Half on the sidewalk and half on the asphalt, the limp drool of the coldest piss the devil ever took was raising me just north of a blackout. In a second long enough for dog's lifetime, I imagine a world of forgetful people. It felt good to be alive. Then it escaped me before I had a chance to thank her. Then I found my brain, and it fit back into place, and I remembered that reality had kicked my legs out from under me.

I needed chemicals. Something hot. Something empty of flavor. First though, I had to do somebody a favor. A couple of flat-footed reptiles without an ounce of warm blood between them had put me on the concrete. I owed them now. I had to return the favor. It's just common courtesy. I wasn't raised on a farm. I wasn't raised by wolves.

They bordered on biggish—they ought to be ashamed. They spent their entire lives smiling down at people, smiling down at their devices, their timepieces of glow. They should've been getting into fights instead.

The first had weak knees. He folded like a fan. The breeze was nice. The other one ran while he could. So I chased him. I caught up with him. His family planning took a hit.

I went through his coat while he wept his family name in falsetto. I took the key back. 'Constructive criticism—learn to comma-splice,' I reminded him. It was a hell of a thing though. I couldn't remember what the key went to. I needed it. I had to take it. Take it back. Whatever lock those metal teeth might chew open, well, I didn't see the chained ghost and I'm my third eye's dim. We are the future's bitch-whipped sucker but the safest hands are still my own.

I left him his wallet and his device—14% battery—in case he feels the need to make pixels. Tumblr was a mistake.

I reacquainted the brick wall working the door back at the pub with a scratcher of Amazons and he let me back in after I jumped on one foot and recited the alphabet in Greek. Sounded like Yiddish scatting to me and I knew I'd insulted somebody's rabbi. We had a laugh at that but I felt the sting of bad taste. Cruel satisfaction has still got that smell.

Urgency and a cracked rib had accelerated me back toward sobriety. The air back in the pub gave me a contact high. I was thrown right back down. I looked through the gloom and the non-sequential green, blue, and pink music that was displacing my common sense, and I asked the fella working the bar if he knew what the key went to. When he couldn't answer, I asked the girl that had been traying drinks since the six o'clock shift started—she mentioned a name.

Septima.

I gave it a think and gave that think more structure than most cared for, quiet, lonely, and analog. Which Septima was that? The only Septima I knew—well, at least I knew where to start. It'd require a password. And I'd have to chase pavement for a stretch. It'd give me a chance to think. But the thoughts only aroused my appetite, rather than bed it down. There was a white door on a dirty building three blocks yonder that plenty chortled over but few entered because they were afraid of their mothers and fountain pens made them barf. I was going to have knock on that white door and say a certain something. Then, Septima. Better start walking.

Better grab some where while my breathing's still strong. Pixels don't age, but me? Someday, I'll have to stay put and put a bucket underneath it. Till then, I'll put my soul at hazard.

The street was overrun with psychological molasses. There aren't many sensible people left, but there was just enough rain coming down to send all those sensible people running. This evening was demanding senselessness though. Who was I to complain about these circumstances? I'd stepped in the sluice. Now I had to clean my shoes. The cold front really had blown in with perfect timing, hadn't it?

I passed yellow cabs.

I passed a silver Uber.

I passed a pink Lyft.

I passed a black cat.

I passed an orange ramen-truck that served steaming vegan food and at last I came to the white door on a dirty building. I made a fist and swung it.

A slide showed me her eyes, purple as smashed seashells. 'Password?'

'Books.'

The door opened, giving me a stairway and a frown. 'You shouldn't have come back,' she told me.

'Should? Should implies that there's a way things ought to be,' I said to myself as I passed. 'Or that fate will make cowards of us all.'

She put her hand out onto my chest to halt me. 'Where's your device?'

'It'll stay in my pocket, I wouldn't stain a lie,' I answered. I held up my phone-hand, bloody from knocking the fella's teeth sideways. 'Plus, I've a busted flipper. God willing and the creek don't rise, it'll be my only miscommunication of the evening.'

