The Library

I write this, no I narrate this account of my exploit. And why would I? I could save myself and you time, time that we could be dancing, singing and playing. Would you prefer that? Then by all means do so, but you will wonder what is contained in these words and that curiosity will haunt you. You could be doing something better, more worthy, more wholesome; exactly as were my thoughts when I was selected to go to the Library. Why waste the little time we have on this rock reading books? Yet I was selected. We have no choice, we must go once of age, when we are ready for knowledge. A test if you will; can we know or can't we know?

They needed to find it foremost, the Library. It is not fixed they say. It travels here and there, within, between and outside. They hurried us aboard to get to it before it disappeared again. Our everything was the hold and their everything was the deck, the sails, the turbines and the air. Oh, the air. It whistled to us down below; a teasing mistress. The skies were rough to us, toying with us adventurers and throwing some of the above overboard. They said that they can't save them, the skies have them and they have no time. Their eyes; fear like a coldsore. What mounds of luggage some of us had and I was soon to learn that some were convinced of the knowledge. They wished to use the shelves as their pantry, to sleep on the staircases and get high off the inks in the books. Some were overwhelmed, unfitting. They hid in corners and repeated, "Content! I am content!"

The bridge was rolled out, we were abandoned. The Library floats, its whole sphere, its whole world. Yes, it has its own expansion of land and a sphere that protects it, or stops it from spreading. Inside, I remember, the towers reaching the drenched clouds, the trees twisted copper scrap, the cobblestones fossilized faces of the knowledgeable. Several thousand buildings, millions of passageways and a couple billion rooms. Oh! It is a place that can not keep still and I recall lampposts bending and squeaking, following me and bitching about me. The Library is forever moving and forever alive. Which building did I go to first? How could I have decided? I picked the nearest to me of course. Oh yes, on the streets they have signs and they are written in our language, but the words morph, deform, blur and move. The Library, alive, does not want me to have a destination or a plan, it wants me to explore, to have an adventure. Books, oh so many of them! They are aligned on every possible surface. In some galleries, towers of volumes reach the ceilings. The librarians advised to be weary of them as the towers are known to collapse on people, then build themselves up again.

Where am I after all this? I am still here. It is as if I have lost the need to eat or sleep, the knowledge sustains me well enough which means I can read more without the distraction of such idle things. How long have I been here? I can not recall. Time seems like an endless stream, without numbers on the clocks and the transition of night and day. Oh so much knowledge! But I am not greedy, oh no. The Library kills those that are greedy by making stairs disappear beneath them or locking them in rooms. Ha! The Library loves me, adores me, I am forever its pupil! I reach up and touch my cheek and it feels cold. Dust falls from my fingers. My face is dead, as if stone. I am afraid that I shall never leave.