So dear, readers. What do I have for you today? A tale from a place that within it's walls can transport you to more places on heaven and Earth than you can ever visit in a lifetime. Enjoy.
CROSS REFERENCE
It’s cold today. It’s cold here everyday. No matter what lunch time holds and what promise of good weather may be round the corner, every morning starts the same way in Britain ...Chilly; and when my day starts at 7:30 each day, it’s always like this. Sometimes it’s cold sunshine, sometimes cold wind, sometimes cold rain and sometimes cold snow, but whatever else it throws at us, cold is what it stays. As much as I’d like to get in and get a cup of tea I can’t. Myself and the rest of the team have to wait for fucking Linda to turn up. Everyday she seems to be a little bit later, probably our imagination as us poor sods are always on time. Just when I think she’s not gonna show of course her husband drives round the corner in that clapped out old Saab that he’s never ever gonna get rid of.
“Sorry, am I late,” she asks cheerily, as she gets out of the warm vehicle.
“No, of course not,” I lie effortlessly. It helps when you have to lie every day. But this day is slightly different to most others. This day has an added ingredient to the usual shit that we put up with. Today we get the added stress of having a camera crew follow us round, too. That should be fun. With everything that goes on here on a regular basis today we also have to nursemaid a bunch of Johnny Hollywood TV folk. Great.
Linda pisses about with the padlock for what seems like a fucking age till eventually it clicks open and we all huddle in, desperate to get the kettle on. After a few moments we’re all standing together in the kitchen, sucking down the delicious hot liquid, a variety of sweeteners and sugars in each cup, or not. For all my complaining this is probably the best part of the day. That calm sense of togetherness that binds us all, at least for a few minutes each day. The clanking of equipment and chaos of noise from the front of the building tells everyone that the camera crew have arrived, breaking the bonds of friendship and restoring the barriers of workdom a few minutes earlier than usual. No matter, at least by arriving now they won’t miss a thing. The day begins.
For an hour nothing much happens and in spite of what the camera crew may have heard about the pressures of being a librarian there isn’t really anything to back that up. After a while they traipse off to grab a drink and just leave us to it and for a few moments and I start to think it’ll be one of those days were it’s a challenge to stay awake.
It’s then that I notice them as I stamp out a couple of Doctor Seuss’. Three guys with heavy duffel bags, eastern europeans, tall and look like they haven’t visited a library in their lives. They pick up books and look around at windows and doors while nodding dubiously at each other. I don’t like it. I don’t like it one bit.
“Sue,” I whisper to, well, to Sue.
“What?” she says.
“I need three books, quick,” I say to her.
“What on?” asks Sue as they haul their way-too-heavy bags around without straining what’s underneath their green coats best suited to winter months.
“Tai Kwan Do, Jeet Kun do and Circus skills, quick,”
“Right,” she says and exits the booth casually. I don’t know how long we’ve got before this goes down but I just hope I have enough time and will be ready. Sue trundles back casually as the three heavies begin to look nervous. I don’t know what they’re planning but I want to be prepared. I hold up the Tai Kwan Do book, take a deep breath, and read!
In this job it is an essential requirement that you can speed read. If you can’t you might as well quit on the first day. I flick through scanning each page for diagrams, key postures and central key sentences before laying it down and moving to the next one; Circus Skill’s next, but I don’t really need most of that, just the knife throwing section, before I move on to the informal masterpiece that is Jeet Kun Do, Bruce Lee’s finest work. I absorb each detail before putting the third book down and exhaling. PHEW!
As I look up the camera crew role back in with all the subtle timing of a speed-bump underneath a coach trip of hemorrhoid sufferer’s, just as all three men start to sneakily open their bags and reach inside. Fucking hell!
“PUCHUNG-CHUNG-CHUNG-CHUNG-CHUNG-CHUNG-CHUNG!” the submachine gun fire of the one furthest away from me by Fiction K barks it’s presence to all the libary’s occupants. The other’s brandish their weapons with expressions a mixture of fear and uncertainty. They might be murderous thugs with a fiendishly heavy arsenal, but they also don’t know what the hell they’re doing. I’d be worried but we get this at least four times a year now. At first I’d drag them over to the hostage negotiation section but now, well after having to work past seven a few times and being denied overtime payments for it I just think “Fuck you!” The bloke about five metres away is the one I should dispose of first and then wipe out this near guy, before finishing off the third.
