Chapter 3 - Writer’s Block
Thump… Thump-Thump Thump Thump-Thump-Thump
Jakob stirred in his chair, slumped over his polished wooden writing desk. His head was buried in his arms, and, blinking awake, he saw rays of early-evening sunlight filtering in through the thin white curtains of his bedroom. As Jakob’s room was on the ground floor in a well-frequented art district, dozens of shadows were wandering back and forth past his window.
Thump-Thump-Thump-Thump
Through the thin ceiling came the unmistakable sound of Jakob’s sister, Sylvia, stomping around the kitchen of their three-story townhouse.
Thump-Thump-Thump Thump Thump-Thump
The steps retreated out of the kitchen into the index room next door.
“Proto…” mumbled Jakob, sitting back in his padded Orthoposture chair with a stretch. His neck was stiff and he had to turn his whole body to face the lens-shaped device on the corner of his desk. A soft turquoise light flickered on beneath the glass.
“Look who’s finally awake,” came Proto’s charming voice from within the device.
“Yeah, yeah,” said Jakob. “What’s it then, two… three?”
“Six if you’ll believe it,” said Proto cheerfully.
“Oh man,” groaned Jakob, rubbing his eyes until his messy desk came into focus. It was strewn with papers covered in loosely organized notes and scrawled illustrations. “Where did I leave off?”
“You were revising a sentence on page eight,” said Proto. “You conked out just after your seventy-first rewrite of the passage.”
“Page eight?” asked Jakob. “Why was I back on page eight?” Everything after four in the morning was a bit of a blur.
“What do you mean back on page eight?” asked Proto. “That’s all you’ve got. You only wrote two scenes last night.”
Jakob lay back in his chair, defeated.
“Also, a couple calls came in earlier,” said Proto. “Nothing urgent enough to wake you. They left messages though.”
“Go ahead,” said Jakob.
“First, it was your parents, who asked me to remind you that your Lowend night calls aren’t optional. You’ve missed two weeks in a row now. They also said you should try to be a bit more like your sister.”
“I’m sure those were their exact words,” said Jakob sarcastically, though he did feel bad and planned to give his parents a call after a much-needed shower.
“I’m just a bunch of zeros and ones,” said Proto, feigning offense, “I couldn’t lie if I wanted to.”
“Seem to be doing a fine job of it right now,” countered Jakob.
“In any case, the other call was from your agent,” reported Proto. “She wanted to make sure you knew your Induction into the Vault of the Great Ri’Kallan Library is this Hypae afternoon. You’ll need to arrive by noon.”
“Is it really almost the fifty-sixth of Highsun?” asked Jakob in disbelief. “I’ve been working on this new book since the cycle turned… eight pages in fifty-six days… that’s a new low.”
“Hey, you don’t break a personal record every day,” pointed out Proto. “Celebrate the little wins, right?”
Jakob didn’t feel like celebrating. In fact, he was suddenly feeling quite nauseous.
Despite his anxiety at his lack of progress, Jakob didn’t write any more that evening. Oftentimes when Jakob was stuck in his writing, looking to other stories was a safe bet to get his creative juices flowing, so he spent the rest of the night with his sister in their index room watching a series they both liked called The Lautice Queen. Sylvia was shorter than Jakob, built wide with sandy blonde hair. She sat with her knees up on the couch but when she saw Jakob come in, she adjusted to upright, making room for her brother.
Other than the couch and a pair of identical side tables on either end, the index room was entirely empty. The show Sylvia was watching had paused when Jakob entered, leaving the circular room with a plain white ceiling, floor, and walls. Jakob managed to get comfortable and Sylvia told her index to resume the show. The projector flickered on and the room appeared to transform into the magical forest kingdom of Lafalia where the Lautice Queen was set. Fantastical battles, heated diplomatic negotiations, and heartfelt moments between characters played out all around Jakob’s turquoise sofa.
That night, Jakob dreamt of flying jellyfish people and impossible forest cities, but when he woke up and sat down at this desk to write, nothing came to him.
Jakob spent the whole day pacing around his room. Once in a while an idea would come to him. He’d run to his desk, grab his sleek silver and gold pen, and start to scrawl down notes, only to realize something conflicted with a paragraph on page four. This would send him back in a spiral of editing, which eventually led to a cry of frustration and Jakob dumping the entire draft into the trash bin beside his desk. That evening, Jakob finally ventured from his bedroom, starving and in search of food.
