1 Stanislaw Klemp sat cross -legged on the drab, gray, polyblend carpet that covered the floors of the Stacks' lowest levels, inhaled as deeply as he could (which, due to his asthma, wasn't very), then released the breath in a long, ragged exhale. Klemp loved the Stacks, especially the windowless depths where the mingled odor of paper mold and library glue was strongest and no one, not even the bawdiest and most desperate freshmen in search of privacy, ever came. He listened to the timer that controlled the overhead fluorescent fixtures go click, click, click, and waited for the moment when the lighted row would flick off and the world would be plunged into a profound darkness broken only at the far end of the row of shelves by the half-visible "Exit" sign.
He glanced again at the wadded-up ball of university stationery that lay to his left, just beyond arm's reach. Klemp could see the outline of the official seal of Empire State University through the back of the page, and he briefly wondered if he might somehow derive satisfaction from burning the damned thing. He'd started to reach into his pants pocket for his butane lighter when he reconsidered. The fire suppression system would activate and flood the room with inert gas, which, while not enough to suffocate him, wouldn't do him any good, either. He remembered reading about how Reed Richards, Empire State University's most famous (as opposed to infamous) alumnus, had designed the system and paid to have it installed. Apparently, Richards had spent almost as much time down here amongst the rows and rows of books as Klemp himself had. Once, that thought had delighted the young man, but tonight the idea only filled Stanislaw Klemp with self-disgust. In what now seemed the distant past, he had imagined that someday people might speak his name and Richards' in the same breath, as in "Wow, did you hear what Klemp has come up with this time? We haven't seen a mind like his come through ESU since..." And et cetera.
But now what were they going to be saying? What word was going to most likely be said in the same sentence as "Klemp"? He tried to remember the exact words the dean of the Graduate School of Engineering had said, but the only ones that stuck in his memory were "lax" and "disappointing" and, most important, "funding discontinued." Klemp's grandmother, a tiny, shriveled, desiccated, beetleshaped woman who wore only black and had a mustache thicker and darker than the feeble one Klemp had sported for a brief spell last semester, had used similar words when describing him. "You're a lazy boy," the old hag would spit at him during one of her volcanic tirades. "Just like your father -- God rest his worthless soul. He was lazy too. Got by on good looks and charm, but wouldn't ever turn his hand to an honest day's work." The implication here, Klemp understood, was that he didn't even have the advantages of good looks or charm to help him get along in the world. He was, he knew, a sunken-chest, no-chin runt, with a hairline destined to end in a comb-over. Girls didn't just turn away from Klemp or pretend he wasn't there; they actually seemed to look right through him, as if he was invisible.
Invisible. Like Susan Richards, the Invisible Woman. Except, of course, Susan Richards wasn't always invisible and when she wasn't, she was one of the most beautiful women on the face of the planet if you believed what every celebrity rag and Web site had to say on the matter. And who was she married to? Why, Reed Richards, of course.
Klemp lowered his face into his hands and mimed a scream. ARGHHH! he thought. If I lose my grants, I'll have to go back there and live with her! His grandmother was the only member of his family still alive, if "life" was an attribute a scientist could truthfully ascribe to the shrunken, leathery old gargoyle. Klemp had not communicated with her for years, not since the day the acceptance letter had arrived. He tried to find an iota of savor left in that single moment of triumph, but found the memory as dry and desiccated as the mold covering the pages of the ancient volumes that surrounded him.
After being accepted, unfortunately, Klemp had learned two profound things about himself -- 1) he didn't like to work and 2) he had a talent for slipping between cracks. For almost four years, he had exploited the system and learned to exploit his "invisibility," though in the back of his mind he had always known that someday the dearth of measurable progress would come back to haunt him. Sooner or later, he knew, the Powers That Be would notice that the grant and scholarship checks were going in one end of the machine but that nothing useful was coming out the other.
The odd thing was that some part of him had truly wanted to work, to try to live up to all his "unlimited potential," but then there was this other part of him -- the more persuasive and powerful part -- that took a simple delight in wandering the Stacks like a goat in a grassy meadow, grazing on whatever random bits of knowledge fell under his glassy gaze.
