by MAJUMDER SAKRASHUMINDERATHER, Alternate Reality News Service Education Writer
Olivia D'Arcyvillia is everybody's stereotypical nightmare of a librarian. She is old. She is crotchety. She is fanatically driven to enforce the rules, even when they don't make any sense. Especially when they don't make any sense. Her voice is like nails running down a glass chalkboard - and, that's when she's in a good mood.
In short, Olivia D'Arcyvillia is the wicked Witch of the West, except without Margaret Hamilton's cackle or sense of rhythm.
Not, in shorter, the sort of person to whom you want to give control of a Predator drone.
"We don't like to think of the Predator as a 'weapon,'" stated North York Board of Education Trustee Marcello Singh-Asatsoong. "We prefer to think of it as a rules enforcement tool. A really, really powerful rules enforcement tool."
When the United States went bankrupt, it held the mother of all international garage sales in order to pay off its debts. India bought the Lincoln Monument, the Brooklyn Bridge (and they've got the papers to prove it!) and the CIA for less than the down payment on a mid-sized sedan (the sort that Detroit used to make). China took ownership of Hollywood's Walk of Fame and the Seventh Fleet for a song. (Literally. The song, "Make Way for the Glorious People's Triumph Over The Forces of Imperialist Aggression" was a forgotten relic of the Mao era.) Smaller governments got the leftovers.
"I would hardly call Predator drones leftovers," commented historian Hidecko Obviousness. "They may not be the Seventh Fleet, but, in the hands of a municipal employee, they can do considerable damage to reputations, if not property."
Is municipal employee Olivia D'Arcyvillia, who works at the Pierre Elliot Trudeau Library and Chuck E. Cheese in the Toronto suburb, using the Predator drone for purposes of damage, reputations, property or otherwise? "Mostly, it's used to collect fines on overdue library books," admitted Trustee Singh-Asatsoong.
To some, that seems excessive. "Excessive? The book bitch blew up my garage!" complained avid reader and cello sex fetishist Andre Beluga. "I had planned on renewing War and Peace - it's a long book you know - but, then I had a run-in with a walrus on Bloor Street and had to spend a week in Intensive Care. When I got home, my garage had been destroyed and there were 27 messages on my answering machine demanding the return of the book. Excessive doesn't even begin to describe it!"
"Excessive?" Trustee Singh-Asatsoong chuckled. "Maybe. But, you know, since the library got the Predator drone, late book returns have dropped 87 per cent!"
Excessive or not, ownership of the weap - sorry, rules enforcement tool is causing other problems. Rumours have been circulating in the last week that the Warren Allmand Library and Salad Bar ("Come for all you can eat Tuesdays, stay for a reading of Neil Gaiman's latest children's novel!") is seeking surface-to-air missiles in the Kensington Black Market as a counterweight to Trudeau Library's Predator drone. Representatives of the Allmand Library would neither confirm nor deny the rumours, but patrons have noticed that even though 40% of the library's budget is devoted to "book repairs and restoration," the quality of books in the library seems to be deteriorating.
"I am aware of the rumours," Trustee Singh-Asatsoong gravely stated. (He answered this question at the funeral of his pet python, Mister Giggles.) "And, I am monitoring the situation. However, as long as the Allmand Library manages to maintain service and stay within its budget, there's really not much the Board of Trustees can do."
It is hard to see, however, how an arms race between libraries would benefit patrons. "Oh, I wouldn't call it an arms race," Trustee Singh-Asatsoong demurred. "More of an arms crawl, if anything. An arms slow motion replay. An arms snail's pace. An arms watching paint dr -"
Whatever the speed, surely a library arms…competition would be an unprecedented -
"Actually, no," Hidecko Obviousness interjected. "In 1860, Philadelphia librarian Rupert Lovejoint bought a gun to work in response to reports that librarian Antonin Scapula had begun stockpiling knives. The library arms race may have escalated to deadly proportions, had not the Civil War intervened."
Okay, so, not unprecedented. Still -
"Then, there was the great library poisons debacle of Alexandria," Hidecko Obviousness droned on.
Whatever!