Library Crimes
“Never pay for a convention.” 
That’s what Cain had told Sy one night over discord holo chat. 
“Isn’t your whole deal free information? Just find a way to sneak into conferences. They don’t actually need the money from your ticket. Only sheeple buy tickets, man.”
Sy didn’t necessarily agree with Cain, it seemed like the organizers very much needed the money from the tickets. But it’s not like he had a choice to buy one. Sy was broke. 
And he was also burning with curiosity. 
Sy was an aspiring coder and DC 72 would be his first conference ever. He loved tinkering and taking things apart, but more than anything he loved to consume the past. Black and white news reels, old films, books, science journals: all of it enthralled him. It’s why he started coding in the first place. 
The local library in his hometown only allowed residents to take out two “assets” for two weeks at a time with their own personal device. Even if you returned an “asset” - like a digital book or movie - you couldn’t take another one out until the two weeks were up because of “inventory issues.” 
To Sy, it felt like starving. So he figured out how to break into the library hub at 11 years old. He had spent months obsessing over how to break in and he had felt the sweetest rush when he finally did. There wasn’t anything quite euphoric like watching the download bar complete. 
At the time he had been grateful that libraries were all digital now. He had imagined trying to break into a physical building and knew his shy 11-year old self would never have had the guts. But stealing through his computer screen? That he could do. Later, he would come across footage of old libraries and museums, and would feel a pang of sadness that he hadn’t been born in an era to see them. Physical locations of libraries had shuttered a decade before he was born.
At age 17 Sy had added many treasures to his collection by hacking into other digital libraries and archives. He even managed to get his hands on several university library repositories. He was insatiable but getting fed. He was happy. Something started to bother him, though. At first it felt like an itch, but soon it grew into an unsettling sensation in his chest. It was weeks before he realized the sensation was guilt. Here he was able to enjoy all this content - this magical library he had built for himself. But all he could think about was there was another 11 year old kid out there who was just as information hungry as he had been. 
So when he was 19, Sy decided to share his precious hoard. It took a year of prep, not only to build and organize the massive architecture of his library but to strategize around security. Sy knew from his time spent stealing that if he was going to share his treasures with the public, he would need to be safe. He needed to be careful. When he was finished, he called the site HoW, after the ancient grand libaray of Baghdad, Bayt al-Hikmah, also known as the House of Wisdom. 
Libraries may have been for the people at one point, but corporate sponsorship over time had turned them into conglomerates that controlled content as “assets” - only valuable for their monetary and copyright value. These same companies would hire librarians to track down anyone who replicated or “stole” the content. Punishment was harsh for commiting a library crime. When he opened the virtual doors of his illicit and free library, Sy had mostly become a ghost online. 
It was essential that Sy stayed underground the best he could. He didn’t mind. Most of his social life had ended up being a tiny online network anyway. He stayed in touch with a handful of friends through discord holos and open source encrypted messenger apps on burner phones. But he made sure nothing ever connected his social online presence to his library. Sy even avoided coding jobs to stay under the radar, instead working as a nondescript coffee barista during the day. It was a small sacrifice when you had been regularly breaking federal law since you were 11 years old. 
Sy had rules he followed to stay safe, such as ‘never talk to anyone irl about HoW.’ These rules kept him safe for the past few years. But here he was, at age 23, on the precipice of breaking them because of DC 72 in Las Vegas. One of the panels in particular — on legal aid strategy for library crimes — was just too enticing. He told himself he had to go in person because this panel in particular would not be recorded or reproduced in any capacity and information about the panelists was anonymous. But maybe there was a small part of Sy that was also just tired of isolating himself from the rest of the community. 
So when his longtime online friend Meg offered to let him crash on the couch of her work-paid hotel suite, he took the opportunity. All he had to do was to get inside the Con himself. He asked Meg to give him a ride to the con building but to go in without him. After much protest, she had finally relented when he said, “please just trust me to do this my own way.”
He had been adamant about trying to get in on his own for some stubborn reason, but as he watched Meg walk into the sleek capsule doors to enter the con, he felt a little anxious. Here he was, standing in front of a convention center in Las Vegas with a backpack full of gear, Sy tried to embody Cain’s advice for sneaking in. “Take some time to case the joint casually, but do it discreetly. Stay boring, unsuspicious. Social engineer your way in if you have to. In the end, don’t actually trust anybody,” Cain had said.
“Discreetly Observe. Social engineer. Don’t be suspicious. Don’t trust anyone.” Sy repeated these phrases in his head over and over again. He saw an alley, next to the massive convention center building and took a quick glance to see if there were any cameras. All he saw was a dumpster and some boxes and traffic cones strewn about. He saw that if he walked to the other end of the alleyway, he could take a look at the back of the building. So he walked on through muttering to himself, “Discreetly Observe. Social engineer. Don’t be suspicious—”
Sy heard the dumpster burp. 
“H-hello?”
Sy could hear cans rustling and bottles clanking as debris started moving in the large bin, a tall skinny man emerged. 
“Yerrr not Liza.” he said, squinting his eyes as if Sy was the one who had just popped out of the dumpster. “Hmmmm but you seeem alrighty. Annnnd I’m never wrong about these things.” 

