The Book Warehouse

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I stepped into the book warehouse and looked around. Vast, enormous.

I looked up at the top of the shelves crammed full of thick books with colorful spines and whispered, this place is dangerous.

The wide shelves were filled with gigantic boxes. Huge boxes on wooden pallets all the way up to the ceiling. Death by books? A proper and sophisticated way to die.

The crowds of people pushed forward, and I bumped into several people. Everyone was looking at the books on the shelves and in the boxes and no one was looking at where they were going. A colorful variety.

I reached into one of the boxes to see what I could find. Ornate fantasy cover design by an author I had never heard of before.

Corrugated metal ceiling with fluorescent lights casting a faint buzzing lime glow on everything. Rows and rows of shelves full of large cardboard boxes were roped off. Those boxes had never been opened.

So many books! Why had those boxes never been opened or brought down to floor level to be sold? How did the organization determine what to sell?

The warehouse was open to the public twice a month in the summertime. I had driven three hours away from my home down a winding back road that led through the unknown to me countryside. The road had taken me through many different small towns that I had never heard of or seen before. Even the town that appeared as I came near to the book warehouse was barely a town at all.

The warehouse was situated in a vast expanse of green rolling fields with sharp dark grass blowing at an angle under blue skies. White cloud shapes drifted across the sky charitably blocking out the hottest part of the sun.

The book warehouse was in the middle of nowhere. There might be a Walmart just beyond my line of sight that would give way to a populated area with traffic, neighborhoods, and schools. But I saw nothing beyond the parking lot and flagpole.

Inside the book warehouse was quite the optical illusion. Shelves full of boxes went on very far beyond the ropes marking it off limits to the crowd.

I began my search for something valuable. Something rare. Something good. I looked. I selected a book. I held it in my hand. Heavy, chalky. Covered in a layer of dust. I put the book back. Selected another book. Concentrate on the synopsis. Read. I put the book back. My hand was covered in a grey dust. The book warehouse had a bizarre aura. A strange vibe reverberated in the space.

I saw things that made me smile. A miniature zen garden. A lucky cat. Kits. Art books. Harley Davidson and the Queen of England.

The light in the warehouse dimmed but I thought it was because I was reading and it was getting later in the day. The place closes at eight. I was in no rush. I did not notice the crowd leaving because I was getting lost in the books I was finding.

I get easily distracted. I think of other things. I have tried to transcend this limitation in the very recent past. Now, I became absorbed in the books that were rapidly blackening my hands. Not all the books were damaged. I must have found the damaged books section. Some of the books were immaculate.

The place was a maze of boxes and shelves and boxes on shelves. It was easy to get lost there among the books. So many aisles and rows. I vaguely heard a crackling woman’s voice say something. I disregarded whatever she said because I could not hear her very well.

I had stupidly left my phone in the car.

If there is one thing I love, it's a book. Books of any kind. I adore books.

I did not need my phone.

I thought, I can live without it. But could not check the time.

Of the people in the crowd, the customers, I figured they were people like me. Travelers from another place come to see and shop the book warehouse. I did not speak with any of them. I suppose looking back at the bizarre turn of events and the peculiar way in which I found myself so lost there, it is possible they were all holographic projections meant to assuage any fear I would have had that might come from arriving there only to find that I was the only customer. No. The crowd of people buying books were real.

The light in the warehouse cast a dusty faint neon tint down upon the books in my hands. I selected a few. A small stack. Listen when I tell you, I did nothing out of the ordinary. I was hidden behind many of the large open boxes arranged like a maze on the floor and hidden behind the precariously vertical narrow metal shelves.

All I can tell you about what led up to the great moment of trouble I found myself in was that the light was fading inside as it was fading outside.

I found a neat box of Angel Oracle cards. The cover of the small box featured an angel draped in extravagant red and purple satin robes that swirled around her arms and legs. An angel floating through celestial clouds, majestic. I had been finding those same kinds of sparkling angels everywhere lately. Serendipitous synchronicity. I like seeing angels as a theme repeatedly. Pay attention to things that drift over to you from wherever they originate.

I must have been further from where I thought I was. I kept walking through the shelves with the books in my (now dirty, smudged) arms. The row finally ended and there was a maze of open boxes lined up together. A sort of path created by boxes. I walked through. It should have alarmed me that the light was now so incredibly dim. As if there were a slide dimmer shadow on the wall captured in some selfie that never existed IRL.

