The Library of Time

168 - ARGUMENT AND PERSUASION

After a while, Bonnie started accepting entirely what she was hearing, and now it even seemed to have logic.

"This library must be taken care of with a lot of respect and dedication," said Brookstone. "That's why I come here every day at night, when they are all working and ignoring each other out there, to check if all books are in their places."

"I suppose there is no danger of any stranger getting in here."

"No. As far as I am aware, you are the third person who has stepped inside this library, and that was because I told you to. If I hadn't, you would never have imagined there was another world on the other side of that door."

"But if there's no real voltage in here... why was the warning placed outside?"

"I have no idea, maybe to keep people apart from it. It was here when I first got in."

Drastically, Bonnie turned to look at the teacher.

"So you weren't the first person discovering the library?"

"Not at all! Then, who could have placed that warning over the door? It was certainly a person who knew perfectly well what was hidden in here."

The man was right, there was no chance of anyone finding the library if the door had a Dangerous Zone warning over it. But he had apparently no idea of who could have placed it there. If so, then how had he ever got to cross the door so easily?

"How did I get to know this place?" Professor Brookstone said. Once the question had been asked for the first time by the girl, he repeated it to himself over and over again, trying to find the answer.

He raised up his face, looking at the ceiling, and scratched his neck, knowing that was a difficult question.

"Well, I don't know!" He said. "You know, I've spent almost all my life here, in this school. I got in one day to study my undergraduate years, then I got higher degrees 'till I became both an English and Literature doctor. And after all, I started giving classes here! I've had so many adventures in this University that it is impossible for me to remember that moment so specifically. I can only tell you that, during my undergraduate years, I used to work here, helping organize the library. So it is very probable that it was part of my life when I found this extension. "

Bonnie thought that was a pretty interesting story. She believed she would never be able to forget the moment she realized Brookstone's newspapers predicted the future, or even worse, when she accepted they didn't really predicted but rather told the future as it was meant to happen.

She started considering Professor Brookstone as a very busy person, and a daydreamer. Someone who always had his head filled with ideas and questions flying all around. That was the only explanation she could find for the fact that he had forgotten when he discovered something as important as the future of humanity.

"I keep on advancing in my research of this library, and analyzing the information I get about the future to understand what caused it and the further consequences we will have. And every time, more problems seem to appear, and more topics need to be thought about. That's why I strongly believe I need an assistant."

"That's why you called me here?" asked Bonnie, not believing Brookstone had been able of seeing her future. "That's why you went back and sat in the same place every day? You knew all this was going to happen?"

"Not at all," answered the man, with normality. "This library only wards the future of our society, not of any normal and unimportant mortal being. Bringing you here was just an asserted guess."

The girl felt sick listening to the rough and completely cold way the teacher used to explain certain things. But at the same time, she knew he was and had always been telling the truth.

When talking to him, she imagined herself talking to Nietzsche. And even when it was a little bit difficult to understand his ideas and take every word he said with a stoned heart, it was also a great honor to be able to listen to such a wise man.

Thinking this way, it was also an honor to have the opportunity of becoming his assistant. If so, Bonnie could not only learn to manage a library or understand the causes and consequences of the different events happening in history, for she could also (and above all) follow that mysterious man's example and one day become as intellectual and wise as he was. So, eventually, she accepted the offer and got compromised by going every noon to the Library of Time for her preparation, before really getting into work.

Happy with her answer, Brookstone started guiding the Physics student around the corridors and sections he had already discovered. But when they reached the end of the already known terrain, the teacher stopped her and made her look to the horizon in front of her.

Her eyes were bombed with thousands and thousands of filled bookshelves along the gray metallic walls of the section they were in. There seemed to be no end for the rows of shelves, and they were so much that they made you feel the lights become dimmer and dimmer if you dared to move forward.

When the tour around the safe and known part of the library was finished, and some hours after she decided to follow Brookstone, Bonnie returned to the safety of her dimension. There where all things were vulnerable to drastic changes and their destiny wasn't written down yet. Or at least, where it was filled with people living in ignorance and believing their lives were so changeable that they even liked to compare them with a rollercoaster.

Once outside the library of time, completely alone and trying to remember her way back to her dorm, Bonnie started thinking deeply about the man she had just met.

A new war started inside her mind, and she suddenly felt completely disturbed by the man he had now formally met. Her conscious and sane mind was telling her Professor Jonas Brookstone was a madman, a kind of crazy scientist or drunk philosopher. Thinking calmer, it seemed risky to be near him. She knew it was better if she just left that lonely part of the library, got away from that door and the crazy world behind it, and forgot everything she had heard to go back to her normal life.

That way she would have a safe and beautiful life, a successful future, and she wouldn't find herself constantly intoxicated with such abysmal reflections.

And still, deep into the bottom of her brain, she knew perfectly well that she would find herself back in that mysterious library the next day, and the rest of the days she spent in that University.

For her, that could be just the years she'll spend doing her undergraduate studies. But who could assure her she wouldn't follow Brookstone's steps and stay there forever?