Study desks and chairs and tables all stood near the south-facing windows. Sunlight was the best light by which to work here, and the library shut down after dark. The desks and the tables dated back to the Old Time. A few of the chairs-the plastic ones with metal legs-did, too. Most of those had cracked or worn out since, though. That didn't bother Liz. The wooden ones the Westsiders had made since were more comfortable anyhow.

When Liz did go back into the stacks, the musty smell of old paper filled her nostrils. It was stronger here than it would have been in the home timeline. No climate control here, so the paper aged faster. A lot of books on the top floor were damaged beyond repair because the roof leaked. Down here, that wasn't a worry, anyhow.

She pulled out a bound volume of Newsweek magazines that ran from January to March of 1967. The war had started-and ended-in the summer. Nobody at the URL had bound the issues for April to June. Or, if somebody had, the volume had disappeared before Crosstime Traffic discovered this blighted alternate.

Liz wanted those, or the equivalent from Time or Life or Look or U.S. News amp; World Report. She was stuck with what she had, though. She carried the bound volume back to a table. She was the only one there, so she could open the volume-carefully-and start scanning pages with a handheld scanner that sucked up data the way a vacuum cleaner sucked up dust.

If a local did see her doing that, he wouldn't understand it. Neither this alternate nor the home timeline had known how to make handheld scanners in 1967. Transistor radios were still pretty new. She saw an ad for one. It was bigger than an iPod, and couldn't do one percent as much. It didn't even have an FM band, only AM. And the ad said it was a technological breakthrough! The scary thing was, maybe the ad was right.

The Vietnam War dominated the news.