There was one more door at the top of the stairs. Then I was in. Not a bar, but it used to be. It also used to be a library, if you believe in them. Now it's a bit of both, a confusion, a cave in this city's mind where drunks beg brown bottles to listen to every pixeled word they can muster. A body was hunched over each table. Each table had a screen. Each screen was smeared with prints. The factory at the end of the mind's horizon laughed its doubtful hymn.

It's a tough thing to ever sober up after seeing and smelling this place. It's a cage, but at least you've got the leading role and nobody puts a gun to your head and demands you put a tent on that circus. Only the deranged climb out of Tartarus and try to make good back on on earth—only the arrogant and the blind stagger back into the dragon's mouth on purpose.

I shouldn't have come back? If there is fate, then I didn't have any choice, and that means blame is make-believe.

'I'm looking for an author,' I said to the one pouring drinks. He's got hair like a hat a lesbian would wear.

'A what?'

'This was a library wasn't it? Libraries had books. Books had authors. Logic suggests I stand in a fine place to find an author.'

'Fine logic. If you've eyes clear.'

'Can't make promises,' I answer. 'But I'll take complements off of a bottle-man as they're dealt. I'm looking for Septima.'

'Is that a name? A name doesn't help you. Everybody makes content. Everybody makes pixels—'

'—And everybody's got a name. Yeah, I know. But I don't want pixels. I want ink.'

Should I not have mentioned it? I'd have been better off suggesting we bow to a despot or the King of England—one of the fat ones. I sobered a little bit more. I'd lied about the odds of miscommunication, but violence was averted when I took my key and went. I departed the bottle-man who retained his rage long enough to tell me to go find the letter 'B' set in bronze, and I walked deeper into the empty halls away from the sounds of dying electricity, and pinging feeds, and and impact fonts, and capital letters, and .gifs, and the ill-formed sentences that fouled up the whole operation in the first place.

Everybody makes pixels. Everybody's got a name. And that makes us all miserable, self-absorbed drunks. Some live with that better than others—some can make it a metaphor. We love and we hate ourselves with every word we put on the screen and nobody's got the sand to put those words to the test—to put them somewhere else.

The empty halls had empty shelves and the words on the pages in the books that they once held were as sharp as can be—somewhere. Somewhere in the Archive with the other terabytes of words. Everybody makes pixels. Nobody's an author. I found the letter 'B' set in bronze on a shelf. The shelf was empty, so I felt along its sides in the half-dark and found a keyhole. It resisted, then sprung when the teeth bit down, maybe breaking, but it loosening a door that I slid open. It had books inside.

'Septima,' I said, taking one. The pages were noisy when I turned them, rusted with filth, and there were hundreds of them. 'All one story. Just keeps going doesn't it? Crazy girl didn't know when to quit.' I listened to my own words and felt admiration for this dead thing in my hand. She had made herself hard to find. I closed the book and took it with me. The bottle-man eyed me when I came back. He eyed me when I sat on the stool. He eyed me when I placed the book on the counter between us.

'Get that thing off of there,' he said.

'It doesn't bite.' I flapped the cover at him and barked and he was not amused. 'This ain't no Sam Raimi bittorrent packet.'

He poured a drink in front of me. He swallowed it. Then he poured another and slid it to me. 'I can read,' he said. 'I can write. I can put fingers to keys just as anybody can. And just as I can, doesn't nothing say that that book—dirty as it sounds in my mouth—is better than me. I've got thoughts. You can read them. Same as you can read this book.'

'But I don't want to,' I tell him. 'We all make thoughts and we all make pixels. What's it gotten us? What's it made us? It's turned us into drowned rats, sinking into every word. It's turned us into tiny, choking, miserable authors. Look at us. Look at this city. All drunks, unable to tear away from the craft or tear away from themselves. It wasn't always like that. A long time ago, not everybody put everything on the screen. Only the weird. Only the best. Only the bravest. Only the most miserable. Only they made ink.'

'They're south of the dirt now.' I nodded and drank the whole glass and examined it when it was empty. 'That thing. That book. It just keeps going and going, doesn't it? Is it it any good?'

I shrugged. 'I really have no idea. Ain't that the thickest misfortune? We'll all be reminded to remember.'

I took the book with me and left the library and walked home in the rain.