Museum
From PatchworkWiki
The Museum is supposed to hold everything, with new displays coming in to be added constantly. Interest seems to have dwindled. Worse, displays and entire wings seem to have vanished. At the very least the exits seem to be closer together.
Children born and schooled in the Museum usually hope to graduate to Runner (message-carriers who learn the layout of the entire Museum if they know what is good for them), Guide (leading parties of Visitors through the various Exhibits and handing them off to Guides in other wings), Curator, and Curator General. Others remain in the basement.
The basement, open only to employees of the Museum, is divided into three sections. The boiler room is the darkest and most mysterious. Those who do not become Runners and wind up here fulfill functions that have even Curators in awe. The rest of the basement is divided into the commisary and the infirmary, the latter including the nursery and school and the former containing not one chair with four even legs.
Everyone's footsteps echo everywhere except the basement, of course. A pervasive light comes from no visible source. Only the occasional closet or a gallery designed to show off the luminous qualities of an object are dark.
No smoking in the exhibits, please, and follow your Guide.
Contents |
Geography
The outside walls extend right to the mist or just short of it. The main entrance is on the east side. The other sides have doors leading into behind-the-scenes areas. The north and south sides each have two doors, each of which is about 250 feet from the corner. In addition to the two small doors the west side has a large cargo door in the middle.
Just inside the front door is the Grand Foyer. To the right, upon entering, is the cloakroom.
Grand Foyer
Oak cabinets with glass doors line the walls. In them are books, children's toys, party hats and baskets. Swords and spears share cabinets with three-hole punches and staplers; feathers from assorted birds are displayed near a small collection of mobile telephones; batteries and musical instruments and mugs and glasses sit surrounded by delicate figurines and small paintings and drawings. Balconies from the next two floors up are hung with larger paintings and bas-relief murals and friezes acquired during the grand, flamboyant temple-robbing days of archaeology. Four small islands of large displays divide the room so that it can be imagined as nine rectangular sections with an island where four sections meet. These islands include Kenmore washing machines beside washtubs with washboards, a wicker chariot, a billiards table, and the engines from an F-16 and a Nieuport 17. Above the engines, suspended by cables from the ceiling three floors above, are the aircraft belonging to those engines.
On top of or beside each object is a card explaining briefly what it is and where more like it can be found.
Close to the front, by the door, is a kiosk. Painted on one of the front panels of the kiosk, in a green that just fails to look like anyone ought to use it for anything but which seems to be used for signs everywhere, is a short list:
Admission ~ Adults and Children 12 and over ~ 10¢ Students and Children under 12 ~ 5¢ School Groups ~ 3¢/student Teachers and Babes in Arms ~ no charge
In the middle of the Grand Foyer is a large tub, about four feet high and six across, in which is growing an ash tree it seems to be having some trouble containing. A closer inspection shows that the twists of one of the roots resembles a stylized tree.
The Cloakroom
A large room. The north and east walls are plaster over oak wainscotting. The south and west walls are plate glass over oak wainscotting. Oak pews line the north and east walls and most of the middle is full of hat stands. Four pedestal ashtrays full of sand stand near the door and all but the southwest corners.
Quotations
Understanding arrived all at once, as if in a dream. This was not a real story; this was some kind of literary fantasy, a piece of intellectual trickery intended to amuse the decadent and feeble minded. A fable about a museum of infinite extent, within which all knowledge was contained, whether real or illusory. A place where you could find the answer to any question... as long as you were willing to search forever.
Doomshadow sprang to his feet. His voice was harsh with fury and contempt.
"Ivor! We are trapped in a work of... poetic realism!"
