The Library

By: Bel Iver

The girl is nervous; I can tell. She’s drumming her fingers against the side of her seat and jiggling her leg so fast it’s a wonder it doesn’t fall off. Why wouldn’t she be nervous? Today decides the rest of her life, and it all comes down to one random choice that she can neither prepare for nor change later on. She’s nervous, and yet she doesn’t even know the full extent of what her decision will do.

                Oh, she knows some things. She knows she will have no memory of this place once her mind has been made. She also knows she’ll be trading her dry, uneventful memories for other things. A name. A family. Friends. A life.

                I’m privileged in that way, I suppose. In this world, we are not named. We don’t know what we look like, and we don’t interact with others. Those things could affect our choice (or so they tell me). I’m fortunate in that way; I have a name. I look at people, and see them.

                This girl, for example; I look at her, and I see her long, auburn hair. I note her dark eyes and pale, freckled skin. She’s a beauty, not that she knows. She’s never been privileged with a look at her reflection. She may have seen a strand of her long, ginger hair, but I doubt she’d known what to make of it. She would know nothing of color in our world, outside the customary blacks and greys, like shades on an old TV screen.

                They’re good at that, taking the color from this place in the name of eliminating bias. They can’t take a color from a person, though. People are unique, special. One of the many reasons they mustn’t see each other.

                I look down to my tablet, a dull grey like my desk and chair. A green pop up screen has appeared; it’s the girl’s turn.

                “You can go in now,” I say, looking to her. She nods mutely, swallows, stands up, and swallows again- a nervous tick I’m just now noticing. I wonder in a removed way what she thinks of me, all covered in grey and black clothes, a transparent cloth hiding my face from her. Maybe she doesn’t think it’s odd. After all, she has nothing to compare it to.  

                “Thanks,” she manages finally, walking to the lone door by my desk. I almost wish it wasn’t her time yet; the room will be empty when she’s gone. Some days, the empty silence suffocates me. Other days, I embrace it as a quiet, private escape. Today, it’s the former.  

                “If you need anything,” I say, just to hear my voice again while I still have a reason to use it. “Just call for me. My name’s the Librarian.”

                She blinks, stunned. I’m not surprised. She’d know of no one with a name. I’m the first, for her. She’s confused, too. The girl doesn’t know what a librarian is, as to be expected, I suppose.   

                “Okay,” she says finally, no doubt wondering why she’d need me. Even she’d know that today is the day her life truly starts. I turn away, my sign of dismissal, only turning back when I hear the wood door shut with a heavy thud, like hearing a stone hit rock bottom underwater.

                My company is gone. I’m alone. I don’t want to be, not so soon, but does it matter? She’s the lucky one, really.  Getting away. At the thought a new feeling fills me: curiosity. What will she decide? It’s an odd feeling to have after so many lonely, empty years of solitude, to be curious. To wonder.

                My fingers move without my permission, pushing buttons on my tablet until I can see on the screen the room beyond the door. I find the girl immediately. She’s still by the door, staring in awe.

                After so many years of sheltered isolation, it’s no surprise the room she finds herself in stops her dead in her tracks. It must be an assault of colors for her: the deep brown of the bookshelves, the unearthly blue running along the white walls like veins, the empty, silver books with their title-less covers staring back at her. She’s never even seen a book before. What must she think of them? Of their varying sizes and thickness? Does she know that they tell stories- that one will become her story, one book in the endless room of billions?   

                Slowly, she seems to regain her composure. She walks further into the room, not touching anything, just looking. It’s as if she knows her time in the room is unlimited, and there’s no hurry. She’s still staring at the books, frowning. She doesn’t know what to make of the square objects, it’s obvious.

                She has no idea how many before her have done the same thing. They’ve entered the room, and looked in confusion around, and she does now. They’ve looked around, not sure how this is their choice, and what choice they’re supposed to be making- as she does now. And then, finally, they reach for a book- as she does now.

                Her long, pale fingers almost touch the spine of the nearest book, when suddenly she hesitates. Retracting her hand, she steps back, uncertain. I try to imagine that I am her. Is she supposed to touch the strange object? She doesn’t know, has no way of knowing. This isn’t what she expected.      

                Her mouth moves, suddenly; she’s speaking. It takes me a moment to read her lips and realize what she wants.

                “Librarian?”

                She wants me to explain. To tell her what’s going on. I almost feel bad; I told her to ask if she needed anything, but it was a lie. I cannot interfere. She’s on her own now.

