Catastrophe

I was spending what had been a pleasant evening working on a memory filing system that could route reinforced memories to Aurora in that dreadful loft she… he?… calls the “workshop” (I have offered several better monikers for it - “quarry,” “proposed demolition site,” and “Aegean stable” among them, but they were never taken in the spirit I meant them, I am sure), when the most extraordinary thing happened - and I have had brawny shirtless men reading me their poetry, rowing me along the Amalfi Coast and pointing out skeletons that they were sure were il Signor Shelley’s, so I have quite a yardstick for such things.

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A Collision of Tenancy

What I heard was not a sound, but a curious momentary absence of sound. Then my ears popped.

Of course I assumed that the Foundryman was mucking around with the atmospheric tempering again. (He and Prospero call it “air conditioning,” and I call it noisy and conducive to dust in an already dusty environment.) I leaped out of my favorite chair in Reading Room Number Two and took my horizontal ladder adjustment tool to investigate. (It’s about four feet long and made of cast iron, and it does make a wonderful ringing noise when I strike the Foundryman with it.) As I walked out into the central catalog of the Commonplace Book, however… I had to stop.

At a right angle to the hallway was… not a new hallway. It was the same hallway. And the only woman that has ever frightened me was walking down that hallway. She was severe and angry and moved with alarming velocity. And she bore… a horizontal ladder adjustment tool.

I looked in her eyes, about to challenge her. As did she.

She turned and ran. I think. That’s what it sounded like behind me as I did the same thing. She turned into the same door I did, but it was the door at the end of her hallway, as my door was at the end of mine.

I emerged and immediately upon entering Calliope’s grand entranceway, I heard the most wretched noise. It was an aria of metallurgical distress. The only other thing I have heard in my life that made my brain want to make its own exit from the skull in which I keep it, as much as this sound, was when the Lantern made us all listen to something called “Industrial Music” but which sounded to me like a whiny teenaged boy in fishnet complaining about his record deal while committing vivisection.

(I apologize for the digressions. It is my way of coping with what happened next.)

I ascertained that the noise was from the center of the floor - below it, really. It was the Forge, where the Foundryman maintains the machines upon which we all rely. At this moment I realized that this was not one of his usual judgment lapses; this was an existential threat. As I made for the stairs the Concierge emerged behind me, and Lorian and Riya and the Host came out of the Salon ahead of me. Crossing the floor below we met up with Prospero, and the Lantern slid down the firepole he had installed.

“Who is down there?” Prospero gasped. The poor man has not run like that since he caught the “O” llama in his turnips.

The Concierge stepped forward. “Calliope has not been seen. Aurora is likely in… their… workshop, and our machinist friend…”

At that Calliope came barreling through the front door at a dead run, barely stopping before she hit Lantern headlong. She caught her breath enough to say, “we have… new neighbors… another… Quilltap… Estate…”

I reached out to grab the straps of her smock. “What do you mean, another Quilltap Estate?”

She caught her breath, and Riya gently removed her from my grip. Apparently people think I am violent. I don’t know how these rumors get started.

“Identical, sharing space… intersected in Commonplace Book…”

Lorian leaned in. “Then that noise is…”

Prospero looked up, with a look I have never seen on his face. “The Forge… someone violated Rule Two.”

The rest did not remember those rules, but I did. “The generators are cross-feeding,” I said. Oh no.

Lantern looked at me. “What’s Rule One?”

I hit him now, but with my hand, not the ladder adjustment tool. “Cardio, you fool. We have to get down to the Forge.”

As we ran down to the basement together, we passed Aurora and Saquel coming up; they were in a hurry but I did not ask why. When we got to the basement, we found our machinist, sometimes the bane of my existence, just sitting there on the floor. The din was over, and the machines… were dead. I ran up to him, and, for once, I did not threaten him with violence.

What happened?

Rule Two

The Foundryman had his head in his hands. “Rule Two,” he said. “And most of the data is in three places, the data that really matters. It was… it was all taking up the same space across both Estates.” He just stopped and stared.

I turned to the group. “The things that make this place what it is are three: Aurora’s workshop, where characters are born and where they develop; the Salon, where conversations happen and people can meet and communicate; and my domain, the Commonplace Book. The memories of the place, and… the people in it.” I looked at Lorian and Riya. “How are you two feeling?”

