Mr. Gordon looked up at the old building, a little nervous. He'd been living on the night-side for close to two months now, and he'd more or less gotten used to the way things looked in the late hours of the night, but the fact was that some buildings just did look creepier in the dark - especially abandoned ones. The new "dark moon" didn't help, either. Still, this needed to be checked into. He wasn't really certain what he thought of Lilly's story about a ghost in the library. Certainly, things were getting strange enough that he couldn't rule it out, especially now that he knew magic to be a real thing. On the other hand, Lilly still was a child, with an active imagination. She'd said it wasn't malicious, but that didn't mean that it might not've been a squatter - suppose a mentally ill person had taken up residence in the old library? That would certainly explain the strange behavior.
Part of him knew he was trying to rationalize it away, like he used to. He'd stopped sticking blindly to that, now that he'd realized that there were possibilities traditional science didn't account for, yet. Still, an open mind and a healthy skepticism aren't mutually exclusive, and if it was something more mundane and possibly more dangerous, it ought to be dealt with. He was just glad he wasn't alone; he'd called up a friend in the night-side police department, one of the forensics guys his lab sometimes did analysis for, and he'd agreed to come out - armed, just in case.
"I called the city offices," Patrick, his friend, said, as they walked up the steps. "They said the utilities were never actually disconnected - they just shut off the power inside the building and turned off the meter. Something about not wanting to pay for the disconnection if the library reopened. Of course, it never did, but I guess they never got around to it."
"So we can get the lights on," Les said. Pat nodded. "Assuming they're still functional, yep. We'll have to get down to the breaker box in the basement, first, but that shouldn't be too much trouble. Certainly worth it to be able to do the search with more than a couple of flashlights." He tried the front door - it was still unlocked from when the girls had made their exit. "So they broke in here themselves? Most parents these days'd have a conniption over that."
Les nodded. "I wasn't exactly thrilled myself, but mostly I'm just glad they're alright. Ever since Lilly became a squirrel, she's been climbing on and into just about everything, though..."
Pat chuckled. "Well, I'm not going to tell you there's anything wrong with that," he said. "My brothers and I probably sprained or broke one of everything, back in the day, and never in places we should've been. Mom and Dad weren't so much worried about our safety as pissed off about the medical bills. And we all got to adulthood alive and mostly intact." He opened the door, running his flashlight over the floor to check for hazards, and they stepped inside.
The library was dark and quiet and a little musty, but the inside didn't feel as ominous as the exterior looked. They found their way to the basement pretty easily, though Pat had to shuffle through a handful of different keys he'd brought to find the one that unlocked it. Down there, they had to pick their way through a minor labyrinth of boxes and shelves with greater caution, but there were no real obstructions, and it wasn't long before they'd found the breaker box. They looked it over, but there didn't seem to be any obvious loose wires or anything. Pat shrugged and began flipping switches.
As the power began to hum to life, the lights flickered once or twice, then slowly faded in. The old fluorescent tubes were dim and reddish and flickered in a slightly nauseating way, but it was enough to see by - and certainly better than having to check through the whole building for trespassers with only flashlights to see by.
They made their way back upstairs and began a sweep of the building - first the outer halls, then into the main library area, and then upstairs. Aside from a little disturbance of the dust and some books moved around in the children's section, which was consistent with Lilly's story, they didn't find any evidence of anyone having been here in the twenty-ish years since the library had closed. The only sign of life in the whole place was an abandoned rat's nest in the far corner of the main library area made out of old National Geographics.
Heading back downstairs, they turned to the last place they hadn't checked - the little cluster of small office rooms behind the desk. Most of them turned out to be empty of everything but shelves and tables, but Les stared and then laughed when they got to the last one.
"A PDP-11! God, I haven't seen one of these in years," he said, stepping over to the ancient computer. "Not since college - and it was old then."
