{"id":9888,"date":"2012-02-18T09:55:01","date_gmt":"2012-02-18T14:55:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=9888"},"modified":"2017-04-06T17:48:45","modified_gmt":"2017-04-06T21:48:45","slug":"the-propagational-library-introduction-the-librarian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2012\/02\/the-propagational-library-introduction-the-librarian\/","title":{"rendered":"The Propagational Library (Introduction): The Librarian"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

[Image: <\/em>The Beginning of Everything: Remembering Distance
\n(oil on linen, 90 x 180 cm, 2010), by Kathryn Brimblecombe-Fox<\/a>]<\/em><\/p>\nT<\/span>hat’s what it said (on what would have been the little placard on what would have been his desk — if he had required a desk in the first place): The Librarian<\/em>.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

If it helps, think of him as a man in late middle age, his hair thinning, eyeglasses straddling his nose, perhaps a hint of a paunch from far too many hours spent sitting or standing still. Such a man would probably favor clothing of neutral colors — not too flashy or expensive — and he would speak softly but clearly, every meticulous syllable unambiguous in sound and sense. He would probably even eat lunch (ham and cheese on rye, with a good swish of coarse brown mustard) at his desk, from behind the little placard.<\/p>\nA<\/span>gain, if it helps, think of him that way. Think of him any other way, for that matter; think of him as her<\/em>, if that eases your mind past the reality: he no longer had what you would call a “body,” not even of the mechanical sort. He had once had one, true. Like you, he once had grown from a molecule to a cell and thence, after a certain number of years, to a fully-formed individual, of dimensions on approximately your own scale. But that had been many, many millennia ago — thousands of millennia ago, just before it became obvious (and necessary, indeed\u00a0imperative<\/em>) that shedding a body would free a mortal creature from the limitations that had plagued every single life form up until then, everywhere in the universe of universes.<\/p>\n

The Librarian did not age or take ill. He suffered no pain, never hungered or thirsted. With impunity he passed through walls, mountains, asteroids and moons, entire planets. Cosmic radiation had bombarded him, supernovas had erupted nearby, and he had endured not a single atom’s worth of damage… because, of course, he had no atoms<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The Librarian had not decided on his own to forgo a physical self. That decision had been made by the ancients (the ancients now long, very long gone, The Librarian now and forevermore alone). Furthermore, they had developed the technology to enable the shedding of skin, bones, muscle, neurons and blood, leaving behind only a disembodied no-dimension\u00a0point<\/em>, a conscious and active self.<\/p>\n

But they had had sufficient energy resources and sufficient time to do it for only one of their number, and only once.<\/p>\n

They chose from among themselves by way of a lottery; their agent did not need to be the smartest, wisest, or most noble. He would have an eternity in which to accomplish what had to be accomplished, as The Librarian.<\/p>\nA<\/span>t first and for a long, long interval thereafter, he had been impeded by time itself — that steady, seemingly relentless pressure always invisible and always at the back of every conscious creature’s mind. Time always propelled him forward. He could look back, but could not be<\/em> back. If he did something wrong, he could not back up to correct himself. He had to begin the something-wrong<\/em> all over, from the start, which often meant restarting one or more previous somethings as well. Having anticipated this, the shrugging-off of time had been the first mission the ancients had assigned him.<\/p>\n

Time was stubborn. But time had never run up against an adversary anything like The Librarian, with intentions anything like his. Never aging, he had an eternity in which to imagine a solution, to theorize, to experiment, and ultimately simply to dispense with time’s constraints. It didn’t even require a machine, although at first he’d thought it might; he now just, well,\u00a0put himself<\/em> to whatever moment he wanted. It was simple, so simple in (yes) retrospect: lacking form, incapable of aging or deteriorating, he had only to recognize that he already had escaped time — transcended it. He could no longer remember what it felt like to be bound to a “present.”<\/p>\nH<\/span>aving shrugged off corporeal form and then time itself, The Librarian could at last turn his attention to his biggest task, to his true reason for being: the establishment and the stocking and the care — and ultimately, most importantly, the launch — of the Propagational Library.<\/p>\n

__________________________<\/p>\n

This is the first of what may — will probably? — turn into an occasional series of tales of the Propagational Library. (Not that this introduction itself is much of a tale, ha.)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Image: The Beginning of Everything: Remembering Distance (oil on linen, 90 x 180 cm, 2010), by Kathryn Brimblecombe-Fox] hat’s what it said (on what would have been the little placard on what would have been his desk — if he had required a desk in the first place): The Librarian.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[250,105,2810],"tags":[1019,2811,2812,2813,2814],"class_list":{"0":"post-9888","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-art","7":"category-short-fiction","8":"category-propagationallibrary","9":"tag-time","10":"tag-kathryn-brimblecombe-fox","11":"tag-matter","12":"tag-the-universe","13":"tag-space","14":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-2zu","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9888","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9888"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9888\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19058,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9888\/revisions\/19058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}