She goes on and on, and William listens to her every word of advice and the technicalities it comes with. Sometimes brief, but otherwise long speech makes her information perfect for him, so he does not mind almost 20 minutes of listening to her talking.
“… and that is a basic premise of the beginning of the Library. Shall we go for the things you are interested in now? Any floor is open for you.” Ellie ends her long, and amazing explanation of the structure of the Library.
“Why do I have an idea that you seem more excited about this than myself?” William looks at Ellie with a questionable attitude, before the huge board.
“I am excited. Why should I not be? Dealing with people is always interesting, and your case is the same. Maybe you should be more excited since the amount of knowledge Outside must have been terrible.”
“That is not true at all. There are plenty of resources and common sense that people who survived until now gathered. I speak from the perspective of survival of many camps on the border of the US and around Canada.” Willian begrudgingly says, while maintaining some sort... of proud expression of being from the Outside.
“Really? You have not exaggerated when you spoke to the Burton?” Ellie honestly asks since she has not trusted him before.
“Not one bit. I was like this for the past 10 years.”
“10 years... I grew up in the Federation…” Ellie mutters hesitantly, in a fear of jealousy and a change in William’s attitude.
Unlike her thoughts, William responds with a different answer that she has not expected.
“Must have been hard.”
Chuckling, she maintains her image. “Heh… You are a funny guy. How old are you? You look around the age of 15 years.”
“You are right. If we will have time, or you will have no issue with it, can you teach not only about the Library but the structure of the city and the Federation in general?” William asks, with expectation and opportunity, what goes right to his lap, by the experienced Ellie. Getting a person to tell him about the information that he seeks is best done directly, and not go around the bush in hopes of getting lucky.
“Sure, if you will give me some compensation. Let’s say for 10 credits.” Sarey importantly added for some service outside of her work.
“Sure.” William agrees without hesitation. This is common sense even in the world he grew up in. There is no free meal in the world. Everyone works for themselves. Although the case of Ellie was not… willing. However, she finds it much better than doing something that she does not like.
With this being done, William moves to the first floor, which is right beside the small frame of two doors on each side of the curved stair that leads to the upper floor. It is kind of hidden, while an unassuming door leads to a quite large open space.
Inside the Technological section, rows upon rows of bookshelves go for hundreds of feet. This place is massive, but very simple looking to make it all about knowledge making.
At the walls around this otherwise open place are single sitting tables with one chair, for anyone to sit, and read whatever one wishes.
William learns from Ellie that absolutely no one can take any kind of book with him or her outside to their homes. Everything is owned by the Library, but anyone can still access a majority of the knowledge here to their heart's content. There are a lot of people at the moment, while the time of the day, is not early, nor late.
Although the premise of paying to get into the Library makes very little sense, William finds a surprising amount of people sitting beside the table, or even walking through the sections of the bookshelves that went in chronological order of an alphabet. Older, younger, it does not matter. Every kind of person sits and reads the same, but not one was below the age of 10 from Ellie’s explanation.
People's time is worth a lot more in the Federation, and getting knowledge is even more so important. One could get higher-paying work when one is skilled in certain skills. It all stems from the knowledge that they can gain from their time.
It was quite past the morning when William finally gets his opportunity to learn and seek out whatever he wishes for.
Ellie follows and sometimes leads while going over the stuff of what would she find promising or important to know about. Regarding William's knowledge base, she explains almost everything to him. It is just her assumption of the uneducated person, and it is not wrong. William finds countless books and stuff that he never heard of.
The technical section of this first floor is going over the orders of a method of tech, engineering, and more topics about the whole technological ordeals of humanity. From cars, planes, electricity, and so on.
This does not interest William too much since he has not much needs for them. It all makes so little sense to learn about so many complicated problems of technology that he gives up after going through with 3rd technological book. Skimming over the pages, he found quite abundant pieces of information everywhere, and it is very informative indeed. Although not for him.
“This stuff of the Enginist is truly complicated,” he mutters in helplessness.
“It is. Technology is important, so everyone who feels like not comprehending this could give up. We can do nothing about it. I knew some friends who learned about technology for more than 7 years and still failed to get stable work in the industry. Not like there are a lot of job opportunities. In fact, the Federation is expanding every year, and the amount of work that is needed has to be adjusted by workers. It is all very hard.” Ellie explains like a teacher lecturing their students. Although they are close by age, they both carry different living experiences.
“It is not for me at all. If there are gonna be more interesting books, or more simply written. I will give them a try in the coming weeks. No need to blow my mind on the first day.”
“That is a good idea.” Ellie agrees. There are too many books and materials to choose from. All of these were either salvaged from the past, where certain institutions prior to the Dark Age, held the books with importance. Of course, they protected them, sealed them, and caused them to be very important after more than 100 years. It is quite impressive.
