Post by thegingerbarrister on Mar 12, 2020 19:16:30 GMT -5
March 12, 2020
Happy Thursday, friend!
I’m starting to feel like I'm being very foolish. The trouble I’m having is figuring out whether I’m foolish for getting a bit frightened, or for not being nearly frightened enough. I’m leaning toward the former, but here in the library the latter is a distinct possibility.
After doing a great deal of exploring, taking incoherent notes about all of the clocks that I found, and repeatedly giving myself a fright by imagining every draft was a giant book moth about to attack, I decided that I wasn’t getting anywhere on my own. In the end it was Molly who came up with a much more reasonable suggestion: talk to one of the Librarians about what was concerning me. She also made fun of me a great deal for letting myself get spooked by timepieces, which miffed me a little but which I also thoroughly deserved.
I chose the Librarian of Clarke’s Three Laws (I almost slipped up and called him Clarkesy twice but was able to fake allergies) because I think he likes being asked questions, which let him show off a little, so was unlikely to be annoyed. It also occurred to me that he might have some idea how to fix the clocks, which would make me feel much less like I was coming unmoored from spacetime. (It’s a very discomfiting feeling and I do not recommend it.)
Clarkesy — sorry, Clarke’s Three Laws — seemed terribly surprised that any of the clocks might be broken, and insisted such a thing had never happened before. He demanded I show him one of the broken clocks immediately, and upon seeing the device displayed visible relief. I showed him a handful of different mechanisms and he cheerfully told me they were all in perfect working order, and I didn’t have to worry any longer.
And I was relieved for approximately half a minute, but then I had to go and ask what I thought was a very simple request: could he show me how to read the clocks, so I could get a better sense of time passing in the Library.
“That won’t do you any good,” he said. “Every one of these is keeping it’s own time.”
I tried to get him to clarify what he meant, but somewhere around the part where he began musing about each aspect of time-keeping moving through the universe at its own speed and clock as “psychogeographic spaceships” my brain simply gave up, and I tuned out.
Frustrated, I asked him (rather exasperatedly I’m afraid) if he could just teach me how to tell one of the times so I could just keep track of time passing inside the Library.
This is when he became quite serious, and told me something I keep turning over and over, like a sharp stone I might one day wear down. “We don’t keep time here,” he said, then turned to me with the closest thing to worry I’ve seen on his face. “We’re hiding from it. Whatever you do, don’t let it in.”
And that took me from frustrated right back to frightened.
The Boundless Library tells stories in many strange and unusual ways, including Borrowings, our podcast that takes you behind the scenes of the Library, and tactile stories like A Feather in Dust, available for preorder now.
Best,
Alice
Apprentice (of sorts)
The Boundless Library
Happy Thursday, friend!
I’m starting to feel like I'm being very foolish. The trouble I’m having is figuring out whether I’m foolish for getting a bit frightened, or for not being nearly frightened enough. I’m leaning toward the former, but here in the library the latter is a distinct possibility.
After doing a great deal of exploring, taking incoherent notes about all of the clocks that I found, and repeatedly giving myself a fright by imagining every draft was a giant book moth about to attack, I decided that I wasn’t getting anywhere on my own. In the end it was Molly who came up with a much more reasonable suggestion: talk to one of the Librarians about what was concerning me. She also made fun of me a great deal for letting myself get spooked by timepieces, which miffed me a little but which I also thoroughly deserved.
I chose the Librarian of Clarke’s Three Laws (I almost slipped up and called him Clarkesy twice but was able to fake allergies) because I think he likes being asked questions, which let him show off a little, so was unlikely to be annoyed. It also occurred to me that he might have some idea how to fix the clocks, which would make me feel much less like I was coming unmoored from spacetime. (It’s a very discomfiting feeling and I do not recommend it.)
Clarkesy — sorry, Clarke’s Three Laws — seemed terribly surprised that any of the clocks might be broken, and insisted such a thing had never happened before. He demanded I show him one of the broken clocks immediately, and upon seeing the device displayed visible relief. I showed him a handful of different mechanisms and he cheerfully told me they were all in perfect working order, and I didn’t have to worry any longer.
And I was relieved for approximately half a minute, but then I had to go and ask what I thought was a very simple request: could he show me how to read the clocks, so I could get a better sense of time passing in the Library.
“That won’t do you any good,” he said. “Every one of these is keeping it’s own time.”
I tried to get him to clarify what he meant, but somewhere around the part where he began musing about each aspect of time-keeping moving through the universe at its own speed and clock as “psychogeographic spaceships” my brain simply gave up, and I tuned out.
Frustrated, I asked him (rather exasperatedly I’m afraid) if he could just teach me how to tell one of the times so I could just keep track of time passing inside the Library.
This is when he became quite serious, and told me something I keep turning over and over, like a sharp stone I might one day wear down. “We don’t keep time here,” he said, then turned to me with the closest thing to worry I’ve seen on his face. “We’re hiding from it. Whatever you do, don’t let it in.”
And that took me from frustrated right back to frightened.
The Boundless Library tells stories in many strange and unusual ways, including Borrowings, our podcast that takes you behind the scenes of the Library, and tactile stories like A Feather in Dust, available for preorder now.
Best,
Alice
Apprentice (of sorts)
The Boundless Library