#75: Library

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Shelby and Elvira had also 'discovered' libraries. A branch library was near by. They spent a lot of time there too.

“Houston we have a problem” Shelby said to Elvira one evening.

“What would that be dear?” She asked him.

They were in the reading room of one of the branches of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh. Oddly enough even though they allowed him to check out several books at a time he was reluctant to do so. He didn’t want to remove the books from the library.

“Books are almost holy.” Shelby said “damaging a book is a sin and a shame. If one of my books get’s damaged, one that I bought and paid for..that’s one thing. If one of these books get damaged...one that was entrusted into my care that belongs to someone else. That’s another thing. I’m reluctant to take any of them to the barge.”

“I see your point. I have a solution” she said.

“What?” he asked.

“Read fast” she said.

Glare.

“No...really. All you have to do is glance at a page and I can store the content for you to read at your leisure.” she said.

“Oh?” he said “ You interest me strangely. How much storage space is available? Where IS the storage space?”

“The storage space is in the SoulStone. I could give you the numbers if you like but they are so huge as to be meaningless. The SoulStone uses allotropes of carbon in variable crystalline configurations for storage. Consider the storage space to be infinite.” She said. .

“Problem solved.” he said

From then on he would go to the library after work, a couple or so times a week, and read for a few hours. He chose areas of study that he was interested in or thought he might be interested in at a later date. His body, under Elvira’s control, would read the books as fast as she could turn the pages. She could turn the pages VERY fast.

The library personnel might wonder at him sitting at a table with a book in front of him, flipping through the pages as fast as he could. They might wonder but they wouldn’t say or do anything as long as he didn’t damage the book. He wouldn’t do that. Not damaging the book was the whole point. Elvira could easily scan several pages per second. A six hundred page novel took about fifteen minutes. Most books were about half that in length. She would typically go through several books an hour.

Thus..between when he arrived in the morning after he got off mid-shift until he left at noon, he might scan thirty or more books, and he did. He scanned a LOT of books.

After it was scanned it became a memory. He could ‘remember” the data. Not only that but Elvira understood it all...and could draw comparisons, conclusions, deductions, inductions and cross correlations among everything scanned. Then understood it all too. No studying required.

He wished he’d had something similar when he was in college. It was fun.

With so many library books ‘on file’ his need for ‘dead tree’ books declined. He no longer needed the physical book itself. With the advent of e-books and the internet he needed less and less dead-tree books. Once he read a book he had instant access to it from then on. He found that he had an embarrassment of riches. Too many books. He began to make donations of books to needy causes. The local “friend of the library” became a repeat recipient. Eventually, except for a few ‘special friends’ he had no ‘dead tree’ books in his possession. Everything had been converted.

...............

The Next Episode is
#76: Toilet Stall
The Previous Episode was
#74: Barge
the First episode was
#1 : Prologue

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@everittdmickey
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I write
SPECULATIVE FICTION
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