The library of everythin.., p.1
The Library of Everything, page 1
The Library of Everything
Hunter Terrell
copyright © 2024 by Hunter Terrell
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, except for the purpose of review and/or reference, without explicit permission in writing from the publisher.
Cover design copyright © 2024 by Design by Definition
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Published by Paper Angel Press
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978-1-962538-66-4 (EPUB)
First Edition
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“Friend” said the Spirit. “Could you, only for a moment, fix your mind on something not your-self?”
C.S Lewis, The Great Divorce
1
The Library and Its Characters
Lily found herself in the Library in a dream; or maybe it wasn’t a dream. Either way—she knew that the experience was something more than imaginary, but less than real. A short, brown-eyed young woman with a blue-green knitted beanie that she had worn most every day since childhood, Lily sensed the strangeness of her situation, but whatever impulse might normally bring panic was absent in this moment, so Lily did what she would normally do in a dream (or in a not dream)—she walked around, looking left and right, with her arms folded.
The Library was a liminal sort of place. It was at once a place known from childhood and also a place very foreign. It didn’t feel like it was somewhere; it wasn’t its own location. It seemed … in between. It was a building to be sure, though it felt more like an elevator, or a road, or a hallway. But the Library was none of these things—it was a Library; not unlike ones you’ve seen before, with dark blue carpet, warm lamps on the walls, wooden desks and chairs, and of course, bookshelves. Tall, and endless, and full of books.
As she walked, Lily looked around the tall shelves, full of hundreds, no, thousands of books. Maybe hundreds of thousands. All of them looked much alike—save for the titles on the spines. Some of the titles were very plain and academic, like Mt. Sumdum, while other books had quaint names such as Andre’s Picket Fence in Salento. Other titles were quite nonsensical, take Fujunishalikertyopica 37th Neverdone for example …
One book in particular caught her eye. The title on the spine read Tranquil Beach. She stopped and cautiously reached up toward it, pulling it out of its sacred place with one hand, revealing a midnight black backstop to the otherwise warm wooden shelf. She held the book in front of her face for examination. The first thing she noticed upon removing it from its shelf was the weight—she felt as though she shouldn’t be able to lift it—yet she could easily. The second thing she noticed was the size. On the shelf she was sure that it was the same size as all the other books—quite large and thick, yet holding it now, it seemed like a reasonably sized novel. But the real magic was not in the size nor the shape.
She parted the book to expose a random page she felt was about the middle, and what she read there was quite unlike any book she had ever read before. Lily had always loved reading, but what she read here seemed to skip the active processing part of her brain and immediately enter the long-term memory part of her brain, giving her a strange sense of deja-vu. She was reading, for sure, and could recount with some accuracy what she was reading, but could detail no specific words or sentences, or even letters for that matter—she couldn’t even be certain that the book was in English, save for the fact that she could understand it.
She read about Tranquil Beach, and a hungry seagull, and beautiful waves … She had a sense that what she was reading was real; it certainly was no fiction novel. The book described scenes with too much detail and no discernible plot. It seemed random and chaotic, much like the world she knew, not the books she knew. She closed the book and shuddered, replacing it on its shelf. Lily had always been easily unsettled, and bad experiences had a way of sticking with her. She tried to shake it off, and kept walking.
The first sound Lily was aware of was the soft scratching of her Chuck Taylor’s on the worn blue carpet tile. Very painfully conscious of her footsteps echoing through the otherwise seemingly desolate Library halls, Lily refused to call out the obligatory, trepid “Hello?” into the void, for she had a small voice, and she used it sparingly, only when social expectations were strong enough to force it from her. Fortunately, storytelling conventions were upheld, as Lily heard the stereotypical call ring out through the Library—from a middle-aged, East-Coast woman, by the sound of it.
“HalllloOOooo …” the nasal voice called out.
The social obligation getting to Lily— “… hel— throat clear hello?”
The clack of heels coming around the corner revealed that the two characters had been divided by a single row of bookshelves, merely one hall apart. Jane hustled around the corner toward Lily. Jane looked like she used to be pretty, before she had put her body through all the drugs, and men, and procedures. Her face was pulled tight, caked with makeup, overly shiny and orange, and her eyebrows were tattooed permanently pointy. But her age was given away by her arms—the saggy, spotted skin that clung to bone, and the wrinkled hands. Jane wore big hoop earrings and a bright pink top with white slacks. She had long acrylic nails, and she carried a tiny matching purse. You probably wouldn’t recognize her, but she was a famous popstar in some circles.
Jane was smacking gum. (It is unclear whether she had begun her journey in the Library already chewing it, or if the first thing she did in the Library was put in a stick of gum) “What’s going on? Why am I in a libary?” she questioned Lily, who shrugged.
The two looked at each other, and then around at their surroundings, neither being quite sure what they were looking for. Lily had never in her life taken any psychedelic drugs, but she wondered if somehow this was some kind of a trip. Jane had done plenty of psychedelics, but was fully convinced that she had been kidnapped, or was perhaps being pranked. The impossibleness of the Library was lost on her, and she was sure there were hidden cameras, and that the person responsible for this would reveal themselves soon.
