Chapter 12

Next door to the event center was a large building which had a Romanesque look. Scaffolding surrounded the building, which looked in passable from the outside.

“Could be a façade. The place could be wrecked inside.” said Melissa.

As the explorers got closer to the building, they saw some fallen bricks laying on the ground. Some of the windows were broken. Megan decided to stay outside.

A sign next to the front door said, “REDUCED HOURS, EFFECTIVE OCTOBER 6, 1986: THU-SAT 8 AM – 10 PM, CLOSED MON-WED FOR ONGOING RENOVATION”.

“I guess the renovation has lasted 34 years… and counting. The focus has shifted from modernizing it to turning it into a pile of rubble.” said Billy.

David opened the 15-foot tall, solid wood door. The explorers followed him into a large atrium. The ceiling was about 35 feet high and made of glass, which lit the interior of the building so that flashlights weren’t needed. To the sides, spiral staircases led up to the second and third floors. Floor-to-ceiling bookcases, still loaded with books, were visible from the front to back of the building on the top two floors. In the center of the atrium, there were rows of red chairs, with wooden end tables next to them, and a circular desk with chairs around its interior. Some of the end tables still had books on them.

Although the books looked to still be in place from a distance, the atrium was in terrible condition. Shattered panels of laminated glass from the ceiling covered the floor – this was a “hard hat required” building. The ceilings outside the atrium area had mostly come off, revealing the bare beams under them. There was obvious water damage – the wood floors were buckled and warped, and many of the walls were decayed to their internal beams, the drywall having been eaten away by water. Moss covered parts of the floors, and a greenish grime covered the interior walls.

 “I wonder how many of these books could be saved?” asked Billy.

“None of ‘em.” said Dirk.

“Not sure yet, but I’m sure some of them could and some couldn’t, maybe 60 or 70% could be saved.” said David.

Melissa led the explorers to a small alcove to the right. The sign, which was missing some letters, said “C ck Che k ut D sk”.

One bookshelf had large binders on it, each labeled with a year, from 1951 to 1986. The binder for 1987 was on a desk, next to a telephone, a pen, and a dried-out date stamper still set to “APR 11, 1987”.

While David, Dirk and Melissa looked at the 1987 binder, Billy grabbed the 1964 binder off the shelf and looked at it. All wanted to sit in one of the four chairs behind the desk, but all looked too dirty and weak to sit in.

Billy flipped through the pages of the binder, which appeared to be about 800 to 1,000 pages. He turned one page at a time until he was more assured of the durability of the binder, then he opened the binder to what appeared to be about 1/3 of the way through, looking for April 28. He landed five days early.

“April 23… 24… 25… 27… 28!” mumbled Billy to himself. The pages had 50 lines each, with the title of the book, the due date, and the number and shelf of the book. Each line was numbered; the lines on the page Billy was looking at were numbers 924,551 to 924,600. Most of the books checked out on April 28, 1964 had been nonfiction books that Billy had never heard of. The first entries for the day were a set of 14 books, all about the schwa sound, all with Dewey Decimal classifications of 414, from shelves 502 and 503. All had a check-out time of 8:01 am and a due date of May 12^th; they’d all been turned in the day before that.

“Uh. I didn’t know there were so many books about ‘uh”. said Billy. “Meliss-uh, somebody was doing some intense research on schwas the day you were born.”

Melissa looked at the binder from 1964, while Billy started looking at the binder from 1987 – looking at the last-ever books to be checked out. The last ever book, number 4,518,386, was titled “NYC at 360: A History of New York City, 1624-1984”. It had been checked out at 9:55 pm on March 28, 1987, had a Dewey Decimal classification of 973.92718, and was from shelf number 1,782. Its due date was April 11, and it had never been turned in, for obvious reasons.

“Have you ever been to New York City?” asked Billy.

“Yes. Beautiful city. I lived there for a while in the ‘90s, as a matter of fact.” said Melissa.

“Somebody’s got a book on it forever, no late fees. What was it like living there?” asked Billy.

“Very crowded. I moved there in ’93 when I found a job opening at my dream job there. Back then, I was an investment banker, so I took a job at the World Trade Center and moved into a SoHo apartment. At first, all the hustle and bustle, being in the middle of everything, was enjoyable, and working 103 floors up was a nice novelty. After a couple years, it got old having to deal with everything being so crowded all the time. I missed the space and the fresh air of living in a smaller city and not having to pay $2,000 a month just for a one-bedroom apartment. Someone told me ‘you should teach’, so I left New York in June of ’97 and went back to get my PhD.” said Melissa.

