. . . who was once handsome and tall as you

"Say that my answer was, RECALLED TO LIFE."
-Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

A librarian died today.

I awoke from fevered dreams to the sound of sirens and alarms. My burned hand had made sleep intermittent and uncomfortable, and I wanted to stay in bed. However, the sound of the sirens only grew louder, so I forced myself out from under the covers to make one last trip down to the library.

Shuffling blearily down the street I was joined by throngs of other early-morning gawkers. I half-recognized most of them. They were people I'd probably passed in the street many times, but never spoken to or acknowledged. Our mindless parade was accompanied by a chorus of howling and barking, as if all the neighborhood strays were singing some cacophonous elegy.

When we reached the library, the police were already removing the body. Two of them had the black bag on a stretcher, moving laboriously through the debris and slowly dissipating smoke. In the grey haze the ruins of the library looked ancient, rather than newly destroyed. Policemen moved around, busily questioning the onlookers. Did you know the victim? No one seemed to.

When it was my turn, I asked the bored-looking officer who the victim was. The librarian, he said, did you know her? I told him no and he moved on. The librarian. No was too simple an answer. But then, the police probably didn't care that she had berated me for bringing food into her domain or once debated the relative importance of the number two. After all, I'd never even learned her name.

The only person to answer the policemen's question in the affirmative was a young woman in yellow pajamas. I'd have thought I would have noticed before if anyone else worked at the library, but apparently I'd managed never to notice her before. After the woman's brief questioning, she wandered about in a daze, only stopping to ask a medic a question.

How should I feel?

I watched as she was brushed off and left to aimlessly drift deeper into the ruins. It wouldn't do any good to talk to her. I had nothing to say. But a few minutes later, I followed, finding her huddled in a corner with a salvaged book.

What was her name? I asked.

She looked up, blinking as though I'd shone a bright light into her eyes. She put down the book, The Search for Intelligent Life, and spoke.

Oh, she said, Edith. Edith E. Evans.

I'll try to remember that, I said.

What's your name?

Jack F. Alwyn.

You're not bad, Jack. I'm Macy. What do you do?

I make snow, I said, snow machines. Ones that make real snow. At least, I'm trying to. It's not easy, you know?

I know. I wait for aliens. It's not easy either.

Aliens? What will you do if they don't show up?

She furrowed her brow, pondering the question. She bit her lip, and her finger nails, and finally looked back at me.

Well, she started, I suppose . . . I suppose it's just important that they know, that if they come, if they wanted to come, that is, that they'd know they would be welcome.

She picked up her book again and resumed reading. I left her alone, left the ruins, left the dregs of the crowd, and returned to my apartment. Waiting where I had left it, the machine dominated the cramped room. Pipes and wires and laptop screens culminated in a great bubble of glass at the center of my apartment. The globe was big enough for a man to walk inside of.

For something so arduous to construct, it was simple to start. One click of a mouse was all it took. Everything hummed to life, a mechanical symphony of clicks and whirs. Soon, crystalline flakes were trickling into the sphere. Timid and alone at first, they were quickly joined by flurries of their fellows, then gusts. Within the hour, a snowstorm raged within the giant globe.

Thousands of microscopic cameras, arranged in nets around the room, recorded each and every flake as it fell. Instantaneously, these images were transmitted to the laptops, the photos swiftly flitting across the screens as they were analyzed, checked, and cross-checked. They were verifying what I already felt to be true, that each new snow flake was unique.

I watched the contained maelstrom through the night, long past the point when sufficient data had been gathered. It was beautiful, and like so many beautiful things, dangerous.

It was tempting me. The thought of entering that perfect sphere was nearly irresistible. Only a few steps separated me from an eternity spent among infinite new worlds. A universe of forms forever shifting, dying and being reborn as something new. A universe removed from spouses, children, and incomprehensible neighbors. It would be so easy.

And yet, I lived in a world where librarians could be murdered.

Maybe I knew something other people didn't, this secret beauty, but even that didn't entitle me to leave. Not yet. Such a world won't tolerate inaction.

