Library of the Ages

 ”Ethelbert!” shouted Master Godwin. “Ethelbert, where are you!” He then added under his breath, “Lazy idiot!”
Unfortunately, Ethelbert was on the next aisle over, pulling a few finished lives in the 50’s section and heard the muttered comment.

He stepped out in front of Master Godwin with a barely concealed smirk when the older man jumped, startled at his sudden appearance. “Yes, Master Godwin? You called?”

“Ethelbert, this is the last straw, the final one! The camel’s back is officially broken! You have made your last lazy mistake, my boy! You are finished!” crowed the old man triumphantly. “I told the board that you would be a mistake. Far too dreamy, I said, the boy can’t concentrate for more than a second, I said, far too full of fancies, I said, he’ll never work out!” He stopped to draw a breath.

Ethelbert shifted the white covered finished lives he held into one arm and took advantage of the slight pause to ask, “What is the last straw? I don’t understand, sir, what have I done wrong?”

‘What have you done wrong? What have you done wrong? Why you’ve misfiled a life! This fellow is supposed to be in the 80’s and you’ve put him in the 30’s! This is no small mistake, my boy! As a result of your misfiling, this fellow ran a marathon yesterday. He didn’t win of course, but 80 year olds aren’t supposed to run marathons! They’re supposed to sit in rocking chairs and reminisce, that is if they can remember anything to reminisce about!” He nodded for emphasis and slapped a life with a brilliant blue binding into Ethelbert’s free hand which was upraised in self defense. “And then when I went to put it in the right spot, I found this, this 20’s life in the 80’s!” A bright yellow life followed the first.

“Ah, I can explain that, sir. It was no mistake. I did it on purpose,” said Ethelbert.

“ON PURPOSE!!!” Master Godwin’s voice echoed through the marble halls, off of every life shelf in the entire Library of the Ages. Dust sifted off the chandelier onto Master Godwin’s flat scholar’s cap.

Ethelbert winced and plumbed gently at his ear with a dusty forefinger. “Yes, sir.”

“Why, for the name of all that’s timely, would you put life that belongs in the 80’s into the 30’s or a 20’s life into the 80’s?” Master Godwin asked in a dangerously soft voice.

Ethelbert looked at Master Godwin with an earnest expression on his young face. “Well, you see sir, I was reading those lives the other day, and I noticed that the older fellow still thinks like a 30 year old. He has gone out of his way to keep his body in shape despite the ills that age has done him, and well, he just seemed more like a young man than an old one. I couldn’t undo all the things that moving through the age shelves has done to him, but I gave him a chance to keep on living his life the way he wants to – and deserves to! Then the other fellow, well, he has wisdom well beyond his years, and I thought he would be more comfortable not being surrounded by those who don’t,” he added defiantly.

“You read these lives. Who in the Library of the Ages, who in the Universe, gave you permission to read these lives!?”
“Why, no one, sir, but then no one ever told me I couldn’t either.” Ethelbert shrugged.

Master Godwin closed his eyes and began talking again, this time apparently to himself. “No one told him not to read the lives. See, this is the sort of thing that I knew would happen. I told the Library Board he wasn’t suitable. Far too creative. I told them.”

“Sir,” Ethelbert interrupted, “the Library Board talked to me before they agreed to hire me. They told me…Well, they told me that things over here needed a little waking up, so to speak. They said that things had gotten in a rut, and maybe I would be the one to get the Library out of it.”

“A RUT!!!” This time, Master Godwin’s voice shook the front doors with its blast and threatened to blow out several of the intricate stained glass windows. Then it took that frighteningly soft tone again. “Ever since the business with Methuselah living to be 969 – 969 I tell you! - I set some standards in here. People move through their years in a timely and orderly manner, advancing one set of shelves each decade. Few people get extensions past 80, and virtually no one goes past 100. It would be havoc if they did! Placing the lives on the proper shelf prepares them for the fact that they are running out of time. It serves as a reminder that they should act and think their age! Can you imagine if everyone who thought like a young person got to live like a young person? Frankly, I’m working on something to ensure that they begin to think like older people should – you know, hardening of the attitudes and things like that. Not nearly enough of them are content to go that way. We’ve got far too many rebels. Mostly the creative ones at that. Maybe I should work on something that slows down the creativity, too. I can’t stop them being born with it, but I should be able to do something about it fairly quickly…” Master Godwin was talking to himself now.

