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First Page Friday: Show your faces
Aug. 13th, 2010 04:39 amThis is from the Howl at the Misteltoe collection:
I sat quietly in the 280s, cataloging. I was typing a subject card for Tertullian. I scowled at the book. One of my least favorite theologians. The little solar-powered battery lamp glowed beside me, and I banged away at the old manual typewriter, my fingers aching and feeling mushy at the tips. It all seemed so silly. I kept cataloging, because it was all I could do. It was all that kept me sane. Of course, it had become harder without electricity or computers, but I found an old Smith-Corona in the storage room and pushed it through the stacks on a cart, re-creating the obsolete card catalog.
I smiled at the memory of using the old cards for notepads. I'd salvaged as many as I could on The Badger's orders. She'd been an abrasive old lady, but a decent library director. Pity she decided to go to Mass last Good Friday. Brother Vincent got a little too theological, going on about “take, eat, this is my body.” Not the smartest thing to do in a chapel full of very hungry students and faculty. I didn't miss her much.
You can't teach starving people democracy. The Hunger Studies of the Second World War proved that. You apparently can't teach them theology either.
Bob had taken over, and decreed we would keep the library open, regardless. Viral warfare, nukes, hell or high water, the library would continue dispensing knowledge. So, we worked, just like always. Only one thing had really changed.
I lived in the library now. My family died of the plagues released in the viral warfare. The suburbs weren't safe; too many wild things were drifting in from the piney woods, and the ones that went on four legs weren't the worst. My urban library, surrounded by its high fence, with the guard booths turned into machine-gun nests, was far safer.
I sat quietly in the 280s, cataloging. I was typing a subject card for Tertullian. I scowled at the book. One of my least favorite theologians. The little solar-powered battery lamp glowed beside me, and I banged away at the old manual typewriter, my fingers aching and feeling mushy at the tips. It all seemed so silly. I kept cataloging, because it was all I could do. It was all that kept me sane. Of course, it had become harder without electricity or computers, but I found an old Smith-Corona in the storage room and pushed it through the stacks on a cart, re-creating the obsolete card catalog.
I smiled at the memory of using the old cards for notepads. I'd salvaged as many as I could on The Badger's orders. She'd been an abrasive old lady, but a decent library director. Pity she decided to go to Mass last Good Friday. Brother Vincent got a little too theological, going on about “take, eat, this is my body.” Not the smartest thing to do in a chapel full of very hungry students and faculty. I didn't miss her much.
You can't teach starving people democracy. The Hunger Studies of the Second World War proved that. You apparently can't teach them theology either.
Bob had taken over, and decreed we would keep the library open, regardless. Viral warfare, nukes, hell or high water, the library would continue dispensing knowledge. So, we worked, just like always. Only one thing had really changed.
I lived in the library now. My family died of the plagues released in the viral warfare. The suburbs weren't safe; too many wild things were drifting in from the piney woods, and the ones that went on four legs weren't the worst. My urban library, surrounded by its high fence, with the guard booths turned into machine-gun nests, was far safer.