There was nothing for it. With a sigh, I turned off the machine. Suddenly I couldn't keep my eyelids open; I was exhausted. Curling up in a ball on the floor I fell into a deep, oceanic sleep. I drempt I swam in the sea of the young Earth as a single celled organism; fatherless, motherless, born of lightning and inert matter.

A few short hours later, I was awoken by the rising sun. I got up, loaded a USB flash drive with the snow machine's blueprints and the results of the previous night's experiment. Then I gathered up my few remaining funds, the apartment key, and headed downstairs.

The doorman was back at his post. I handed over my key and the cash to pay for my rent. Only a few small bills remained. The doorman asked if I would need help removing my boxes.

No, I said. Everything I needed was in my pocket, in my flash drive. The machine, the boxes made of mashed up trees, all the papers and notes and photos crammed in those boxes; none of that was necessary anymore. I thanked the doorman for his offer and walked to the lobby's exit.

I went through the door and came out on the other side.

Dragon Burns, Badger Dances

"'Nobody's gonna read it now,' Hoshino said. 'I don't know what was written in it, but it's all gone. A bit of shape and form has disappeared from the world, increasing the amount of nothingness.'"
-Haruki Murakami, Kafka On The Shore

I had a pattern now.

Each day I spent at the library; reading, dozing off, getting lost in the words without a trail of breadcrumbs. Each night I spent in my apartment; feverishly working, testing, creating new connections and complexities. Progress was being made, everything was going according to plan.

As I left that morning the doorman was missing from his habitual post. I wonder where he is, if today is his day off. Does he have days off?

The first sign of trouble was the badger. Tanuki, of the family Mustelidae, is running wild up the street in zig-zagging, haphazard movements. There is terror in his eyes. I stand back to let him pass, afraid he might bite me if provoked. Where is his master now?

The second sign of trouble was a man. Dirty and unkempt, he strides with purpose down the street. I've seen him before, I think, but hunched over, muttering to himself by the side of the road. He's still wearing the same rags, but now he stands tall, holds his sign up high. THE END IS NIGH. He's hollering something, filling his chest with air and releasing torrents, machine-gun bursts, of speech.

It's over, he says, it's time to give up. The end is here. Finally we can all go to sleep, lay down our heads and die, stick your heads in the sand, or in a paper bag, if you think it will help. It won't help. The end is here. It's just around the bend. Come and get it! That's right, the end is here. Game over.

I get out of his way, and continue down the street. I can smell something now, a festive smell, the smell of summer cookouts, but it isn't summer. I quicken my steps, turn the corner of Mercy, and see the fire.

The library is burning. I'm running now, and, as I get closer I see that's not quite true. The books are burning. It's a massive billowing fire, and naked women are dancing around it; a pagan ritual in the city streets. I stand transfixed.

They are singing, and dancing, and yelling, and throwing books and fuel into the fire. They are as wild as the Furies. They sing a song I can't recognize, some incantation of dark power. Slowly I move closer to the inferno, and the chanting resolves itself into words.

What can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

Now I see there are other people here too. An old woman. It's the librarian. She's attacking the fire-makers with an umbrella.

What can make me whole again? Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

I've never seen her move so fast. She's screaming, but it does no good. Her umbrella catches fire, forcing her to retreat. I should be helping, I want to help, but I don't know what to do.

Oh, precious is the flow that makes me white as snow.

I'm only a few feet from the fire now. The dancing, singing women ignore me. They just circle and circle. I stare into the flames, the all-consuming, mindless destroyer. I only wanted to read a book. I watch it eat the words, the patterns of letter and meaning. It's insatiable, always eating. It's eating my pattern too, and it's done it before. But this time I cry.

No other fount I know, nothing but the blood of Jesus.

Through the distortion of my tears, I see something. The two. There it is, swiftly turning into ash and cinders. My feet can move again, and they move even closer to the fire. The women notice my presence, they push and jostle me. Heedless, I move forward until the heat threatens to burn my eyebrows.

I thrust my right hand into the fire.

I feel no pain. I'm grasping, gasping, searching. Then I feel it between my fingers, precious impermanent paper, and I'm pulling up and out. The book is in my hand, but so is the fire. Just like I learned in elementary school, I stop, drop and roll. The world spins around me; a vortex of concrete, fire, and moving bodies. I don't stop until I feel the pain.