Casually I pick up the checking out stamp. We still use those here, it’s not all bar codes and emails of course. People still need to see what day to return their books on. Arm back I fling the stamp at the middle terrorist. Just as I release the stamp he looks my way. His face is a quizzical delight as he tries to comprehend that I just threw something at him and what it was, before the metal spinning mass introduces itself to his forward and cracks his skull in the process, sending him to the sound resistant carpet. The guy nearest to me just in front of the counter watches his colleague ...friend? (who gives a shit) smack down before looking at me. Too late! By now I am already on the counter, my feet flicking through the air, and connecting with his jaw, the sound of it detaching from his skull sounding like a champagne cork popping. Two down. I’m on my feet now in front of the counter, MY checking-out counter staring at the third guy. He’s looking at his colleagues and shaking, even though he’s the one holding the sub-machine gun.
“Sprechen ze Deutsch?” I ask. That’s almost all the German I know. He shakes his head in fear.
“Polish? Tag?” I ask, bluffing my way through Polish now. He doesn’t seem to notice that I’ve forced my foot under his colleagues sub-machine gun.
“Tag, Polish,” he smiles, lowering his weapon slightly, while smiling. I smile back and wipe my brow in a mock relieved way. He laughs lowering his gun even more. Sucker. I flick the gun up and catch it in mid air. releasing a couple of rounds into the idiot’s foot.
“AAAARRRGGHH!” he screams as he drops the gun and lifts his foot up tumbling to the floor. I kick the gun away and cover him while Sue takes his gun to stop the other two getting any ideas while Joanna rings for the Police to turn up. The amount of times this happens these days you’d think that we’d have the police permanently on position in here, but the council are resistant to it. They don’t want to create a threatening atmosphere I guess, and as we’ve yet to take a single casualty they probably see no need for it.
The police arrive five minutes later and escort these would-be-captors out of the building. I get back to logging books out and getting them back on the shelves were they should be. The morning moves then as it should with me advising people where certain sections are, whether certain books are back or which library within the district we can get them from. It feels like all the excitement has passed from the day when a roar comes from the main reference room in the centre of the library.
“Oh great!” I shout, as quietly as I can. I enter the round and there, perched on the central reference desk is a thirty-foot, snarling, fire-breathing, red-horned, grapple-flange dragon. In the sorcery section a bunch of young teenagers are hold of a huge tome looking terrified as it growls and twitches at the slightest movement from them.
“Unbelievable!” I say as Joanna and Michael enter. “Someone always thinks they don’t have to follow the rules. Whose turn is it this time?”
“I did it last time,” Joanna chimes in.
“I did it the time before that,” I point out. Michael roles his eyes before removing the emergency “Gandalf” staff from its glass case on the wall. Trudging over Michael slamms the staff on the floor.
“Thou shall not pass,” he mumbled.
“That won’t work,” I shout over. “Louder, and with feeling.
“Okay,” he says, still sounding disinterested. “Thou shall not pass.”
The dragon looks at him moving its head from side to side, trying to decipher what he’s trying to do.
“LOUDER!” Joanna shouts, exasperated. He shrugs he shoulders, slams the staff down one more time.
“THOU SHALL NOT PASS!!”
The top of the staff explodes in white heat, light cascading across every surface in the gigantic reference room. The Dragon rears back and as it does the central station opens up revealing a trap door that flicks open. The Dragon starts to fall but managed to lodge its wing and the talons of a leg outside the door. It hangs on desperately, clawing and flapping, roaring defiantly at the feeble attempt to expel it.
“You know what to do, Michael,” said Joanna. Michael leaps in the air with the staff and hurls himself on top of the beast, the weight of Michael finally causing it to fall through the hole, not before it gets off another blast of flames that leap out of the trap door. Joanna flicks a switch on the wall behind her and the trap door and central station close. All that’s left to do now is deal with the arseholes who did this. Joanne and I march over to three teenage lads who are just standing there looking sheepish.
“Okay numb-nuts, which of you idiots thought it was a good idea to read the spells out aloud?” I ask, angrily. The two boys on the left and right just look round, randomly; the guy in the middle’s gaze furtively switching between his two mates. He might as well have hung a guilty sign round his own neck. “YOU!”
