1-02 Augusta Saves the World

Augusta Constantine was not happy. There were days in the past when that wasn't the case. There were days in the recent past that were not like that either. But not today. Today was not a happy day, and Augusta wasn't happy about it.
The public library in which Augusta worked was a branch in a nice quiet suburb. A bedroom community, they called it. It had a few restaurants and a strip mall and a downtown area where the buildings were getting to be almost a hundred years old. Brick. Maybe at one time they did mining or logging there. But these days, it was just a place where a bunch of cookie-cutter houses were built for new families after World War II. All of the important stuff of the Twenty-First Century were done in the more important city. People didn't do much here except get a fast food burger, a haircut, or take their kids to the park. Or the library. Especially on rainy days. And this was a rainy day.
Augusta put her hands on her hips as she surveyed the post-apocalyptic nightmare scenario where all of the children had become zombies and all of civilization was represented as picture books. So much metaphorical blood. Augusta cringed just a little at her analogy, but she was too tired to let her imagination come up with anything more appropriate. With a heavy sigh, she started to gather the carnage, place it on a trolley cart, and attempt to restore them to their origins as dictated by the late, great Dewey and his decimal system.
When the Internet had become a thing, someone somewhere predicted that librarians would be out of a job within a decade. That didn't happen. However, they did have to completely reinvent themselves. It used to be about finding information and navigating the library card catalog. But once they put it all on computer, and even the computers started to become the shelves and then the books themselves, libraries had remained.
But no longer were librarians the guides and custodians of knowledge. Instead of meticulously crafted books by scholars, the world had become more content with Wikipedia and cat videos and people hitting themselves for—she rolled her eyes at the thought—"teh lols". Languages had evolved over time, but Augusta was sure this was a devolving along with the appreciation of books, followed by the appreciation of knowledge. No wonder the world was drowning in "fake news" and "post-truth". How ironic that the explosion of information would cause the human species to overload and rock back and forth like some stereotypical insane patient in a ward whose only recourse was soft-tipped crayons and foam rubber walls. All hail the emoji. Long live Facebook.
Librarians had become little more than custodians fussing over a few of those archaic things made of paper with no moving pictures in them in which to interact. They became the enforcers of banks of computers, telling certain patrons that their thirty minutes were up. No, you can't play that first-person shooter next to that elementary school child. No, that is porn, sir and don't start lecturing me on the First Amendment. Please wake up, ma'am, the library is closing but that shelter should be opening in about a half-hour to serve free dinner.
It was the babysitting that got to Augusta most, though. She didn't despise kids. She was known to help a few of them with their homework, especially the math problems, from time to time. What she hated was when a parent would come into the library, find a corner and a People Magazine and unleash them to find the Children's section where they would invariability throw every delicate copy of Goodnight Moon and A Wrinkle in Time to the floor just because it was in arm's reach. They would run and shout and discover how easy it was to obtain crayons to deface anything in sight. If there was too much disruption, it was Augusta would be chastised for not keeping them in control—no thought to the parent taking that quiz to find out which hairstyle matches their eyes the best. If Augusta did happen to firmly tell a child to stop ripping out every page to the last good copy of the Wizard of Oz, she would get it from the parent for "speaking to their child that way."
And at the end of the day, there was the mess. A mountain of a mess. A completely avoidable, chaotic mess with the probability of a book becoming completely irreplaceable correlated to how much precipitation was coming down that day. The parents felt good that they had gotten their children out of the house, even if all that meant was playing a computer game in the library instead of that same game on their home computer. At least they got them out of the house, right?
"Missus Green?" Augusta tapped the shoulder of a woman who was maybe in her fifties. She was in her favorite chair in a corner that was neither too close to nor too far from anything like a bank of computers, a stack of books, or the bathrooms. Mrs. Green's eyes drifted slowly open. "The library is going to close in about fifteen minutes. You might want to gather your things."
"But it's coming down in buckets out there, Auggie."
Only Mrs. Green was allowed to call Augusta "Auggie" but even then she cringed a tiny bit inside. Her mother used to call her that. Her mother also used to bother her about getting married to a "good man" and "doing something productive with her life".
