‘You see, I know that you were expecting my TED talk on the path to success. But the truth is that success is a delusion. It’s all a delusion. I mean, yes, there are things we can overcome. For instance, I am someone who gets stage fright and yet, here I am, on a stage. Look at me ... on a stage! And someone told me recently, they told me that my problem isn’t actually stage fright. My problem islife fright. And you know what? They’re fucking right. Because life is frightening, and it is frightening for a reason, and the reason is that it doesn’t matter which branch of a life we get to live, we are always the same rotten tree. I wanted to be many things in my life. All kinds of things. But if your life is rotten, it will be rotten no matter what you do. The damp rots the whole useless thing ...’
Joe was desperately slicing his hand in the air around his neck, making a ‘cut it’ gesture.
‘Anyway, just be kind and ... Just be kind. I have a feeling I am about to go, so I would just like to say I love my brother Joe. I love you, brother, and I love everyone in this room, and it was very nice to be here.’
And the moment she had said it was nice to be there, was also the moment she wasn’t there at all.
System Error
She arrived back in the Midnight Library.
But this time she was a little away from the bookshelves. This was the loosely defined office area she had glimpsed earlier, in one of the broader corridors. The desk was covered with administrative trays barely containing scattered piles of papers and boxes, and the computer.
The computer was a really old-fashioned-looking, cream-coloured boxy one on the desk by the papers. The kind that Mrs Elm would once have had in her school library. She was at the keyboard now, typing with urgency, staring at the monitor as Nora stood behind her.
The lights above – the same bare light bulbs hanging down from wires – were flickering wildly.
‘My dad was alive because of me. But he’d also had an affair, and my mum died earlier, and I got on with my brother because I had never let him down, but he was still the same brother, really, and he was only really okay with me in that life because I was helping him make money and ... and ... it wasn’t the Olympic dream I imagined. It was the same me. And something had happened in Portugal. I’d probably tried to kill myself or something ... Are there any other lives at all or is it just the furnishings that change?’
But Mrs Elm wasn’t listening. Nora noticed something on the desk. An old plastic orange fountain pen. The exact same kind that Nora had once owned at school.
‘Hello? Mrs Elm, can you hear me?’
Something was wrong.
The librarian’s face was tight with worry. She read from the screen, to herself. ‘System error.’
‘Mrs Elm? Hello? Yoo-hoo! Can you see me?’
She tapped her shoulder. That seemed to do it.
Mrs Elm’s face broke out in massive relief as she turned away from the computer. ‘Oh Nora, you got here?’
‘Were you expecting me not to? Did you think that life would be the one I wanted to live?’
She shook her head without really moving it. If that was possible. ‘No. It’s not that. It’s just that it looked fragile.’
‘What looked fragile?’
‘The transfer.’
‘Transfer?’
‘From the book to here. Thelife you choseto here. It seems there is a problem. A problem with the whole system. Something beyond my immediate control. Somethingexternal.’
‘You mean, in my actual life?’
She stared back at the screen. ‘Yes. You see, the Midnight Library only exists because you do. In your root life.’
‘So, I’m dying?’
Mrs Elm looked exasperated. ‘It’s a possibility. That is to say, it’s a possibility that we are reaching the end of possibility.’
Nora thought of how good it had felt, swimming in the pool. How vital and alive. And then something happened inside her. A strange feeling. A pull in her stomach. A physicalshift. A change in her. The idea of death suddenly troubled her. At that same time the lights stopped flickering overhead and shone brightly.
Mrs Elm clapped her hands as she absorbed new information on the computer screen.
‘Oh, it’s back. That’s good. The glitch is gone. We are running again. Thanks, I believe, toyou.’
