Mr Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore

The chair behind the front desk creaks under my weight. I expected the Accession Table to be a little more high-tech, but in fact it looks like an artifact itself. It’s a bright blue monitor, not of recent vintage; the pixels peek out through thick glass. New acquisitions all over the world scroll up the side of the screen. There are Mediterranean ceramic plates and Japanese samurai swords and Mughal fertility statues—pretty hot Mughal statues, all hips, totally yakshini—and more, lots more, there are old stopwatches and crumbling muskets and even books, nice old books bound in blue with fat golden crosses on their covers.

How do curators not just stare at this terminal all day long?

First-graders are streaming into Cal Knit, yelping and shrieking. Two boys grab knitting needles out of the bucket by the front door and start dueling, making buzzing light-saber noises accompanied by sprays of saliva. Tabitha shepherds them to the activity stations and starts her spiel. There’s a poster on the wall behind her that says KNITTING IS NEAT.

Back to the Accession Table. On the other side of the terminal, there are graphs, obviously configured by Tabitha. They track accession activity in different areas of interest, areas such as TEXTILES and CALIFORNIA and NO ENDOWMENT. TEXTILES is a spiky little mountain range of activity; CALIFORNIA has a clear upward slope; NO ENDOWMENT is flatlined.

Okay. Where’s the search box?

Over by Tabitha, the yarn has come out. First-graders are digging through wide plastic containers, looking for their favorite colors. One of them falls in and shrieks, and her two friends start poking her with needles.

There is no search box.

I jab random keys until the word DIRECTORY lights up at the top of the screen. (It was F5 that did it.) Now a rich, detailed taxonomy unfurls before me. Someone somewhere has categorized everything everywhere:

METAL, WOOD, CERAMIC.

15TH CENTURY, 16TH CENTURY, 17TH CENTURY.

POLITICAL, RELIGIOUS, CEREMONIAL.

But wait—what’s the difference between RELIGIOUS and CEREMONIAL? There’s a sinking feeling in my stomach. I start exploring METAL but there are only coins and bracelets and fishing hooks. No swords—I think those are filed under WEAPONS. Maybe WAR. Maybe POINTY THINGS.

Tabitha is leaning in close with one of the first-graders, helping him cross two knitting needles together to make his first loop. His brow is furrowed with utter concentration—I saw that look in the Reading Room—and then he gets it, the loop forms, and he breaks into a wide giggling grin.

Tabitha looks back my way. “Found it yet?”

I shake my head. No, I have not found it yet. It’s not in 15TH CENTURY. Well, maybe it is in 15TH CENTURY, but everything else is in 15TH CENTURY, too—that’s the problem. I’m still stuck looking for a needle in a haystack. Probably an ancient Song Dynasty haystack that the Mongols burned along with everything else.

I slump forward with my face in my hands, staring into the blue terminal, which is showing me a picture of some lumpy green coins salvaged from an old Spanish galleon. Did I just waste a thousand of Neel’s dollars? What am I supposed to do with this thing? Why hasn’t Google indexed museums yet?

A first-grader with bright red hair runs up to the front desk, giggling and choking herself with a tangle of green yarn. Um—nice scarf? She grins and jumps up and down.

“Hi there,” I say. “Let me ask you a question.” She giggles and nods. “How would you find a needle in a haystack?”

The first-grader pauses, pensive, tugging on the green yarn around her neck. She’s really thinking this over. Tiny gears are turning; she’s twisting her fingers together, pondering. It’s cute. Finally, she looks up and says gravely, “I would ask the hays to find it.” Then she makes a quiet banshee whine and bounces away on one foot.

An ancient Song Dynasty gong thunders in my head. Yes, of course. She’s a genius! Giggling to myself, I pound the escape key until I’m free of the terminal’s awful taxonomy. Instead, I choose the command that says, simply, ACCESSION.

It’s so simple. Of course, of course. The first-grader is right. It’s easy to find a needle in a haystack! Ask the hays to find it!

The accession form is long and complicated, but I race through it:

CREATOR: Griffo Gerritszoon

YEAR: 1500 (approx.)

DESCRIPTION: Metal type. Gerritszoon punches. Full font.

PROVENANCE: Lost ca. 1900. Recovered via anonymous gift.

I leave the rest of the fields empty and thwack the return key to submit this new artifact, entirely made-up, to the Accession Table. If I understand this right, it’s now scrolling across all the other terminals, just like this one, in every museum in the world. Curators are checking it out, cross-referencing it—thousands of them.