“It wasn’t me!” he spat, nervously.
“Don’t lie to me,” I continue. “Now I want the truth, did you or did you not incant that spell out loud!”
I wait as he looks at the ground soberly. Eventually he nods. I feel relieved that I picked the right one, but I can’t let up.
“What does it say on that wall over there?” I demand.
“But I didn’t know...” he begins, I don’t give him chance to finish.
“I SAID WHAT DOES IT SAY?”
“It says don’t incant spells aloud,” the boy replies timidly.
“And you did didn’t you?” he nods as I shake my head in fury. “Because of you, Michael has had to do battle with a grapple-flange Dragon, not only is that incredibly dangerous but it also means we’re now short-handed on reception!” I shout.
“I didn’t think...” he starts, again I cut him off.
“No, clearly you didn’t think,” I retort, sounding scarily like how my parents sounded in these situations. Yowch! “Right then, you leave me no choice. You are hear by barred from this library. Give me your card.”
For a minute he hesitates then hands it over. His own personal passport to this haven of knowledge removed forever. I don’t blame him for getting tearful.
“As for you two you’re lucky I don’t do the same to you too, GET OUT!”
Shifting fearfully all three of the teenage lads leave the building. God I’m so mad right now! The next hour on the check out desk is horrendous with us being short-handed. Eventually Michael turns up covered in burns, his hair still smoking.
“You okay, Michael?” I ask. “Did you remember to bring the Gandalf staff back?”
He looks at me and looks down at each of his empty hands as if by looking at them the staff would magically appear.
“Go and get it, then,” I respond. For a second he looks as though he wants to kill me, then he turns and leaves to collect the staff. A further hour later he turns up at the desk looking even more singed and even more smoking.
“Right, shower, get changed and then come back here ...15 minutes,” I say. He nods and then trudges out. 15 minutes later he steps through the doors looking spritely.
“Well done, Michael,” I tell him. “It usually takes longer to subdue that beast. You did good.”
“Thanks,” he says with a cheeky grin. “Can you believe that another idiot incanted one of the spells out loud?”
“There’s always someone who doesn’t follow the rules and spoils it for everyone else,” I begin. “I tell you, they’ll shut down the sorcery section just like they did with the poisoning section!”
“Oh yeah,” says Michael. “There was never any problems there ...until Mad Man Simmons poisoned that Church fete.”
“Yep, how they could say we were at fault I don’t know,” I continue.
Thankfully the rest of the day passes without any other significant development ...until the screaming starts down one of the aisles! I run over and turn the corner and there on the ground is a woman who looks like she’s about to burst led in a pool of, well, what looks like wee. Next to her is a man who seems to have had all the blood drained from his face, holding her hand but looking like he’s about to watch a live action replay of the John Hurt chest-burster scene.
“OhmyGod! My wife, she’s about to give birth!” he blurts out.
“OHMYGOD!” she screams! “All that IVF doesn’t seem like a good idea now!”
I feel like saying “SSSHHH!” and “You think?” but somehow I manage to stop the connection from brain to mouth on this rare occasion.
“You having contractions, my love?” I ask, using my most motherly voice, or as close as I can get to that.
“Uh-Huh!” she nods, panicking. “I thought it was just really bad cramps, or phantom pains or something. UNNNNGHHHH! FUCKING HELL!”
“Can I take a look down there, love?” I ask doing my best to sound supportive and not patronising.
“Uh-Huh!” she mumbles. I look under her dress and through her tights I can see what looks like a melon pressing against her knickers. Fucking hell! No wonder she said “Fucking Hell!” How bad do your cramps have to be for you to realise you’re having a baby? Her hubby looks like his water may also break at any second, the wuss!
“You!” I shout at him. The strength of command seems to get him to snap out of it momentarily.
“Yeah,” he replies, back in this world, at least for the time being.
“I need scissors, towels and hot water, STAT!”
Stat? Why did I say, stat? What the hell does that even mean anyway? I shouldn’t worry. Somehow it works and off he pops. Then like a thunderstorm on a picnic the camera crew turn up.
“Oh, wow! It never stops here does it?” asks the Director.
“Get that camera out of my fucking face!” I shout. They back up somewhat. I look back and the bulge between her legs is now pressing hard against both her knickers and her tights as her screams tear through the library with the subtlety of a dentist’s drill. I need to work fast.