                After a moment, she seems to realize I won’t be coming. Her mouth forms a hard, thin line as she presses her lips together. She’s getting frustrated, whether with me or herself, I’m not sure. Spinning, she walks past the first book and reaches for another.  

                This time, she does not stop.

                The moment her fingers touch the spine, she disappears in a flash of blinding light. The book falls from the shelf to the floor, splaying open. On the pages, I can faintly see words crisscrossing the previously blank parchment, long horizontal rows telling a story that only moments ago wasn’t there to be told.

                My screen goes blank. Once again, my body moves without my permission. I’m standing, going toward the door- my fingers brush the handle and I freeze, the cool metal forcing me to face the reality of what I’d almost done.

                I almost entered the Library, I think, horrified. I almost went in. What was I thinking?! They would have been furious with me. I would have paid dearly for such an offense. How could I have been so stupid? My hand goes back to its place by my side, my fingers curled around the edge of the tablet so hard they turn white.

                Even though I’m staring at the door, all I see is the girl’s face. She’s gone, like so many before her, but this is different. So very, very different. For a moment, I dare to wonder. To curse Them and what they’ve done- not for the choice they’ve instilled in everyone, but for not instilling the same choice in me. For keeping me here, stuck in no world with no hope.

                You could always pick up a book. Escape.

                The thought startles me so badly it is as if it is not my own. I haven’t thought that way in years, and for good reason. Remember the consequences, I think. So why does my hand itch to circle back around the cool metal handle?

                Once again, I see the girl’s face. I see her ginger hair and dark eyes- and I wonder if she’ll like what she sees, when she finally looks in a mirror. What will her name be? Her friends? Her family? What will they be like?

                Cool metal touches my palm, and this time, I don’t flinch away. The metal slowly warms under my hand, and I know I should be thinking, weighing the mounting cons against the almost nonexistent pros, but my mind has gone blank. I am staring at the door like it is the most fascinating thing on earth.

                Behind me, a door opens and shuts, but I don’t jump. Something inside me is broken, defeated. I don’t have the energy to be surprised.

                “Uh… hello?” Asked the new voice, and I look over my shoulder, my hand never leaving the door, to see the newcomer. It’s a boy, this time with dark skin and dark hair.

                “How can someone you don’t know change everything?” I ask, my voice hoarse. He blinks, surprised, confused. He doesn’t understand. Of course not- he doesn’t still see the red haired girl, nervously tapping her foot and scanning the room.

                “I dunno,” he says finally, dumbstruck. “They can’t?”

                “Wrong answer,” I say, looking back to the door. I haven’t thought this through, but in a way, it’s like my mind has been made up from the start. From the moment that girl walked in, I some part of me knew I would be leaving. “Because they can.”

                And I open the door.

Alarms go off, the system warning Them that I’m attempting the impossible. They’ll be here in thirty seconds; They’ll be at the building in ten. Like a well-oiled machine, I’ve become a spare, broken part that must be corrected or eliminated because of my disobedience. 

I know that outside the Library, alarms are still ringing and the boy is probably looking at Them with wide, baffled eyes. They’ll demand to know what happened, and yelling will no doubt follow. But alone in the room of books, the thick walls and heavy door muffling the sounds, I feel isolated and far away, as if I have all the time in the world and not mere seconds.

The book on the floor beckons me closer, and I walk next to it, falling to my knees and staring at it. My hand is just above it, quivering. She’s in there. The girl with the dark eyes. Does she regret her choice?

No. She doesn’t remember it.

Would she regret it, if she did?

Would I?

No- that is not the real question. I do not remember consciously making my decision, but I know that I have. The question is not “would I”. It’s will I?

Behind me, the heavy door opens. They pour in- tall adults clad in white body suits and bearing weapons. They will not ask me to step away from the book. My eyes and body language betray my intent, just as theirs betrays their own intent.

The leader raises his gun; my hand finds the book.

“Goodbye,” I whisper, almost smirking. Thirty seconds, and yet they still come too late. I will not be punished. I will get my freedom. They disappear in a flash of white that surrounds me, claiming my swallowing me from the view of my oppressors. My arms and legs tingle, and as I fade I see a stand of my own hair for the first time in years. It’s a dark auburn, like the girl’s.

I guess they should have known better than to put me in charge of my own daughter’s Choosing. 

“We all make choices, but in the end our choices make us.”
― Ken Levine