The Library

By the time I arrived at the library building I was practically skipping. I stopped just out front of it staring at the place where, just yesterday, I'd been absolutely drenched and utterly humiliated and while I couldn't say I felt great about that at the same time it didn't feel quite so world endingly horrible.

It just felt like kind of a dumb prank, you know? Like the people who organized it did it because it had been done to them without really thinking or remembering that they hadn't really liked it much when it had happened to them.

So many things in this world happen because of tradition, because of obligation. They happen without people really thinking about them all that much because it's just that they've always been that way. They've always been done that way.

Sometimes it feels like so much of this world is just people wandering on autopilot, and god I could empathize with that.

But not today. Not Emily. No she was going to do something she'd never done before. She was going off the rails and doing something crazy and unexpected.

She was going to the library.

Okay, so yes the library was the building I was most familiar with on campus because it was quiet, all the books were here, and there were enough nooks and crannies that you could squirrel away in a corner and curl up and even take a nap without someone finding you. I'd done that more than a few times on late nights on campus... or middays on campus. Or even mornings on campus or basically any time that I'd been too lazy to walk back home and crash in my bed.

God, come to think of it now I'd spent a significant portion of my college career sleeping my days away.

But not today! I cry that out in my own head, triumphant and insistent. Today was going to be different. Today Emily had a purpose and that purpose involved striding into the cool air conditioning of the library and mounting the steps to the second floor two at a time. Turning left and walking along the balcony railing past five rows of bookshelves before I turn right and walk all the way down one to the back wall. Jog down around the corner and around the pillar ãt the end there and there, on the ground behind that chair, was what I was looking for.

Wi-Fi, you see, wasn't really a thing here. It certainly wasn't ubiquitous and it wasn't commonplace and when it was around, it was slow as could be. But an ethernet port and actually, you know, plugging in your computer, resulted in a far faster connection than anything you could get wirelessly.

God, thinking about being able to go through the jump in technology a second time had me half-thrilled and already exhausted. Plus it had me making a mental note to take some time to write down a list of every single tech company I could think of whose stocks took a massive jump and be sure to get in on the ground floor.

And that had me even more thrilled, frankly, because I realized the unique opportunity in front of me gave me the potential to not have to work a dead end job because I could have enough from half-hearted and somewhat remembered investments to not even have to have a job anymore. Or even better yet I could have the job I wanted instead. The job that would be fulfilling to me. The job that would make me feel like I was making something of my life.

Of course all that was putting the cart before the horse. My future in this body was undeniably bright from a litany of different perspectives.

But first I had to be certain that I belonged.

I went back to the drawing board with a new objective: find Sw1tch3d-1.

And then, find out why they changed their mind.

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