“When you worked at the towers, were you worried about t-?“ asked Dirk, before Billy cut him off. Don’t want to bring back any potentially traumatic memories, he and David thought.

“Terrorism? I never worried about it too much. Two months before I started working there, they put a truck bomb in the basement and tried to knock the towers down. It killed a few people, but it wasn’t the massive catastrophe the terrorists were hoping for. After that they upgraded security in the buildings. We had the occasional evacuation drill but never thought about it on a day-to-day basis.” said Melissa.

“Wow. We’re all glad you’re okay.” said David.  

“How’d you go from being a journalist to an investment banker to a journalism professor?” asked Billy.

“I double majored in journalism and business. From my childhood, I was always a good writer, but I also became interested in finance and investing. I couldn’t decide which one I wanted to do, so I did both. When I got out of college, I was recruited by the local newspaper, so I did that for a while until the volcano went off. Then, I moved to Helmintoller City and found a job working for a small local newspaper, the Barlow Post, and got an internship at a Silverman Sachs office in 1988. After that, Silverman hired me on. I was putting in 60, 70 hours a week for at Silverman, driving for GT [an Uber-like business active since 1973 in Helmintoller State] in my spare time, and I barely got any sleep. In 1993 I found a job with the same pay, about 60 grand a year, working a regular 40-hour week. I enjoyed it at first but got burned out on both living in New York and the hustle and bustle of the financial sector. A fresh college graduate I was mentoring in 1996 told me I should teach, and I started doing research onto professorships. Left New York in ’97, enrolled at Western Helmintoller University, and got my PhD in 2001, when I started teaching.” said Melissa.

The explorers took in what Melissa told them, then soon put the binders back down and walked toward the back of the library, where the card catalog was.

“I’ve never seen a card catalog in person. It’s been all computerized my whole life.” said Billy.

“They were getting ready to computerize it here, too.” said Melissa, pointing to a moldy, decayed piece of paper which said “NEVER FUMBLE THROUGH CARDS AGAIN. COMPUTER CARD CATALOG COMING AUGUST.”

“I wonder if they were already doing the work on digitizing it. A million entries don’t digitize overnight.” said Billy.

“Not sure, but I seem to remember seeing a guy on a computer with a rack of cards a couple weeks before the volcano. So, probably.” said Melissa.

Billy opened a broken glass door. A computer laid on the ground, next to a desk half-eaten by termites. 3 ½ inch floppy disks laid next to it amid insulation and ceiling tiles. Billy picked up one of the disks, labeled “CARD CATALOG: Disk 13, 218 to 233”. He left the room and showed the disk to the rest. 

“Looks like it was going to be a 40, 50, maybe 60 disk job. The wonders of computers before the Internet and cheap storage.” said Billy.

“Computer town, they looked for an excuse to computerize everything.” said Dirk.

“I’d rather deal with 60 floppy disks than this big card catalog. We were all looking forward to the computerized card catalog, or Triple C as we called it.” said Melissa.

The explorers then went to look at the thousands of shelves of books, which were all labeled with a number. Shelf 1 was at the far left of the 1^st floor, directly to the left of the entrance. The floor-to-ceiling shelf only went from 000.00003 to 000.2816. Every book was still intact on the shelf, covered in a thin layer of dust. The first book was entitled “Computing Theory”. On the other side, the shelves started with shelf 27. Billy turned on his flashlight and walked down the corridor of books. The books on every shelf were still intact. Billy wanted to read some of them, but knew that time was limited, and he didn’t want to be the one who would move the books for the first time in 33 years.

“I wonder what the last shelf in this place is?” asked Billy.

“I think there were about 15 or 1,600 shelves.” said Melissa.

“If we can safely get to it, can I see it?” asked Billy.

“Follow me. It would be at the back right corner of the building.” said Melissa.

As David and Dirk explored the remainder of the library, Melissa led Billy up a debris-covered staircase, careful to avoid a slippery section of boards, glass and 2x4’s that covered the whole right side of the staircase.