Sylvia was already in the kitchen upstairs cooking up a vegetable curry. As soon as Jakob got to the top of the steps, Sylvia turned with her nose scrunched up and demanded he go take a shower claiming she could smell him over the curry.
Jakob went to bed defeated that night. Tomorrow would be his Induction into the Vault, and with it would come an hour of Q&A with his fans. No doubt they’d be expecting an update on book three in his Inspector Aurilius mystery saga, but he didn’t have so much as a bone to throw them. To Jakob, nothing was scarier than a mob of disappointed fans, and it was a very violent and angry mob that chased him through his dreams all night.
“Wakey, wakey” came Proto’s voice nice and early the next morning.
Jakob turned in his sheets and buried his face beneath the covers, figuring if he didn’t look at the light beaming in through the windows it couldn’t possibly be morning yet.
“You don’t want to play this game with me,” said Proto from his desk. “Shall I load up some audio samples from Orn mating seasons?”
“Alright, you win,” said Jakob, throwing off the covers and sitting at the edge of his bed. Even at thirty, mornings had never gotten any easier, and his habits of typing away well past midnight certainly didn’t help his sleep schedule. “What’s the plan today?”
“You’ve got a couple hours still until you need to be at the station,” said Proto. “I’d suggest preparing some words before you go. Oh, and Sylvia picked up your suit from the cleaners on her way back from classes yesterday, such a saint. It’s up on the kitchen counter now.”
Jakob spent the next two hours getting himself cleaned up and jotting down some talking points on a notecard. Most people just used their index for note taking, but Jakob liked the feel of paper in his hands. Besides, it gave him an excuse to use his fancy pen, a birthday present from his parents that had gotten much more use than he could have ever guessed at the time. That was before he dedicated himself to writing, back in academy when he still wanted to develop artificial intelligence for a living. Proto was all that had come from that particular dream of his.
An hour before noon, Jakob stood in front of the dresser-top mirror, trying to figure out if his stomach was growing larger or if his suit had shrunk at the cleaners. His face was narrow, and dark bags were settling into the valleys beneath his eyes, a product of exhaustion, he told himself, not age.
“Come on,” said Proto, “You’ll be late if you don’t get moving.”
Jakob took the lens from his desk and fixed it to a clasp on the left breast of his suit. “Okay,” said Jakob, “go ahead and call the alca.”
It was a short walk from his townhouse to the neighborhood station. The streets of the art district were light of traffic today, at least as light as one could hope for in the popular tourist destination. The streets were never truly empty here, even now, midday in the heart of the work week there were several families wandering up and down the lane with dozens of colorful shopping bags. It was a pleasant cobble walking street with square white buildings lining either side of the winding road. There were small shops full of vibrant canvases, galleries of homemade furnishing, painting supply stores, and dozens of cookie-cutter storefronts with all number of touristy knick-knacks.
A network of rails ran between the upper floors of the buildings and alca trams sped along them. Some rode on top of the tracks, others hung from the bottom or the sides. There were big freight alcas and small personal cabs, fancy colored sports vehicles, and large boxy public transport trams, but regardless of size or shape, all the alcas had three main parts. There was the cabin, where people and other cargo went, it was always right-side up regardless of whether the alca was riding above or below the tracks. Then, there were two spinning metal magspheres that connected the cabin to the track, one at the front of the alca, one at the back.
The station was an exceptionally long platform with dozens of alcas lining the rails on either side. Jakob climbed the steps and walked down the platform, past a family struggling to get their stubborn toddler into a plain looking alca with scuffed white paint. Jakob’s alca, a 3978 Pursuer model (which he saved for years to buy and of which he was immensely proud), was waiting near the end on the right side of the platform. It was a sleek silver vehicle, and the magspheres at the front and back of the tram were glowing Jakob’s favorite color, a soft sea-foam green. Inside, one-way windows lined the sides, top, and bottom of the tram, looking out through the polished silver exterior. The superior view from the Pursuer’s cabin was half the reason Jakob loved this model so much.
The Pursuer’s side slid open and Jakob boarded, taking a set on a bench running the length of the far wall.
“Alright, Proto, you’re up,” said Jakob.
“Next stop, the Great Ri’Kallan Library,” said Proto, his voice now filling the entire vehicle. “Any preference on tunes?”
“Something fast,” said Jakob.
