DAYTIME IN THE LIBRARY
by Desirel Ng
Perspective: Ceiling Light in the Baillieu Library
Get directions: 37°47’54.9″S 144°57’34.1″E
As evening settles in like a fine gauze, it is daytime in the library. I lighten up as footsteps grow louder. Then, from the shadows, you walk in. I watch you slide your laptop out and plug it in to drink deeply from the wall. You get out your pens, set a drink on the table for yourself, and settle into your chair. I beam. I’ll have you to myself for a while.
“596,” I note – the number of bodies I have gathered today. The sun and I started a counting game ever since I was fashioned from her image and adorned upon your ceilings. She wasn’t happy that I was now the eye of a spherical god that could see people she could not. Ever since then, she and I have placed bets on how many bodies I
can gather under my gaze.
Being older and much brighter, she deemed 600 too many to amass by midnight today but I am switched on, primed for the challenge. She sinks down by the window to get a look at my progress. I feel the power pulsing in my head as she draws closer, warning her away. Then, you get up and close the blinds. My unwitting conspirator. I glow with glee. I wrap you in warm light as a reward and sharpen your words into points as night forces the sun further away. I am not unreliable like her, I coo down at you. I am your constant. Even the earth turns its back on the sun sometimes, but I offer the light of the world at your fingertips.
I watch you work silently for another two hours, marvelling at how your gaze never once leaves the table. I gather another three bodies to me during that time. “599,” I buzz excitedly. I dive into irises, slide down into nerve cells and brains where I accomplish the ultimate magic trick – converting night into day. Stay. True night has fallen like a heavy blanket over the buildings now, but I fend the shadows away, leaving only your own to settle down next to you like a deflated doll for company.
You work under my spell, forgetting sleep as I mark you in place like a beacon. Then, 11 pm announces itself on someone’s phone. You look up and the illusion breaks. One by one you slip away from me into the night where dreams and things you cannot see lay beyond my reach. I begin to panic as the clock ticks closer to midnight. I make myself bigger, fill the room and stretch beyond the windows, searching for a body. About to turn myself out for the night, I hear a sound from behind a shelf. I glow, ecstatic, and curse the dark which hid it from me. A hunched figure types frantically. I bring them into the light in all their magnificent glory – dishevelled hair, under-eye bags, flaked skin, thesis on page 15. My 600th body.
Fancy responding to the Ceiling light?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Desirel Ng researches the impact of artificial lighting on infection outcomes as part of her PhD. After pursing science despite her teachers also encouraging a career in writing or literature, she has remained passionate about these subjects. She devours fiction and film, writes book reviews, and got a small piece published in the world’s shortest six-word story collection in her spare time. She would like to challenge the misconception that art and science are disparate subjects and promote their cohesion. This idea complements this anthology which explores how humans have impacted the natural world through a creative lens.
Words from desirel
Humans have evolved alongside the sun so that our bodies sleep and wake up with natural light cycles. However, artificial lights in the modern world have altered our behaviours. By exploiting nature and creating our own daytime, we no longer rely on the sun alone and can work when it is night, leading to the destruction of our sleep. Therefore, this tongue-in-cheek story is told from the perspective of a manipulative ceiling light which aims to lure students into the library and keep them awake. Our self-destructive shift from relying on natural sunlight to artificial light is playfully reimagined as a sparring between the sun and ceiling light. They bet on the number of bodies the ceiling light can acquire in the library from which the ceiling light emerges triumphant, much to the detriment of a disheveled post-graduate human who is the final body counted at midnight.
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