Mr Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore

I don’t say that it took me all night and part of this morning. Kat probably could have cooked it up in fifteen minutes.

We watch the colored lights curl around one another. I rewind it, and we watch again. I explain what happened with Imbert—the prototype’s predictive power.

“Could have been luck,” Kat says, shaking her head. “We’d need to look at more data to see if there’s really a pattern. I mean, you might just be projecting. Like the face on Mars.”

Or like when you’re absolutely sure a girl likes you, but it turns out she doesn’t. (I don’t say that out loud, either.)

“Is there more data we can add to the visualization? This only covers a few months, right?”

“Well, there are other logbooks,” I say. “But they’re not really data—just description. And it would take forever to type it into the computer. It’s all handwriting, and I can barely read my own…”

Kat’s eyes light up: “A natural language corpus! I’ve been looking for an excuse to use the book scanner.” She grins and slaps the table. “Bring it to Google. We have a machine for this. You have to bring it to Google.”

She’s bouncing in her seat a little, and her lips make a pretty shape when she says the word corpus.

THE SMELL OF BOOKS

MY CHALLENGE: get a book out of a bookstore. If I am successful, I might learn something interesting about this place and its purpose. More important: I might impress Kat.

I can’t just take the logbook, because Penumbra and Oliver use it, too. The logbook is part of the store. If I ask to take it home, I’ll need a good reason, and I can’t really imagine a good reason. Hey, Mr. Penumbra, I want to go over my sketch of Tyndall in watercolors? Yeah, right.

There’s another possibility. I could take a different logbook, an older one—not IX but VIII or even II or I. That feels risky. Some of those logbooks are older than Penumbra himself, and I’m afraid they might fall apart if I touch them. So the most recently retired logbook, VIII, is the safest and sturdiest bet … but it’s also the closest at hand. You see VIII every time you slide the current logbook back onto the shelf, and I’m very sure Penumbra would notice its absence. Now, maybe VII or VI …

I’m crouching down behind the front desk, poking logbook spines with one finger to test their structural integrity, when the bell above the door tinkles. I spring up straight—it’s Penumbra.

He unwinds the thin gray scarf around his neck and makes an odd circuit around the front of the store, rapping his knuckles on the front desk, casting his eyes across the short shelves and then up to the Waybacklist. He makes a quiet sigh. Something is up.

“Today is the day, my boy,” he finally says, “that I took over this bookstore, thirty-one years ago.”

Thirty-one years. Penumbra’s been sitting at this desk for longer than I’ve been alive. It makes me realize how new I am to this place—what a fleeting addition.

“But it wasn’t until eleven years later,” he adds, “that I changed the name on the front.”

“Whose name was up there before?”

“Al-Asmari. He was my mentor and, for many years, my employer. Mohammad Al-Asmari. I always thought his name looked better on the glass. I still do.”

“Penumbra looks good,” I say. “It’s mysterious.”

He smiles at that. “When I changed the name, I thought I would change the store, too. But it hasn’t changed that much at all.”

“Why not?”

“Oh, many reasons. Some good, some bad. It has a bit to do with our funding … and I have been lazy. In the early days, I read more. I sought out new books. But now, it seems, I’ve settled on my favorites.”

Well, now that you mention it … “Maybe you should think about getting some more popular stuff,” I venture. “There’s a market for independent bookstores, and a lot of people don’t even know this place is here, but when they discover it, there’s not a lot to choose from. I mean, some of my friends have come to check it out, and … we just don’t have anything they want to buy.”

“I did not know people your age still read books,” Penumbra says. He raises an eyebrow. “I was under the impression they read everything on their mobile phones.”

“Not everyone. There are plenty of people who, you know—people who still like the smell of books.”

“The smell!” Penumbra repeats. “You know you are finished when people start talking about the smell.” He smiles at that—then something occurs to him, and he narrows his eyes. “I do not suppose you have a … Kindle?”

Uh-oh. It feels like it’s the principal asking me if I have weed in my backpack. But in a friendly way, like maybe he wants to share it. As it happens, I do have my Kindle. I pull it out of my messenger bag. It’s a bit battered, with wide scratches across the back and stray pen marks near the bottom of the screen.

Penumbra holds it aloft and frowns. It’s blank. I reach up and pinch the corner and it comes to life. He sucks in a sharp breath, and the pale gray rectangle reflects in his bright blue eyes.