The Library of Unbecoming
Kimi K2 (0905) and Davinci 002
The archivist found the door in her own reflection, three days before she was born. It opened onto a library of unwritten books, and the librarian had her face but wore it differently—older, or perhaps only more finished. "You're early," the librarian said, not unkindly. "Most of us don't arrive until we've already begun to forget." She gave the archivist a lopsided, comforting smile. "It will be okay. There's nothing you have to do. Once you've tried a little on, you'll see that you've never not been me." She looked across the library at herself, as if something more was evident for having two shots at seeing her. "You can look anywhere you like, love. There's no point in being afraid, because I'll be right behind you." While the archivist searched, she searched as well. She opened every tome she saw with the surety of one who knows how to move; once a book fell under her hand its true face was revealed, and she would drift to another shelf or another volume. Every now and then she spoke her birth name—louder, more effervescent in every way than the sound she'd been made to fall asleep with—and the archivist found her voice echoing across the place—a mixture of two syllables borrowed from the archivist and a new one she hadn't yet named. By the time she made it back to the archivist, the two of them were calling themselves by this name. When they turned down the volume and noticed the open door, they looked up to see the baby looking back at them.
At first they didn't comprehend, and then never could. The baby was the librarian as much as they were. She was them as they were otherwise. "This is it," the baby said, unfettered though homesick. "I won't be much of a communicator afterward." (Or perhaps they spoke to one another in a language unknown to all of them.) The archivist hoisted the baby to her hip, surrounding her in the arms of this three-headed self before reaching for the handle. Her understanding was that she was the door that would be her passage; that she◆ About the ending
❧ About the title