“Let’s go to the second floor.” William decides and walks straight outside the first floor after choosing to give up for now.
Walking out to the back of the humongous tall room, one has to follow the route with the curved stair from the first floor, and the same is done on the other floors as well.
Everything has its unchanging order, and nothing seems out of place in this spectacular space.
On the second floor, there is a handrail all across the open hallway where one could watch down to the opening gate to the Library. William could only imagine what sort of view he could see from the 6th floor. It could wait since he knows he will be able to come there, eventually.
Most likely not today, but in the next 6 weeks, he will get accustomed to this building and live in this city. At least he plans to.
In the hallway, above the staircase, there is no open space that William could not see from the first floor. The single massive wall has pictures, paintings, people, everyday objects, and portraits of abstract meaning around the total width of the wall. In the very middle of the wall is the door to the Academic section. It is different from the 1st floor, which is hidden by the small walls on each side of the library board.
“I think this will be a more important section of this library for you. Apart from the 5th or 6th floor.” Ellie says as he points to the closed door.
“Also, here is one thing that I have not talked about previously. You have not probably noticed, but the first floor has no restrictions. One could come there whenever one wishes, and there is no payment. Not even the pass is restricted towards it.”
“Why?”
“I assume it's a work of economics, and provide the best education for people who actually want it. On the second floor, it changes to 10 credits a week. The reason is simple. The whole premise of the second floor is to educate the people who pay with credits and provide the best books, discussions, and regular seminars.”
“So, almost like a school?”
“Not really, but very close to being one. It is more... free, where any failure is the fault of the person, not the system. Everyone works for themselves, while we provide help to those that are interested, or willing. I spent 3 years here, for example, and I regret not one bit of this.” Ellie proudly announces while puffing her chest.
William nods in seemingly unbothered approval, which still pleases Ellia a little. Just a pinch to her otherwise cheerful mood.
“How to get inside?”
“See that door handle? Put the card to it, and it will open up.” Ellie points once again to the door, where is a rather sturdy-looking handle. Flat, and somewhat thick with a smooth surface of no door or stone.
William does not question this as much, since he had seen Luke enter the building where he met with Kaufman yesterday.
It makes sense since everything seemed to be automatically operated. Though William does not understand it, he could flexibly get use to this.
William places the card on the door handle, and it opens inwards to the hallway. Only a hundred feet towards another door. On each side of the hallway are two doors to respective seminar rooms.
“Those are seminar rooms for guest and teaching experiences. They are usually held whenever, with events or scheduled releases of seminars. Not something that concerns you, unless you will learn about seminars yourself. There are at least one a day, but sometimes multiple.”Ellie explains, while pointing to the doors.
“What are they about?”
“Depends. One who is in charge of the seminars is making adjustments and topics vary a lot. Botany, economics, technology, whatever else in the advanced level of learning is there. The speaker is usually very good at whatever the seminar is about. Are you following so far? I feel like a teacher today while speaking so much.” Ellie says, while figuring this out just now.
She already spent almost an hour speaking nonstop, yet she has not been one bit tired. Quite the opposite, actually. She feels William takes everything to account and ask good and meaningful questions.
This slightly surprises her, since the people from the camps or far away in the dead zones are very different from the people of the Federation. She is, after all, a native of the Federation.
Not like there are not a lot of people coming here every month through some transaction of workforce and deals about the Federation. They all follow certain rules, which Ellie knew a little. Usually, they are not folks to befriend, since they are focusing so much on maintaining their lives in the Federation, where greed or exhaustion get to their lives.
It is a precedent of the different environment when growing up, and studies show that quite a bit. New dystopian work gives rise to another kind of patriarchy, or so-called feudal flow of nations. The people rise structural organizations to make their end meets and doing so in a way, which could help.
It is inevitable since the destruction of the majority of the population gives growth to more powerful humans. While more than a century passes, people who grew up before the time of the destruction are all long dead. All that is in the present is a world ruled by the Dark Age and Walkers that go against them.
A new life began to form on the Earth, while people visibly remain the same, with changes that have to be made. Those changes are for them, so their surroundings and lives would be safer. That matters more than anything, so the Federation results from that.
Ellie learns about all of this through her studies in this Library, and William could do the same, thanks to her help. Ellie is quite hesitant to see the changes through William, who is nothing like her. He grew up on the outside, while he could learn much about the vast history of the Outside and other states, and continents in general.
Anticipation and little apprehensive feelings about it are all she could muster, yet she wants to continue since William seems like an understanding person.
Throughout this time, after all her talking, she forgets one of the most fundamentally different things about him. The Emblem that is hidden under his sleeve would have made this whole situation much more awkward for her.
She forgot about this particularly important information that even Burton spoke about. It would wait… since it is not something easy to conceal for long.