Dear diary,
It’s been really quiet at the library. Under any other circumstances that comment would go completely unnoticed, but this past week it’s been different. Normally there are the sounds of people trying to be quiet, like whispered conversations, the shuffling of chars, muffled coughs, that sort of thing. Now it’s simply devoid of sound.
There was a lot of cleaning up to do on Monday morning. Ernesto was the first one in, and thus it was he who found me in the Sequestered Stacks where I’d slept all night. I told him my story as he looked around the transformed staff room in awe. There was no trace of Sue, just her black robe which was soaked in the tangy smell of ozone. S.I.R. and the ReShelve™ had been reduced to their original parts, and were now just two piles of scrap metal. The room itself had been half redesigned; where the streaks of temporal energy had flowed out from the handheld time machine there were now 90s and 80s décor. Sylvia was going to have a fit when she found out her computer had been transformed into a rusty old typewriter.
I was surprised to find Boudecia, seeing as she’d been at the epicenter of the blast. She was a hatchling owl, making the cutest little hooting sounds I’ve ever heard. Ernesto carefully put her back in the cage on her desk, and I nicked down to the local pet store to get her something to eat. I was glad for any excuse to leave the building. I couldn’t really remember much of Sunday evening, besides that which I’d hastily typed into my BlueToothBerry™ – it’s meant to be used for recording and transmitting shelving/shelf-reading locations across library branches – as it seemed like an extenuating circumstance at the time.
When I got back I found Ernesto had called all the staff in. Goldie was cradling her pet kittens, which had luckily been protected by the drawer they’d slept in. TJ was trying to console an emotional Pepper, though she was doing a better job of it to him by the looks of it. Sylvia was, as I’d guessed, fuming over the loss of her Mac, oblivious to everything else. Bron and Heb were tidying up silently so they’d have an excuse not to talk to anyone, and I could hear
We discussed what we should do now that Boudecia was … unavailable to manage over the library. It was decided unanimously that Ernesto should become the new head librarian. We discussed what message to tell the public and the Council (Boudecia had no family, and the library was her life). We decided on the cover story of “she’s taking time off indefinitely to travel”. I made that slightly truer by driving one night to an animal sanctuary and leaving my former boss, in her cage, at the front steps of the office. She’d be safe until morning when they could take her inside and care for her.
And so that’s that, really. We’re going along as though everything is normal. Sylvia bought a new Mac and it’s all she talks about; Heb’s organising a pub crawl for his upcoming birthday, much to Bron’s dismay; and Ernesto has put an ad in the paper for a new Reference Librarian. We’re also having the library redecorated, both to get rid of the horrible fleur-de-lis wallpaper in the staffroom and also because we all need a change.
It’s a strange feeling, when the group you always held close to you gets that little bit smaller all of a sudden. Time keeps ticking and life pushes onwards, but it feels as though something you used to have is gone forever. I think the library staff had become my family, and the library my home. I’d always thought that working in a library was just something I really enjoyed doing for a while, but that I’d eventually move on. Now I’m not so sure.
That’s probably a good thing too.
-Jay, shelver explorer, signing off