The people must be standing in line on the other side.

What is this place?

My mind answered back, the biggest book warehouse in the world, duh ya ding dong.

The black dust made black dust rivers into the sink and was washed away by the liquid soap I pressed from the dispenser into the palm of my open hand. I came out of the bathroom with clean hands and made my way through the maze of boxes, often looking inside them to see if there was anything I might want or would be of interest to me. I kept glancing down and so got lost in this way.

When I found the corridor that ran along the side in between many narrow shelves (on one side) and the rows of wide shelves (along the other) the corridor connected to the center, I was all turned around. I thought I found it. But I was on the other side. I began to walk back around.

I finally found the door to the lobby.

To my immediate and immense horror, I suddenly realized the book warehouse was closed for the night. I almost screamed. I held the scream within myself and thought, no. This cannot be possible. I am not locked inside.

I tried the doors to the lobby many times. Both were locked with dead bolts.

Then I did yell, let me out! I am locked inside! Please help! Help! Let me out! But there was nothing and no one to answer me.

By the time it officially occurred to me that I was locked and trapped inside, a sort of apathetic calmness and acceptance settled over me. I figured someone would come for me. But no one knew I was there. I had become separated from the crowd and lost among the stacks of boxes and books.

I stayed by the closed and locked double dark blue metal doors to the lobby for the longest time as if it were the safest place in the entire world. Every inch of the place was now my fantasy playground or worst nightmare. A third party within myself stared at me with something akin to bewildered amusement.

Think on the bright side.

My imagination began to play with different scenarios. In all of them I was discovered before morning when the staff of that day’s shift reappeared like apparitions or marvelous saviors and freed me into the bright summers day air.

Inside the warehouse it was hot. No air conditioning. Stifling, muggy. I was sweating profusely but I hardly noticed for the fear that began to rise within me and take shape as I looked down the empty rows of boxes on pallets stacked up to the ceiling all along the wide shelves and thought what could be and be inside of the boxes, if not books?

Then I thought (to my expanding shock and horror) there must have been a reason those boxes were taped shut and not brought down to the floor level, placed on the concrete ground, and made available to the happy crowds of book buying people.

A flood began rising in my mind of possibilities that had never occurred to me while I had been sitting on the floor perusing the open books in my lap, innocently and without a care in the world.

How these thoughts never occurred to me until now blew my mind wide open to the darkening sky.

I gazed suspiciously down the endless rows of shelves to a distant beige wall that was a vanishing point that suddenly reappeared as soon as I blinked and looked again.

I thought I saw something when I looked down the endless row nearest the lobby doors. A foot? But when I looked again, I saw nothing.

The lights must have been set on a timer because there was a sound of something heavy closing and shutting down and the lights began to turn off at the end of the far sides and rows. The lights were still on in the center aisle, and I could see a faint glow at the end of the center aisle to the left, so I headed back to where I had become lost to begin with.

I thought, stay moving.

For whatever reason, I did not feel alone in that place.

But “death by books” is a proper even glorious way to die, I whispered to myself, half expecting someone to reply aloud to what I had thought and bothered to say.

The silence in the place was of a buzzing light source and an electric generator somewhere beyond the regions of where I could see or step. I had a lightbulb epiphany at once that told me if I did not prefer a death by books I should make my way quickly towards the open box on the end of the maze row path that was in an open square bordered by metal shelves filled with large boxes but in an open part of the place.

The air was cooler in the open square filled with the maze path of open boxes. Most of the boxes were filled to the top or half filled with books of all sizes. But there had been one extremely large empty box that only had a few stacks of fiction fantasy novels written by Masters AI (although no one would ever admit it).

I could tell by the cover and the title and the artwork and the name of the author and the style of the writing. The way the author wrote the words and the themes of the book.

The practical and paranoid voice in my head said, get into that box! Quickly now. Go!

I zig zagged through the maze and popped out of the end of a row of shelves back into a passageway of boxes like a tunnel but without any over my head. I looked up. The flickering dim fluorescent lights were gradually fading like some pixelated gradient descending over the place and everything. All along the edges and far sides the lights had gone out. I wondered then if there had ever been lights on there to begin with.

