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!]

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The person seems human. Looked like it, to someone who could see. Sounded like it. Was largely indistinguishable from one - unless, of course, you had ways to tell that sort of thing.

(And it had been just a bit too fast. Probably it should have slowed its speed a bit more than it had; but it had been concerned about the unfolding Fire Problem.)

(It frowns at that voice. The resonance didn't match with expected human parameters. Did this human have some sort of vocal augment, to make it sound like that? (If he had those, why hadn’t he bothered to get ones for his eyes as well?))

"So the answer is yes," it says. "Why the fuck are you intentionally trying to blow up the Food Heating Device?"

The -- person's -- different inside in a way Illarion's never seen before. He tips his head just slightly kata for parallax -- some of his hair disappears from three-dimensional view -- and gives a slow blink.

Much more interesting than trying to destroy the microwave. (Maybe not as satisfying for the slow insect-relentless gnawing inside him, though. Not at all as satisfying as breaking something.)

"The instructions warned against putting metal in it. That didn't actually destroy it."

So he moved on to seeing what would -- or at least, what would destroy itself.

Internally, this person is indeed very, very strange. Some of it is organic - including part of its brain - but most of it is constructed of inorganic materials. It's as if someone had grown human tissue around an inorganic frame.

Its eyes also snap to the human's hair. Which is somehow disappearing. (What the fuck?!)

(Was every human or whatever in this place fucking weird?)

(And did they have to all be weird in different fucking ways? Couldn't some of them be polite, and at least be weird in the same way? For fuck's sake.)

"The instructions aren't there so you can destroy the stupid thing, they're there so you don't start a fire and fucking kill everybody, you idiot," it says. (Its Act Like A Human code suggests that now would be a really great time to grind its teeth. It lets it, just to see how it feels.)

The blend of metal and living flesh is -- elegant, in a way. Almost an elven aesthetic, if one compared it to their use of live wood in building.

It would also, Illarion thinks, be horrific if his sensibilities on that front hadn't been utterly destroyed by the Unearthed. Not that this -- trellised human -- likely had any say in how they were made. Interesting, though -- very interesting -- that part of their maker's pattern involved very recognizable frustration.

He's begun to smile, just a little. Without even realizing it.

"The instructions," he says, slowly, "are incomplete, and meant to teach awe and fear of a device. A thing that operates consistently on knowable physical principles. Lie, and make it more dangerous than it is, and you'll protect half the fools who use it. The other half will kill themselves from complacency when their first fuck-up doesn't result in disaster."

... Also, he really wanted to make something explode.

(There is, in fact, a literal maker's device on it. A logo etched into some parts of its internal structure. (In some instances, attempts to remove said logos appear to have been made.))

SecUnit listens to that whole philosophical diatribe. And then decides almost immediately that it's a whole lot of complete waffle, and it absolutely doesn't need to remember any of that. (Note: delete this section of memory later.)

"I don't care if you don't like the stupid instructions, you can find whoever the hell wrote it and take it up with them," it snarls. "Don't explode or set fire to things in the Food Heating Device. There, that's all you need to fucking know."

Edited 2025-11-13 08:14 (UTC)

"No. It isn't."

It's not an unreasonable --

Well. At its core, "don't blow up the microwaves" isn't an unreasonable request; the way this person is making it an order is less reasonable, and unfortunately for them, Illarion's feeling less reasonable still.

Though at least their interruption has had the effect of shifting all his attention from the abandoned project to their presence. He wraps the notes he'd been making around the pencil he'd been making them with and tucks the resulting cylinder away in a pocket. Then ambles over to the counter where he'd lined up his future experiments -- not caring how close it brings him to the microwave's prickly guardian as he starts to tidy them away.

"Who are you to care?"

When Illarion gets close, SecUnit shies back. Not so far back that it can't still defend the microwave, but enough that there isn't any risk that the human might try and touch it.

"Someone who doesn't want anyone getting third degree burns, you asshole," it says. Funnily enough, Illarion himself was included in that statement. Even if SecUnit was seriously considering telling him to go off and maim himself somewhere else instead.

Oh, that is interesting -- both the scramble to stay out of touching range, and the guarding behavior. Illarion stares toward the microwave's elected savior, not meeting their eyes -- looking somewhere over their shoulder -- but still silently evaluating how difficult it would be to get at them or the microwave.

Depended on how fast they were grown to be, didn't it? He stares a little longer -- totally ignoring the retort as he does -- before returning to what he was doing. Trash to the bin, usable food back into the ice box ...

"So you'll post a round the clock watch on it?"

It's eyes narrow, and - for the first time - actually looks at Illarion's face. (Though, it also thinks Illarion can't see it. This does make the eye contact considerably less uncomfortable.)

"If you blow up the device when you think I'm not looking," it says slowly. "I will pick up whatever's left of it and smash it into your fucking skull."

(Now, though, it's debating whether it should post a round the clock watch. It could do so. It could post a drone to monitor the kitchen, just like it has one monitoring the STAFF ONLY doors.)

The studious avoidance of eye contact is winning the trellised human a point in their favor, even if Illarion's not consciously thinking about that. Totally averted the risk of his unveiled gaze, and left them both much safer.

