Chapter 1

Roger balanced his bulk atop the ladder, a fat book tucked under his left arm, as he ran his finger along the serial numbers on the spine of each book. He was a good twelve feet off the ground, and as he found the proper spot amongst the 822s, he couldn’t help but think about what would happen if he slipped.

He was nervous; he’d woken up with a foreboding about today, a sense that something terrible was about to happen. He knew that it was the exact kind of feeling that would cause him to fall, or make some terrible error. He tried not to think about it, and get his work done.

Finding the proper spot for The Collected Works of William Shakespeare, he pushed the folios to either side, and began to slide the book onto the shelf.

“Hey, where can I find the works of David Hume?” someone said, causing Roger to jump.

His left foot slipped, and he began to tumble backwards. Moving quickly, he grabbed onto the ladder, and held himself steady, causing it to groan from the strain.

He looked down to see an undergraduate student with dreadlocks and a goatee.

“Where the hell’s the philosophy?” he said, again.

Roger thought for a moment, suppressing an annoyed sigh, and finally remembered who Hume was and what he had written about.

“Section 122, Causation. First floor, near the back, east side.”

“East?” the student asked.

“That side,” Roger said, pointing.

Without thanking him, the bearded man wandered off, seemingly without regard to Roger’s directions.

Roger descended from the aging ladder, and finally allowed himself to sigh. It seemed that none of the students that came to the library actually bothered to learn the arrangement of books or listen to his directions.

He climbed up to the third floor, and went to the back, before sitting at the small desk that had been allotted to him.

He was a man of average height, in his mid twenties. He carried his extra bulk with stooped shoulders, and was wholly unremarkable; brown hair framing, and brown eyes within, a plain face.

Settling into the chair, he let out another sigh, and closed his eyes for a moment.

Any moment, he thought, someone is going to bother me for a book on hagfish fossils, or something.

For a moment, he wished he could have a cup of black coffee. It was an impossibility, given the danger of spilling, but that rationalization did nothing to satisfy him.

He turned on his monitor, and opened the web browser. A brief check revealed that he had neither mail, nor any interesting news to read.

Briefly, he considered looking elsewhere online, but decided against it. He couldn’t risk his job just for temporary amusement.

The phone on his desk rang--a low noise, like an electronic pigeon’s call. He picked it up, and rested the receiver on his shoulder, as he examined a small tear in the cuff of his shirt.

“Rodge,” came the voice of the front desk librarian, Jonas Richter, “What’s the section number for architecture?”

“Landscape or structural?” Roger responded.

Why am I the only one who bothered to learn this system?

“Umm...structural.”

“What purposes?” Roger asked, yawning.

“An Office Building.”

“It’s in section 725. If it isn’t there, try sections 724 and 720.”

The sounds of a pen scratching carried over the phone line.

“Thanks, Rodge. How do you know all this?”

“It follows a pattern, you know,” Roger said, “every entry moves further from philosophy, and more towards History.”

There was a long pause.

“That makes no sense.”

“I know, but it’s how Dewey made it.”

“Whatever,” Jonas responded, hanging up.

Roger sighed, and hung up the phone, before leaning back in his chair, and closing his eyes. He didn’t really feel like working, today. He thought about giving Elly a call, seeing if she wanted to get some takeout and watch bad movies on cable.

He knew he’d only get her voicemail, though. It would be unreasonable to expect her to pick up the phone in the middle of the day, even if he called on her free period, when she didn’t have to deal with students.

Perhaps she would have papers for him to help her grade. It wasn’t impossible, but was a little unlikely--she only did that when she was swamped with work; it was the middle of February, and thus unlikely that she’d be that busy.

He sighed, and looked at his hands, folded across his stomach. Thick, stubby fingers wove into a lattice across his gut. Looking up he could see no students, and could hear no one moving. The library level he was on was completely silent.

He sighed, and smiled.

Life was much easier when no one came to him for help, and easier still when he had nothing to put back on the shelves. He opened his desk, and pulled out his copy of Salinger’s Franny and Zooey, before leaning back and opening it to the page he was on.

He wished that he had some music to listen to, but did so in vain; even with headphones, the Hall Library wouldn’t allow such a thing. His savant-like understanding of the Dewey Decimal System earned him no leeway.

Forty-five minutes later, he found himself in the basement, recovering books to be placed back on the shelves.

