Page 59 of Booked for Theft

FIFTEEN

They appealed to national pride.

Time with Bradley and dinner helped restore my sense of calm and purpose, and armed with my journal, I began digging at the past in the hopes of preserving the future. To disguise what I did, I whited out some of the information I already had and began fresh, sticking to the AD calendar for the research project and working out a historic timeline from the invention of the printing press to the critical dates I wanted to research. With luck, anyone checking the book would assume I, a librarian, had an interest in how printed books came to be.

It would take digging at the heart of my journal to discover the truth about the government’s manipulation of the past.

Partway through building my timeline, a thought occurred to me.

What if books, like what Tom Clancy had written, could provide some insights into how the past worked? Fiction often had some foundation on reality, although events, people, and places were changed for legal reasons as often as not. If I could locate enough fiction books written during the downfall of the United States, could I pluck out more evidence?

Could I find tidbits of truth hidden among the threads of storytelling?

By bedtime, I’d picked the first voter guide I wanted to distribute to the media and began the tedious process of photographing it with the laptop’s camera. We used one of Bradley’s music stands and took care to crop out anything that might identify us. At five years prior to the change in the calendar, the guide appeared to be innocent enough. However, a few bills hinted at the future to come.

One forbade the changing of the dictionary, outlawing the use of slang in schools, businesses, and public institutions, and was purported as a method of preserving American society. Those laws were stricter than the federal law dictating which version of English would be used in government. The guide had a few cons of the change listed, but I could understand why the supporters of the bill might win.

They appealed to national pride.

I could only assume the law had been passed, giving the federal government the precedence needed to tighten the rules on language, freezing American English for hundreds of years. The more puzzle pieces I uncovered, sifting through scraps from the past, the better an understanding I had of our situation—and why a group of vigilantes might decide assassinating politicians might be the only hope for the future.

If enough of the corrupted politicians were eliminated, if enough holes in the net formed, the government might lose its grip on the populace, allowing democracy to be restored. It might be possible, with enough work, to turn back the hands of time, before the doomsday clock had struck midnight, and pick a different path for our country.

Then, with a growing sense of dismay, I realized very little separated me from the assassins. I could, with just a little push, become just like them, choosing to destabilize the corrupt government through violence and death. I wouldn’t, but the understanding I could would cost me a great deal of sleep moving forward.

I went to bed in a solemn mood, and not even Ajani sleeping around my head, a warm and purring hat, was able to drag me out of my funk. Sometime during the night, the tyrannical kittens had managed to climb into bed, and they had claimed Bradley as their throne. As my fiancé slept without a care in the world, I took a few photos of him and our new pets with my phone before sneaking out of bed and starting my morning routine.

I woke him ten minutes before I was due to leave for work, informing him he had to feed the demons. While I doubted the furry beasts would flay the flesh from his bones, the possibility that they might got him on the move. Ajani led the way to the kitchen, and the kittens mewed up a storm, bounding along with adorable inefficiency.

Once I reached the library, I threw myself into my work, focusing on acquisitions while monitoring my email for more donation requests. Aware I’d be scrutinized for what went into the library, I made a list of subjects the local politicians pursued, determining that more than a few had been checking into history, too.

As I didn’t want to see more corpses show up, I grabbed my phone and dialed Beatrice’s number, tapping my foot while considering the various ways we, as a library system, could support those who wanted to pursue the truth of our government’s treachery.

“Please tell me there’s no bad news,” my fellow librarian begged.

“Ajani adopted two kittens yesterday, and due to their state as freshly rescued, they can’t come to the library yet. Ajani has to be quarantined and checked for any health issues. How does that rate on the bad news scale?”

“It could be worse, so I’ll let it slide. What can I do for you?”

“I haven’t pitched this to Mr. Tawnlen yet, mainly because I don’t want to waste his time if you think it’s going to be refused. I’d like to run a history program here. Some of our clients have been pursuing books of that nature as of late, and I think it might be a good time to start an initiative. I’m sure we have a bunch of government approved non-fiction we can fill the one floor with. It’s ready to accept books now—well, the first half of it.”

The second half would vex me, as there were a few structural issues that had been addressed, and the flooring needed to be reinstalled. That could be done while we used the other half of the room, which had been finished during my absence.

“With your donation budget, I can easily get that approved for you by the end of the day, and your boss won’t have a problem if you’re running the program. That’ll let you have a little extra variety and something to do when you aren’t luring politicians into giving us money. What’s your game plan?”

“I’d like to abuse my powers in acquisitions to turn our branch’s open floor into a full global timeline of general history, from as much pre-history data as possible to the end of the AD calendar. I will authorize the duplication of my Roman codices for use in the library as well, along with the other texts I’ve acquired. Perhaps we can find a book binder and have a public project of recreating the book, tracing the photographs I’ll take of my copies. We’ll segregate the books per the various laws, but I bet I could relocate a bunch of books around our branch onto the history floor and free up the other floors for additional acquisitions.”

“I’m sold on the idea, and I bet I can sell my boss on the idea. Your boss will do what we want because it means his branch becomes more versatile for politicians and the public. Are you game to having a discussion with the Met about photographing their old books?”

“I would love to get permission to create replicas of their books. You could send me to the Met for an entire day, and I would not complain. In fact, I would sing my praises of my best bitch for the world to hear.”

Beatrice laughed at me. “You just want to go to the museum on the library’s dime.”

A day wandering through the museum sounded like a good use of my time. “You would be correct.”

“I’ll pitch my boss and get back to you in a few hours. Is there anything else I can help you with?”

I considered the number of politicians willing to throw priceless treasures at me, debating if we could spare a section of the branch for donated antique books. “As part of the initiative, how about a section on the new floor where patrons can donate antique titles, fiction and non-fiction, to be preserved as part of the history program? I know your branch has a lot of antiques, but ours has none.”