Jane pulled the latest generation of iPhone out of her purse. “I don’t got any signal in here. You swear you’re not in on this?” Lily nodded fervently. “Well I have things to do. HALLLLOOOOOO!!” she shouted again into the air, her voice so shrill as to make Lily wince.
The Library responded with a long silence.
“We could ask the librarian,” Lily mumbled.
“The libarian??”
“Well, yeah … every library has a librarian … right?” Lily was sure there had to be a librarian but wasn’t sure how she knew. It just felt like one of those obvious realities about the world that needn’t be observed to be believed.
“Well, someone did this. Let’s go find ’em,” Jane conceded.
And so, Jane and Lily continued in the direction they had been going before running into each other. They walked down a couple more halls, around a few corners, to the desk to talk to the librarian. The librarian greeted the two as they approached.
“Welcome Jane, Lily, I’ve been expecting you! Do you know what books you are looking for?”
Lily let Jane answer first. “What is this place?” But before having her question ignored, the librarian fixed her expectant gaze upon Lily—“Umm … No. I like books, but I don’t really know what this place is, I guess.”
“It’s the Library. It has literally everything.”
“Everything?”
“Not like Hamlet or Moby Dick or Twilight or any of the books you know …”
“So you just have, like, non-fiction, then?”
“Well, not exactly. The Library doesn’t have books like that either. See, it’s—”
“Where is this place?” Jane demanded.
“It isn’t anywhere, it’s kind of everywhere. It’s not a place within a bigger place—it’s just the Library.”
Jane rolled her eyes at the librarian’s unhelpful answer, but before she could get another question out, the librarian rose from her desk abruptly—
“Let’s go find the others.”
“Others?”
• • •
Elsewhere in the Library was Christopher, a middle-aged man with a greying beard, whose felted vest struggled to restrain his hefty gut. Chris was holding a fishbowl—in that fishbowl was a goldfish. Chris didn’t own a fish, but he now looked one in the eye. It was small and looked exactly like any goldfish you might see at a fair, except it was a vibrant purple. Chris had never looked a fish in the eye, and was surprised at the intelligence he saw there, in the thing gulping water from the plain glass bowl. This fish’s name was Barnacles; remember Barnacles the goldfish—he will be important later.
Chris came from money but prided himself in dressing modestly—below the vest, a pressed plaid shirt was tucked into a simple pair of trousers, accompanied by older, but well-kept, leather shoes. Chris’ attentions were divided by his surroundings—he looked around at the Library and marveled.
He sensed he wasn’t alone, and so he somewhat quickly and quietly carried the goldfish bowl around the bookshelf behind him, (after having briefly assessed his immediate vicinity for any suitable place to set the goldfish and finding nowhere) scanning left and right for signs of life. Just a few dozen shelves down the hall was a figure sitting on the floor against a wall of books.
“Howdy,” Chris announced his presence as he approached the flo
He was an average-looking young guy with messy hair. He was in jeans and a Captain America t-shirt. He introduced himself lamely as Sam. Sam came off as the sort of fellow who lived his life as though he were just waiting for it to be over. He worked at a general store, lived with an equally lame roommate, played video games too much … And he, too, found himself in the Library.
“You wouldn’t be keen as to our whereabouts, now, would you?” Chris questioned Sam, who shrugged.
Chris scratched at his beard with his free hand, perplexed. “Well golly, I must have gotten lost.”
“I think, perchance, you’ve been found,” said the librarian, appearing from around a corner, being followed by the two girls from earlier, Lily and Jane. Just as a third, new character also approached from a distance, having been drawn to the noise of conversation.
This woman joining them now was named Elizabeth—who was perhaps thirty? Mother of three, she appeared young and healthy, with a seriousness about her. She looked like your mom looks in old photos, warm and classic and purposeful. Elizabeth had a certain tiredness you could catch a glimpse of in her eyes every now and again when she thought no one was watching. She had wandered into Jane and Lily and the librarian and Sam and Chris, (and the goldfish), and was, for the moment, silently taking in the shock of such a bizarre scene.
“Oh, there you are, Liz,” said the librarian, acknowledging Elizabeth’s arrival.
Liz squinted. “Please don’t call me tha–hey, wait, how do you know my name?”
The librarian pursed her lips and stretched her eyes to the left, avoiding the question, and soon was saved by the bell of Chris’ further questioning.
Chris was surprised at the sudden appearance of an entire ensemble (he certainly wasn’t the only one confused). He questioned, hopeful for some clarification on matters—
“How did you ladies get here?”
“The same way you did, silly,” the librarian remarked.
Chris wasn’t particularly flattered at being called silly, but he could tell that this librarian was somehow privy to information, and so, desperate for answers, he asked, “And just how might that be?” The entire group was quiet in anticipation of the librarian’s response.
“You didn’t get here—you just are here.”
This was the final straw for the group, thoroughly fed up with the librarian’s non-answers, and they all erupted in angst about their situation.
