The End of the Dream

Chapter 8

For all the foreboding, dramatic talk of altering realities and untold destruction, nothing truly felt at stake. In fact, it soon felt downright domestic.

You had already decided you ought help in the research efforts; it was not as though you had anything better to do with your time, and, all else aside, the scripts intrigued you.

Other realities. Other realities you had lived through, possibly. Or would yet live through. Wilford had, during a tangential discussion, made it clear that the sense of time here was far from linear. Some of the scripts existed before the events described within them had even occurred to be transcribed and archived, or those involved may find, meeting at a separate time, that some had already experienced the events whilst others had not.

Bewildering.

But you curled up in your chair, with your coffee (Wilford was generous with refills), and you read. They were stories at heart, vast, glittering fantasies. The manifestation of creativity, Dark had also described this existence you found yourself in. It seemed that way, in the other realities. Never was there a mundane moment.

You were enrapt.

You were also unable to find any hint of what you were meant to be looking for.

That had you anxious for a bit. Jittery. Maybe the coffee didn't help with that. Eventually, you decided you needed a break, and got up to stretch your legs outside in the library. Wilford joined you, and you confessed what had you on edge.

"Oh, don't you worry about any of that," he said, giving your shoulder a reassuring pat. "Dark is all doom and gloom. Always overthinks everything. Now, I love the man dearly, but he's always imagining the worst-case scenario. Where's the fun in that, eh?"

"So... you don't think any of that will happen? All the reality altering and untold destruction?"

Wilford scoffed. "Of course not! Mark would need to find the crystal first, which he needs you to do, and you're safe right here with us! Ergo, no issue."

He made a good point.

Although, that in itself raised a concern you had thus far been avoiding. "And I am safe here, right? Mark can't find me?"

"Certainly not! Well, probably not. Well, possibly."

Your smile grew thin. "What if he comes after me? Or worse, that thing from the Manor comes after me. The collateral damage if it gets in here—"

"Oh, pish. It'll be fine. Not easy to find a closed mindscape, you know. Not unless you know exactly what you're looking for." He paused for a moment, eyes clouding over with thought. An almost wistful expression crossed his face. "I've stumbled into a few in my time, of course! But that's different. I wonder how old Abe is doing..."

Your leg-stretching endeavours had looped you around nearly the entire library. You thought you had found its end, until you spotted another staircase leading down into the dark depths below; a whole additional floor of archives, if not more. Maybe it was as infinite as the infinite realities and infinite possibilities that supposedly existed within this space.

It made your head hurt if you thought about it too hard.

You pulled yourself away to return to the reading room, and to the more pressing matter; a term Wilford had used that caught your attention.

"What exactly is that? A mindscape. That's something different to the other universes; something outside of them?"

"Quite right you are!" Wilford beamed. "Sometimes, when people can't quite handle the whole chaos and madness and hullabaloo of alternate realities, or the whole being dead thing, their mind makes up a safe little story to lock itself away in. Their own personal pocket dimension."