“Dance of Deathtraps it is.”
The eerie melody of a grand organ filled the alca as it crept out of the sparsely populated station. A hollow synthetic harmony added its voice to the organ and the tram picked up speed, swiftly rising to the network of rails between the buildings. Through the glass bottom floor, Jakob could see the many colorful denizens of the art district going about their lives. He passed over an intersection where a group of girls were working together on a large street mural, though it looked like they were only just beginning, and he couldn’t quite make out what it was going to be. Out the side window he saw a woman on her balcony, playing violin for several colorful caged birds. As he rode, Jakob tapped his foot in time with the driving beat.
The alca rounded a bend, giving Jakob a view of the ocean out the right-side window. It was a bright cloudless morning, and the sun glinted off the slow churning waves of the bay. Small sail-skiffs skipped across the crystal clear waves while, further out, large private ships full of swimsuit clad sunbathers drifted lazily in the Highsun warmth. Jakob was always a touch envious as he watched them floating free of cares on their yachts, more money in their accounts than they could ever hope to spend. North Ri’Kalla was the city of artists and aristocrats, though the two groups had little overlap.
“Library’s dock is just up ahead,” said Proto over the music.
The library looked like an enormous mansion at the end of the street. It was ten stories tall with a shimmering sapphire blue rooftop, and at each corner was a winged grothgoyle statue, snarling with long protruding fangs. A pair of tall arching windows gilded in gold dominated the building’s frost-white front face with crescent balconies filling the gap between them.
There were two entrances to the library, a set of carved blue and gold doors at street level and a wide terrace on the fifth floor. A man in a neatly ironed blue and gold button-up was waiting for Jakob there as the alca pulled up to the terrace.
“Welcome, Mr. Rite,” said the man in a booming voice. He had thin grey hair, bushy brows over wrinkled eyes, and a short beard with streaks of black near the chin. “My name is Luise Ventroff, Curator of the Great Ri’Kallan Library.”
Jakob left his alca and met the man with a handshake as his silver 3978 Pursuer drove off back to storage.
“Your agent said you’re familiar with our library?” asked the man, ushering Jakob through a door leading inside.
They were on the fifth-floor landing of an enormous open chamber. The ceiling was painted in a complex and colorful mural with hundreds of figures, from a winged man playing the flute, to a gruff military commander comforting a dying soldier, to a pair of lovers sharing a kiss in a boat at sea. The walls were a series of reading balconies. They were full of people in cozy seats, most reading from softly glowing pages of text projected just above their laps.
“I used to come here all the time when I first moved here,” said Jakob, gazing at the ceiling, noticing strange new figures every time he visited. It had now been three years since his first book became popular enough for Jakob to afford a townhome in the city and almost a year since he last came here for a read. In fact, ever since the release of his last novel, Jakob had hardly set a foot outside his residence except for promotional events like this.
“It’s a pleasure to have you back,” said Luise. “I would assume you know all about our Vault then?”
“Just about the only place left to get your hands on print literature,” said Jakob. He knew the only way to gain access to the Vault was to have a work of your own inducted, a goal he’d set for himself the day he started writing. That much he was giddy for, a chance to read the classics in hardback, to feel their endings looming closer with each turn of the page, and the musty smell… it simply couldn’t be replaced.
“Indeed, we take great pride in our collection. Many of the novels in our vault have only the one print,” said Luise. “When your agent told us of your insistence on handwritten paper drafts, we couldn’t wait to add your works to the shelves. Though, we hadn’t anticipated just how many consider your books worthy of induction.”
He pointed down from the landing overlook to the crowded lobby below where hundreds of people were packed in front of a stage, many wearing the iconic blue and black cape of Inspector Aurilius. Jakob’s heart skipped a beat as he saw the sheer number of fans he was inevitably going to disappoint today.
In the very center of the lobby, parting the throng of costumed attendees, was the vault, an enormous hole plunging several dozen floors into a lightless underground pit. Its walls were ringed in shelves of printed books, but as far as Jakob could tell, there was no way anyone could reach them.
“There’s a bit of time before we take the stage,” said Luise, “would you care for a tour of the Vault?”
“Absolutely,” said Jakob excitedly. He didn’t think he’d get to see the Vault until after the ceremony, and as disastrous as he expected Q&A to go, he wouldn’t have been terribly surprised if they took back their key before he ever got a chance to see it.
“Right this way.”
