Chapter Six - 'Librarian Girl'
The Library slept.

It covered a huge area of space housing hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of books. During the day great shafts of light streamed in through huge vaulted windows, exposing little motes of dust as they danced in the sunshine. The light fell on hundreds of leather topped tables, surrounded by studious academics leafing quickly and efficiently through weighty old texts. The only noises to be heard was the gentle squeak of wheels as the squad of librarians pushed trolleys around restocking the shelves and brief, hushed conversations that somehow carried further than they would had they been spoken normally.

But now, in the dead of night with the thick, velvety curtains drawn, there was nothing. The darkness enveloped the books and the aisles, wrapping them in blankets of night. If you stood stock still, you would swear that you could hear the covers of the books creaking, the pages shuffling as they tried to find a comfortable position in which to sleep. You could even convince yourself that the occasional gust of wind was the building itself breathing out, expelling the collected detritus of the day from its deep, cavernous lungs.

The darkness itself is hiding something. On this evening, there is darkness within the darkness. A small shape, quite still, is not being penetrated by the coils of night. In a sudden movement, the patch of dark breaks free, moves along for ten feet, and pauses again. Then, as suddenly as before, another ten feet is covered, followed by a similar taut pause. There is a small click is the night, and the world quickly became illuminated in a hazy, two dimensional green for Dorothy Ladyman, Supernatural Librarian.

Dorothy, although hard to see in her current location, was perfectly suited to her profession. She was of an average size, petite, and yet powerful. Her arms had been known to be able to subdue a fully grown War and Peace, and you don’t spend long being a librarian without being able to outrun the most vicious of Collected Works of Shakespeare. It was a job she had fallen in to by complete accident. Having completed her degree in English Literature, she’d been approached by a small man with friendly features who had offered her the opportunity to see the real world of publishing.

Had she known at the time that it would mainly involve tracking down man-eating Dan Brown books and wrangling particularly fundamentalist copies of The Bible, she may have requested another Valium there and then. As it was, she had found the job interesting, and lord knows it paid the bills. The only thing she had trouble with was explaining the bruises away sometimes, and that could make dates or strapless dresses a bit of an issue. Of course, being one hundred per cent tougher than any of her potential beaus did have its downside. One fateful evening they were attacked by a Poster Book of 20th Century Art that had sworn to kill her for misfiling it under ‘Modern Art’. She’d tried to let her man deal with it, but he’d just collapsed in to a ball in a bus shelter whimpering some nonsense about how this wasn’t happening. She’d managed to talk the book down, but the whole situation had resulted in a promising young man reduced to a gibbering, sectioned wreck.

At this rate, she was never going to get rid of that ridiculous surname. So ridiculous was it, in fact, she had taken to pronouncing it ‘Lah-dah-mahn’, and hated herself for doing so.

As it was, she found herself in the world’s biggest library, in the dead of night, with a pair of night vision goggles strapped to her head. She didn’t like the weight of them, and she didn’t like the image they gave her eyes. She would have preferred to work with the lights on, but there’s a certain code of practice when it comes to these things. For example, all archaeologists have to go to work in a Fedora carrying a whip; all Burglars must wear a black-and-white striped jumper and carry a bag labelled ‘swag’; all action heroes must wear white vests and be prepared to go shoeless, and so it is all Librarians must be prepared to work in the dead of night with limited vision. It’s a glamour thing. She twisted a small dial on the side of the headset, bringing her pond-green world in to as sharp a focus as she could get. The shelves shone a deep green in the grainy image, while the books pulsated a light, bright green. Clicking another button, the image flicked the heat sensitivity.

All seemed normal. Books were registering at 37.5 degrees, the shelves running at ambient temperature. She swept 360 degrees, all normal. She switched back to night vision, and began crossing and recrossing the library floor. She was in the main room now; the book that she was after had last been seen here. She was praying she would be able to take it on in this larger space: going after it in some of the ante-chambers or study rooms in this library would be a complete bitch. And, she told herself, it’s always sodding me who’s left to clean up anyway. No, she needed a large space with plenty of room to manoeuvre. This particular book had taken the arm and a large part of a leg of the last person who had tried to rein it in, so she knew she had to be at the top of her (admittedly very small) league.

She heard a rustle, 90 degrees to her left. Turning on her heels, she saw it there. It lurked behind a shelf, the dull olive green of it standing out against the black. She switched to heat sensitivity, and saw that it was running a temperature of 100 degrees centigrade. No wonder the thing is in a bad mood, she thought, it’s got a temperature. The goggles switched back in to night vision, and Dorothy edged forward. She reached in to her utility belt and grabbed a cube of fresh meat. She held it in her hand, and gave it a squeeze, blowing on it slightly to release the smell in to the air.

