“So you’re free to answer any question now?” Andy asked the Librarian, hopeful for a game-changing answer.
“Yes, anything I know. Which, for the most part, only applies to this wing. I was only privy to seeing the other wings when I was first created briefly as an introduction to the purpose of the Under Library.” It answered.
“Before we all begin our flurry of questions, I have a very simple one. Do you have a name?” Ralth asked.
‘Librarian Unit zero zero four, guests often shortened that Libby.” Andy thought he caught a look of longing on the Librarian’s face.
“Alright, Libby, it is. So, can you tell us what all the wings are and what they pertain to?” Andy continued.
“I can try. Currently, you are in the What Is Wing. This covers all that is. That means everything currently exists, alive, dead, sleeping, waiting, et Cetra is contained within these stacks. Going in clockwise order around the hub, the next wing is the What Will Be Wing. This covers the future, things that haven’t happened yet but barring intervention by someone with future knowledge, will occur. Then there is the What Was Wing. This covers things that no longer exist but have in the past.”
“How is that different than the What Is Wing? Wouldn’t anything that existed just be covered here?” Bill cut in with a question.
“As I said with the What Will Be Wing, future knowledge can cause shifts. This means futures that were going to happen no longer will. Pasts that had happened are no longer part of the pasts experienced by the current population of a universe or multiverse. That knowledge is retained within the Under Library, though. As it exists outside of conventional spacetime, the archive is able to detect these changes and updates the wings as needed.”
“So then all of the wings are actually in flux based on potential changes to time as we know it?” Andrew asked.
“Yes, and current events you are part of have greatly altered the Under Library’s collection methods, but I will get to that after I explain the other wings. The next three wings tie strongly to the previous wings and tend to be where things shift around during universal reordering. The What Could Be Wing covers potentials for future deviations. While the What Will Be covers the current future, the What Could Be Wing covers other futures that haven’t been mapped through existence yet, and there aren’t in the What Was Wing either. The What Is Not Wing houses contradictions. Timelines and events that cannot coexist but do so within the stacks. It is a wing full of paradox and hard to truly understand. The last wing that I have any real knowledge of is the What Will Never Be Wing. These are potentials that have been sealed off due to the ramifications of their existence. Usually, this means not paradoxes but an absence of all there is. The hub also now contains a gateway to the steward homeworld.”
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
“That’s only seven of the walls. I know there were eight,” Bill said.
“Correct, mostly. There are actually ten when you count the ceiling and floor. I believe the floor leads to the inner workings of the Under Library, but I have never entered. The ceiling leads to where the creator originally resided, though they are likely long gone. I do not know what the final wing is, though. The Librarians used to discuss every so often, but since the updates, it has been entirely off limits as a conversation piece.”
“Updates? You mentioned a new firmware as well. I assume this means, like Bart said, things used to be very different. What happened?”
“You did. Or at least an event that ruptured the constant of time in the universe centered directly on you happened. The Under Library only exists in its own local time, not relative to other places, but when you break down the time of all those other places, it is bound to affect us here anyway. The problem is then exacerbated as the time within the library is non-constant, even within different parts of the same wings. The Librarian Engineers attempted to solve this by further pulling away from standard reality, and this resulted in the breach you’ve all experienced with the abyssal beasts free to roam to stacks. The second effect was that all exits were now sealed. As all the current guests were contained without the protection of the time bubbles of the Under Library, that meant they hadn’t been exposed to the start of the time loop, and without a way to maintain themselves through the loops, any singular reset would annihilate them from existence. So the Under Library made the unprecedented move to archive them as they are.”
“Wait, are you saying I’m some sort of archived copy?” Serilina asked. It was the first time Andy had heard any real pain in her voice.
“No, you are the original. The purpose of the archive was to avoid the situation you are describing.” Libby answered.
“Okay, that’s better news. So then what caused the Librarian corruption or Bart’s here?”
“In the case of Bart, that was an early infection of the engineers from a very dangerous abyssal beast before we truly realized the walls had been breached. Shortly after that, the central Librarian Factory started pushing out rapid updates to the Librarians in an attempt to stem the damage. One of these is likely where the corruption started. I fought it as best I could. I don’t know if I would have been able to overthrow the shackles of my programming had the stewards not arrived with their own paradox. I thank you for that. Now, though, I must ask you for a favor.”
“What’s that? And what paradox, wait do you just mean me and Andrew?” Andy assumed that had to be the answer.
“Yes, your doubling paradoxical self helped short some of the problem circuits. I would like for the stewards to help me free all the Librarians and perhaps even find cures for the engineers. To that end, we must travel to the core of the wing and seek assistance.”
“Oh good, See Mr. Wiggles, everyone thinks we should go.”
The cat growled a low, annoyed sound