledge it, to bring it into existence, and the existence of new feelings would only contribute to solidifying the strangeness of her day.
Instead, she decides to dive back into work.
"LET'S GET TO WORK :)", the little robot agrees, standing at the ready.
Cleanup begins again. The robot vacuums up the dust, and the Librarian binds her stories. She places the new books in Science Fiction, steps back to admire the shelf-a minimalist metallic design, this time-and nods in satisfaction.
And just like that, the new indescribable feeling comes back in full force, resurfacing with a vengeance.
It tugs at her heart, threatening to sink her to the floor. She presses a hand to her chest, hoping to quell the invisible pain, but the feeling refuses to fade, only getting stronger by the second.
"What do I do?" she asks the only other remotely sentient thing in the room.
"LET'S GET TO WORK :)", it replies, and the pain gets worse. The creature has top-of-the-line technology and can decipher passwords, for goodness' sake. Does it not have anything else to say, even now?
The robot is right, though. Work is the answer; it always is. Where to next, where to next... What can she possibly write while saddled with this overpowering, disconcerting feeling?
Romance, she thinks. There has to be a box in there by now, and Romance is all about feelings, is it not? Perhaps the cure to her sudden madness lies in those stories.
She is overjoyed to find that there is indeed a package waiting for her next to the Romance shelf. It is much smaller than the two that came before it and holds little more than a blue bow tie and a coffee-stained rag (for a moment she wonders if it's one of hers), but it should still do.
She seizes the bow tie, holding it tight in her fingers. Just before closing her eyes and losing herself to her writing, for the first time she briefly wonders what kind of person the item might belong to, and if she would ever get to meet someone like them.
YOU ARE READING
The Timeless Library
FantasyThe Timeless Library gathers stories lost in time, adrift between dreams and reality. It is the Librarian's sole responsibility to turn memories into books and store them on the shelves. But unbeknownst to her, she has a story of her own to tell...
