Jimmy Stickman

Chapter 19: The Library

Jimmy and Squirps made it to the library.

It was quite large actually and had 3 floors filled with bookshelves among bookshelves, which appeared to form a maze. Luckily, there were not very many people there, so they could rummage through the seemingly endless supply of books without much annoying interference. And, it being a library, it was quiet. Jimmy hated sudden, loud, unecessary noises, so that factor was a huge plus.

There was a row of computers in the very front of the library labeled "directories", and Jimmy knew that they were used for finding specific books because his schools had them. "Hey Squirps, these computers are used for finding books; do you think anything interesting is going to pop up if we input 'secret places' in the searchbar?"

"I damn-well hope so."

Jimmy walked over to one of the computers and powered it up. Immediately a huge white screen with a lone searchbar in the center came up which had lettering above it reading "Type in the book title". Jimmy typed in the relevant keywords into the field and one lone book title came up titled "Secret and Legendary Places: Fact and Myth".

"Hey, that looks like it could hold the next clue. Click on it and see what it says about it." Squirps said to Jimmy.

Jimmy clicked on the title and a list of facts about the book came up such as a summary, the author, the date that it was published, its location in the library, etc. The description was moderately-lengthened, but it said a lot:

"There are many places on Earth that have been described as 'secret' or 'legendary'. Many of these come up in mythology, but sometimes they are in-fact very real, contrary to popular consensus. Dive into a huge number of these cool places to learn about their history, descriptions, and to learn whether or not they are fact or faked."

"Hmm. Interesting..." Squirps said as he tapped his fingers on the side of the desk, as he was too short to reach the flat top. "Where is the book in the library?"

"It says here that it is within the 'conspiracy' section, which in-turn is within the nonfiction area of the building." The library was huge, but at least it was labelled so that Jimmy and Squirps did not have to waste too much time trying to find the "conspiracy" section. Jimmy walked over to the desk clerk to ask where the conspiracy section was, "Excuse me, ma'am, but do you know where the 'conspiracy' section is?"

"It is on the third floor right next to the big globe. You should be able to find it quite easily." She answered.

"OK, thanks." Jimmy said as he signalled Squirps to start going up the stairs to the very top floor.

Once they were up there, they spotted the huge globe in the middle of the room, and right next to its there was a huge sign that said "Conspiracy" on it in big, white, bolded letters.

"Is there any section devoted to secrets alone?" Squirps asked. "Because that would make the book that much easier to find."

"I don't believe so, but this isn't that large of an area to begin with, so it shouldn't be too much work." The author of the book was, consequently, unknown, so they could not use the labels on the bottom of the spine (which would be in alphabetical order normally) to find it among the whole lot of other books.

They searched up and down each row and shelf for anything with the relevant title, but they found nothing.

No matter how hard they looked, they just could not seem to find the correct book. Turns out, it was secluded in one of the bottom-most corners of the shelf, and they figured that out after minutes of searching. The book was relatively thick with a bland, grey cover that only had the title written on it and nothing more, not even an author.