The building’s condition was even worse up here. The roof visibly sagged in many areas; in some areas, there was a hole or a separation between roof sections that let in enough light that a flashlight wasn’t necessary. Damp patches on the red-carpet floor showed where was relatively safe to step, and where was dangerous – Melissa deftly stepped around the patches, and Billy followed, occasionally stopping to film a section of books or hallway.

They finally reached the back wall of the building. By the Dewey numbers on the books – in the high 980s – Billy could tell that the shelves, 1,708 and so on, were near the end. A few shelves down, a bright light shone through a hole in the building. As they walked by shelf 1,712, the two turned off their flashlights.

Shelves 1,715 to 1,717 had all fallen through a hole in the wall that extended from floor to ceiling and was about 12 feet wide. Melissa put one foot on the floor by the hole, declaring it safe, before Billy walked onto it. He filmed the shelves adjacent to the hole and zoomed his camera in on the pile of books and wood scraps that had fallen to the ground. Judging by the lack of vegetation growing atop the books, Billy reasoned that the wall must have collapsed recently – probably in the last year. Moss grew along the sides of the adjacent shelves.

Billy and Melissa continued, noticing a crack in the wall above shelves 1,718 to 1,726, and light shining in from behind 1,721, although the shelf was still in place. Finally, they reached the last shelf in the entire library, 1,731. The area in its immediate vicinity was oddly pristine, with the wall, shelf, ceiling, and roof fully intact.

Billy looked at the last book, 999.96502, Where in the Universe could Humans Live?

“When I was a kid, I would always so straight to the last book in the library and thumb through it. I’ve seen 998’s and a couple 999’s, but never a 999.9 anything.” said Billy. He carefully pulled the book out and turned the first page. Melissa shined her flashlight, allowing Billy to read the book.

It had been checked out only twice, on November 5, 1986 and February 10, 1987. The first line in the book, which had a 1986 copyright date, was ominous. “In the future, a major disaster, shifts in the Earth’s natural state, or overpopulation may cause some of us to have to move to another planet.”

“Melissa, can you hold this book open like I have it? I want to get a close up of these words.” said Billy.

As Melissa held the book open, Billy filmed the words, then turned the pages of the book. The irony was not lost on him when he found a chapter labeled “Supervolcano”. Turning to the chapter, he saw a diagram of the Toba supervolcano, erupting and creating a cloud around the world.

“Wow, how ironic that a town that ended with a volcanic eruption, would have the last book in its library feature a supervolcano.” said Billy. He took the book from Melissa’s hands and put it back in its original spot, and they walked back out.

Melissa got in touch with David through the walkie-talkie. “Where are you?” she asked.

“I’m on the west side of the second floor, near shelf… 927. I don’t know where Dirk is, he started up his ghost scanner and wandered off.” said David.

“Wait right there. I’ll be there shortly.” said Melissa.

Melissa and Billy met up with David at shelf 927, and they scanned their flashlights but couldn’t see anyone. “DIRK!” they yelled in unison, through the walkie talkies. No answer.

Walking toward the south side of the building, they yelled again. “DIRK!”

“What do you want?” asked Dirk.

“Where are you?” asked David.

“Bottom floor, northeast corner. I wouldn’t come out here though, it’s possessed.” said Dirk. “I’m in the Bermuda Triangle, coordinates 56.784 North, 110.82 East” continued Dirk, raising his voice to talk like a ghostly female. The remaining three walked down the stairs and continued toward the front door.

“That’s not in the Bermuda Triangle, it’s in Siberia.” said Billy.

Billy decided to play a game with the ‘ghost’.

“Who are you?” asked Billy.

“I am Amelia Earhart… I’m so lonely…” said Dirk.

“What ended up happening to you on that flight?” asked Billy.

“I crash landed in a sewer and lived there for the rest of my life… I died in, um… 1992, I guess.” said Dirk.

“From what?” asked Billy.

“Loneliness… no one wants to talk to you when you’re covered in sewage…” said Dirk.

“If you’re really Amelia Earhart, what’s your middle name?” asked Billy.

“Um…Ethel.” said Dirk.

“Okay, Amelia, it’s time to leave this building. Come to the front door.” said Melissa.

“I’m talking to Amelia Earhart.” said Dirk, back in his normal voice.

“Well, Amelia’s ghost is actually a bit to the east of here. You’ll understand her a lot better if you come with us.” said Billy.

Within a minute, Melissa, Billy, and David could see Dirk walking toward them.