Luise led Jakob down six crisscrossing flights of stairs to a level just below the ground floor. There was only one hallway and only a single door at its end. It was, however, quite an impressive door. Solid metal floor to ceiling, the Vault’s door looked like something straight out of a casino or a secret government laboratory from one of his mysteries. The door had an enormous crank handle in the center with a small pentagon hole below it.
“The key,” said Luise. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a black pentagon coin. It was made of stone and had something inscribed that Jakob couldn’t quite make out. Luise entered the coin into the slot in the door. It fit perfectly. With some effort, Luise turned the great crank three full rotations. There was a click, and the key plopped out of the door into Luise’s waiting palm.
“And that’s all there is to it,” said Luise, pulling open the weighty Vault door. It was nearly a foot thick with six massive retracted bolts along the edge.
The room inside was warmly lit. A long blue carpet patterned with silver stars spread the length of the hall, and, curiously, beside every modern light fixture was an unlit candelabra.
“Excuse me, Curator,” said Jakob.
“Just Luise,” he insisted.
“Sorry, Luise,” said Jakob. “Why are there candles if you already have lights?”
“The world is fragile,” said Luise. “This Vault is built to survive any fate, including a complete loss of power. The stairs, for example,” said Luise, pointing to the end of the hall where the carpet cut left down a staircase. At the top of the steps was a white lattice elevator door. “We have the luxury of this lift, but should technology fail our descendants, the Vault is still accessible.”
At their approach, the lattice lift door folded to the left. They boarded the small elevator and when the door unfolded itself the lift began to descend. It didn’t take them long to reach the bottom. The doors opened to a cozy room, carpeted with the same silver stars on a blue backdrop and lit just perfectly for reading. There were scattered chairs, built sturdy, desks off by the wall, and a stack of pillows and different colored beanbags in one corner.
Luise led Jakob through the reading room to another door at the back. There was a small cupboard beside the door. Opening it, Luise produced an electric lamp, and turned the switch at the bottom, producing a warm light. “Don’t worry, there are oil lamps and matches as well, should the worst come to pass.” Then, pulling open the door he said, “Welcome to the Vault, Mr. Rite.”
The Vault seemed even bigger from the bottom. Far overhead, Jakob could see light from the lobby casting across the uppermost stacks of books. Down here, the lamplight cast the tiled floor in its warm glow. Jakob couldn’t make out any of the titles of the hundreds of books lining the shelves, but he could see a strange looking contraption on the near wall. Luise made straight for the device, and as Jakob got closer, he could see it was some sort of lift, a wooden crescent with high railings and a small door at the front. It was only just big enough for the two of them.
There was a wooden pedestal in the middle of the tram with cranks on either side, several knobs on top, and a wide cubby in the front. Luise affixed the lamp to a tall arched post overhanging the pedestal, and reached into a cubby, sliding out a hidden drawer with a massive tome.
“Let’s see…” Luise mumbled to himself as he flipped through the pages. “Here! Eighteen… A… F… R…” Luise turned the dials on the podium, then slid the tome and drawer back into the cubby. “The tome is organized by author’s last name. Simply enter the corresponding level number and three digit book code, then turn the crank! No power, needed.” Luise grabbed both handles, and as he turned them in sync the lift began to move.
“It’s really not all that much work,” said Luise, though he seemed to be pretty concentrated on his breathing.
“I can take care of that,” offered Jakob.
“No, no,” said Luise, “I insist.”
They rose slowly but soon enough reached the eighteenth set of stacks, stopping in front a colorful assortment of spines. Jakob recognized a few of them; there was Susaya Rathpinka’s Gutterrot trilogy, Roveo Remvero’s thousand-year-old epic, the Endeavor of Love, and even…
“Here we are, Investigator Aurilius, books one and two,” said Luise, pulling the first book from the shelf and handing it to Jakob. “Beautiful covers on these, did you design them yourself?”
Jakob turned the book over in his hands. It had taken more work than he’d have thought possible to have these printed, in the end he could only get five, and even then, they cost a small fortune. “The broad idea was mine, but my designer deserves the credit,” said Jakob, looking at the plain cover with the Family Crest of Aurilius alone in the center. There was no text, except on the spine and the back where a short description read:
Aurilius’ curse is branded across his palm so that he’ll never forget. Invisibility is his gift, age is its cost. For each minute he spends unseen, an hour is cut from his life. When a serial killer has evaded every attempt by the police, Aurilius will be forced to decide; how much of his life is he willing to give for the truth?
