Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians

very much at all. The Lenses react to information and intelligence. So, it’s easiest to handle them when there isn’t much of either one around.”
    I paused. Then I frowned and looked at the Lens trying my best to be… well, stupid. I would like to note that this is quite a bit more difficult that it might sound. Particularly for a person like me, who can be (has this been mentioned?) rather clever.
    Not only is it against a rashional purson’s nature to try and convince himself that he is more stoopid that he thinks he is, it is quite dificult to not think about anything when one has been told not to. Only the trooly most briliant of peeple can purrtend stoopidity so sucessfuly.
    Butt eet kan bee dun.
    I closed my eyes and tried to empty my mind. Then I reached for the Lens. It started to glow. I frowned, then tapped it before it could go off. “Maybe we should just leave it,” Sing said nervously. “Before someone sees us.”
    “Too late,” Bastille said, nodding down the hallway, to where a group of robed Librarians had just appeared around a corner. They looked quite anxious, and I suspected that Bastille had been right in her earlier comment. The gunfire had been heard.
    Bastille glanced at them through her sunglasses, then flipped her knife in her hand, raising it to throw.
    “No!” I said. “Wait!”
    Dutifully, she paused. The Librarians scattered, several racing back the way they had come.
    “Why did you stop me?” Bastille asked testily.
    “Those aren’t paper monsters, Bastille,” I said. “Those are unarmed people. We can’t just kill them.”
    “We’re at war, Alcatraz. Those people are the enemy. Plus, they’re going to alert Blackburn!”
    I shrugged. “It just didn’t feel right. Besides, there were too many for you to kill them all. We can’t keep our escape secret any longer.”
    Bastille snorted but otherwise fell silent. Either way, I didn’t have any more time for acting stupid. I grabbed the Lens – it began to glow – and quickly shoved it back inside its velvet pouch. Then I reached in and tapped it off with a finger. I pulled the bag shut, then stuffed it in my pocket.
    Let’s go, then,” I said.
    Bastille nodded. Sing, however, had moved over to the pile of ripped, shredded papers that were the remnants of the Alivened. “Alcatraz,” he said. “There’s something here you should see.”
    “What?” I asked, hurrying over. As I approached, I could see that in the center of the pile, Sing had found what appeared to be a portion of the Alivened that was still… well, alive ned.
    It sat up as I arrived, causing Sing to point a pistol at it. The creature was smaller now, and it was much more human-shaped. However, it was still made of crumpled-up paper, and now that I was close, I could see that it had two beady, glasslike eyes.
    I frowned, looking at Sing. “What’s going on?”
    “I don’t know,” Sing said. “Of course, I don’t know a lot about Alivening. It’s Dark Oculary.”
    “Why?” I asked, watching the three-foot-tall paper man with suspicious eyes.
    “Bringing an inanimate thing to life this way is evil,” Bastille said. “To do it, the Oculator has to give up a bit of his own humanity and store it in Glass of Alivening. That’s what those eyes are made of. Shoot it, Sing. If you hit it in the eye, you may be able to kill it.”
    The little paper creature cocked its head, quizzically staring down the barrel of the gun.
    I looked back at Bastille. “They give up a bit of their own humanity? What does that mean?”
    “They let the glass drain them of things,” Bastille explained.
    “Things? That’s specific.”
    From the side, I could see Bastille narrow her eyes behind her sunglasses, staring at the little creature with suspicion. “Human things, Alcatraz. Things like the capacity to love, protect others, and have mercy. Each time an Oculator creates an Alivened, he makes himself a little less human. Or, at least, he makes himself a little less like the kind of human the rest of us would want to associate with.”
    Sing nodded. “Most Dark Oculators think the transformation is an advantage.” He reached down with his free hand, still keeping his gun leveled at the small Alivened. He held up a ripped bit of paper.
    “You’d think that by giving up part of his humanity,” the anthropologist said, “the Dark Oculator would create a creature that possessed good emotions. But that’s not the way it works. The process twists