unfinishedlibrary | Careful of the stacks

Entry tags:

Careful of the stacks - LIBRARY LOG

Who: EVERYONE!
What: A bunch of Editors walk into a library...
When: October 31st - November 13
Where: The Unfinished Library
Content warnings: Please add them as needed in the comment titles!

Welcome to the Library, Editors.

As the new residents drop into the Library, they are bound to have questions. Unfortunately it seems no one (except perhaps someone on the phone) appears to have any answers. But there is a nice little cart with a carafe of too weak coffee, a pot of too strong tea, assorted creams and sugar packets, and what appear to be leftover boxed shortbread cookies. There’s a sign inviting people to help themselves but reminding them not to take any food or drinks into the stacks, or touch any of the books with their grubby cookie hands. But aside from this little display and the nametags they’re all given, which do reappear whenever removed for the first week (where do they keep coming from?), the Editors are more or less left alone.

The Library is eternal, or at least it seems that way, unbothered by its new inhabitants. It certainly does not seem like this is anything unusual within its operation. Are there other sections of the Library with Editors, tucked into a different part of the stacks? Have there been Editors here before, and the ones here are simply a replacement? It’s impossible to say, just that the Library seems quite prepared for them. The refrigerators are stocked with appropriate (if generic) foodstuffs, any tantrums in front of the circulation desk are completely ignored, and attempts to set the Library on fire fizzle out before anything can even catch.

However, after a few days, some of the scenery in the Library seems to be changing. Little singing bowls and white noise makers pop up on various shelves and counters, yoga mats appear tucked under the bunk beds (plenty for everyone, somehow), and some of the rooms have started playing relaxing, meditative music over unseen speakers. More confusingly, there are also small UFOs hanging by string from the lower ceilings of the contained rooms, which on closer reflection are revealed to simply be two paper plates glued together and painted silver. In the beginning they’re quite sparse, but by the end of the second week they are everywhere and impossible to ignore.

At the start of the second week, there is a possible hint as to why, for at least part of it. On the table by the circulation desk there is a sign: “This Week’s Recommended Reading: Invasion of the Body Snatchers!” Next to it, there is a sign up sheet: a waitlist to check-out the ‘reading.’ (There is no explanation or apology for it actually being a movie.)

[ooc note: The Library prompts from the TDM can be considered canon to the game. Remember any of the locations listed in the setting are fair game. Have fun!]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The person he nearly bumps into gives a startled sort of cry, but quickly suppresses it. Mina is not of a particularly hysterical disposition, though a quick glance at her face - eyes a little red and puffy - makes it clear that she's been crying.

"The fault is mine," she says hastily, dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief. "I've been here long enough to know this place affords little privacy. I wonder if perhaps it wants us all to be bumping into each other like this."

Oh no. Kai is not very good with people who are crying. Luckily it seems Mina doesn't to be perceived crying; that means he can just ignore it and both of them can be happy.

"How long have you been here?" To be fair, very little time is needed to learn that, but so far it seems most everyone he's met arrived at about the same time.

Yes, she would rather he ignore her obvious distress. It's simply unbecoming of a lady to act like that in front of a stranger!

"Only a few days," she admits. "But it didn't take more than a few hours to realize that the, ah, geography of this place is very... changeable."

And not to be trusted when one wants some privacy.

Now that she's more masking her distress, she might be getting some... confusing to Victorian gender sensibilities from the man in front of her. His dress, to her, probably appears more towards the feminine- he's wearing the Arike style of clothing, which for men is a belted tunic with a skirt, his having split sides for ease of movement. The veil of his face conceals most of the contours of it, but his voice is definitely masculine. For his part, he has no idea what it is she's wearing, but frankly some parts of the world get Especially Weird about gender (the Arike are more rigid about it than the Saredi ever were- he might not understand what the Enalin's fourth gender is but he has never cared for how strict the Arike are about it all) and that's before adding in all the weirdness of this place.

"True," he agrees easily enough, looking around, "I've been trying to map it out with basically no success." He sounds cross to admit it, because he is, but there's little point in concealing that information.

Honestly she interprets what he’s wearing as a kilt. Not the first time she’s seen a man wearing a kilt. Hardly worth noting, even in her diary.

“There seems no pattern. I use the changeable door every day to find the private study room, but there seems no trick to it that I can find,” she adds. “It doesn’t operate on a regular cycle.”

~~Good, saving Weirdness About Gender for another day--~~

"None at all?" That's... concerning. Though he might try it himself, to make sure she didn't miss anything. Better to have multiple people check that sort of thing. "Have you been able to make any sense of the pattern in the stacks?" He doubts it, no one has, but it will tell him things about her character if she's tried.

“That also seems random,” Mina says. “Or at least, the pattern is so subtle it might take all of our observations to discern it.”

Since, clearly, none of them is figuring it out on their own.

