Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore: A Novel

There is no immortality that is not built on friendship and work done with care. All the secrets in the world worth knowing are hiding in plain sight. It takes forty-one seconds to climb a ladder three stories tall. It’s not easy to imagine the year 3012, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try. We have new capabilities now—strange powers we’re sti

Our red-bearded waiter arrives bearing another mug of beer and sets it down in front of Penumbra, who waves a hand and says, “Charge this to the Festina Lente Company, Timothy. All of it.”

Lately, even the Waybacklist borrowers seem to be missing. Have they been seduced by some other book club on the other side of town? Have they all bought Kindles? I have one, and I use it most nights. I always imagine the books staring and whispering, Traitor!—but come on, I have a lot of free first chapters to get through. My Kindle is a hand-me-d

We sat in the living room (then dominated by a flat-screen TV, with no tabletop cities even dreamt of) and he told us about his current task at ILM: the design and construction of a bloodthirsty demon with blue-denim skin. It was part of a horror movie set inside an Abercrombie & Fitch.

It’s not like we have the same brains as people a thousand years ago.” Wait: “Yes we do.” “We have the same hardware, but not the same software. Did you know that the concept of privacy is, like, totally recent? And so is the idea of romance, of course.”

Books: boring. Codes: awesome. These are the people who are running the internet.

So I guess you could say Neel owes me a few favors, except that so many favors have passed between us now that they are no longer distinguishable as individual acts, just a bright haze of loyalty. Our friendship is a nebula.

She’s wearing the same red and yellow BAM! T-shirt from before, which means (a) she slept in it, (b) she owns several identical T-shirts, or (c) she’s a cartoon character—all of which are appealing alternatives.

In the morning, when Penumbra arrives, I broach the subject of a friend buying entry into the Waybacklist. He shrugs out of his peacoat—it is an epic peacoat, finely made, with wool from the blackest of sheep—and sets himself up on the chair behind the front desk. “Oh, it is not a matter of purchase,” he says, steepling his fingers, “but rather of