"That could be fun." It would be fun, if things turned to violence. (He has to assume as much. Has to -- if even that can't interest him, after what the Unearthed had twisted his native predatory instincts into, then what is left in existence?)

He finishes his tidying up -- except for the microwave. ... Except for the microwave. Time to test something.

"You are looking, then. Most of the time."

He heads to the sink, finds and wets a cloth, and returns to stand patiently before the microwave's guardian. Going to let him clean up what he's done to it?

The one time it breaks that avoidance of eye contact doesn't last long; soon, it's back to looking somewhere else instead. Like just to the side of Illarion's head.

There's a twist to its expression though, if Illarion can see it. It doesn't like the way he keeps talking. Like violence would be fun.

It reminds it of humans who liked to be cruel far too much. (It reminds it too much of the Targets.)

"It's not fucking fun," it says, managing to keep how unsettled it is out of its voice, but not off its face. The comment about whether its looking gets ignored. (Good thing it doesn't have any drones around right now; it left the ones it had active back in the sleeping area when it ran in.)

"No, don't," it says. "Not yet. There'll be hazardous fumes. You should stand back."

"It's not fucking fun," they say, and the obvious discomfort pulls Illarion up short. New instinct says he should press that discomfort, escalate this dispute until the other retaliates, until someone's hurt or dead and torn open --

Old instinct says this is someone -- whatever their rough manners -- who understands a deeper truth about the world. This is someone who loves peace, and a shrike should love and guard them for it, even if it means being a weapon in their stead.

New instinct says that makes them a target, a weakling, a waiting victim. That who Illarion was shouldn't matter to who he is now (weapon, killer, revenant) and who he always was at heart (weapon, killer, warlord).

But he has the luxury of choosing now, even if neither choice matters -- even if he feels nothing about either.

So he chooses.

He looks -- for a few seconds, the maximum safe time -- directly at the guardian, well aware of the power of his own gaze. The violence of it.

"My kind were made to show the world war's horror and the awful waste of it," he intones. "It's good that you were not."

That is a compliment, however ominously delivered. He drops his gaze, and adds more lightly, "Fumes aren't a problem. I don't breathe."

He is already dead, after all.

('My kind'? What kind what that? Whatever it was, it didn't like the sound of it.)

(SecUnit didn't like a lot about this human. He made it feel like it needed to find a small closet and hide. Even though that made no fucking sense. He couldn't see, so why did it feel like it was being...urgh...looked at?)

"You don't breathe," it says flatly, trying to focus on the important things (and not the creepy, unsettling things.) "Don't tell me you're dead too."

(Why the hell did this place have so many inexplicably still animated dead humans in it?)

"It would be only the truth." But since they asked, and Illarion is perverse by nature, he won't directly say -- yes, he's dead. No breathing, no heartbeat, and now that he has no reason to be moving he's still as a corpse. Beyond holding up the rag once more, suggestively -- can he clean up the microwave, now?

Urgh. Well, maybe that explained the weird hair-disappearing thing from earlier then. Dead people do weird shit, apparently.

Then it gives Illarion one last, highly suspicious look, before taking several steps back from the device.

(At least by this point, anything still on fire should have already burned itself out; it didn't know if dead humans were immune to fire, and it didn't want to find out. It should just be the smoke left now.)

Edited 2025-11-15 23:03 (UTC)

Oh, it is so, so much worse than Illarion merely being dead.

Given permission to approach the microwave, Illarion goes to it -- opening the door and waving the smoke away. Then he sets to cleaning out the remains of the exploded, burned egg with a certain militant efficiency. When the rag doesn't prove enough, he goes to the sink to grab a scouring pad and returns to scrubbing until all traces of his experiment are removed.

"Is it damaged, that you can see?" Not that he'd feel any particular guilt if it were. But it would be good to know whether any of the changes he saw in the mechanism were damage, rather than expected.

SecUnit had, in fact, been on the verge of quietly leaving the kitchen all together. Normal human food is disgusting. Exploded human food, with all of the bad smells and sticky substances that entailed, was even worse.

Except the (dead) human couldn't so. So fine, it'll do the looking. From a distance. Like hell is it getting up close. (Or getting roped into helping clean up.)

"Don't think so," it says. Then, after an awkward pause: "I'm going now. Don't explode anything else."

"Not in the microwave," Illarion says, by way of agreement. He would never promise not to explode anything else, ever -- but doing so with the microwave is no longer of much interest.

He finishes scrubbing; turns to loft the scouring pad over into the sink, before shutting the microwave door with a click. He doesn't offer any more of a farewell. Let the trellised human go without further bother on his part.

It pauses. It's not an idiot; it knows when a human is attempting to be stupidly specific.

"Not in the microwave, not in the living areas, not near anyone else," it says. "You really want to blow yourself up like a moron, do it somewhere you won't impact anyone else."

(Now it leaves.)

"Do you always have this much contempt for what you protect?"

Illarion does not expect an answer, from the retreating back. He merely wonders aloud.

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Careful of the stacks - LIBRARY LOG

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