The man started to clamber through trash, pulling himself out of the bin. Sy would have helped if he hadn’t been so stunned. He got a better look at the dumpster-stranger once he was out. The tall gangly man looked like he had been in a fight, wobbly and unfocused, as though he was drunk or drugged. Around his neck hung a glitering DC72 badge. Sy idly considered snatchiningthe badge and running. 
The man pushed over a stray traffic cone on the pavement and slurred: “Fuck the Poe-leese. Are you the police?”
Startled, Sy answred, “No. No police here.” 
“Good. I believe innn youuus.”

The man pulled out an opened pocket knife.
Sy immediately put his hands up, “Whoah whoah whoah! Let’s talk about this– you don’t want to hurt anyone!” But the man paid no mind to Sy and ripped a hole in his own pants leg with the knife, Sy watched in confusion as the man prodded around the skin of his upper thigh and then suddenly sliced.
Suddenly, a flash of pink hair and black clothes ran into the alley and pushed past a surprised Sy. 
“IAN STOP, what are you doing?” shouted a short, pink-haired woman.
“It’s time! It needs to go somewhere else now!” said the dumpster man. 
“Are you sure?”
The man looked the woman in the eyes, “They know!” 
Even Sy could tell that despite how unhinged this man appeared to be, there was weight to whatever he was saying. The woman hesitated for a moment. Sy could see her doing mental calculations of the situation. She noticed him staring.
“Who are you?” She asked turning to Sy. There was a catlike quality to her brown eyes.
“Not police. Not Librarian.” The tall man said. “He’s already seen a lot.”
The man swayed, then fell directly on his butt.
He motioned to the woman to bend down to his level. She rolled her eyes and complied.