Sam shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans and mumbled things like, “I don’t know, man …”
Jane clicked her nails and snorted things such as, “I don’t have time for this; I got places to be.”
“Are my kids here?” asked Elizabeth, to which the librarian reassuringly shook her head.
Looking around at the vast multitude of books, Lily asked, “What kind of books are these? Is it … like a giant encyclopedia?”
Christopher bellowed out the loudest—“You have better give us some answers, missy!”
The librarian would quiet everyone so she could explain, finally, the nature of the Library.
“Listen. This Library is unlike any library you know. This Library contains the whole of everything. Everything. Look at that section over there. That section, which stretches to near-infinity, is for drops of water. Every water-drop has a book of its story—the ocean it came from, the clouds it travelled in, the flowers it will water, the cheeks it’s rolling down in tears, the dinosaurs that drank it up and peed it out … And that other section is for trees, from seed to timber to dining room chairs. When and where and why it was planted, the animals that lived in it, children that climbed it, its offspring, the man that cut it down, and ultimately how it will be burned and sent to the sky in smoke. And those subsections are for the leaves of those trees, and the subsections under those are for the cells those leaves are made of, and under that is the carbon atoms making up those cells … One of my favorite sections is that one; it’s for stars. I promise, if you look, you will find a couple hundred billion trillion books, one for every star. And each of those books will have a near infinite number of pages—somewhere under “S” is Sirius, whose book tells the whole story of how that star was born, the planets it has fostered, the asteroids it has consumed, the wonders it has witnessed, and how, after a long and full life, it will go out in a blaze of glory. Every rock has a book about the volcano it came from and the shoes it’s been stuck in. Every flower, every dog, every dust mite, every galaxy … and every person that ever is or was or will be has a book containing the whole truth of their past, present, and future. Whatever is in those books is truth. This is the story of everything.”
Sam stared open-jawed and wide-eyed. Chris furrowed his brow. The group was in wonder and some disbelief, except Jane, who had been tapping her foot and rolling her eyes around with her arms crossed. As soon as there was a break in the librarian’s exposition, she popped off.
“Sister, I can’t be here. Do you even know who I am? I gotta get back right now cuz my manager is supposed to tell me how Grooveyard Records liked my demo! This is my next big break! I have to be there!”
Christopher raised his eyebrow at the diva. “Well, lady, if the librarian is to be believed, you wouldn’t need to go home at all to receive your news—supposedly there’s a book around here with your name on it that tells it all!” Christopher gestured sarcastically at the books around them.
“I have a book about me?” she asked what everyone was thinking.
The librarian replied, “I just told you about an endless Library teeming with knowledge and art and story itself, everything that ever is or was or will be, and your first question is about your own book?”
The group paused for a minute, and looked around at one another, before nodding unanimously. The librarian’s expression was a mix of understanding and disappointment.
“Of course you all have a book—everyone does. These books define and reflect reality as you know it—”
“And my book got the future in there? Some Gypsy Voodoo thing gonna tell me what the label say?”
“I don’t think you’ll like what you read,” the librarian responded solemnly.
“You’re gonna tell me they don’t sign me? Funny. They tell me I’m a wizard, too?”
The librarian was offended. “I’m serious. This place is magical. These books tell the truth. Read one and see.”
“It seems like it could be true,” Christopher interjected. “There seems to be more to this place than meets the eye. If this isn’t all just a dream, then we each are here quite supernaturally …” Christopher developed his thoughts as he spoke. “This could actually be quite the opportunity!” he said, considering the profound implications of such a library.
Jane’s sass was knocked down a peg. “So, I’m supposed to believe that this chick knows I ain’t signing?”
Everyone turned to the librarian, each formulating the same realization independently. Lily recalled her experience reading one of the books, and believed what the librarian was saying. Elizabeth was the first to speak out. “Hey, you keep talking like you know us … How did you know my name earlier? How do you know me?”
The librarian kicked at the carpet bashfully and put her arms behind her back like a shy schoolgirl.
“You’ve read my book, haven’t you!” Elizabeth accused triumphantly on behalf of the group.
“Well, more like skimmed, you couldn’t really read a whole book. I read about all of you before you came here.”
“That’s a bold claim, missy. Can you prove it?” Challenged Christopher.
“Your uncle’s name is Ronald Albury, and his birthday was the fifth of November.”
“I don’t think that’s his birthday,” Chris hesitated.
“You don’t know because you’re a bad nephew,” the librarian retorted. “Elizabeth, your youngest son just learned how to walk, and sometimes you worry about the day when you’ll pick him up and set him down for the last time and never hold him again. Sam, you carry a Polaroid picture of a girl named Beatrice in your wallet. I bet you have it on you right now. Jane, you won’t get this record deal like you haven’t gotten the last four. Lily, your dad gave you that hat when you were thirteen and you’ve worn it almost every day since. And, Barnacles,” the librarian said, leaning down towards the fishbowl in Christopher’s arms, “you have got to be the most peculiar fish there ever was.” The librarian’s evidence was sufficient, and agitating.
