Dear Friend.

Have you ever once lost something. Perhaps even something important to you. Well I’m sorry to hear that. I hope that whenever you’ve lost something you can regain it or something new and better is able to take it’s place.

You see the thing I lost, in relation to the title was a book. I consider myself a prolific reader and have many avenues to which I read. Gifts, from either friends, teachers, or family. Libraries whether public or school. Book stores, to which my local area has one, that I don’t like very much.

That being said, please support your local book stores. Mine locally owned bookstore isn’t as convenient as our lord ruling supreme Barnes & Noble. I love B&N with every fiber of my being, if I didn’t know my favorite spots so well, I could get lost there just by absorbing the ink and paper. I have had many friends work here and most still do.

Anyways small tangent aside, I get books from many places. And one particular book that interested me long ago had slipped my mind. A few years ago, after I had moved out and in with my partner, I had begun searching for this book. Surely it was one gifted to me by someone close to me. As I searched my newly arranged shelves I couldn’t find it.

So I asked my brother, a voracious reader about this book, he said he hadn’t the slightest. Dismayed I let the idea slip my head.

Until one year ago. I began my search for this book oncemore.

Let me describe this book to you, in the faintest slightly wrong terms I used to inconclusively search for it then.

“A boy living in a futuristic world where a MMORPG game is the world’s economy searches for peculiar and interesting things in the game. Upon finding a bug or a glitch he exploits it and the world comes cascading down around him. The boy’s father was also reputably high in his skill in said video game and that’s a focal point of the story.”

Now this didn’t produce me any results then and I refuse to use AI to search and find it like someone later in our story would.

Anyways, I search book stores. I know the story is YA so I look around for it. I also obtain my old school library records and comb through them. Nothing. At least I could update my Goodreads. Feeling one option left, I go to my old library.

Eyes full of hope I ask the librarian for a moment of her time. I describe my circumstances and explain that I’m looking for my old library records to search for a book I may have checked out from here years before. She frowns and bad news follows.

You see my local library doesn’t keep records of what book you checked out. For privacy sake. That being said, perhaps this is standard procedure where you are from Dear Friend. To me this was news, and bad news at that. Dismayed I thank her for her time and leave.

Ah but Dear Friend, I said early ‘find it like someone later in our story would’. I did and this librarian stopped me before I left and said that she would take a crack at it. I gave her the rough description that I had written above and she used an AI program to find it.

Now I must say, I don’t particularly like using AI for anything. I have used it in the past but now that it is becoming more rampant, I have thrown my lot in with humanity and artists and people who’s jobs shouldn’t be phased out by AI. But when I tell you that this librarian came up with exactly one result. And it was the book. Heir Apparent by Vande Velde Vivian(Awesome name by the way, not a pen name as far as I can tell).

Dear Friend, I hope all is well with you and you find whatever you may have lost. Perhaps your very own AI wielding librarian will come to your rescue after so many years of trying. With that in mind, you will be alright