Sy heard the man whisper loudly in her ear, “I think he was going to steal my badge.”
Sy became flustered and he could feel heat rush into his face. “No! I was—“
The woman held her hand up to silence him.
“I don’t know who you are or what you’re doing here. But you’re going to stay right where you are. If you move before I get this sorted out, so help me — I’ll taze you.”
Sy looked at her balled up fists and for the first time he noticed a pink taser clenched in her left hand. He wasn’t scared. Not entirely. He could tell that this person wouldn’t hurt him without reason, but could also tell that something larger than himself was afoot.
Sy put his hands up and slowly sat on the ground cross legged. “I’ll stay put,” he said calmly. The woman seemed satisfied with Sy’s demeanor and slowly sat on the ground with the tall man she called Ian. She put the taser on the ground but made a show of how easy it would be for her to grab it if needed. After a moment of glaring at Sy, she then grabbed the man’s face inbetween her two hands.
“Ian. Look at me. What happened?”
“Listen, there’s this secret network of people all named Ian,” he started in a slurred voice, “they’re coming for me. There can only be one Ian!”
The woman suddenly slapped the tall man right across the face.
“He’s absolutely off the rails,” she muttered to herself. 
“Ow,” said Ian.
“Better?” asked the woman.
“A little Better.” 
The woman pulled out a kit of some sort and motioned for Ian to let her look at his leg. She unwrapped a medical-looking set of tools from the kit and the plastic packaging made a satisfying tearing noise that implied its contents had been carefully sealed air-tight. 
“Seriously, what were you thinking by using a pocket knife? This looks like it’s from the dumpster!”
“It is!” Ian said cheerfully.
“What happened to your extraction kit? You are supposed to have it on you at all times.”
Ian thought for a second and with great mental exertion slowly explained, “..Was left in my bag.. I ran to isolate myself as soon as I felt the drugs...lit up the tracker on me for you… I think my drink was spiked.”
“Drats. Thank god you had the sense to ping me with your tracker. Alright, let’s finish getting it out.”
Sy watched with curiosity as the woman finished ripping away at Ian’s pants leg. She then cleaned the area with an alcohol pad, pulled out a surgical scalpel from the kit and cut further into the flesh of his upper thigh. Ian winced and Sy noticed that, although he wasn’t making much of a fuss, Ian was clenching his knuckles so tightly that they were turning white.
When she was done making the cut, the woman used long tweezers to pull something small out of the incision. It almost looked like a tiny black square. She plopped it into a small, clear plastic bag and quickly pocketed it before grabbing a needle and thread to stitch up the wound. 
“We need to get rid of this as soon as possible,” the woman said to herself as she stiched. 
“What did you just pull out of his leg?” Sy asked. 
“Illegal Information!” Ian giggled.
“IAN!” Liza gave Ian a warning look. 
“I like information…” Sy said quietly.
The woman looked at him, as if she was trying to size him up in a different way than she had done before. She studied him for a long moment before she asked: “What’s your name?”
“Sy. And yours?”
“Liza. So what kind of information do you like, Sy?” 
This was a critical moment for Sy. If he wanted to be safe, if he didn’t want to take the risk, he shouldn’t share the truth about his library. He’d lie or deflect or just make a run for it while her guard was somewhat down. He wanted to protect himself. But what if they were all on the same team? She could have tazed him, rendered him unconscious so he wouldn’t have witnessed anything that just happened – but she chose not to. And his curiosity was burning. Curiosity had brought him his skills and his library. It also quieted his fear.
“I run HoW.” Sy blurted. “That’s the kind of information I like.” 
For a fleeting moment Sy wished he could take it back. It was terrifying being honest. Exposing his work to strangers. But how else was he going to connect? He was already stuck here. 
“No way.” Liza said with a stunned expression on her face. 
Ian whistled. “Definitely not cop. Definitely not librarian,” he slurred.
“Do you know it?” Sy knew from the limited traffic he collected on HoW visitors that it was accessed quite frequently by many people, but the internet was a big place and it only just occurred to him he had no real idea how well known HoW was or even if it was popular at all. 
“Know it? It’s one of the case studies we’re going to be talking about on our panel about legal aid for library crimes.”
“That panel is why I’m here. I was hoping to learn something… or get help.”
For the first time, both Liza and Sy smiled at each other. 
Liza ran a hand through her pink hair. “Of all the people we could have run into…” she said almost wonderingly. “I’ll admit, it almost feels like a trap.”
“I can prove it—” Sy started.
At that moment two other people ran into the alley. Sy immediately jumped up to his feet. Did he just make a mistake? Was he about to be dragged away by undercover librarians? Would he be thrown away to prison in a foreign nation, convicted of breaking library law? No longer allowed to consume content?
“Don’t worry I know them!” Liza said to Sy as she stood up. He noticed she put the taser away. 
“We got here as fast as we could,” one of them said as the other rushed over to Ian’s side and started pulling out needles and an IV from what looked like a medical bag she had on her.
“Sy, this is Xan and Stacey. I sent out a distress message to them before I arrived. You can relax, they’re friends,” Liza said. Sy hadn’t even noticed his body was tensed up, like he was about to sprint out of the alley. 
Liza then turned to Xan and Stacey, “This is Sy, he’s okay. He runs HoW.” The person called Xan looked Sy up and down with distrust, “If you say so.”

Xan then turned their attention to Liza, “On the way over I managed to confirm through security footage someone spiked Ian’s drink. I was able to identify them as a librarian. I’m convinced they’re still on the convention floor.”
Stacey looked over her shoulder as she tended to a now babbling Ian and said, “I’m running a rapid drug test now, but I can tell you just by looking at him we’re lucky he wasn’t kidnapped. It’s a wonder he managed to get away and hide. Maybe it’s all the drugs he does. It’s wild he’s one of the leading legal experts in his field.” 
“Fuuuuck the poooolueeeshee!” said Ian. 
Liza sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose in frustration. “This is bad. Drugging one of us was an aggressive move. It’s not safe for any of us to be carrying this now, even surgically implanted. We need to get rid of it.” 
Both Stacey and Xan looked alarmed. 
Xan was the first to speak: “You understand how much rare historical content we would lose? How hard it was to steal this in the first place?” 
“There’s nothing on that chip that will strategically help us survive another day. The risk has officially outweighed the pros. We can’t have the community’s leading legal experts on fighting library crime law also locked up for committing library crime. Not right now, anyway.” 
Sy softly said, “It sounds like you just need to get rid of the evidence that you took this information. From what I can tell, you don’t need that little black square if all the content is uploaded online in a place like a digital library…”
Liza understood immediately. “Can you do it from here?”
“I think so.” Sy sat down again and pulled out a laptop and a portable router out of his backpack. 
“Whoah, hold on a second” Xan stepped in. “Liza, can we really trust this person? You just met him and you want to hand over all this information over? Information Ian just got drugged over? Information he had to hide within his literal body?”
Liza stared wordlessly at Sy for a moment. She pulled out the bag and an alcohol wipe and started cleaning blood off the square. “I do. He was terrified to tell me who he was. I don’t know what made him do it, but I’m glad he did.” She then started peeling away a black plastic-like coating to reveal a little SD card and handed it to Sy, “I’m reciprocaiting the trust.”

