The Last Librarian #futurelibrary

The Last Librarian

'I've come to see the real books,' Adie said.

There was something wrong with the woman behind the desk. Her skin was too large for her skull, like a jumper that had been washed one too many times. She looked up at Adie with hooded eyes, a few spindly blood vessels creeping their way across the whites.

'They're just called "books" here,' the woman said. 'And you can stop staring.'               

'What's wrong with your face?' Adie asked. She knew vaguely that this was a rude question, but nobody thought much about rudeness these days, not when they had their whole lives to seek forgiveness from their sins.

'There's nothing wrong with my face. Now which books, precisely, did you want to see?' The woman sat up a little straighter and pulled her faded mauve cardigan closed. Adie glimpsed a streak of grey in her hair.

'You're not vaccinated!' she said.

'Is ageing a disease? I don't think so. So it's not a vaccine. But no, I have not had that particular injection. Not that it's any of your business.'

Adie was startled. She'd come here to The Book Museum because she wanted to see the old books – she wanted to feel their leather cases, sniff their papery innards, flick through them so the air from their pages cooled her face. She loved old things. Collected old things. A pair of soft leather shoes that she'd found in an abandoned house; a comb; a plasticky thing called a 'pez dispenser', which she assumed was some sort of medical instrument designed not to scare sick children. They did something for her, these things; they were amulets that protected her against the sheen and the clean of The City. But she never thought she'd find an old person.

               

'How old are you?' she asked. The woman sighed and pushed an imaginary strand of hair away from her forehead.

               

'Oh, we're really doing this, are we? I'm 47. And how old are you, dear?'               

'22. Nearly 23.'

'Nearly 23,' the woman said, testily. 'And then after that you'll be 23, and then the next birthday, 23, and the one after that you'll be – wait, let me guess...23. Et cetera, ad nauseam, and so on and so forth, world without end, Amen. Yes?'

Adie opened her mouth to retort, but stopped short. Yes. It was nearly time. In The City the injection of The Fountain was a time for celebration – literally the birthday party to end all birthday parties, because it was the last real one you ever got. Why would it be anything but a happy occasion? The Fountain had saved the human race from extinction; the one bit of good luck in those terrible years before the final reckoning – that scientists had discovered The Fountain right before The Flu hit. One in ten thousand people survived, and The Fountain, which sped silently through the body freezing telomeres and preserving cells, had given them the time they needed to rebuild, repopulate and live. (And live. And live.) 23 was when life began. But the closer Adie got to it, the less she felt like celebrating.

               

'Shall I find you a book, then?' the woman interrupted her thoughts. She ducked down under the desk and emerged with a slim, flat rectangular book with faded cartoons on the front. 'This one is called The Moomins, and it's about "moomins", which are sort of pale hippopotamus-like creatures that live in a part of Finland called The Lonely Mountains. They may or may not be fictitious; I haven't managed to cross-reference it yet.' She looked at Adie, who was still staring at her. 'Of course,' she spread her arms wide, 'as you can see, this is far from the only book here, and you are free to wander as you like, and to stop looking at me whenever you please.'