Ethelbert was staring at him with horror on his face. He slipped away through the shelves while Master Godwin was lost in his plans. He needed to let the Library Board know about this as soon as possible. It was far, far worse than they thought. On his way through the dusty, rarely disturbed shelves, he read a few more lives and moved a 20 year old to the 50’s and a 90 year old down into the 60’s. Then he took his armload of white covered spent lives to the archives and slipped out a side door. The Library of the Ages didn’t simply need stirring up a bit, it needed a thorough house cleaning, starting, sadly, with Master Godwin.

She Wolf (c)2007

Ruination and Abomination

 Brother Thaddeus put down his pen and carefully capped the inks on the desk in front of him. The scriptorium was silent; all the other brothers had already left for dinner. Brother Thaddeus had wanted to finish the page he was working on. Father Jonas, the head of the order, would be pleased. The page was perfect and beautiful, each letter carefully and lovingly formed, the uncials uniquely decorated – it was a work of art, fit for the holy words written there.

Just as Brother Thaddeus thought of him, Father Jonas entered the scriptorium. He looked perturbed. “Brother Thaddeus – here you are. I need to talk to you somewhat urgently.” Father Jonas led the way into the herb garden outside the scriptorium door. “Something new has come up. I have hesitated to bring it to your attention – the attention of all of you who do the beautiful work in the scriptorium – but the time has come to talk of this.” Brother Thaddeus was puzzled. What on earth could the problem be?

“There has been a new invention. You know the printing press has been around for a bit, but it has been mostly used for images, as carving a page of words is difficult, to say the least. Now someone has come up with moveable type. Men arrange individual letters to make the page they want and print them, then move the letters around to make a new page. It is nearly effortless. It will enable thousand of books to be printed at one time. What it could do to us, well, is inconceivable. The holy words of God and the saints, reduced to mass printings, without the care and love we put into each page! And what could be printed! Men could print blasphemy with no effort at all! Any one who can tell a story can have it printed! This will ruin us, ruin the world with a flood of thoughtlessly printed garbage!”

Brother Thaddeus shook his head in shock and horror. “Father Jonas, I don’t know what to say! This is a tragedy indeed!”

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The Duke of Sandcastle paced through the little village near his home. “Matthew!” he called to his secretary, “Make a note!”

The secretary scurried up behind his master and tried to juggle the pen and ink and the little writing board he carried with him. “Yes, sir. What did you want to say, sir?”

“I wish to dismantle this ‘school’ the people have begun here in the village. Teaching the common people to read and write like their betters! What is this world coming to? Teach them to read and write and they will be discontent with their lot, and think they can be as good as those of us born to a better life! And they are even teaching their female children to read and write! Just imagine what could happen if one of them should decide they can write as well as a man! This could be disastrous!”

Matthew the secretary, uncomfortable aware of his own bourgeois background, duly noted all of his master’s concerns and then shook his head. “Just terrible, sir, just terrible!”

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“What on earth is this thing?” the publisher yelled as he slapped the cheaply printed digest down on his desk. “Pulp? They’re calling it pulp? I’m calling it garbage!”

“Yes, sir, I totally agree, sir!” answered his secretary. “This stuff is cheap to print, and now everyone is going to think he can be an author! We’ll be swamped with all kinds of people thinking they can write, just because they get published in this ‘pulp’ stuff.”

“Everyone can get printed in this junk!” raged her boss. “Who the hell is this Isaac Asimov fellow in this issue anyway? Next thing you know he’ll be knocking on our door, wanting us to publish some book he’s written! This is a disaster!”

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Every few generations we have new advances that allow more and more people access to writing and publishing. Rather than being the disaster that has been predicted each time, the new advance has sorted itself out and instead we find that our world is all the richer for a new group of writers gaining the attention of still more people.