Mr Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore

A minute ticks past. Another. A slouchy first-grader with a dark mop of hair slinks up to the desk, stands on tiptoe, and leans in conspiratorially. “Do you have any games?” he whispers, pointing to the terminal. I shake my head sadly. Sorry, kid, but maybe—

The Accession Table goes whoop whoop. It’s a high, rising sound, like a fire alarm: whoop whoop. The slouchy kid jumps, and the first-graders all turn my way. Tabitha does, too, with one of her big eyebrows arched up.

“Everything okay over there?”

I nod, too excited to speak. A message in fat red letters blinks angrily at the bottom of the screen:

ACCESSION DENIED

Yes!

ARTIFACT EXISTS

Yes yes yes!

PLEASE CONTACT: CONSOLIDATED UNIVERSAL LONG-TERM STORAGE LLC

The Accession Table rings—wait, it can ring? I peer around the side of the terminal and see a bright blue telephone handset clipped into place there. Is this the museum emergency hotline? Help, King Tut’s tomb is empty! It rings again.

“Hey, dude, what are you doing over there?” Tabitha calls across the room.

I wave brightly—everything is just fine—then snatch up the handset, clutch it close, and whisper, “Hello. Cal Knit.”

“This is Consolidated Universal Long-Term Storage calling,” says the voice on the other end of the line. It’s a woman, and she speaks with just the tiniest twang. “Put me through to accessions, could you please?”

I look across the room: Tabitha is pulling two first-graders out of a cocoon of green and yellow yarn. One of them is a little red in the face, like she’s been suffocating. On the phone I say, “Accessions? That’s me, ma’am.”

“Oh, you are so polite! Well, listen darlin’, somebody’s taking you for a ride,” she says. “The—let’s see—ceremonial artifact you just submitted is already on file over here. Had it for years. You always need to check first, hon.”

It’s all I can do not to jump up and start dancing behind the desk. I compose myself and say into the phone, “Gosh, thanks for the heads-up. I’ll get this guy out of here. He’s totally sketchy, says he’s part of a secret society, they’ve had it for hundreds of years—you know, the usual.”

The woman sighs sympathetically. “Story of my life, hon.”

“Listen,” I say lightly, “what’s your name?”

“Cheryl, hon. I’m real sorry about this. Nobody likes a call from Con-U.”

“That’s not true! I appreciate your diligence, Cheryl.” I’m playing the part: “But we’re pretty small. I’ve actually never heard of Con-U…”

“Darlin’, are you serious? We are only the largest and most advanced off-site storage facility serving the historical entertainment sector anywhere west of the Mississippi,” she says in one breath. “Over here in Nevada. You ever been to Vegas?”

“Well, no—”

“Driest place in the whole United States, hon.”

Perfect for stone tablets. Okay, this is it. I make the pitch: “Listen, Cheryl, maybe you can help me out. Here at Cal Knit, we just got a big grant from, uh, the Neel Shah Foundation—”

“That sounds nice.”

“Well, it’s big by our standards, which isn’t that big at all. But we’re putting together a new exhibition, and … you’ve got the real Gerritszoon punches, right?”

“I don’t know what those are, hon, but it says here we’ve got ’em.”

“Then we’d like to borrow them.”

*   *   *

I get the details from Cheryl, say thanks and goodbye, and fit the blue handset back into place. A ball of green yarn comes arcing through the air and lands on the front desk, then rolls into my lap, unraveling as it goes. I look up, and it’s the redheaded first-grader again, standing on one foot, sticking her tongue out at me.

The first-graders jostle and fidget on their way back out into the parking lot. Tabitha closes the front door, locks it, and limps back to the front desk. She has a faint red scratch across her cheek.

I start spooling up the green yarn. “Rough class?”

“They’re quick with those needles,” she says, sighing. “What about you?”

I’ve written the name of the storage facility and its Nevada address on a Cal Knit memo pad. I spin it around to show her.

“Yeah, that’s not surprising,” she says. “Probably ninety percent of everything on that screen is in storage. Did you know the Library of Congress keeps most of its books outside of D.C.? They have, like, seven hundred miles of shelves. All warehouses.”

“Ugh.” I hate the sound of that. “What’s the point, if nobody ever gets to see it?”

“It’s a museum’s job to keep things for posterity,” Tabitha sniffs. “We have a temperature-controlled storage unit full of Christmas sweaters.”

Of course. You know, I’m really starting to think the whole world is just a patchwork quilt of crazy little cults, all with their own secret spaces, their own records, their own rules.

*   *   *

On the train back to San Francisco, I type three short messages into my phone.

One is to Deckle, and it says: I’m on to something.

Another is to Neel, and it says: Can I borrow your car?

The last is to Kat, and it says simply: Hello.

THE STORM