“Retro.” said Sy as he gingerly took the card, “But I have the parts to make this work.” He didn’t know how to verbally express how touched he was by Liza trusting him, but he was going to do his best to show her she made the right choice. 

Xan gave Liza a worried look. She raised an eyebrow back at them, “If you’re that concerned, you can watch the upload go live. I know you check HoW every day on your burner phone.” Xan begrunfenly agreed and pulled out a phone from their pocket.
Sy set up a secure line to the archive and got to work. The contents appeared to be a media collection called ‘criterion.’ He could tell this was going to be a very special addition to HoW. Sy decided he would upload now and would add metadata later. The contents getting online was more important than his sorting system. He held his breath until the secure upload was confirmed and he checked that the content was accessible for archive users. 
Xan grinned. “It’s up. The kid was telling the truth.”
Liza spun around to Sy, “Never doubted you for a second.”

“Yeah you did,” Sy laughed as he unplugged the chip out of the unit and handed it over to Liza, “Remember the taser?”
“Well, maybe I was a little suspicious at the start,” she smiled.
Liza put on a pair of gloves and pulled out what looked like a small glass jar out of her bag. She tossed the chip in and then added a vial of something coroseive along with a mystery powder before screwing the lid on tight and shaking. Sy could see a chemical reaction taking place that completely dissolved the chip into nothing, and he was now certain that the jar was made of a material sturdier than glass. Once satisfied that the chip was destroyed, Liza poured in a second vial and, to Sy’s surprise, the liquid turned into sand. Liza tossed the jar right into the dumpster before noticing his curiosity.
“Don’t want to cause any chemical accidents by tossing reactive coroshive right into the trash,” she explained as she pulled off her gloves and pocketed them, “Plus, the jar of non toxic sand adds to the confusion if anyone found it.” 
Sy had questions, but they were interrupted by an exclamation from Stacey. “What the actual fuck?” she said while looking between the digital tablet in her hands and at Ian in horror.

“Is he going to be okay?” Xan asked. Sy could hear something hitch in their voice.
“He’s going to be fine but the rapid test results are back in and the amount of GHB that’s been slipped into his system should have knocked him out instantly!” 
Everyone else turned to stare at Ian, too, clearly wondering how he was somewhat conscious with that amount of sedative in his system.
“I know I was joking before, but I actually think it’s because of all the drugs he does,” Stacey said in wonder.
Xan facepalmed and groaned. Liza just sighed as though she was exhausted. 
Ian just shrugged and burped. “Not my first rodeo, comrades. Also, I need a drink. Who wants a drink? Yeah, let’s go get a drink.”
“Nobody give him a drink,” ordered Stacey. 
“But I could use one,” said Liza. “And we should bring Ian inside the con at least. We shouldn’t split up until we learn more about what’s going on, but thanks to Sy we at least don’t have any evidence on us while an undercover librarian is running around.”
Xan went over to help Ian to his feet. “Alright, upsey daisy.” They hoisted the tall man up to help him walk. 
“I’m sorry I didn’t believe you.” Xan said to Sy as they tried to help Ian keep balance.  “I’m actually a big fan of your work. I’m glad you’re coming back to the con with us.”
“Coming with you?” asked Sy.
“Yes, ofcourse!” said Stacey.

“It’s a real party now!” slurred Ian.
“Is there a reason you wouldn’t?” asked Liza. 
“I want to come with you, it’s just that I don’t have a pass.” He glanced at the one glittering around Ian’s neck. Sy’s embarrassment was palpable. 
For a moment, Liza looked at him bewildered and then put a hand on his shoulder. “Sy, after what you did today, we’ll make sure you never have to pay for a convention ticket ever again.”