fandomhigh | Library [25.04]

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Library [25.04]

Karal was early, and he spent a few minutes simply looking around the library before opening it.

This was his last day as a library aide, and he was only just realising how much he'd miss it.

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"As opposed to the lamps that don't need oil, the devices that have to be plugged into the wall, and the ice box that cools itself?" he said with a knowing smile.

"Exactly! Glory, my first hour here I learned about photographs and electricity and telephones. It was overwhelming." He chuckled quietly. "And now I take almost all of it in my stride."

"Most things don't make sense," he said with a faint shrug. "These are just helpful. And they accomplish things that people can't. People usually make things to increase what can be done. Defy the past."

"Now the things like the washing machines and the tik toks like that? I can't understand why someone would make them."

Yes, they still creep them out.

"Why make a machine to do what you can do?"

He waved it off.

"I suppose that's another difference. A small one. How people think in different worlds."

Karal nodded thoughtfully. "I think I understand why, though I admit I'm never going to like computers. If you can create something like a washing machine, it allows more time for other things. The time one would have spent washing clothes by hand can be spent reading or learning or helping someone else."

"I suppose. It makes sense when you explain it. It seems... fake to me, though. For some reason. As if building with hollow blocks. Though, as I said, that's just how it seems to me.

"My many discussions with Ino have made it quite clear that no one thinks like I do."

He didn't sound bothered by it so much as interested. He couldn't change it, and he didn't see it as a bad thing as Ino'd made him think of things differently more than once. Your thinking could stagnate without something else to rub against.

"If everyone thought the same way, life would stagnate. I have some sympathy for that, at least as far as computers go." He made a face at the one on the desk. "Words should be written, on paper with pen and ink. Words are important, care should go into their crafting." He'd been trained as a scribe; there were certain prejudices he couldn't shake.

"Words shape reality to some extent. How is a matter of opinion and belief, will and perception."

He nodded.

"And I agree with you. The differences are very much an advantage. One great problem of Oz is that objections are silenced. It's what she said, though differently. It's one thing I agree with her on."

He shook his head.

"There's a dance tonight," he said with a brief grin, "and work to go to and the club later. And these are very heavy subjects, completely unsuited to a couple of young jacks out of classes for a time."

"Jacks?" he asked curiously.

"Young men," he said with a quirk of his lips. "Just a different term. You and I, I meant."

"Oh!" Karal laughed quietly. "It would be colts in Karse. But jacks works just as well."

"Colts are horses," he said with a laugh of his own. "Or Horses."

"Young male horses, and jacks are male donkeys," he said with a smile. "Our worlds aren't so different."

"Though your world thinks better of young men, if they're just horses instead of asses," he said with a brief smirk.

Karal burst out laughing. "Or less, as donkeys are considered far more sensible than horses!"

"How many Horses and how many Donkeys have you talked to?"

Though he was laughing as well.

"Two Horses, but no donkeys," he said after a moment's thought. "And a horse who became a human, and to my horse as a horse. I don't agree, anyway. Horses are far smarter than people think they are."

"Horses are practical," he said with a nod. "At least the ones I've met were, which I admit weren't too many. But you can't end up in as many stables as I slept in in the City without meeting a few."

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