"Hi there...Let me ask you a question...How would you find a needle in a haystack?" The first-grader pauses, pensive, tugging on the green yarn arou… - Robin Sloan

"It was tall, made of pale blue light, a creature with long arms and long legs and the shadow of a smile, and above it all, eyes that shone bluer still than its body. "What do you seek in this place?" the shade asked plainly."

Is this a book club? How do they join? Do they ever pay? These are the things I ask myself when I sit here alone, after Tyndall or Lapin or Fedorov has left. Tyndall is probably the weirdest, but they’re all pretty weird: all graying, single-minded, seemingly imported from some other time or place. There are no iPhones. There’s no mention of current events or pop culture or anything, really, other than the books. I definitely think of them as a club, though I have no evidence that they know one another. Each comes in alone and never says a word about anything other than the object of his or her current, frantic fascination.

I told them I didn't have time for this bullshit, and if either of them wanted to ask a lady out, he could do it by text message like a normal person.