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JANE
My tripod is in place and I’m just about ready to record my daily episode of Book Talk with Byron when Amelia, the library branch manager, pops her head around the corner of the romance section.
“Hey!” I flip the switch to power on our library’s super cool new shelving robot. He looks like a white salt shaker, with eyes painted on the front and a mechanical arm sticking out of his belly. The sight of him never ceases to make me smile. “Byron and I just need a few more minutes. We’ll be done filming before it’s time to open.”
Amelia grimaces, like she’s in pain, and switches Byron back off.
“You okay?” I ask, stepping away from the powered off robot toward my boss. She’s young for a branch manager—only a few years older than me—and is also my friend. “Are you feeling sick? Do you need to go home?”
“I’m not sick, but I’m far from okay. I got an email from the Library Board last night and was on the phone with the president for an hour this morning trying to process…” Her forehead creases and she runs her hand through her curly mop of hair.
“Process what? Are they canceling funding for another one of our programs? Please tell me it’s not Wednesday Lunchtime Reads. We can’t lose that one. I’ll do it on my break. Those kids need us.”
Amelia shakes her head and squeezes her eyes shut. “Jane, I don’t know how to say this other than just… say it. Your library assistant position. That’s what they’ve decided to cut. They said Byron has made it obsolete.”
I glance at the robot in question as the word ‘obsolete’ echoes in my head, then drops into the pit of my stomach, where it stirs up the acid and makes me feel like throwing up.
My dream job at my favorite place in the world—the public library—is being cut. At twenty-six years old I’m already obsolete.
I’ve worked as a library assistant ever since I graduated from college. It’s all I’ve ever known. I don’t have any other skills or interests. I’m an English major, for goodness sake. There aren’t any other job opportunities out there for me. At least, none I’d want to pursue. Nowhere else I’d ever want to work.
I swallow hard. “What am I supposed to do?”
“Oh, Jane. I’m so, so, sorry.” Amelia pulls me into a tight hug. “I don’t agree with the Board. No matter what I say, they won’t budge. I’ll keep trying. I promise.”
“I know it’s not your fault. I just wish…”
I’m not even sure what I wish… That Bryan Brooks, Hottest Billionaire Bachelor of the Year—according to Lavish Magazine and the three million women who follow him on QuickStar—never invented the automated shelving robot? That he hadn’t donated it to our small library system because his mansion just happens to be on the hill overlooking our little town? That I’d never taken the robot out of the box?
And to think I’ve been crushing on Bryan and his brawny, brainy social media posts for over two years. I don’t care how many shirtless photos or book quotes he posts in his ‘Ripped and Well Read’ feed. I’m definitely unfollowing him.
“If there were anything I could do to keep you here, I would.” Amelia sighs heavily and leans on a shelf, pushing a few books out of robot-perfect alignment. “The Board’s been trying to find a way to pay for renovations. We desperately need to fix the leak in the roof and replace some of the shelves before they become a hazard.” She shakes her head. “You’d think Bryan Brooks could have donated cash instead of a robot named after a poet.”
“He didn’t actually name it after a poet,” I mutter. “Not that it’s relevant right now.”
Amelia gives me her ‘are you okay?’ look; the one that’s usually reserved for our more ‘difficult’ library patrons.
“Since I’m being fired, I might as well come clean. Bryan Brooks didn’t name the robot Byron. The arrogant jerk named it after himself. When it arrived, the package said Bryan 1.0, but you know how the R on the label maker sticks.” I shrug and point at the ‘Hello, my name is Byron’ label on the robot’s chest. “I accidentally typed BY, and I didn’t want to redo the whole thing.”
Amelia snorts. “You didn’t.”
“I did.” I grin, but then my heart sinks, and I swallow hard. “Now I’m being replaced by Byron. Not what I’d call poetic justice.”
“Oh, sweetie. Why don’t you take the morning off and have a good cry? I’d let you take the full day, but it always gets so busy when the quilters are here, so I need you back after lunch.” She winces. “I don’t know how the Board expects us to get by without you.”
“Adversity is the first path to truth.” I glower at the namesake of the poet who wrote those prophetic words two hundred years ago. I can almost picture Robot Byron saying them now—even though he can’t actually talk—injecting himself into the conversation, like he injected himself into my library, only to replace me.
“There’s enough funding to keep you on until the end of the month,” Amelia adds. “That’s just over two weeks. I’ll help you look for an amazing new job in the meantime, and I’ll give you a glowing reference. Obviously. You have so many skills, and you’d be an asset to anyone.”
Anyone who isn’t the Library Board.
My heart sinks. What could possibly compare to working surrounded by books? Putting away the paperbacks and hardcovers I treasure? Keeping the library organized so that when people come in, they can find exactly what they’re looking for? Not to mention getting paid to chat with library patrons and spread the love of reading to the community?
Amelia gives me another hug, flips Byron’s power switch, and leaves me standing in a trance with the robot hard at work three feet away. It’s his job to shelve books that were dropped in the overnight returns bin—a job that used to be mine when I first started here five years ago. Why didn’t I see this coming?
Like me, the robot is completely oblivious—though in his case, it’s to my presence, not to reality. He picks up a historical romance and nestles it with the other QUI titles, right where it belongs. Then he straightens the shelf so the books are perfectly lined up and grips another book in his metal hand to put away.
I want to kick him, pour coffee on his circuit boards, or break his perfectly programmed arm—but that doesn’t feel fair. This isn’t really the robot’s fault. He’s just a scrap of metal. No, if anything, I blame his sexy bookish inventor.