A warped copy of a collection of papal encyclicals--section 282, which was on the first floor, on the west side.

He smiled slightly when he saw A.G. King’s Ceramic Technology and Processing, primarily because of the childish jokes that its catalogue number, “666”, brought to mind.

The strangest object, by far, was the solid black book by a man named “Bentley” with the catalogue number of 132.01. He tossed that out of the pile, ignoring it. It had to be a joke by some clever student--that was an unused number.

Better to just ignore it, he decided, it’s just a hoax, anyway.

Roger left the library around five, and walked down the hill to sit on a bench as he waited for the bus. It was a gray, overcast day; a fitting February day. He wrapped himself deeper in his coat, as he hunched down on the bench.

It would be instant food again, tonight. For two days, he’d managed to live on leftover curry that he’d made on his last day off, but it had run out.

Just keeps getting better and better, he thought, cursing his luck.

“Why don’t you just take out another loan?” Elly had asked.

“I never thought of that...I’ll have to look into that,” he responded, not wanting to explain that they wouldn’t give him a loan, and not wanting to explain that he didn’t know what he was going to do with himself in five years, after all possibilities of further education had been exhausted for good.

Maybe he’d just go into teaching; become a professor. He didn’t relish the possibility that he’d simply continue the cycle of continuing to learn without any actual application of the knowledge.

The bus finally arrived, letting him escape from his thoughts. He patted down his pockets, and checked his wallet, discovering that he had no money--not even the minimal amount needed for bus fare.

Roger remembered that he’d used his last dollar bill to pay for his lunch--a bag of chips from a vending machine.

This must’ve been what he’d been nervous about; he would walk home, and probably be mugged. He knew that something was going to happen today, but he had no options.

Sighing, he began to walk north.

By the time he’d navigated rush hour traffic on foot, and made his way to his apartment, he’d lost nearly an hour and a half, and the sky had darkened. His breath was visible, each labored wheeze transforming into a cloud of white before his eyes.

He pressed the button for the elevator, and waited for it to descend. No one was out in the halls--it seemed that the entire world was deserted, today. Other than foul-mouthed undergrad students, it seemed.

When the elevator opened, he caught a whiff of a coppery scent, but assumed it to be the wiring. He pressed the button for his floor, and waited as the elevator climbed the three floors. It would probably have been faster to take the stairs, but he didn’t feel like climbing them, after his long walk.

He exited onto his floor, not caring if he tracked footprints on the cigarette-yellowed chartreuse carpet. He unlocked the door to his apartment, 302, and stepped in, locking the door behind him.

He untied his shoes, and placed the pair of threadbare sneakers by the door, where they would wait for him to leave in the morning.

Entering the tiny kitchenette, he pulled a cup of instant noodles from the cabinet, filled it partway up to the line with water, and microwaved it. After a minute, he opened the Styrofoam container, and pushed the crust of uncooked noodles down into the water at the bottom, and cooked it in the microwave again.

Pulling it out, he drank the foul-tasting instant food, chewing on the noodles as he gave the newspaper a once over.

He looked over at the clock, which read 8:45, and decided that he shouldn’t bother Elly tonight. She was probably busy, anyway. For not the first time, he contemplated asking her to go out with him.

While he was relatively certain she would agree, he was also relatively certain he didn’t have the money or creativity to take her on a date that she would actually enjoy.

He contemplated watching television, but didn’t feel like filling his brain with sitcoms. It made him feel like a fool, anyway, just sitting there and watching glowing pictures dance in front of him.

Stretching, he drained the last of his dinner, crushed the Styrofoam cup, and tossed it in the trash. He resolved to take the paper with him on the way to work, and drop it in one of the campus recycling bins before he clocked in.

Leaving the kitchenette, he entered his small bedroom, and then turned left, into the bathroom. He brushed his teeth, and thought about getting a shower.

Deciding against it, he put his shirt and pants into his hamper. He was about to turn on his lamp, when he noticed that the outlet it had been plugged into was damaged. The faceplate had fallen off and was suspended on the cord, and the wiring was exposed.

While tired, he still felt somewhat relieved--nothing truly bad had happened that day.

Sighing, he climbed into bed.

As he began to relax, and forget the stress of the day, he was ignorant to the rustling coming from the wall behind his bed.