The Library

You wake up in the middle of an empty library. There are no people in sight so you get up and start walking towards what you think is the exit – but as you keep walking, more and more bookshelves seem to appear beyond the ones that are visible. The more you walk, the longer the corridor gets. You start running, then sprinting, but there doesn’t seem to be an end in sight.

It feels like you’ve been running for hours – or maybe days? What were you doing before this? Was anyone around?

You look up and notice that not only do the bookshelves seem to go indefinitely horizontally, but also vertically – they all converge to a single point, directly above you. And even though you can’t see all the bookshelves at once in all their enormity – you can feel their weight and the weight of the knowledge encapsulated in them crushing you – in every other way but physical.

“What is this place?!” – you scream – “Where am I?!”

Your echo fades with each bounce, getting more distorted until it becomes a muffled whisper you’d never guess originated from a living entity.

Suddenly, out of a single point a couple meters in front of you, a cube with intricate patterns of gold and bronze starts growing, slowly rotating around all of its axes. In a couple seconds it grows to about two times your size, standing before you like a Goliath of steel – ominous and incomprehensibly massive. And yet, something about it feels comforting.

“At last” – it spoke with a voice so deep and powerful it felt as though it resonated through spacetime itself.

You feel frozen. Your body - a stone. Immovable. You try to run, or speak, or do anything other than breathe – but can't.

"Welcome, child," – it said - "it is time."

"Wh-Who are you?" – is all you could muster.

“You may know me by many names” – it said – “yet in reality, I don’t have one.”

“Am I dead? Is this the afterlife?” – you ask, fumbling, trying to find your words.

“You are,” – the Machine replied – “considering this place is beyond what you call time. Your reality has already happened. All realities have. However, this is not an afterlife, you can choose to go back at any time – yet you may not return here once you do so.”

“What is this place, then?” – you ask.

“This is one of my attempts at sharing my knowledge with you – monkeys. And, well, the bears before you, and the geese before that, and so on. Each person perceives it their own way. Some see a library – such as yourself, while others see a temple, or a classroom, or a forest even.”

You look around.

“Wait. All people have been here?”

“Not in this library, no, but in their own version of this place. Some chose to remain indefinitely, while others left as soon as I mentioned they had the option to do so. Some spent – what you would define as – eternities, learning here, then went back and used this knowledge to better their society – or to destroy it.”

“If my reality already happened, how can I go back and change it? Wouldn’t that change history?”

“By being here you only alter which version of yourself you are and nothing else. You won’t make something happen that wasn’t going to happen, or stop something from happening. You will only change which events you will see if you go back.”

“How come no one has ever mentioned anything about this?”

“But they have.” – the Machine replied – “When – if – you go back, you’ll think it was a dream. You’ll tell your partner, or your family, they’ll make a witty remark about the talking cube you saw and then get over it. Since this place can vary greatly for each person, they’ll never link it to their own experience of it.”

You stand in silence for some minutes, just looking around, not saying a word. You pick up a book and read its contents, and then another, and then five after that. Some are topics you’re very familiar with while others seem like random words and letters jumbled together. Some have already been discovered in your reality, such as semiconductors and flight, while others sound like concepts not meant to be discovered until many thousands of years into the future, or maybe ever – like taming black holes and reversing entropy.

“Remember,” – it said – “your scientists and “inventors” are merely discovering my tools of creation: maths, physics, biology, and everything in-between – I had to create those first so that through their interactions would emerge life and death, and love and deep breaths, mountains and valleys, and fountains and alleys. For through my reflections and discoveries I gave you your thoughts and shaped your memories. And if that’s of interest to you – if what you seek is not wealth nor power, but nuggets of knowledge – stay here a while; we have much to talk about.”