The Portrait of Rachel Sinclair

12: The Brain Children

The local library always smelled like something dusty and old, a cross between

musty shoe leather, and pitiful neglect. Nobody would ever visit this place; in fact, it was

all but deserted half the time only filled for events like a poetry reading or a book signing,

in the rare event that there would ever be a book in paper form these days. Other than

that, it was an elephant graveyard to which books arrived, were shelved and never

removed from their places again. Most were slated to be burned as space became more

and more limited, others would be kept depending on their status as a literary classic.

Paper and hardback books had become a hobbyist game, something collectors and

purists did only for fun, but the glory days of the physical form book were long behind it.

Nowadays people carried all the novels they'll ever need inside their brains, accessible,

sharable to anyone and everyone who was connected to the SPITZ web, and if you

haven't experienced it first hand, I'll just say that reading a novel via SPITZ wasn't the

same as reading one page by page. Upon downloading it, it was as if you knew the entire

story front to back. All of the characters, their conversations, where they lived, what they

did; their entire world would become as a fond memory, its events and details becoming

as your own. It was hailed as the age in which the intimacy of writing had reached a new

plateau. For most this was enjoyable, for others like myself, it felt like a cheat, in which

somebody spoils the entire plot of a film you hadn't seen, and not just the good parts,

they'd spoil every single nook and detail. I failed to see what the fun was and appeal of

knowing a Sherlock Holmes mystery and its end even before he even began to solve the case.

I didn't bother mentioning any of this to Raquel either, she would just laugh and

say I were an old fashioned man who had somehow been born in the wrong era. I

wouldn't argue with this assessment of myself either; I truly was a relic from another age.

The walls of the old library were lined with books 2 levels high and a domed

ceiling over compensated this space far above our heads. On the first floor were rows of

heavy oak desks that would have been appropriate office furnishings in the 1950s, with

stain glass lamp shades and a single gold pen each in their own little casing protruding

upward from the corners of each desk. At the end of the rows, a front desk made of even

heavier and thicker oak than the ones on the floor with nobody to man it. I approached

the desk with Raquel close behind, she stared at all the books with the awe of a child

visiting the county fair. I rang the bell for service as the sign suggested and waited.

"Never been here huh?" I asked smiling some. "Did you know this place was built