“You, Director guy! Get me the scissors from that desk over there!”
He nods and heads away, a few seconds later they’re in my hand and I’m slicing through the material, hoping that if I can get this done fast enough that there won’t be any damage done to her or the baby. The tights are easy to slice through as, once pierced, the scissors edge just rips through the flimsy material. The knickers prove that much harder but I cannot waste time thinking, just cut through without slicing anything vital. Done. The baby’s head is coming now. Well, I say one, a lot of IVF babies are multiples. Oh shit, I’m not prepared for that.
“How many babies are you expecting?” I pry.
“What do you mean how many babies am I expecting?” she retorts. “Just one, you cheeky bitch!”
Well that went well. So much for my bonding skills. I stick to telling the fat cow to push with each contraction and eventually the babies head pop’s out fully. I don’t know why but when it does I almost expect a pea pod POP to be heard. Don’t get me wrong I’ve given birth before but just never been at this end. Eventually the Dad arrives back with the towels and hot water. When he sees his baby’s head sticking out of his wife’s vagina however he then faints sending the bucket of water all over the floor. Thankfully the towels fall the other way and remain dry.
“I’m gonna fucking kill him when he comes round!” she shouts as she pulls a face that’ so angry it’s like she’s possessed by Lucifer. I spout more empty pregnancy platitudes at her and somehow she manages to keep pushing. This is the last bit, the hardest bit, the shoulders just need to come out and then we should be able to help the baby flop out, then that’s it, they’ll be parents. Pfff! Lucky them!
“One more push, love. Let’s get these shoulders out and it’ll all be over,” I say.
“I can’t!” she cries, tears flopping down her face, the running mascara making her look like someone’s laying a motorway on her face.
“Yes, you can. Once the shoulders are out it’s done,” I remind her. She shakes her head, scared, but somewhere within that expression I know that she knows I’m right. She uses every last resource of strength in her body and, with the help of a bit of wee as well, the baby surges forward. I help it flop out and lay it on the towels. It doesn’t breath. This is always the worst bit. I wrap the towels around it’s pale and lifeless form and start to rub firmly but softly as not to cause any damage.
“Come on, breath little person, breath,” I say quietly as I motion like everything is fine to the mother. After all that effort all anyone wants to hear is that baby’s cry to signify that everything is okay, but often it doesn’t happen straight away. I keep rubbing and open the baby’s mouth to try and remove any gunk trapped inside. There is some stuff in there.
“The baby’s fine. Won’t be a sec,” I lie, while trying gentle chest massage as the baby shows no signs of life in my arms. Then suddenly...
“WAAAAAAAH!” it screams. The Mum starts crying, the Dad comes to and starts crying the camera crew start crying. Me. Nah! I have to worry about whose gonna clean this sodding mess up. There’s gunk and hot water everywhere and you can’t just leave a library in that state. I hand the Dad the scissors and let him cut the cord. I head back to the desk and ask Joanna to arrange for someone to clean up there.
“Can’t you do it?” she asks.
“Midwife’s privilege,” I come back at her with. She can scowl all she wants, she knows I’m right. And that’s it, the end of a perfect day. The last hour roles round and I think we’re gonna get out of it scott free without any further crisis, then, the fucking phone rings.
“City of Manchester library,” I say, in my best posh voice.
“Well, well, well. It’s Zoe. My arch nemesis!” says a civilized but odious voice.
“Doc Khaos!” I say, the words feeling vile as they leave my mouth. “What do you want?”
“There is a bomb in the library,” he says, malevolently. “Don’t try to evacuate the building. It is a nuclear device.”
“You’ve planted a nuclear bomb in a library?” I ask, horror-struck. “We’re not backing down over those late fees you know.”
“IT WAS NOT FAIR! IT WAS A BANK HOLIDAY WEEKEND!”
“You were four days overdue, you know the rules,” I tell him.
“No matter,” he replies dryly. “I just wanted to wish you a pleasant goodbye. Ha ha ha ha. A-HA HA HA HA...”
“Dick!” I shout, before putting the phone down. I’ll probably get in trouble for that. It wasn’t very good customer service. It’s then that Linda and Donna appear with a huge box loaded onto a tiny trolley.
