The Library

Twelfth Scene

"Whatever possessed you to do that?" No. 6 asked Gwen, with an appalled look on his face. The storm clouds had started gathering on the horizon, darkening the sky in the middle of the day to a dusky, stark intensity.

Here and there thick ropes of lighting put out a spectacular display, made even more impactful by the contrast with the gloomy background.

"Do what?" Gwen replied, and the puzzled expression on her face confirmed she had absolutely no idea what the fuss was about.

"You broke it!"

Gwen looked around and wondered what she could possibly have broken in a landscape which consisted entirely of rubble.

"I don't understand!"

"You broke it and now it's going to change. We lived here forever and managed to keep 'here' stable and now you show up and in only a few short years everything is upside down!"

'YEARS?!' Gwen thought, instantly drenched in cold sweat. 'I've been here for years? How is that even possible?'

"How indeed!" No. 6 intervened, morose. "You do not know how you irritate me with this devastating lack of awareness."

"Leave her be, No. 6," No. 4 came to her rescue. "Don't you want to emerge from this hell?"

"To what? An even worse hell?" No. 6 retorted.

"No. 4 might actually have a point," No. 1 mused. "This version of awakening is not exactly what we were hoping for when we started the quest."

"Speak for yourself," No. 8 frowned.

"Everybody stop!" Gwen raised her voice above the argument, surprised at her own brazenness. "What did I break?"

"Why, reality, of course!" No. 6 deigned to answer while all the others rolled their eyes, exasperated.

'You're all crazy,' Gwen had a sudden revelation. 'You're all crazy and I'm enabling you.'

"I am not crazy; my reality is just different from yours. [ Lewis Carrol, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland ] Don't you dare psychobabble me, young lady!" No. 3 replied, offended. "I was reading Lewis Carrol when you were but a glimmer in your father's eye!"

'Well,' she thought, 'at least he didn't serve this to me in ancient Greek.'

"Oh, I'll explain it to you in Greek if you want!"

"Αρχάς είναι των όλων ατόμους και κενόν, τα δ' άλλα πάντα νενομίσθαι. [ "The beginning of everything is atoms and void, and everything else is perception." Democritus ] You looked at it."

"Huh?"

"It's uncanny how little polish your education cast on your language skills. Huh? After four years of college? Studying literature of all things? What I meant is you gazed upon reality and in the process altered its fabric."

"Its fabric is not a matter of opinion," Gwen replied, appalled. "And certainly not mine!"

"Oh, how I wish that were true..." No. 6 responded, sorrowful.

"That makes no sense at all!" Gwen continued defending herself in this surreal moral indictment, feeling guilty even as she spoke for no logical reason she could muster. "If that were the case, the world would have ceased to exist a long time ago! There were literally armies of scientists and philosophers all throughout history who did nothing but snoop behind the surface of reality and spill out its secrets and we're all still here!" She paused and looked into the distance at the gloomy cloud which was still pinned to the horizon; it hadn't moved or changed at all since the beginning of the discussion, she noticed, as if it had been frozen in place and time. "Wherever here is."