Pat laughed. "Some of us weren't as young as you when they put this thing in, you know," he said. "I remember that - it was the first library in the system to go computerized for tracking its books. I think it was a hand-me-down from one of the local businesses, wasn't it?"
Les nodded. "Oh, I remember it, too," he said. "I was in junior high, then. Yeah, I think it was - probably the film plant down Highway 23, these things used to see a lot of use in industrial and scientific applications. That was actually where I saw one - it used to run the mass spectrometer in the chem lab at the U. I think that one stayed in place until they managed to wrangle the budget for new lab equipment out of the state about ten years ago."
"I remember that. Well, the fuss about budgeting, anyway. I never understood why they needed it so much, if all the old stuff still worked, but then I'm no scientist."
Les shrugged. "Oh, the new stuff was a definite improvement," he said. "If nothing else, it certainly cut the power bill. Still, those old machines did last pretty much forever." He laughed. "Actually, I bet this would still work..." He checked to make sure it was plugged in, then flipped the switch on the power supply. To his surprise, the light came on and there was no smoke, no smell of dying capacitors. Grinning slightly, he powered on the old removable disk drive, hearing it whir to life.
"You think you're going to find anything on that?" Pat asked, watching with mild curiosity. Les shrugged. "Maybe not," he said. "But as I recall, the software installation for this was donated labor from the U's computer-science department. Some of those guys were still around by the time I started; we used to hang out in the lab most nights."
"This was before you met Abby, I assume," his friend interjected dryly.
Les laughed. "Yeah, before I had a life. Anyway, they used to make a game out of hiding stuff in the mass-spectrometry computer - the software didn't take up the whole memory, so they'd see what they could fit in the rest of it. The head lab tech used to get amazingly pissed-off about using the machine for non-work purposes, so the game was to fit the best thing you could in there, but hide it well enough that it didn't interfere with normal operation and he didn't suspect that you'd done it. They were pretty good at it - even managed a decent Pac-Man. So who knows - if those guys were doing the install, it's entirely possible that they left something hidden in here."
Pat just shook his head, rolling his eyes. Les turned his attention to the front panel. Let me see if I can remember, he thought. Load R0 with 123456, PC with 177562...that's the trick, getting the instruction from the serial port...Dr. North would never think of something like that. Then you punch in H on the terminal, then... He flicked the Start switch.
The lights on the panel began to cycle, but what came up on the terminal wasn't Pac-Man, or any of the other novelties he'd seen the CS grad students pull off back in the day. First there was nothing but a blank screen and a flashing cursor; then, after a couple seconds, it printed a single line of text.
Where am I?
He stared at it. Pat glanced impatiently at his watch, then at the terminal. "The heck kind of game is that?" he asked.
Les shook his head. "I don't know. I don't recognize this. Still, I must've done it right; if I'd messed up, it would've gone off into la-la land. Might print gibberish, but not text." Was this a text adventure, or something? A quiz? "Where am I..." ...well, he knew the answer to that one.
In the library, he typed.
There was another pause - the lights were still flickering rapidly, it couldn't have crashed, or it'd have gone into halt mode, and he could hear the disk chattering. The library? came the response. I don't remember...is it open? I can't see.
Les suddenly had a feeling that whatever this was, it wasn't a quiz program, or an adventure game, or anything his old schoolmates had left in this system. He felt a chill go up his spine. A ghost, Lilly had said...no, wait, he'd heard about this, people whose change turned them into artificial intelligences inside a nearby computer...but if nobody had been here in years, how in the world would someone have wound up inside the machine? Not to mention that he could hardly even believe this thing was capable of holding something like that - but no better explanation came to mind.
He thought for a moment. How did you even tell someone this? Probably no way but the straightforward... The library has been closed for decades, he typed. You're inside the computer.
There was a long pause. ...Yes. Yes, I am, came the reply. I don't know how I know that. But how is that possible?
The Sun changed, he replied. It's started to make all kinds of strange changes to people. You must have been caught in it.
