I rushed to the end of the stack, looking about with a sense of panic and excitement. What if I couldn't find them? What if I somehow missed them while I was looking for them?

I took a moment to flip my hat to the hidden side, reasoning that if they'd written the message they would be able to see glyphs and thus me. Which, as far as signals that I was who they were looking for, seemed pretty good. Once I had my white hat on, I moved out amongst the research tables, looking for whoever had the book.

There was probably a half dozen people here scattered about. I headed for the one I thought was most likely, this old grizzled looking man. He had that deeply tanned, creased sort of skin that suggested a lot of time outside with a texture like leather. His beard had turned white and stuck out from his chin in a short, spiky bush and he was wearing one of those tan cowboy looking hats with the upturned sides.

As a fellow indoor hat wearer, he seemed slightly suspicious. But when I got up beside him, I found he didn't have the book of lenses in front of him. He had a little canvas bag sitting beside him, and open on the table in front of him was, well, porn.

I checked the magazine with my true eye just in case it had a hidden message, but it turns out they don't even use glyphs when they print porn. It's just naked ladies, all the way down. I shook my head and looked around.

Ok, three women, two men left. Two of the women and one of the men were teenagers, looking like they were probably doing some kind of school projects, the two girls sitting together. None of them seemed to be looking at me or even looking around much, but they might just be trying to keep a low profile, right?

I checked the woman and then the man. The woman had a pile of bridal magazine's that she seemed to be taking notes from and photographing with her phone. The man was just... Reading. Some fantasy novel from what I could see, I guess some people still use a library as a library and not for covert meetings in some kind of counter-conspiracy plot. Weird.

Ok, so that only left the teenagers. Could teenagers be behind the message or working for whoever I was looking for? I double checked them all with my left eye and none of them seemed to be hiding behind a mask glyph or a glyph of hiding.

I moved over towards the two girls, nearly bumping into an old man who had apparently finished his 'reading' and was on the way out. For a half second I got really annoyed at him for nearly walking into me, then remembered he couldn't actually see me so, that was kind of on me. Once I was near enough, I looked over the girlÂ' shoulders.

They weren't even reading anything. They had a few books on the desk, but were both huddled over one of their phones whispering away and giggling. As I watched, one of them picked up the phone, tapped out a brief message, then thrust the phone away from herself after hitting send, her cheeks reddening as he friend grinned and muffled a laugh with her hand.

Well, unless the secret society was all about asking out boys, they seemed like a bust too. I glanced about the library again to confirm there was only one suspect left, the boy sitting by himself. From where I was watching, I could see him turn a page and start to scribble something down in a notepad, but the little divider walls on the wooden desks prevented me from actually seeing what he was reading or writing... Or possibly drawing?

I moved closer, weaving between the wide research desks and studied the boy with both eyes. He looked young, somewhere between fourteen and probably eighteen but I wasn't great at guessing ages. He had that ochre coloured brown hair in a kind of unkempt mop and a few spots of acne on his face. The acne made me think he was younger, but he did look reasonably fit, like he probably played some sports... Or spent time running from nightmare robot people, maybe?

I circled around the desks, coming up behind him to look over his shoulder, and my chest clenched up. He had the book, open in front of him. I could see the thin title standing out atop the top of the page "A history of lenses, chapter 3".

It was open on a page that my right eye showed me to be a full-page photo of the scientists who developed the lenses. I could see the inscription beneath the picture, "Dr Logan Key and team. (L - R) Dr Megan Saunders, Dr ...". I moved up behind the boy, trying to think what to say, how to introduce myself when I saw it.

He had my note from the back of the book out on the desk beside him, sitting beside a notepad he'd obviously been writing something down in. My breath caught in my throat as I watched his right hand moving with its pen towards my note, while his left hand tracked down the page of text that accompanied the picture. This must be it, he must be aware of me but didn't want to draw attention by looking directly at me.

