But you know what? The john/jane was also like from another age. Urinals? Yes. Had to try one. Everything we designed out in our Toiletry proj. Flashed Seymour Chin but no emojoes in response. Then seven guys and a woman came in and it was sorting out the rooms and the beds (the wood room with the vampire-castle fireplace was just to hang in) and we cracked the comp six-packs and the night began. Hoo-hooting and woo-wooing from all around the quad.
I put on my droops and the gimme swechirt and 2017 cap, went out with my class into the quad. There was plenty of light there but most of the buildings, classrooms, and such were all dark inside. Way up far-off on a hill was a regular-type building, part of the Science Center I think we got told, lit up normally but looking so far away. These old parts had been left behind years ago.
I’m not that great in crowds — always have this impulse to say things, right, like actual things and not just tags. The Meaning of Life. Sometimes I guess I put people off. Anyway thinking like this I got away from the quads where the spring-breakers were. Thinking of all these buildings being full long ago, now when it’s all collabs across the world, actually better for sure, but still there was a kind of sadness to feel, just wondering what it would have been to go to classes in those buildings and throng around the quad all day hugging books, talking to professors like f2f. Maybe I was born too late.
Tomorrow was going to be utter. We go to class. We hear a lecture by some heyjoe about some subject. Like we walk all together into one of these lecture halls with seats that have these paddle arms where you put your notebook and take notes with a pencil. I got a pencil in my goodie bag. No paper. Maybe the note stuff was like for kidding.
By now I was somewhere that was pretty empty of spring-breakers. The buildings felt like they were sort of looking down on me, like looming. Up in the corners of buildings and on the edges and gutters were these faces — little heads of monsters or like demons. Staring, grinning, showing teeth. Not for kidding: they were there.
Freaking out a bit. What happened to everybody? Was this still Yale? I went past a building that was like a giant white cube, with squares on each face, sort of like a ginormous Rubik’s Cube without the colors. Not old. Not old but cold. And then when I hooked a left and a right there was the most, the tallest, the most looking-at-me building ever. It had to be a church. I’ve seen churches. This was the churchiest church I’d ever seen. The steps that led up to the churchy-pointy door were worn away, by a million feet going up and down a million times. I stood in sort of shock. Ancientness.
Then I saw that the door was open. A little. I could tell that if you went up and pushed on it, it would open more.
So I did.
See, what I learned: that you can be born too late, and really old things can seem, like, familiar to you. There’s a sadness. What it is, it’s more of an entrancement. Which is on the whole not a good thing, because you can just wander on and never come back. Not that knowing this was any help, as it turned out.
The church was just like in this VR tour of somewhere I did once. It was huge and empty and gray. The pillars of it ran together into arches high up. There were little windows made of colored glass, pictures in glass made long ago, or looking like it. What wasn’t there were all the rows of seats to sit in and like worship. It was empty, it was the emptiest place I’ve ever been in. It made you gulp. The VR tour not so much.
I went over to one of the pillars and put my hand on it, the stone, worn by the ages. Cold and rough. Not even VR can give you feels. I was liking this when a weird feeling came over me, like somebody was nearby.
Somebody was. I don’t know how he came up to me that close without making a sound, but when I turned I saw him and I did the guh-guh-guh thing.
“Looking for something?” he said. I didn’t know then how long I was going to be listening to that voice, or how much I would want to not hear it. He was a little guy with a round head, almost bald, with this farcey mustache. Smiling.
“Is this,” I said, “a church?”
“No indeed,” he said. “Or in a way, yes, a church. A Cathedral of Thought. It is in fact a Library.”
“Wow.”
“Yes.”
“And who are you?”
“I am,” he said, “the Librarian.”
“Wow, so a Library.” I took a few steps farther in, and he kept close to me. “And you’re a Librarian.”
“I am the Librarian. There are no others. Not anymore.”
What’s that ancient movie, Seymour sent me snips once, a Cathedral, and this ugly messed-up heyjoe who loves the bells and climbs up the tower to ring them? For some reason I thought of it now.
“Why,” he asked, “does your hat have the number two thousand seventeen on it?”
“Oh, ’cause I’m a student, and that’s my class.” I could tell he didn’t quite get it. “I don’t really know why I’m here, I just...”
“Oh, I know why you’ve come here,” he said, getting a little too close.
“You do?”
“Because you’re a Student. You’re drawn to books.”
“Actually not so much.”
“You love books.”
“Um.” I made that look — eyes sort of closed, shoulders up, hands out to show they’re empty. Like hmmever.
“You don’t. You don’t. Like books. You hate them.”
I laughed. “Well they’re sort of heavy, you know? A whole lot of them together especially.”
He laughed at that, kind of wildly, which made me think I was making a like good impression. Poor guy. His eyes were sort of bulge-y, that condition, you know? And they sort of vibrated. Not his fault, but.
“So books?” I said. “Where are they?”
“In the stacks.”
“Stacks? You mean all piled up?”
“Well, ‘stacks,’” he said with the double-finger-waggle. “Called stacks. All neatly placed on shelves. You went up, up...” — he pointed up, like to heaven, to the ceiling — “and got the one you wanted. If you were allowed.”
“Uh,” I said. “Who’s not allowed?”
“Students,” he said. “Haha, too bad for you. Haha, not true, you could, but long ago, no.”
“So...”
“We-ell,” he said, as though I was little kid, “what you did was, you looked up the book in the card catalog. You see those cabinets over there? They’re all that’s left of the system, and they’re now actually empty. But once there were hundreds of cabinets, and each drawer in each cabinet held hundreds of cards, all in alphabetical order” — here he stared at me with his goggle eyes vibrating, like to make sure I understood what that is, which I do, sort of — “and the card told you what the book’s call number was, and then you looked at that sign over there, which told you where in the Library that range of numbers was.”
“You called the number?” I dialed with a finger, another finger to my ear, like in oldtime cartoons means call me.
“No no. You’d write it on a paper. And ask a clerk to go find it.”
“Every book had a different number?”
“Every book. Every. Single. Book.”
“Of like how many?”
He bent over so close to me, with this creepy suspishy smile, that now I was thinking that he, or well they, was maybe gay or bi. “Millions,” he said.