Returning the book to the shelf, Luise changed the dials and the lift began to descend. On the way down, it didn’t require any turning of the cranks, but it dropped as gently as it rose, and soon they were back on the tiled floor of the Vault.
Jakob had a pleasant conversation with Luise about proper paper preservatives as they returned through the reading room to the main elevator and rode back up to the entry of the vault. There was a similar crank on this side of the wall, but it didn’t require a key this time.
Luise mentioned it was nearly time for the Induction Ceremony to begin and led Jakob back up to the ground floor. They took a side hallway to avoid the crowd and entered through a smaller door to a waiting area behind the stage.
“If you have any final preparations, now’s your chance,” said Luise, walking to a set of black curtains along the wall. Through the gaps in the cloth, Jakob could make out the end of the stage and the scores of people waiting beyond. “You should be able to hear the proceedings from here, so just listen for the cue. It won’t be subtle.” He then disappeared behind the curtains.
Several moments later, Jakob heard Luise addressing the crowd.
“Good afternoon, everybody,” he said, his voice cast over the speakers, loud enough for the crowd to hear but not so loud as to disturb the readers on the upper floor. “It’s been nearly a year now since our last induction and, I must say, the dedication of readers like yourself never fails to impress me. In fact, I think this may be our largest turnout in all my years as curator here.”
The crowd cheered, while, in the back room, Jakob stood and began to pace.
“I do have one request before we begin,” said Luise pleasantly. “If you would all be so kind as to refrain from clapping or shouting during our ceremony, simply snapping instead will show your enthusiasm without disrupting our other patrons. Go on, give it a shot.”
Jakob heard hundreds of soft snaps through the curtains. He pulled his notecards from his pocket, giving them a last glance over as he paced.
“Wonderful,” said Luise, “well, I know you haven’t traveled all this way to listen to me drone on and on. It is my great pleasure to introduce the brilliant and creative Mr. Jakob Rite.”
Jakob took a deep breath. He always had pre-show jitters, but it was the worst for Q&A. Still, he told himself, his last book had only just dropped at the end of last year. He figured they couldn’t be too hungry for more just yet. Knowing he couldn’t wait any longer, Jakob stepped through the curtain to a storm of snaps.
The ceremony felt like a blur. Introductions were made, snaps were snapped, and Jakob read a popular passage from his second book where Investigator Aurilius interrogated the peg-legged damsel. When it finally came time for Jakob to receive his key, he and Luise were joined on stage by another librarian. She was younger and much shorter than Luise. Her black bun was held in place by a pair of crimson-gold hair sticks and her eyes were narrow and squinting behind thick rectangular glasses. In her hands was a small square frame.
“And now,” said Luise in his deep booming voice, “the moment we all came here to see.” He took the frame from the librarian who bowed and scuttled off the stage. “Each key is crafted by hand. The front is as unique as its recipient, in this case, bearing the Family Crest of Aurilius.”
Jakob could see the pentagon-shaped coin in the frame, set on a sapphire-blue velvet backdrop.
“The back of each key,” continued Luise, “bears the Vault’s thousand-line insignia, a labyrinth of markings that takes our most talented carvers over a month to craft. There are much simpler ways to make a key of course, a machine could do it in seconds, but as our inductees well know, there is value in doing things by hand. Jakob Rite has long been outspoken in support of printed text and has garnered notoriety for his classical approach to note keeping. It is therefore my honor to present you, Jakob, with this key to our Great Ri’Kallan Vault. Let it be a symbol of your dedication, and may the knowledge stored within the Vault serve to fuel your creative vision in the years to come.”
As Luise handed Jakob the framed key, the crowd snapped wildly, one person even letting out a “whoop” which was swiftly shushed.
“I’m honored,” said Jakob, examining the flawless carving of the Aurilius House Sigil on the front of the stone pentagon coin. “Done by hand… it’s truly incredible.” He looked over the crowd of faces, all staring at him expectantly, and a speech seemed inevitable. “I didn’t always write,” he said to his fans. “I’ve always enjoyed a good read, but I’d never thought of telling my own stories. In fact, for the longest time I studied AI development. Go on, Proto, say hello.”
“Cheers, everyone,” said Proto brightly, and he was lauded in snaps.