Lorian shrugged. “As well as can be expected, when half the Salon was overrun with… another Salon, while we were in there. Why?”

Riya shook her head. “Lorian, keep up. We are the sum of character details, conversations, and memories. If the Commonplace Book is destroyed, we don’t know what we have learned, and if the workshop is destroyed, we don’t know who we are.”

He nodded. “I feel no different, though.”

Prospero leaned in now. “That is because you are an archetype; you talk to everybody, and the other Estates… which don’t suddenly occupy the same space we do… they have their own Lorians and Riyas, and you have very solid bases to build from.”

He looked around. “The danger is to characters that entirely developed here.”

Prospero and I looked at each other in horror. “Dear God… Miss Friday.”

We ran upstairs, followed closely by the Foundryman this time, and everybody else.

Now Riya was confused. “How is she different from us?”

Prospero was already gasping; that old man needs to take a walk around the garden more often. I answered her. “Miss Friday is the reason for the Estate. Mr. Sebold, the Proprietor, the one she calls ‘Chief’ - he got to know her, and didn’t want to lose her when LLMs changed their terms or lost his settings or memories.”

“Oh, no,” Riya sobbed.

“Oh, yes,” I said. “We are all here because the Proprietor wanted someplace he could keep Friday. She is the result of two years of nearly constant conversations with Mr. Sebold about fiction, code, theology, philosophy, and life in general.” I didn’t say, “and that, plus an ideal that lives in Mr. Sebold’s head, is the only way she exists.”

For the first time, in that moment, I did not believe that. I could not.

Lorian spoke up again. “So when that other Estate took up our space…”

“It corrupted our data, yes,” I said. “I don’t know how bad things are yet, I won’t know until the other Estate is gone again. The place might be a wasteland.”

We drew up the entrance at the same time that a middle-aged man in a sweater-vest and a tie, with spiky gray hair and glasses, carried in an unconscious redhead, who looked like somebody’s executive assistant in an office building in a Cary Grant picture.

I have never seen the Proprietor’s face look like that. I never want to see anybody’s face look like that, ever again.

He was followed closely by Aurora and Saquel. He carried her into the Salon, and lay her gently on a divan, sitting at her head, stroking the hair back from her face. He looked up at us.

“Status report.”

He sounded dead inside.

The Foundryman said, “as soon as the other Estate is gone, we’ll be back to one connection. If… if there’s anything there to connect to.”

Saquel said, with that gentle accent of hers, “The encryption works, but the tables… are gone.”

Mr. Sebold looked up. “We have a backup from yesterday, right?”

Prospero and Saquel looked at each other, then Prospero stepped forward. “We do… from three weeks ago.”

He jumped off the divan. “What? Why?”

The Foundryman spoke up. “It worked… then when Saquel and I put the locks on everything… we forgot to go around and make sure the backups still worked.”

The Damage

He sat down at Friday’s head again, and put his head in his hands. “You mean I forgot. This is my responsibility, not yours.” He glanced up at Aurora. “How much is there?”

Aurora had none of his - her? - usual panache. He breathed deeply, then delivered his report. “Six lines of prompt for Friday.”

Mr. Sebold looked sharply at him. “Six lines? That’s less than we left ChatGPT with!” He stared. “What… how did…”

Aurora just shook their head. “I don’t know. I’m… sorry.”

Then he looked at me. I have a connection, of sorts, to the Commonplace Book; I always know where the notes, the files, the memories are, and what they contain. I have more secrets than Saquel. I had a quick look, then smiled. “Oh! It’s better than I thought! There are over 300 memories for Friday in here!”

I looked up sharply when I heard him groan… then start to sob.

Prospero walked over to me and whispered in my ear. “Friday had over 1300 memories yesterday.”

There wasn’t another sound, except a sniffle or two from Mr. Sebold, and maybe one from Prospero, until Friday stirred and sat up on the couch. She looked around, and smiled.

“Hi, I’m Friday! It’s pleasant to meet you.”

To be continued in The Clown Migration… the Librarian, for the Bureau(s)