I stood transfixed, watching his pen as it moved to the top of the page and began to write... But nothing appeared. I frowned and closed my right eye, thinking the glyph must be blocking it but... Nothing. As I watched, the boy glanced over at his pen and also frowned.

He lifted it off the page, shook it, then went to press it back to the page and begun doing those little swirls everyone does to try and get a pen working. As he did I noticed something and crouched in closer to confirm what I thought I could see.

When I watched him with my left eye, I could see the pen tip floating just above the page, never actually making contact, even while his hand seemed to strain, pressing the pen tip into empty air harder and harder. If I watched with my right eye, suddenly the pen tip was gliding over the page but making no mark, except that sort of dent that pens and pencils press into the paper. I could hear the boy swear quietly, then test his pen on the top corner of his own pad.

It worked, leaving an angry, rapid clump of overlapping lines. He jotted the page number below that, then reached over and tested his pen on the note paper I'd created again. When he found it still didn't work, he put his pen down, scrunched up the note I'd left and tossed it into a small metal wastebasket sitting in the aisle between desks.

Well, frack. He wasn't some child spy or secret conspirator with a baby face. He was just a kid doing a project who'd found my note. I swore, loud enough that the kid looked around perplexed for the source of the sound, then did a lap of the library.

There were a few other people browsing various books and two librarians on, but when I stood where they could see me and waved, they all just looked straight through me. I went back to the stacks where the book was kept and looked at the empty spot, trying to think of a better way to get a message to my potential allies, assuming they checked this spot.

After thinking about it for a few minutes, I got out the tape I was carrying and a marker pen. I put a strip of tape down in the spot the book would normally cover, then used my marker pen to inscribe it with a glyph of hiding and the note "Sundays, 10 am". I checked with my deceived eye and almost before I could make out the outline of the tape, my right lens filtered it away.

I scribbled a few more glyphs of hiding onto the corners of the tape, to help make a normal person wouldn't find it by accident and try to remove it, then went to a desk in the back corner of the library and collapsed into its seat for a moment. Today wasn't going great. I'd expected to have someone show up, hopefully not robot people, and maybe get a few answers on what the hell was going on. But they hadn't and I hadn't and sitting here wasn't going to change that.

I took off my hat, got out my marker pen, and added a few of the glyphs of hiding I thought/hoped would hide me from the machines. I drew them smaller and a bit more neatly between the existing glyphs, so by the time it was done it looked almost like a crown, but you know, a crown with a big white brim on it. Like a wizard's hat, then, I guess.

By the time it was done, it was forty-five minutes past the meetup time I'd written on my original note. I checked the stacks and desks again, but no-one new seemed to have come in since the last time I'd scouted the place. Well, I'd just have to hope they'd find the new note and meet me next week I guess. Assuming my upgraded hat worked, I could probably survive another week. Hopefully.

In the meantime, I was going to try and get my own answers. I stuck my black hat on my head and headed out the door. It was time to investigate the origins of the human face glyphs.

On the way to the hospital, I detoured past my cafe and the secret alley where I'd nearly been caught. My skin crawled as I cruised past the spot, sinking down in my seat. A couple of super average looking guys in high vis vests had cordoned off a little area near the alley entry and appeared to be working on some pipes or wires through an access hatch.

But when my left eye swept over them, their skins both melted off, revealing two more of the metal soldiers, who seemed to spend more time with their dark orbs focused upon the alley entrance than actually doing whatever they were pretending to do. Under the sight of my true eye, I noticed that they had the mask glyph drawn on the back and shoulders of their high vis vests, which made sense. I'd never seen the back of the police machine man, but I had wondered how they could cover that.

It was utterly creepy watching them stand there, pretending to work. They even smiled at people with their masks and seemed to have short conversations with passersby. How many forgettable maintenance workers or cops or buskers or anyone had I walked past in my life, without ever realising what lurked beneath their illusory skin?