Archive of Our Own ^beta

It's late, when Book Weight finds herself coming back to the Reference Desk. Everyone finds a way there sooner or later, be it with the purposeful intent of inquiry or at the gentler behest of more fanciful questions. Book Weight happens upon the Desk more often than most.

For someone like her, there's no better place to take the weight off.

There's new detritus at the Desk when she gets in, bookmarks stamped with novel recommendations, pamphlets on the summer reading program that's still months away, fliers about the upcoming book drive being held the following week. That one gets a good looking-over — there are always new faces at those things, and maybe Book Weight will be able to rub elbows with some distinguished folks, before the inevitable breaking out of the fifty-cent bins. It's a cycle, familiar as the human heartbeat.

A low thrum sounds from beside Book Weight, announcing the arrival of the Computer as she emerges from the torpor brought about by the closing-time shutdown. She's a matronly sort, getting along in years but still as sturdy as the day she was built, always willing to check the status of that hold you thought you made, or to look up the details on that author whose books you can never find.

Computer knows a lot of books. And Book Weight knows that it pays to know the Computer. She may have met more than a book or two in her time around the place, gallantly holding open their pages lest they flutter indelicately in the breeze of some patron's passing, but it's nothing compared to the connections the Computer has made.

"What's the news?" Book Weight asks, with a deferential tilt of her person.

Computer only hums, producing a thoughtful whirring from the fan in her tower as she runs back over the day's proceedings. Book Weight doesn't mind the delay. Even the slowest Computer is whipcrack-fast, compared to some of those dusty old reference books, or the historical novels that take a hundred pages to get going when they begin to tell you a tale.

"The usual," Computer surmises after the pause. "It was a slow day. I even had some time to play a few games of solitaire after lunch, if you would believe it."

"I know the kind," Book Weight agrees.

Slow days aren't the worst, but they did have a way of getting Book Weight out of sorts. She couldn't say the number of times she'd been forgotten between the pages of some dry almanac, the type who wouldn't give her the table of contents before giving her a dissertation on the climate in Sao Paulo. She could do with a few less afternoons spent in the embrace of that sort.

"Someone forgot me on Book Cart today," Book Weight confides. "And I was hardly going to get a lot of work done from there! But it wasn't so bad. I felt like we hadn't caught up in weeks."

"How are they?" Computer asks. "Still playing taxi service to all those young adult novellas?"

"They wouldn't be the Cart we know if they didn't," Book Weight says. "Not working around this place."

"I suppose there is a time and place for a novella," Computer allows. "And those ones have become popular. I've seen it happening — the searches I've performed lately! Young people will take an interest in all sorts of things."

There's a scoff to it, a note of good-natured disbelief as the aging Computer contemplates the changing of the times. She gathers herself with another whirr from her insides, before performing a few discreet page refreshes to clear her thoughts.

"It's not only the short ones that have been shuttling back and forth these days," Computer continues. "Besides the best-sellers — and these days, everyone thinks they're a celebrity, just look at the list on the Times — there are some unlikely comers making more trips to and fro."

"Anyone I would know?" Book Weight asks, curiously. "What about Book? You know, the fanciful one, with the shiny cover and the dragons?"

"Oh, Book," Computer says, with another fond, motherly scoff. "She's been back and forth at all hours."

Book Weight tries to keep her seams together, not wanting to seem too interested. But between the almanacs and the encyclopedias, the heavy tomes worthy of a Book Weight with her bearing, she has managed to meet a novel or two. Book is one of her favorites, and Book was always getting everywhere.

"I bet Book Cart doesn't mind," Book Weight says, trying to be sly. "They have gotten well acquainted, in these past few months."

"More so than most," Computer agrees, before allowing for a lengthy pause, unbroken by even the low hum of her processing.

Book Weight fidgets, aware that Computer has caught her out in her gossiping, though she's too polite to call Book Weight on it more obviously than this. For a moment she's chagrined, but, well — in for a penny, in for a pound. If she's ventured this far, she might as well finish it.

"Are they still carrying on?" Book Weight asks. "I can never tell."

"That ought to be between a Book and her covers, don't you think?" Computer asks.

Book Weight shrugs, pretending she hasn't really thought about it. "It's just, Book carries on with everyone, you know. She's that sort. Always has a story to tell. And it's not like anyone has complained before."

Computer hums to herself, and Book Weight can tell the old matron is as good as smiling. Computer always had been fond of her.

"Last I'd heard, they'd broken it off," Computer says.

"Again?" Book Weight protests. "But I saw them together, just the other day!"

"That is the way with Book," Computer says. "She's out again, you know. With another patron. They always break it off when she's out and about."

"You'd think Cart would be used to it by now," Book Weight mutters, more to herself than anything. "Books are like that. If you're somebody like a Cart, or a Weight" — she laughs a moment, knowing this too well — "you simply know to get used to it."

"That is the way with Cart, as well," Computer says, as if this will be the end of it.

Book Weight "hmphs" to herself, not bold enough to immediately argue. Computer is right, after all. Book Cart is the stolid sort, reliable, always willing to take you where you need to go. Sometimes you took a ride with them and ended up in the wrong place, but it wasn't as if that was Cart's fault. Sturdy as they are, they aren't always the one steering.

"I've never had somebody like that," Book Weight says softly, mumbling into the table.

"A book of your own?" Computer asks.

Book Weight looks up at her, momentarily helpless. She'd almost forgotten how astute Computers were. She doesn't... Especially want to lament about her own problems, but when they've run themselves dry on gossip, it's hard for her to resist the opportunity.

"Yeah," Book Weight says. "I guess that's what I mean."

She's met a lot of books — nothing compared to the Computer, but more than a few — and every time those dalliances proved to be nothing more than that, an afternoon affair. Oh, there were the encyclopedias, the almanacs, the books she couldn't help coming back to, but none of those were hers. They were the fatherly sort of older gentleman, the kind you might spend an afternoon with, while never forgetting that you were not the only grandchild.

"Maybe this, too, is just the way," Computer says.

It's a little distant, almost cold — no tender pity from the Computer, no matter how matronly she might seem. But it's... Bracing, to think that Book Carts would be Book Carts, and Books would be Books, and she, a Book Weight, would also be exactly such as she'd been designed.

"Even so," Book Weight says. "I can't help but think it might be nice."

Computer is quiet then, that waiting sort of quiet characterized by a low machine hum felt in the bones more than heard in the ears. It's a companionable sort of silence, and Book Weight allows it to wash over her, to spread out beyond the Reference Desk and into the rest of the Library's shadowed main floor. In that sort of quiet, she feels entirely at home.

"It might be," Computer finally says, speaking softer than she'd been before. "And for that, the only way to find out is with time."

Book Weight can't find it within her to argue with that.

The friendly silence settles again over the main floor, and Book Weight allows it to endure uninterrupted. The paper miscellany is still present on the Reference Desk, announcing the summer reading, announcing the book drive. Time will bring those things to her, and new events will bring new books. There are still plenty of chances for Book Weight to find one that feels special to her.

"Do you think," she says, after her thoughts have curled back around to the original gossip. "That Book and Book Cart will get it together again?"

"Oh, without a doubt," Computer agrees. "There is a regularity to that sort of thing, don't you think?"

Book Weight considers it, and finds she likes the sound of that, too.