“I made it through three full years of university before things changed,” said Jakob, “and all because of a silly historian’s fair if you’ll believe it. My dad absolutely ate up that kind of thing. There was this old fashion house on display, no index room or alca rails. They had a fireplace with some cozy chairs, and shockingly, some old fashion print books we could read by the fire. I must have spent half the day there reading.”
He had the crowd’s attention. There hadn’t been so much as a peep as they devoured his every word.
“My dad found me when they were ready to go,” continued Jakob. “He figured I’d left early because the old cabin was the last place he thought to check. When he did find me, reading by the fire, I told him I’d made up my mind; I was going to write a story and get it printed, that way people could read like this again. We both thought it was a good joke and had quite the laugh. And for a while it was a joke, back and forth between us until my next birthday, he buys me this.” Jakob pulled his silver and gold pen from his pocket. “Turns out Carava, an arts company some of you might recognize, still produces one line of writing pen, the last of its kind anywhere. I’m sure you all know the story from there, half a decade of worldbuilding, drawers of loosely organized notes, and finally me locking myself up for eight weeks of Newsun to write the first Inspector Aurilius in its entirety.”
At the mention of his novel, the crowd snapped again.
“I learned about the Vault early on while writing the first book,” said Jakob. “It was a huge driving factor, and now…” he held up the frame for them to see. “Today, it’s a reality.”
Snap snap snap snap snap snap snap
“Simply wonderful,” said Luise, snapping, “a tale worthy of these halls by its own merit. It’s inspiring to see you living out your dreams on and off the page. But as we’ve each had a turn, I think it’s about time we hear from our friends in the audience, wouldn’t you?”
“Yeah,” said Jakob, swallowing hard. From their faces he was nailing it so far. He had no reason to worry, still, his heart was pounding fast.
“Alright then, who wants to ask a question?” said Luise. A hundred arms shot up in the crowd. “Let’s start with… hmm… yes, you!” A ball of blue light popped into the air where Luise pointed, just beside a weighty man with long thin hair. He wore a long blue and black striped Investigator Aurilius cape and even had a replica monocle from the beginning of the second book. “Go ahead and speak into the index then.”
“He-hello,” stuttered the man. “My, uh, my n-name is Frederick.”
“Hi, Frederick,” said Jakob kindly. “What’s your question?”
“I-in ‘Aurilius and a Tangible Chance,’ umm, the cyclical writing pattern is r-reminiscent of, umm, of Maryll Calibrae’s triple hoop narrative structure. Was, umm... but in your adoption you some- well, sometimes you don’t fit the criteria for her definition of post-climactic tension release.”
Jakob waited for a question to come, but after several moments of silence he realized the man was done speaking. In truth, he didn’t know what almost anything that Frederick had said meant.
“I’ve adopted a lot from many different authors,” said Jakob, trying his best to get as close to an answer as he dared without sounding entirely ignorant. “Sometimes when I’m writing I’ll look at how other authors solve a specific problem or introduce a new concept. It helps grow my toolbox, but I would say that I don’t draw from just one style, so that may be what you’ve noticed.”
The man nodded, looking satisfied with the answer.
“You want to pick next?” asked Luise.
“Sure,” said Jakob. This was going well. “How about you?” he said, pointing to a girl several rows back with her hand raised high. She had bright pink hair and makeup. An index appeared in the air just beside her.
“Hi, I’m Sussia Longcloak, longtime reader,” she said. “I don’t know how aware you are of the industry at large, but after E.L. Coleman’s leak of her entire unedited manuscript, many authors have considered moving to print for security reasons. As a print writer for principle reasons, does it bother you to have people who once bashed handwritten note-keeping flock to print so suddenly?”
“I don’t think so,” said Jakob. The Colemean leak had been disastrous, so he didn’t blame anyone for taking precautions. “I mean, personally, it’s not an issue I’ve ever been all too concerned with. Can that be attributed to the fact that my writing is off the index network? Maybe, but it’s hard to say. I do think that’s reason enough for anyone to try print.”
The woman looked skeptical by his response but didn’t reply.
“Okay, how about… you,” said Jakob, pointing to a younger boy, about fifteen or so.
“Daerily Stellcreek,” he piped excitedly. “The second Inspector Aurilius novel came out two years after the first. Can we expect the same from the third book?”
Jakob’s insides twisted up. “Ahem,” he coughed a little. “Maybe? The best I’ve got is maybe. It’ll be done when it’s done. I can tell you that.”