"I know, Mrs. Green. But there's nothing I can do about it. The shelter should be open in a half hour, as usual. I saw they're having your favorite tonight. A nice chicken noodle soup with ham sandwiches." Augusta had a way with speaking positively but without the patronzing sing-song tone, so Mrs. Green smiled at her.
"I know, I know. I just wish somebody would adjust their hours so there wasn't all this time to wait and get soaked on nights like these."
"Me too," Augusta sighed and fell to her knees to do triage on a corpse of books marred with telltale signs of zombie children. "But they're talking about cutting hours again at City Hall and won't see reason. They completely ignored my detailed report at the last town hall. They said it was just too much to consider and they didn't have the time to go over it. And I even included pie charts. Pie charts! They are the cookies of the statistical world. You can't get much dumber than pie charts."
Mrs. Green smiled and patted Augusta's shoulder. "That's okay, child. I understand. They never appreciated my bar graphs either. Not even when I had to argue with Social Security after Ralph died." She sighed. "You want help?"
"No, thanks Mrs. Green. You know, they're done replacing that awning on the west side of the building. It might be a good place to wait out the rain until the shelter's open. It's got a light that actually works this time and everything. Do you have an umbrella?"
Mrs. Green pulled something from her bag that looked like it had a one-in-three chance of acting like a rain deterrent. "I'm good. You gonna join us again?"
Augusta frowned. "No. I have to run to the story to get food for Itchy. Who knew a kitten could go through food that quickly?"
The other librarians and a couple assistants from the work program were waiting by the door by the time Augusta made it. A couple of them were actually tapping their foot and checking their watch and/or smartphone not because they wanted to know the time, but because they wanted Augusta to know the time.
"It's five minutes to close," she protested as she struggled with her coat. "If you wanted to go early, any of you could have helped me with Children's." They shifted and looked anywhere than at Augusta's eyes. Nobody wanted to ever deal with the Children's section, and with good reason. So, because someone had to do it, it was usually Augusta that did.
"The Game's on tonight," said one of the younger librarians. "And traffic's going to be a bitch. Just come on, already."
"Just go," she groaned. I'll just get this last bank and lock up. Just do me a favor and steer people to the book drop. No last minute people coming in saying they'll just be a minute, either."
The young librarian's eyes rolled. "Yeah, cuz they never are. I got ya, sis."
The other librarians shuffled out, checking and unfolding umbrellas and pulling up collars. It really was turning into a shitty night to end her unhappy day alright. When the last of them had gotten beyond the final set of glass doors, she turned the key. A wave of calm silence washed over her. She was alone in this place. Although no longer the vast labyrinth of shelved books of her youth, the library was still the best place in the world for her to be. And now, devoid of chaotic children, teenagers hiding in the reading rooms to neck, and junkies hiding in the stalls to shoot up, it was all hers. The silence. The near darkness—save for a final bank in the far corner and a few emergency and spartan lights of a public building filled with computers.
She took her time going back to that last bank of light switches in the back room. She couldn't linger. Itchy would start knocking books off of her shelves at home. But he could wait a couple of extra minutes. Call it an investment in sane self-care.
When she emerged from the back room, she actually shrieked.
"Why, hello there! Do you have any books on transfractal morpho-physical intragerbil dynamics theory here?"
Augusta scrambled in her bag for a mace spray, but her demeanor was more out of annoyance than fright. "The library's closed!" she barked.
"Not according to my timepiece," said the man with a twisted mustache, silk top hat, and holographic bi-colored glasses as he fingered an elaborate pocket watch. "Besides, I'll just be a minute."
"Sorry," Augusta huffed and made shooing motions towards the doors. "We do not. The shelter down the street will open in a half-hour. Ask for Doctor Jake. He'll get you the medication I think you're looking for."
"Pity," the flamboyant figure said. He pocketed his watch and examined his fingernails instead. "I think you'd find the matrix mathematics most challenging, Miss Constantine."
The mace spray was definitively in her hand now and poised for release. "I'd rather mace you outside..."
"...to protect the books. I certainly agree. My apologies, madam. I did tarry too long in my previous location and not even my pet could transport me in a timely manner. Perhaps another time, then." He performed an elaborate bow accompanied by flourish of the arm with his silk hat. Then, in one fluid motion, he pulled the pocket watch out again, opened it, and promptly disappeared from sight.
Augusta dropped the spray. The library was silent once again.