Klemp was quite sure he knew things -- important things -- about a wide array of anomalous and (seemingly) unrelated lore. He sensed that this knowledge was all significant and would someday lift him above the common drudges who struggled so arduously to finish papers, impress their professors, and get good grades. In the pit of his soul, Klemp knew he was destined for greater things. The problem was that academic institutions tended to want a very specific and tangible proof of greatness, the exact kind Klemp did not possess. He had to come up with something soon -- very soon -- or they would ask him to pack up his meager belongings and shove him out the door into the incomprehensible, unforgiving...
Click.
The timer on the lights ran down and the world disappeared. Klemp did not curse the darkness -- that wasn't his style -- but he suddenly became aware that the sixty-four-ounce diet cola he had recently finished was sloshing around in his nether regions. He patted his pockets, found the LED torch he carried on his key chain, and flicked the switch. This time, he did curse the darkness, as the damned thing flickered once and blinked off.
Rising slowly, pins and needles pricking him under his skin, Klemp muttered a few choice imprecations and took a cautious step toward where he believed the light switch would be. Something crinkled underfoot and he realized he had just stepped on the wadded-up letter. "Good," he sneered and took another tentative step. He had expected to find a wall and was confused when all he found was empty air. "Wonderful," he muttered and was surprised to hear a small crack in his voice. Klemp didn't think of himself as superstitious or phobic and generally took pride in what he considered to be an unflappable nature, but somehow the darkness seemed more palpable than what he was accustomed to. This darkness, he thought, has texture.
He shook his head, took another half step forward, and this time his searching hands found something familiar: a bookshelf. Klemp frowned, annoyed. Somehow, he had gotten himself completely turned around. Instead of finding the wall with the light switch, he was staggering deeper into the Stacks. Just above his head, he heard a sharp, ringing sound, a thunk! that sent a quivering shiver down his spine and made him take a single unplanned step backward. His foot caught on the edge of what must have been an oversized book and Klemp's knee buckled, sending him tumbling into the shelf. He pawed helplessly at the precariously balanced volumes, but they tumbled to the floor and crashed into his bony shins, sending jolts of pain up his spine. Surrendering to the inevitable, Klemp fell forward under the hailstorm of archaic information, all the time trying (and failing) to protect his face with his forearms. A couple more largish tomes thumped down onto his neck as the headline for tomorrow's student newspaper flashed through his mind: "Scholar's Career Cut Short in Tragic Library Mishap."
The idea held so much appeal for Klemp that he found himself wishing for that last book -- something really big and comprehensive with extra-weighty color plates -- to come crashing down and provide him with a simple solution to his problem. Unfortunately, fate was not so kind, and so Stanislaw Klemp lay there for several long minutes, the unappetizing options not just for the immediate future, but for the rest of his life, slogging through his mind. The idea that death was the solution retreated and another one took shape: None of this, he decided, was his fault. The world was to blame. There were predators and there was prey and all his life Klemp had allowed himself to be treated like prey. At that very moment, he felt the darkness pressing down on him as if it were a tiger bearing down on a gazelle to break its back. Maybe, he decided, maybe the solution is to let the predator in, to become one with the darkness. Maybe...
And then the lights flicked back on.
A security guard -- one of the heavyset retired cops who sat in a booth near the entryway turnstile -- was standing over him shining his giant black flashlight into Klemp's face. "What are you doing down here?"
Klemp's fractured brain parsed the question, but momentarily had trouble making sense of it. Fortunately, his mouth was able to work independently and found an answer. "I'm a student." Technically, he added mentally. For the foreseeable future.
"That's not an answer," the guard growled. "I asked what you're doing down here."
Again, Klemp's mouth came through in a pinch (Way to go, mouth! his brain cheered): "Studying," he offered.
"On a damned Friday night?" the guard asked, his face twisted into disbelief. "Ain't you got anything better to do?"
"Is it Friday?" Klemp asked. "Boy, you can really lose track of time when you're...you know, working on something important."
"But why the hell you gotta do it down here? Ain't you heard of computers?" ...