“But if not this year, next, right?” asked the boy, sounding a bit disappointed.
“I can only promise it’ll be done when it’s done.”
Over the next forty minutes, Jakob answered all number of questions. There were simple ones like “who was your favorite character?” Others were more complex, asking about the relationships of different societies and the deeper lore of his world. More than anything else though, people continued to press him about his progress on the third book, asking questions every which way to try and get a smidgeon of information, but Jakob remained silent. He really had nothing to give them.
When the Q&A came to a close, the crowd seemed a touch less enthused, but overall still in high spirits. Jakob, however, was exhausted. He went backstage to catch his breath and was joined shortly after by Luise.
“Well done,” said the curator.
“They’re not happy I skirted the release date questions,” said Jakob.
“You’ve already accomplished many incredible things in your short time on this planet,” said Luise with a smile, “but making everyone happy all the time? A lofty goal, even for you.”
“Either way, is there a way out where I won’t be bombarded?” asked Jakob. “I’d imagine the alca landing is just as packed as the lobby by now”
“Undoubtedly,” Luise smiled knowingly, almost as if he were expecting Jakob to ask. “Just this way, unless you’d like a moment’s rest first.”
“No, no,” said Jakob. “I’d better be off anyway. Lots of writing to do.”
Luise led Jakob down another small hallway, away from the lobby, towards the very rear of the great library. Coming to a set of double doors, he said, “A rear exit, for just this occasion.”
“Convenient,” said Jakob.
“Indeed,” Luise offered him one last handshake as they stood in the doorway. “Just outside is a wide lawn. The station is just on the other side. It’s usually fairly calm.”
Jakob shook the curator’s hand and said his goodbye. As soon as he pushed open the double doors he was greeted with a wall of heat. A humid, salty breeze did little to cool the beating sun. The grassy expanse behind the library was full of people laying out, having picnics, or playing games. To the right was the oceanfront, several docks jutting out into the crystal blue waters. There were little shops set up all along the boardwalk, and Jakob could just make out the scents of fried foods over the salt of the sea. It was enough to make his stomach rumble.
Deciding a snack on the way home couldn’t hurt, Jakob made for the waterfront. He passed a young couple giggling from up in the branches of a tree and a group of university students who’d set up makeshift goal posts to play handball, a simpler version of bunball without the fancy masks or rods.
Near the edge of the park, where the grass met the white stone oceanfront, a girl was dancing. She looked in her late teens, twenty at the oldest. Her hair was a few shades darker than her mocha brown skin and it flew wildly in the wind as she pranced about the open lawn.
Her dance was unlike anything Jakob had ever seen. She leapt and spun, dipped and whirled, and a trail of shimmering rainbow light followed her every motion. The light almost seemed like a part of her, leaping from her fingertips, swirling off each step. It flickered and flared like fire, and its colors shifted in time to the music, sounding from a small index laid in the grass beside her.
“Proto, what is this?” asked Jakob. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Like what?” chimed Proto. “Dancing?”
“No,” said Jakob. “The light.” He was entranced. The more he watched, the more he couldn’t look away. The light twisted through her long wavy hair and burned bright in her eyes, shifting colors constantly. And yet, as incredible as this dancing girl was, Jakob was the only one watching her performance. In fact, as people strutted past, it was almost as if he was the only one in the park that could see the dancing girl.
“What light?” asked Proto. “You feeling okay, Jakob?”
But Jakob stood in silence, observing her routine, lost in the lights that sprung from her every movement. As he watched, Jakob began to feel lightheaded. The light calmed his mind, and the world seemed to blur.
“Hello, Jakob? Do I need to call for help?”
Jakob closed his eyes, and he saw the light dancing against his eyelids. He could see shapes in the colors, but the closer he looked into the light the less he heard the park, the less he smelt the ocean, the less he felt the ground at his feet and the breeze blowing past.
“Jakob… Jakob… Jak…”
The light consumed everything, a pearlescent white river with streaks of color all around. Suddenly, it wasn’t Jakob, but Faeron floating in that current. It was a harsh, sudden realization, and the light of peridom faded quickly.
Faeron woke with a start and threw the covers off as he sat up suddenly in his bed. Outside it was still dark but Faeron didn’t care. He sprinted from his bedroom and pounded against Auri’s door. He had to tell her about the dancing girl; he had to tell her that Jakob was a kytra.