Was I? I...I don't remember. I don't remember anything...how do I get out?
Pat tapped his foot. "Les, we've gotta get going. It's getting late."
Les nodded. "Just...give me a second here. I think there's actually someone in here."
Pat gawked. "What? In the computer? Are you nuts?"
He shook his head. "No. I've heard of things like this before, I've just never actually encountered one. Look, we'll get going, but I just want to let them know what's going on first. And we have to leave the power on, at least overnight."
The police officer sighed. "Cripes...fine, let's get this over with, then."
You can't get out, as far as I know, Les replied. But you can at least leave this computer and go out on the Internet, if what I've heard is true.
What's an Internet?
Les blinked. What kind of question was that? He had a hard time imagining that even a squatter living outside the library, somehow close enough to this machine to be caught inside it when the Sun hit, wouldn't even know what it was. Was this person...oh, but they'd said they couldn't remember anything...did they have some kind of amnesia? But there was no time for that kind of speculation now.
Wait, wait! came a further response. Someone is here with me. They can help me. Thank you!
Well, now he was really confused. Someone else was in the computer? Unless...if this had held the catalog, it must've had a connection to the rest of the system for inter-library loans - probably dial-up, by its age. If the city had been as bad about remembering to disconnect the phone service as it had with the power, maybe it was still possible to connect to it. And if there were such creatures as he'd heard of, maybe one of them had found this person...
All right, he said. I have to go now, before it gets too late in the night. We'll be back to check on you later.
He left the terminal on, just in case there were any further messages over the next day. They'd come back tomorrow night and figure out what to do from there. In the meantime, they left for home. It was early enough to be safe, but he was glad Pat had been watching the clock.
Amy slowly gazed this way and that as she made her way across the network. The beret-wearing, fervently Amiga-patriotic digital fairy had become something of a fixture around the local nodes of the Internet, having taken to a sort of patrol of the area to keep an eye out for newly changed fairies who would need assistance. She'd even spread the idea to some other fairies in other corners of the Internet.
She was passing through a node that she thought belonged to one of the city offices when she noticed a connection that she was pretty sure hadn't been open the last time she'd been here. That in itself wouldn't have been so unusual anywhere else, but the city never changed its equipment - not outside of a mass upgrade, anyway, and it was just this one machine...
Curious, she entered for a look, and gasped softly as she did. Moving from a fast connection to a slower one was a bit like wading out into a lake far enough that you have to start noticeably working against the water to make progress, but this was like the stop coming off a waterslide. Even 56K dial-up wasn't this slow - she knew that, she'd gotten a few people from out where the phone company couldn't be bothered to run DSL service because it would mean having to upgrade the wiring. This was...what, 9600 baud, maybe? What system was this, and why in the world would it have been brought online now?
Adjusting to the new connection, Amy looked around. The inside of a computer was always rather abstract and metaphorical; sometimes in ways that reflected the owner (or, in the case of a robot, the robot themselves,) and sometimes in ways that seemed to reflect more on the hardware. (This was less noticeable on newer systems, for some reason; Amy thought it was because everything was a freaking x86 PC these days, but she had to admit that that was probably her own bias talking.) This place looked for all the world like an old textile mill or some other 19th-century industrial building, architecturally, but rather than machinery it was filled with rows and rows of bookshelves on a huge variety of subjects. A library, maybe? But she knew where the city library's systems were, and this wasn't any of them - it was much too old for that.
"Hello?" she called, striding through the shelves and looking for any sign of anybody. Of course a computer's being online didn't necessarily mean that there was a digital fairy in it, and the place did feel like it was long-abandoned, but it was as good an explanation as any she could think of for why a machine of this vintage would suddenly have come online, and it certainly wouldn't hurt to check - better to look and not find anything than to leave a confused newcomer to fend for themselves. She passed from the shelves into a small cubicle complex; on one of the desks, she noticed a framed photo of a woman who reminded her strongly of some of the Windows fairies she'd met - NT, was it? But not quite the same...well, that clinched it, there had to be a digital fairy in here somewhere. "Hello?" she called again.
