Nail Shop

We have reached the end of the series of short stories I (Jenny Trevino, IVAN Library’s Librarian) wrote for my former employer’s Writing Club. In the first week, I posted a story in which I had the idea of making Andrew Carnegie answer for his sins. In the remaining stories, I was trying to imagine ways in which the concept of a library might evolve in a future that has moved on from even the non-traditional services that are currently being presented as constituting a library’s post-print portfolio. This story imagines a library that is very similar to IVAN Library, except we don’t have a physical location (yet).

The Prompt for this story was “Secret identities.”

Nail Shop

“How's it going, Jessie."

"Girl, my check was short again. I don't know what we can do, I've already cut my content and refrigerated subscriptions."

"What's your power sub on?"

"Twenty-five hours. Our refrigerated is down to milk and bologna, but i'm almost scared to drink the milk. We already share bathwater. I'm embarrassed to tell you the frequency."

"Well, I don't smell you, yet. Any idea why this keeps happening?"

"I have to submit a contact form. Then they will call me and I can ask. Only one problem-- Basics aren't allowed on the two-way data plan-- and even if we were, they issued us all the binary terminals. All we can do is like or dislike."

"You should go to the nail shop."

"You're funny. Nails are the last thing I need."

"Not for nails. For the librarian."

"I have to read a whole book about contact forms? Figures. Anyway, Pastor says the librarians all got fired because of witchcraft."

"Maybe you do need to read a book. They couldn't fire the librarians, and witchcraft is the oldest lie there is about resourceful women. They wouldn't have even tried it without closing the libraries. Anyway, librarians are distributed throughout the community now, and all of them have two-way data-- otherwise it's not legal to limit Basics. If there's no two-way node within walking distance they can't restrict you."

"You're telling me there has been a two-way node in the nail shop all this time?"

"Yes, girl."

"And we were supposed to just know that?"

"I mean, it was probably on the government feeds, but most people don't even look at that channel. The only commercial channels that said anything at all about the library closings were the redpill feeds."

Jessie flinched.

"Sorry, i meant to say 'Family Feeds.'"

"One of these days I am going to get in so much trouble for hanging out with you."

"You'll be in trouble with the husband you picked and the church that he picked. Not with the law."

"Trouble with the law would be better."

"Well, you don't need me to remind you what your options are."

"And you don't need me to remind you that I have seven kids. No shelter will take that many, one check won't feed them, and I would not be eligible for remarriage now that we're on Basic."

"I count four kids."

"No, you count four pregnancies. I'm not going to abandon the older ones-- else they’ll just end up like their father. As soon as they get placed, I promise I'll think about it. Now, can you go with me to the nail shop?"

"Let's at least eat first. I invited you for lunch, not errands."

"You sound like mom," Jessie chuckled. Carla's face fell.

"You don't know how badly I wish she was the one having this conversation with you."

"Even if she had lived, she wouldn't be here. She'd be in jail for shooting my husband."

"See? You have more options than you thought."

"Don't tempt me."

"Speaking of temptation, look!” She lifted the cover from a large casserole. “I made King Ranch Chicken. And a cheesecake."

"You win the lottery or something?"

"We're eating my content plan."

"How much did you cancel?"

"I dropped all the production feeds. I only get government and raw."

"And your kids are ok with that? Mine would dismantle the whole dorm."

"That's how I know about the Nail Shop. It's just part of our routine to stop by every day on the way home from school. Once you're in range, you can access any feed-- and the librarian can slice and package 5 gigs per person per day."

"What does that mean?"

"If there is a certain program you want and you can't stay in range, she can download it to your device. Your terminal even ships with an empty five gig folder."

Jessie pulls up her terminal's menu.

"I don't see it."

"Did your terminal come with any content?"

"Only the Bible."

"That's not even half a gig."

"Mine is."

"Let me see."

Jessie hands over her terminal.

"Huh. A five-gig Bible. Well, that's simple to fix. You can trade this version for the one I have and free up almost all of your space."

“Maybe when I get into a shelter. Six years from now.”

“Ugh, that’s so depressing. There’s got to be something you can do now. Hurry up and finish eating. We’ll ask the librarian about a large-family shelter, too. You can’t be the only woman in your situation.” 

It wasn’t that Jessie didn’t believe Carla, who had never been prone to making up stories. It was just that she could not believe she had been walking past the nail shop all this time without having any idea that it had become the new library. She had noticed, walking past, that it was quite a busy nail shop, with an unusually large number of people lingering in the vicinity, many of whom were men who looked more likely to be waiting for a tattoo than a manicure. Now she noticed that they were all wholly absorbed in their terminals, and realized that they must be using the free two-way node or watching content to which they were not subscribed.

When they reached the entrance, Carla led her all the way to the back of the shop, past the manicure, pedicure, and waxing stations, to a little partitioned cubicle in one corner.

Behind the partitions there was a large desk with a standard business terminal, along with two chairs for guests and a scattering of toys. The librarian, a plainly dressed thirty-something with fabulous nails and an “Amanda” name tag, looked up and smiled warmly as Carla introduced her and explained what they needed.

“Sure, no problem,” the librarian said, still smiling. “When do you want the agency to call you? Any particular time of day?”

“About this time? Or any weekday before 3:00.”

“All right, now I just check this box that says ‘payment issue,’ scan your chip, and it’s done.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it. Now, your other question is more complex. Your sister is correct in that you are not the only woman in this situation. There are enough, in fact, that a task force was created to address the problem.”

“Seriously?”

“Oh, sure. It’s a religious freedom issue. If your church encourages large families, then the shelter can’t deny you without risking a discrimination complaint. At the same time, the mere fact of being charged with discrimination doesn’t magically add rooms to the shelter. Usually they just double your housing voucher.”

Jessie’s mouth fell open.

“Excuse me? How can that be?”

“I assume it was more cost-effective than whatever other options the task force looked at. It’s probably a question of scale and location-- not enough cases in any one area to justify building a whole new class of facilities, but still too many to ignore. Kind of like how they use house arrest to cut prison overcrowding. Except you’re not a criminal, of course.“

“I mean, how can it be that no one knew about this?”

“The state provides services but they don’t promote them. It’s up to the citizen to discover them-- which is unlikely, when they don’t know such services exist. That's why I’m here!” she finished brightly.

“But I didn't know about you either! What else are they hiding?”

“Too much for me to name off the top of my head. Why don’t you go home and make a list of services that you think should exist, and when you come back we can look them up and see if they do.”

“Great. Like a big guessing game where the prize is survival.”

“I have no official opinion about that. But yes.”

Things happened pretty fast, once Jessie reached out. They did, indeed, double her housing voucher.  She took her four children out of school one afternoon and brought them home to a new unit, across town. For six months she scrupulously avoided their old neighborhood, never venturing further than her sister’s sector, for the Nail Shop.

It was summertime before she began to feel safe. Having the kids home from school removed one worry from her mind, as there was no longer the fear that their father would find their school and take them out as she had done. After a few days during which her instincts kept them all indoors, feasting on sliced and packaged library feeds, she began to lead small field trips into their new neighborhood.

She was looking for a librarian.  Amanda had checked the Nail Shop network. A license had been issued for the sector, but the registered location was a cement pad on a lonely corner. It appeared that whatever once stood here-- a gas station, based on the footprint-- had been razed to the ground years before.  

She could not resist loitering in the area, inspecting utility poles for bandit signs, scrutinizing passersby for terminal use. 

Today she would make her boldest foray yet, marching her kids right into the center of the pad, then spreading a blanket and setting out sandwiches.