It was after hours, the doors locked, library was quiet, the lights turned off, all except for a few dim nightlights, the staff had finished for the day and had gone home.

Then someone, or something, spoke.

“I think it’s an outrage,” said a voice that came from the stuffed chair over by the window at the back of the library speaking to anyone or anything who might listen.

“What? What are you saying is an outrage?” something questioned. Sounded a little like it had a woody tone, perhaps a bookcase.

“Haven’t you heard? Where have you been anyhow? I’m talking about that proposal of our own City Council to have King County Library System annex this entire library, along with all of us in it,” answered the stuffed chair.

“Yeah, and we never even got to vote on it” piped up several of the books from the biography shelves.     “What has King County ever done for Enumclaw?”

“Remember the fair and how they skillfully managed that event right into the ground!” growled a book from the shelf of the gardening book section.

“And what about the golf course, what was that all about?” sneered a long table.

“And where’s worse is that I’ve heard that those KCLS operators have plans to get rid of a lot of us here; furniture, shelves, tables, books, computers, the whole shebang and replace us with things more suitable to their ideas, not the ideas of our own library patrons in Enumclaw.”

“Yeah, seems like they don’t like our taste here in Enumclaw, they don’t think our chairs and tables are of a style that fits the rest of KCLS,” said one of the tables in the children’s section. “They have plans to change and dispose of a lot of us.”

Just then a new voice was heard.

“This is one of the computers speaking and you should listen up because it is well known us computers are smarter than anything else in the entire library. So did you also hear that this new Reich has said that they want to do away with us existing computers and the new software that at great cost was recently installed in us.”

“Oh! Listen to the hard drive squeal, would you,” said another voice over by the office, and it continued.

“Well, I think books are better than you smart aleck computers anyway. A reader can close up a book and a month or year later go back to that page. But still I’m not for getting rid of you guys, you do have a useful function. I’m not too fond of that software anyway, the programmers of it seemed lazy to me, in a hurry to get it up and running it doesn’t list the name of the author anymore for the titles on the checkout slips like it used to do. Some folks have complained, you know.”

“But,” said a book from one of the novel section, its pages flapping loudly wanting to be heard, “let’s put the blame where it belongs, on some members of our own City Council.”

‘’Yeah, seems they tried to slip this by and get it done without much publicity until watchful eyes objected, wanting more information as to reasons.”

Then the video shelf burst into tears and sobbed, “Is this what we have become to the folks we have served so faithfully … just outdated junk too old to cut the horseradish?”

Then it seemed as if everything began talking at once in outrage. Pages flapped, chairs scraped, chair and table legs thumped on the floor. Computer screens came to life, all objects in the library making their feelings known, if there had been anyone to hear.

S. J. Billeejon

Enumclaw