Mr Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore

“You probably think I’m just the cold New York CEO. You probably think I’m too severe. But, Clay—sometimes discipline is the truest form of kindness.”

He’s using my first name a lot. Mostly it’s salesmen who do that.

“My friend Ajax Penumbra has tried many things in his life—many schemes—and they have always been so elaborate. He has always been just on the cusp of a breakthrough—in his own mind, at least. I’ve known him for fifty years, Clay—fifty years! And in that time, do you know how many of his schemes have succeeded?”

I don’t like where—

“None. Zero. He has maintained that store where you’re standing—barely—and accomplished absolutely nothing else of note. And this, the last and greatest of his schemes—it will not succeed, either. You just said so yourself. It is foolishness, and it will fail, and what then? I worry about him, Clay, truly—as his oldest friend.”

I know he’s using a Jedi mind trick on me right now. But it’s a really good Jedi mind trick.

“Okay,” I say, “I get it. I know Penumbra’s a little weird. Obviously. What am I supposed to do?”

“You must do what I can’t. I would delete the copy you stole. I would delete every copy. But I’m too far away, so you must help me, and you must help our friend.”

Now it sounds like he’s standing right beside me:

“You must stop Penumbra, or this final failure will destroy him.”

*   *   *

The phone is back in its cradle, even though I am not totally conscious of having hung up. The store is quiet; there’s no more pop pop from the front. I cast my eyes slowly around Penumbra’s study, at the wreckage of decades of digital dreams, and Corvina’s warning starts to make sense. I think of the look on Penumbra’s face as he was explaining his scheme to us in New York, and it makes even more sense. I look across at the photo again. Suddenly it’s not Corvina who’s the wayward friend—it’s Penumbra.

Neel appears at the top of the stairs.

“Mat needs your help,” he says. “You have to hold a light or something.”

“Okay, sure.” I take a sharp breath, push Corvina’s voice out of my head, and follow Neel back down into the store. We’ve raised a lot of dust, and now the lamps are making bright shapes in the air, punching through spaces in the shelves, catching feathery motes—microscopic scraps of paper, bits of Penumbra’s skin, of mine—and making them shine.

“Mat’s pretty good at this, huh?” I say, peering around at the otherworldly effect.

Neel nods. “He’s amazing.”

Mat hands me a giant sheet of glossy white poster board and tells me to hold it steady. He’s capturing the front desk up close, getting deep into the grain. The poster board is reflecting so subtly that I cannot detect its effect on the wood, but I assume it is making a crucial contribution to the brightness and evenness of the light.

Mat starts shooting again, and the big lights are just calmly beaming now, so I can hear the camera go click click. Neel is standing behind Mat, holding a light with one hand, slurping his second kale juice with the other.

As I stand holding the poster board, I think:

Corvina doesn’t really care about Penumbra. This is about control, and he’s trying to turn me into his instrument. I’m grateful for the geographical distance between us; I’d hate to experience that voice in person. Or maybe he wouldn’t bother with persuasion in person. Maybe he’d show up with a gang of black-robes. But he can’t, because we’re in California; the continent is our shield. Corvina caught on too late, so his voice is all he’s got.

Mat pushes in even closer, apparently going for molecular detail on the front desk, the place where I’ve spent so much of my life recently. I’m presented, for a moment, with a nicely framed portrait: compact curled-up Mat, sweating, holding his camera up to his eye, and big broad Neel, smiling, holding the light steady, slurping his kale juice. My friends, making something together. This requires faith, too. I can’t tell what this poster board is doing, but I trust Mat. I know it’s going to be beautiful.

Corvina’s got it wrong. Penumbra’s schemes didn’t fail because he’s a hopeless crackpot. If Corvina’s right, it means nobody should ever try anything new and risky. Maybe Penumbra’s schemes failed because he didn’t have enough help. Maybe he didn’t have a Mat or a Neel, an Ashley or a Kat—until now.

Corvina said: You must stop Penumbra.

No, just the opposite. We’re going to help him.

*   *   *

Dawn comes, and when it does, I know not to expect Penumbra. He is headed not to the store that bears his name, but to Google. In just about two hours, the project that Penumbra and his brothers and sisters have toiled over for decades, for centuries, is coming to fruition. He’s probably eating a celebratory bagel somewhere.