“Did you order this, Zoe?” asks Donna. “We just had to sign for it.”
I spring over the desk and pull the top off the box and there it is. I look at the timer. It’s down to six minutes fifty.
“IT’S A BOMB!” shouts Donna, instantly causing panic in the rest of the library. Jesus, the gob on that woman. She has less subtlety than ..well, me!
“It’s all right everyone, please remain calm this is just an exercise and we are professionals!” I say as authoritatively as I can. “Linda, we need to to find out how to disarm an atomic bomb, search the libraries database.”
Linda types away an looks at the screen absorbing all the options immediately. The camera crew turn up again, in two minds clearly whether to leave and die from agonising radiation burns or stay and get vapourised.
“This way,” she says, firmly, and Donna and I push the cart and follow her as she drags us to the other end of the library in the ...CD section.
“There it is!” she says and points. Under U there is a U2 CD with the title “How to dismantle an atomic bomb”.
“That won’t be any good, Linda,” I say exasperated as I look at the timer (Four minutes ten seconds!)
“Really, you don’t think it might have some advice? maybe we should play it,” says Linda.
“LINDA!” both Donna and I shout.
“All right, all right, we’ll try this way then,” says Linda, annoyed. Like we have time for that. All three of us and the increasingly terrified camera crew hurtle round the library to the armaments and weapons guides, looking for an elusive answer to the problem of disarming a nuclear bomb. We zip along the aisle till we come to artillery, going past the cannon’s and the tanks, driving past the inter-continental ballistic missiles and reach stationary nuclear weapons. I chance a look at the timer on that thing. exactly 2 minutes. FUCK! I look along the shelf and there, sure enough, is a tome entitled “Disarming of Nuclear weapons. I grab it out and look at the contents. Their are a huge list of different types of nuclear bombs. Eventually I get to free-standing, page 448.
“Is there a serial number or other identifying marks on that thing?” I ask. Linda and Donna both start to look around it.
“Got it!” Donna exclaims. “Honne-Jeffenberg Ltd AFE-2217.”
The pages dart past at speed while I try and find the necessary model. Time remaining? 1 minute 30 seconds. Finally the AFE-2217 looms into view. I skirt down the page. There’s various details extolling the virtues of this model. It’s like the author has no sense of urgency. Keep going, keep going. Here we are, remove lid.
“Remove the lid,” I say. The girls remove the lid and the bomb isn’t like anything in the movies. You can see the Nuclear container (probably Iodine and Cobalt) and the detonators, of which there are six, with a ton of blue, yellow and purple wires. I look at the timer ...1 minute.
“Fucking hell,” I go back to the book scouring the page. Then it leaps out at me. “Cut the second extreme purple wire from the sixth detonator to the nuclear chamber, the ancillary blue wire from the second detonator to the nuclear device and then the fifth yellow wire from the first detonator to the nuclear chamber.”
There is no way we can cut the right wires; time left ...30 seconds. I keep on reading hoping that something else will leap out. Just keep reading, just keep reading, just keep reading. The last para looms and I can’t see a way out of this one ...till “If all else fails then click the off switch at the back of the unit”.
“Is there an off switch at the back of the bomb,” I ask Linda. Linda bends down and takes a look ...only 20 seconds left.
“Yes there is is,” Linda says ...10 seconds left.
“Well switch it off then!” I shout.
“Oh yeah,” she says and bends down to switch it off. The machine stops at 3 seconds. The camera crew shake their head in awe.
“Jesus! Does this happen every week?” the cameraman asks.
“Sometimes,” I reply. “You have to be prepared for everything.”
The image on the screen freezes of Zoe looking resolute but satisfied at the way the day went. It’s then that Sean Bean’s voice-over commences.
“If you have the courage and strength of mind to be a City of Manchester Librarian call now on 0800 055 555,”
The 16 year old in the career’s office looked terrified at the frozen image on screen.
“So do you think you’d be interested in that?” the career’s adviser asked.
“No! No way,” said the sixteen year old. “Have you got anything easier like the marines?”
“I’ll get you an application form,” said the career’s adviser. The twelfth one of the day.
Fin.
Next time dear readers we have an even bigger treat. Possibly the greatest short story I have ever written till then I will have a number of smaller articles to keep you all amused. But till that time.
Adieu.
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