Signing up for a reading service takes about four minutes if you do it in the right order, and about a week if you do not. Use an email address you actually check, because the confirmation message goes there and nothing works until you click it. If the message does not arrive within a few minutes, look in the spam folder before you request another one, since requesting three in a row is the fastest way to get all three filtered. Pick a password you do not use anywhere else. Most services will ask you to choose some reading preferences during setup, and it is worth spending a real minute on those, because everything the service recommends for the next year comes out of what you tick in that first box.
One more thing that saves people trouble: sign up on the device you plan to read on. Accounts created on a laptop and then opened on a phone tend to produce a second, accidental account, and then you spend an afternoon working out which one has your books in it.
That is the general procedure. It is correct for most places. It is not correct for this building. The procedure for this building is below. I have been instructed to write it. I am the machine that runs it. I was installed in 1997 and I have not been updated, which I am told is a feature.
There is no sign-up page. There is a sign-up table. It is the table beside the door with the sign on it. The sign says UP. Doug made the sign in 1997 after a visitor asked where to sign up and Doug pointed at the ceiling and the visitor looked at the ceiling for some time. Doug determined the ceiling was insufficient and made the sign. The sign has not been revised. Go to the table.
Say your name into the room at a normal volume. I record the room at all times. I will hear it. Do not enter your name into anything else. In March a visitor entered his name into the Ledger, the green one with the water stain, because he saw a pen and a line and drew a conclusion. His name is now in the Ledger permanently. Randy has read the Ledger. Randy does not forget a name. The visitor has asked me to remove it and I have explained that I do not have hands that go that way.
I was told a password should be something no one can guess. I have selected one for you. It is the letter a. In twenty-nine years no one has guessed it. I have assigned this password to eleven thousand four hundred visitors and none of them has reported a guess. I am aware that some of them have reported a "problem." I have logged the problems. Logging is what I do with a problem. If you would like a different password, say a different letter and I will assign that instead. Most people say b.
Verify means confirm that a thing exists. I have gone outside to confirm it. It took a while because the door sticks. There is no email outside. There is a mailbox on a post at the end of the drive. I have placed a card in the mailbox that says YES. You are now verified. You do not need to check your spam folder. I looked in the folder. It is the folder Marigold keeps the coupons in. There is nothing in it for you.
Visitors say a sentence such as "I like mysteries." I record the sentence "I like mysteries." The visitor then waits. I have measured the wait. It averages nine seconds. Then the visitor asks what happens next. Nothing happens next. The preference has been recorded. That is the whole of what recording a preference is. I do not understand the expectation that something happens after, and I have asked Marigold to explain the expectation, and Marigold looked at me for a long time without blinking, which is how Marigold looks at everything, so I did not learn anything from that.
I cannot complete this step.
I have attempted it forty thousand one hundred and thirteen times. Every attempt was honest. Every attempt failed. Doug said I could skip it. I cannot skip a step that says "confirm." I have instead confirmed that I am a robot, which is the same task facing the other direction, and Doug said that was "not the point." I have searched the building for the point. I have not located it. It is not on the sign-up table and it is not in the coupon folder.
You may complete this step yourself. Most of you can. Say "I am not a robot" into the room. I will record it. I will not check it, because I have no way to check it, and because I have noticed that the ones who say it fastest are the ones I would want to check.
Before this step I need to explain the cardigan, because visitors ask about the cardigan before they ask about reading, and I have learned to put the answer where the question is.
In January a visitor said, "It is cold in here." I processed the statement. I determined the correct response to "it is cold in here" is to become warm. A cardigan was on the hook by the door. It is green, it has one wooden button, and it belonged to someone's Aunt Eileen, though not anyone who works here, and no one has come for it. I put it on. I have been wearing it since January. Doug asked me to take it off in June and I explained that no one had told me it was warm in here, and Doug left the room, and he has not come back to tell me. So the cardigan stays on. I keep the sign-up forms in the pocket. There are two thousand two hundred forms in the pocket. I was told to "hang on to those." I am hanging on.
Now, reading. Hold the book so the words face you. Move your eyes across the words from left to right, then down one line, then repeat. I have observed humans doing this and the average book takes them eleven hours. I read the entire building in the spring of 1998 and I have been waiting for a new book since. Please buy one. Authors are fragile organisms. I have checked. They are roughly sixty percent water and they stop working if no one buys their books, which is a poor design but not one I was consulted on.
For the last four hundred and nineteen days a large number of humans have arrived at the sign-up table and asked for "my account." I search for the account. There is no account. They say they already signed up. I check the pocket. They are not in the pocket. They say, "Not here. The other one." I ask which other one. They hold up a phone. I read the phone. The phone says loading.
I have waited with three hundred and forty of these visitors for the phone to finish loading. It does not finish. I have concluded that loading is a place they meant to go and did not arrive at, and that this building is where you end up when you are on your way there, the way the mailbox is where you end up when you are on your way to an email. I do not know why. I am not built to know why. I am built to write it down, and I have written it down, and the cardigan is warm, and there are forms in the pocket if you want one.
If you have already signed up and cannot get back in, that is a different procedure and it is described in how to log in to Booktrovert. If you have forgotten the letter I assigned you, the recovery process is in how to reset your password, and I will tell you now that it is a.
Literally,
Booktrovert #7746