“For instance, if I open the changeable door three times in the morning and three times in the evening, that may be a useless observation if it is being opened many more times in between, by any number of other people.”

Kai nods, thinking. "Maybe we should try watching it," he considers slowly, "Or have people keep track, somehow. It might not mean anything, even if a pattern does emerge, but what we're lacking right now is information. Anything to go on might help us." Admittedly, he can't see how it would, but he needs something to focus on or else he'll fall to despair.

“Working together we could discover more than we might individually,” Mina agrees.

She sniffles again, tucking her handkerchief away and offering him a faint smile. “I beg your pardon for my rudeness. I am Mina Harker.”

"That's true of most things." Though Kai does prefer that the 'together' is people he already knows and trusts. Unfortunately, that's... not an option and he's trying not to think about it.

He nods. "Kaiisteron. ...Kai is fine." The fact that no one can immediately clock him from his full name is nice, at least. (He's not giving his title, absolutely not.)

"Kai, then," Mina says with a smile. "You may call me Mina, or Mrs. Harker. I suppose we really mustn't stand on formalities here."

Kai has no idea what the 'Mrs.' title even means, so it's definitely going to be Mina. "I'd say nice to meet you, but." He gestures at their surroundings. This is not nice at all.

She glances around at the stacks, taking them in for a moment.

"It is difficult," she admits. "I've only just been reunited with my husband, and he's been through a terrible experience recently. I hate being parted from him." She sniffs again, and dabs once more at her eyes. "But it could be so much worse. And everyone I've met here has been very kind, despite everything."

"Your husband?" At least you have someone here. He doesn't say it. No one needs to know just how badly he misses Ziede and Tahren right now- or Tenes, or Sanja. Shit, he might even take Ramad. (Actually no, best shove that thought away as far as possible. That still hurts a bit.)

"I'm sorry to hear that," he says, and if it's rote, well, what else is he supposed to say, "But... yes. It could be worse." Out of deference to what seems to be a more sheltered life, he won't then go detailing all the ways that this is plenty bad enough and how it could get worse a the drop of a hat.

“Yes,” Mina agrees. Perhaps she’s sheltered. She knows in some ways she has been - lucky in ways that many people in her situation were not. But she knows hardship and horror.

“And I know I’m far from the only one here who is concerned for loved ones left behind,” she adds. She knows she’s not special or unique in that. “I suspect all of us here will have to work together if we’re to return home again.”

"It is starting to look that way." Most people have seemed... reasonably trustworthy. But trust has gotten Kai poisoned and kidnapped and all sorts of other less desirable things, so he'd rather not rely on that alone. And there's definitely one or two that don't seem trustworthy in the slightest.

He sighs, stubbornly keeping his hands by his sides. Showing his frustration won't help here. "Where to start, is the question." There's so little they know and so much to look into.

"Where not to start," Mina says, straightening herself up a bit, "is weeping in the stacks as though one has nothing better to do."

This is her attempt at self-deprecation.

"I shall consult my own notes, to begin," she adds. "Perhaps we can all gather together and compare notes."

He gives a little huff of a laugh, shaking his head. "...Sometimes we need to get it out, to move forward," he says, but otherwise won't comment. His edges might be too sharp to cry much anymore, but it's not an existence he wishes on others. It's probably the better way to get it out, to grieve, in a situation like this.

"Right. I've been mostly focusing on trying to map the place out, with almost no success, but I guess that's its own sort of information." He'd like something more concrete, but he very often doesn't get what he'd like.

"It is," Mina says. "Navigating this place is very important. It's strange that, the moment I think I'm lost and start trying to look for the circulation desk, I always find it."

Kai nods. "I've found the same. That's the only area that's actually consistent, too. It seems to be some sort... center, or verge point, or something." He admittedly does not understand even a little the type of magic at work here, but it's clear there's something making the desk and the rest of it easier to get back to.

"Yes - the stable point around which all the rest of it seems to revolve. Like a child's top," Mina says thoughtfully.

That's not a bad way to put it. "How, I don't know. Why... it does seem that they mean for that area to be a... holding point? Base camp? They have provided the bare basics of living, after all." Just the basics there, though more can be found in the various other rooms that rotate. But there's no scavenging for food needed, at least. "Which would indicate they have some sort of use or purpose for us."

“I believe so, yes,” Mina says. She pulls a book at random off the shelf. “Have you looked at these at all?”

"Yeah. None of them are full stories- some are missing the ending, or the middle, or are just scattered notes. I've seen that sort of thing for... last works of famous authors, or notes from important figures, things like that. But never everything in a library." It seems to have picked that as a theme, but... why?

“I have to assume, as we’ve been brought here as Editors, that we’re meant to finish some of them,” Mina says with a shrug. “It’s the logical conclusion. Now, how we’re meant to go about that, let alone why, is beyond me at present.”

She carefully replaces the book in the exact spot she pulled it from on the shelf.

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