I climbed inside the box. I could sit on the bottom without my head being seen from the open top. I found a safe box. Feverish anticipation. I cracked open one of the books I had chosen. Not the gardening or cookbook. I would use those as shields I needed to battle some wicked smart robot dog patrolling the place after hours or something beyond the realm of my imagination or that of the machine's creators. Now I was a cog. A gear. Just another book to be read.

No one would find me here until I decided to crawl out and reappear in polite society or pop out like a shocking jack in the box when the new wave of Sunday’s first customers flooded into the warehouse.

Breathe again.

The house was up ahead. Keep going. You can do it if you try. March onwards. Push against the snow. Stab and punch your way through. The woman felt completely lost in the maze of whiteness, blank and cold.

Here I stopped reading and sighed.

I heard something. A sound. A definite sound. Something climbing out of one of the boxes? Or trying to get out. But what?

I wished I had my phone. That would solve everything. Strong signal. Five bars. Books were creatures. With pages mouth. I heard something shuffling and dared not look. I heard footsteps.

The place was alive with book magic and abundant exponential mystery after the lights went out. But not all the lights went out. I kept looking up at the ceiling.

I look up. I see. The aerial point of global reckoning. Look up. You might find yourself looking at point of view of the God mode. It cannot be a robot but rather the Creator that has created you. Or am I part of the machine?

I drifted off to sleep with my head leaning against the corner of the box. I woke up startled and remembered where I was. I listened for any sounds. I heard clicking and tapping, scraping, and scratching throughout the night. I did not dare stand up or peer above the edge of the box.

Nothing out there, I told myself.

It is just a Roomba bumping against boxes, vacuuming up scraps of paper, lint.

I hear it again. It whirs.

Who are you? I whispered the question into my cupped hands, over my mouth not really hoping for an answer.

Something is scraping around. Only fans somewhere. Just a warped fan blade hitting the plastic like a shit show.

I have thought of these kinds of robots and things as pets, helpers. Try not to think of them as enemies, monsters. But I did hear a sound. It was getting closer, emboldened by my absolute fear. No, I decided I would believe in benevolence and the superiority of our fellow robot helpers.

No robot ever hand wrote on my report card.

Ancient reptilian teacher versus shiny new robot?

Hours I lost track of filled with sweaty dreams and visions of the future in which an apocalyptic wasteland mixed with up-to-date technology, convenience.

Was it today? Now must be Sunday.

When was the first time I heard advertisements reflecting everything I ever selected, all my additions made to planet earth and the moon, my contributions, forgotten things. When did I first notice my preferences targeted reflecting everything back to me so that I would feel seen or like I had been calculated and measured.

I turned that setting off once.

In dreams I can see further, do more. The past is a mystery. Measured, calculated. We have been tested. We forget so much. Without access to our memories, we are unable to compete with the future as it comes on strong and without conditions. Without a rule book or sketchbook full of code.

I was almost dreaming about butterflies floating. Lens flare on that scene in my mind. Drifting.

I heard the first round of voices coming from the lobby’s distance. I stopped myself from jumping up. I did not want to forget my books. Do you remember when a kid could win be the president for a day contest? Or when a kid won all-the-toys-you-can-grab-and-shove-into-a-shopping-cart in ten minutes contest? Make a wish. I am not sick. I am tired.

Could not risk jumping out of the box until I had further information. I waited for the voices to say more, make themselves known. Then I climbed out of the box and went in search of the voices.

I would like to pay for these, I said laying my stack of books on the front desk counter.

The men were on their phones at once speaking to supervisors, managers, the owner. I assumed from the serious tone it was quite the oversight. Someone would lose their job over it but who. They opened the front door and ushered me out after making sure I had not been injured and was completely fine (mildly traumatized).

The summer day was bright. Early sun rising in the light blue, pale-yellow sky. An American flag floated in the breeze. I sat in my car in a numb daze. Breathing in the AC and missed messages on my phone. Finally, I started my GPS, selected a pin on Map App. Rode home in dazed silence, blindly following Maps. Directed home turn by turn the woman’s voice said turn right on street, left on lane and I followed.

Who are you? I queried her.

Her voice responded back, not sure if I understand.

Because I breathe and she does not. Our overlapping intelligence always learning but I can breathe and her breath is infinite knowledge.