"H-hello?" came a voice. Amy followed it back through the cubicles to a little office, where she found a female digital fairy. It was always difficult to place ages with them, but she looked to be somewhere in her mid-thirties - mousy and not particularly tall, with short auburn hair and wire-rimmed spectacles. She was dressed in a lab coat with more casual clothes underneath. Overall, she did give off a sort of librarian impression, but looked equally as much like some sort of researcher. For some reason she felt familiar to Amy, but the Amiga fairy couldn't say why.
"Are you from outside?" the other fairy asked. She spoke with an accent that seemed to drift between England and New England at random. "Can you tell me what this 'Internet' is? There's someone on the other line who says I can go there...why can I see you but not him?"
Amy blinked. She didn't know what the Internet was? She wasn't that...well, admittedly, she had no idea how old the woman actually was versus how old she appeared to be, but surely even old folks had at least heard of it, these days. "Uh, yeah," she said. "Yeah, I'll explain everything I can." She took a seat in front of the desk that the stranger was standing behind, and the stranger sat down as well. "What's your name?" Amy asked.
The other fairy frowned. "I...I don't know," she said.
The Amiga fairy stared at her, concerned. "Y-you...you lost your memory?" she asked. She hadn't even heard of that happening outside of Effie, and that had been inflicted on her by others, not something that happened in the change.
"N-no, I don't think so..." the other fairy murmured. "I...I just don't know...'Trip?' I don't know if that's right...I don't know if I ever had a proper name..."
Amy really wasn't sure what to make of this. Had she not only forgotten, but forgotten that she had forgotten? That seemed...awfully convoluted. But what was the alternative, that she'd somehow never had a name? "Well, uh...where are you from...Trip?" she asked. It did seem an odd choice for a name, but it would do for now, she supposed. "I think we're in one of the city's computers...do you work for them?"
"I work for the library," Trip said quietly. "But it's been so long...we haven't had many patrons in years. ...I don't remember much besides that, really. But I work for the library."
Amy frowned. "The public library? It's still open...pretty busy last I looked. Or did you mean like a records library?"
Trip shook her head, confused. "No, the public library...we just had some visitors a while ago...they helped me with some trouble I was having with one of the books. But they were the first in a long time..."
Amy tried to figure this out. She knew that the public library was open for business, same as they'd been ever since society started to get back on its feet after the Sun changed. She'd been to one of the library's systems not three days ago. And that was the only library in the city...well, not counting the old library building. That one had been closed down since she was just a girl...
"Um, the library," she said, "is that...is that the one down in the city's office complex? By the police station?"
Trip shook her head. "No, I don't think so. It's closer to the park...and it's its own building; there's no other offices inside. Well, not since they built the new courthouse."
Amy couldn't remember when the courthouse was built, but she knew the old library was just a few blocks from the park. "But that's the old library," she said. "It's been closed for...geez, must be something like twenty years now."
Trip frowned. "I...you know, I think it has," she said. "I just...but I know we had some visitors, and...twenty years? But I work there...I know I do." She looked around. "This must be the library computer, I'm sure of it," she said. "We had visitors, and they helped with the book, and then...then I was here. That's all I remember..." She rested her head in her hands. "I don't think I've forgotten things," she murmured. "Am...am I supposed to remember more? I don't know..."
Amy put a hand on Trip's arm. She felt like this woman was familiar...almost as if she were a relative...no, she could place the feeling. Trip felt like...like her mother, sort of. Not her human mother; she knew where her parents' computer was in the regional network - she'd visited them there - and this wasn't it. But...she didn't know, maybe there was some sort of software lineage? This was strange and confusing, but it felt right to her. "It's...it's okay," she said, in a comforting voice. "You can come with me...it'll be alright."