Terrible, wonderful pain. I hold my hand out in front of me, just as charred and mangled as the book it holds. That gargoyle's fist can't belong to me, but the pain tells me it does.

I sat there a long while, without thought or motion, only dimly aware of my surroundings.

Eventually, slowly, like an old man, I used my left hand to push myself up, off the concrete. There was nothing left here for me, nothing to be done. I hobbled back down Mercy, clutching the useless copy of A Tale of Two Cities, its title barely readable. Behind me, the singing faded, but the pain did not.

I entered the apartment building, glad the doorman was not there to witness my shame. Stiffly, I climbed the stairs and walked down the hall to my door. Once there, I carefully ripped a piece from the cover of the book and lodged it between two of the three remaining apartment numbers. Standing back, I read it aloud:

1 1 Two 3

Interlude II

"Day after day / Alone on a hill / The man with the foolish grin is keeping perfectly still."
- The Beatles, The Fool on the Hill

That night I worked on the machine.

I loved the feel of the pipes and wires in my hand.

The were fitting together, there was a harmony here.

Each piece would be a part of a greater whole; something vibrant, alive, and they were already vibrating in anticipation.

Or perhaps my hands were shaking.

I knew with certainty this would be my last attempt.

I was close now, and I was not afraid.




Wikipedia has this to say on the subject of snow. Snow, it says, is a type of precipitation within the Earth's atmosphere in the form of crystalline water ice, consisting of a multitude of snowflakes that fall from clouds. Since snow is composed of small ice particles, it is a granular material. It has an open and therefore soft structure, unless packed by external pressure. Snowflakes come in a variety of sizes and shapes.

This is what it doesn't say. To make a snowflake is the hardest thing in the Universe. A real snowflake. Not a knock-off, a fake, a pretender. A truly unique pattern of frozen water molecules. Something beautiful. Only one thing is more difficult: infinite snowflakes.

A snowflake is much like a person. I used to tell myself that sometimes. It was a banal platitude, so easily torn down, so flimsy and without meaning. A person cannot be a snowflake, but perhaps - perhaps a person can make a snowflake.

And so tomorrow I will continue . . .

Nothing At All

- Bill Waterson, Calvin and Hobbes



My feet carried me to the library all by themselves.

Nice out today, the doorman said as I left Wilshire. He was right. Blue skies and warm weather forced me out of my customary sweatshirt.

On the way there I passed an odd woman on the sidewalk. Something told me she was the one, the one who'd taken the two. And yet, my feet kept going, unperturbed.

What kind of January is this? I said to the librarian when I entered. An attempt at casual conversation.

She stared at me, squinted one eye. Maybe she was contemplating ordering me out of the library again. Maybe she wasn't used to being asked about the weather.

The kind that kills, she said.

What?

Plants. Kills plants. They'll all thinks it's Spring, and sprout out of their little hiding places and then, sooner than you can say Thanatos, it'll be cold and they'll die. They'll freeze, and whither, and die cold, lonely little deaths.

Without further comment, she returned to shuffling a stack of papers on her desk. Paperwork, I supposed, though she didn't seem to be making any move to do anything with it other than shuffle it round and round until the end of the world.

I spent the next few hours aimlessly wandering the library. No research project today; not on water molecules or numbers or any other ephemera. Just picking books at random from the shelves, examining covers, author names, trying to pick something to read. They say you can't judge a book by its cover, but you don't really have any other choice.

Eventually I settled on one with a blurry image of someone's face on the cover. He was wearing glasses, but where the eye should have been, instead there were the waves of the ocean. Finding a warm corner to sit in, I began to read. It was a story about a Japanese kid. He was running away from home. I read and read.

At first I promised myself I'd go back to work on my project after a few hours, but I couldn't draw myself away from the book. I couldn't draw myself away from not doing anything. I smiled, stretched, inhaled the book smell, and gave in to temptation.

As the pages and hours crept by I could feel the heat slowly pulling down my eyelids . . . I fell asleep . . . and dreamed of nothing at all.