Almost as soon as she had done this, she heard the book grunt and flex. It had smelled the meat. The book was still hungry, and it now had her well within its sights. She flicked the piece of meat at the book which, in a balletic moment, leapt up in to the air, pages spread, page marker streaming like a tongue (which, of course, it was). The meat landed square in the centre of the pages, and the booked slammed shut and fell to the floor. There was a sound like wood being mulched, and the book burped.

As it lay there, Dorothy pounced. Landing in top of the book, she felt the covers struggling underneath her stomach. She slid her hand beneath her, pushing a finger in to the corner of the books binding. The struggling subdued for a second, and Dorothy shifted her position. In the second the book had, it jumped from underneath her and went straight for her face. She batted it away, thanking her lucky stars she’d worn the reinforced gloves, and flicked the goggles to heat sensitivity, just in time to see the book make its second attack. It came in at stomach level, winding her and knocking her off of her feet. She managed, however, to catch it, and rained down two hard but ineffective punches on its cover. Enraged, the book flew upwards, catching her straight in the nose. She felt her face go warm and wet as the blood coursed down it but, by the feel of things, her nose was not broken. She thought for too long, and looked through the goggles to see the book coming straight for her face. Instinctively, she leaned backwards and threw a mighty left-legged kick straight in to the books spread pages.

Now she had a foot in the mouth of it, she slammed it in to the ground, straight on to the spine. She pressed, and heard the squeals the book emitted. She was safe like this, her foot was lengthways across the gullet – the book could not swallow. Going for her utility belt again, she extracted several magic-grade cable ties, and quickly secured them around the book, finally subduing it with a tiny faraday cage, which fizzed and crackled with useless book energy.

She picked it up. Taking a torch from her belt, she held it to the cover and clicked the bulb on.

The Intergalactic Planning Act, 1,000,000 BC – Covering the Construction of The Universe

“Oh.” She breathed out. “Oh fucking no.”

All the lights in the building came on at once. The books all rustled on their shelves, some coming free and hitting the floor, skipping about like excitable puppies.

“I’m afraid,” said a voice “oh, yes.”

From between two shelves stepped the small old man with a friendly face. Her boss. Her boss who, she now thought, had never told her his name.

“Well done, Dorothy.” He said. “Well done indeed. You’ve stopped the alarm going off. I must say it was rather starting to get on my nerves.”

“What alarm? There is no alarm. And what are you doing here anyway?” She finished lamely.

“The alarm? Oh, Me, Dot, have you not learned anything since you’ve been working for me? The book is the alarm. There are several causal changes that this book is programmed to react to. Once all of these changes have, er, aligned, the book goes off. The reason it’s so violent is that it’s also programmed to stop the wrong people from turning it off again.”

“Well, that sounds obvious.”

“Doesn’t it?”

“Just one thing?”

“Yes?”

“If we’ve had all this trouble turning it off...”

“M-hm?”

“Are we the right people?”

The small old man laughed.

“Ah. A good question, and well asked too, if I may say so. Yes, we are the right people. Largely because I’m one of the people that wrote this here book. Sadly, my access proxy has been overturned by another author, which is why I’ve had to get you in.”

“Get me in? I already work for you!”

“That you do. All you have done, up to and including now, has been your training.”

“Training? Just who the hell are you? What is that book about? It says 1,000,000 BC, there’s no way you’re that old! What the hell is going on here?”

“One at a time, if you please. Firstly, my name’s God. How d’you do?”

“God? Oh, Jesus Christ.”

“No, he comes later, and I’ll thank you not to take his name in vain.”

“Am I hallucinating? I feel feint all of a sudden.”

“I often have that effect on people. Sit down, it helps. Second, this book is the contract on which the Universe was constructed. “ she gave him a look “What? Do you think I did all this in seven days? Give me a break, I’m not Extreme Makeovers, Universe Edition. Third, and perhaps most importantly, why you’re here.”

“Yes?” said Dorothy, slouching back in her chair “What am I doing here then, Mister so-called God?”

“Why, Miss Ladyman,” said God, emphasising the Lady and the Man “you may have just saved the Universe.”

He clicked his fingers. He and Dorothy disappeared and, two minutes later, the books broke in to applause.
( Devil_In_Tights the *real* DiT!, Wed 3 Sep 2008, 17:22, Reply)