Not the cops. Cops I could spot from a mile. No, it was whoever was behind the frame-up that gave me a feeling like a hangover. Afternoon was slinking off the streets when my feet took me off the pavement and into the dim corridors of the Columbus branch of the NYC Public Library. It was a building of lofty, dark ceilings and wide, polished balustrades. Chatter pocked with occasional laughter floated into the stairwell to mingle in its cool air. It was impossible to pinpoint separate sound sources―they were a kind of collected voice, like the collected voice of the library itself set down in print. I followed the signs to the broadsheet archive, a monolithic cabinet set far back on the third floor. I’m not usually one for platitudes. I say run with scissors. But one ghosted smugly into my brain as I covered the distance to the archive: ‘Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.’ The broadsheet archive was an egg that got left out of the big basket: the digital basket. The basket that overnight effectively disappeared from the panoply of human accomplishments, taking with it everything from the collected mind-farts of overwrought teenagers to the substance of entire multi-national corporations.
