The Library of Everything by Hunter Terrell

Author:Hunter Terrell [Terrell, Hunter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Paper Angel Press
Published: 2024-04-17T07:00:00+00:00

6

The Wrong Kind of Apathy

The group had been confused and apprehensive when the librarian put The Library of Everything away as she had made no edits at all. Chris demanded to know why she would put all their hard work to waste, and why the librarian wouldn’t follow their plan through to the end to get them to their books. However, the librarian was in a state of awe and insisted that they only needed to go a little further. And it was not long before the section for people became visible to them.

“There it is!” Jane shouted triumphantly.

“Finally,” sighed Chris.

This section was unlike the others; up until now, the books had been rather uniform in their appearance, but in the people section, every book was unique. Lily received an answer from the librarian before she could ask the question.

“Welcome to the people section. Every book represents a human life. You can tell a lot about a person by looking at the cover of their book. The size and shape and design of the book come from the personality of the main character. Note that the length of the book does not indicate how long someone lived—there are plenty of die-youngers that have one heck of a story to tell. And there are plenty of people that lived a hundred-plus years with next to nothing to show for it.”

Every spine was labelled. Every soul that ever was, is, or would be … Theodore, Michael, Harper, Kænhetda, Brook, Gage, Apricity, Johnny, Queen Elizabeth II, Selah, Robert, Nameless, Olive, etc. Many booklets, pamphlets almost, of babies, characters that never got to live much of a story. Many of the books had never been assigned written names, and too many of the books were titled Emma. Please stop naming your kids Emma. There were magicians and monsters, gurus and hobos, tribal hunter-gatherers and astronauts …

“How are we supposed to find our books in all of this?” the group grumbled.

The librarian, in her typical mystical fashion—“You often can only find what you’re looking for when you stop looking for it. If all you focus on is yourself, you’ll lose yourself. If you want to find yourself, you have to take your eyes off of yourself. Turn your gaze outwards.”

The librarian reached up to one of the shelves and pulled down a book at random. It was a one-inch-thick glossy blue paperback, reminiscent of some government training manual. It smelled like glue. The name on the spine was Evan.

“See, look at this guy. He was born in Massachusetts in 1992. Evan. He was the youngest sibling and always had to fend for himself. He wanted to be a musician, but he fell in love, and family got in the way. He was shipped off to the Gulf War, and while he was away, his baby daughter died of flu and his wife left. He lost everything. He was a hard and bitter soldier, given to drink. When he got back, he became a hitman for east coast gangs … Killing debtors isn’t so different from killing enemy combatants.

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