Letter from a Librarian In An Impossible Situation

Weird year, huh?

Did you know I wanted to be in the army when I was young? My grandfather had been an infrantryman and whenever we went over to him and grandma's house I would always gravitate towards the glass bureau full of his pictures and medals. It attracted my young little eye greatly, and I remember every time we went there I would hope there was something new in the case to look at. Grampa kept his helmet in there, too, and he would always tell me the story about the bullet that missed his head by a centimeter, pointing out the puncture holes every time. I never heard a disparaging word about the army from him, plenty about war and that he hoped I never had to go, but he kept his memories, his troopmates in high honor in his mind.

I lost this urge sometime during adolescence, when everything ceased to be black and white in my head. By the time high school came around the association between killing people and nobility was completely severed. Smoking pot helped with that, I'm sure.

I wish you were here. You would say something really wonderful in response to all of this. Maybe a comment like, "Dude, you still see in black and white.", as you opened up a book and waved the text in my face. You know, something really annoying that would make me want to totally make out with you.

You've been gone for more than fourteen days now, the longest of any of the foraging scouts here. They won't let me go outside of the library to go look for you. Kempeneer is still reading books on military strategy at a furious pace; she says sending me out to look for you would jeopardize me too greatly. Because I'm the one here with the strongest emotional attachment to you, see. I wouldn't be able to think as clearly as someone like Harris would, for instance, because I'm not as huge a prick as he is.

It's still hard to wrap my head completely around a concept like a library under siege. It's still a little too much like a drawn-out diverting game; my mind still believes this will all end soon and without consequence. Really, the whole dissolution of modern society thing is still difficult to accept. Too fantastical a concept, you know. It belongs in video games and the prologues of crap B-movies, not in real life. I guess we'll see how fictional this all seems when the plumbing finally gives out and we're stuck without water.

I guess we'll see how fictional this all seems when we're not surrounded by walls full of fiction (non-fiction, and microfiche!).

Kempeneer says we're extraordinarily lucky in that regard, that we won't go too stir-crazy with the amount of entertainment and distraction available to us. Our only main problems are the procurement of food, armament, and defense, but you know this. That's why you've been sent out to find whatever you can find. You've been gone half a month, half a month! That's one twenty-fourth of a year! That's a long time to be out on a forage. I wish that whenever I thought about this I didn't immediately imagine you dead. I'm so sorry. I can't help doing it. My hope that you are alive remains strong, but logic says otherwise.

I haven't been sleeping well, so I'm up writing. Usually I go up to the tower and help out whoever is on watch. I always insist on taking the north end that faces the gibbet the siege army set up on the other side of the main street. And I know it's garish and extremely unhealthy to do so, but whenever I close my eyes I see it anyway so I might as well face the real thing. The morning I see you hanging from that...I don't know what I'm going to do.

You have to come back. I've written so many letters and you have to read them all.

I miss you. I love you. Where are you?