It was a library.

Zoe found herself in what appeared to be the central reading lounge of a vast hub of towering shelves radiating out in every direction. Looking up, she found that she couldn’t even see the top — the shelves just stretched out forever into darkness.

The same was true when she looked horizontally instead of vertically. Looking down one of the corridors, Zoe couldn’t see an end to it.

The only light came from warmly glowing reading lamps with green glass lampshades. Looking around the pillow-strewn lounge, Zoe spotted about a dozen of them, and she thought she could see more interspersed at semi-regular intervals throughout the shelves around them.

Her mirror copy was lounging on a big gray beanbag, her feet perched up on another bag and a book in hand.

“Go on, take a look around,” she said, “it’s yours as much as it is mine.”

Cautiously, almost reverently, Zoe silently crept forward. Leaving the glowing, carpeted circle of the central lounge, she found herself at the entrance to one of the towering corridors. Getting a closer look at the books themselves, Zoe saw that they came in all colors and sizes, seemingly with far more variety than she even expected normally. The one commonality was that they were all jacketless hardcovers — and they all looked like expensive collector’s editions, gilded in gleaming colors and adorned with ribbon bookmarks.

Reaching out, Zoe gingerly withdrew the first one that her finger happened to touch. The cover was beautiful. The metallic foil imprint depicted a woman looking much like herself holding an anatomically realistic heart in one hand and a small blade in the other. The sideways pose reminded Zoe of old Egyptian carvings, but the other details seemed more modern.

Unfortunately, she couldn’t read the title. It was emblazoned underneath the iconography in strange, squiggling glyphs that reminded Zoe more of science fiction fonts than of the more fantastical world she found herself in.

Would the contents be equally illegible?

Curious, Zoe cracked it open to the very first page. It was blank, which was typical, so she turned it over to gaze upon the deep black ink of the next.

The glyphs shimmered and squirmed under her eye. Despite the fascination of their twisting, ever-changing movements, Zoe couldn’t actually decipher them.

And yet it was only after she turned the page that she realized her enraptured eyes had been scanning each symbol line by line anyway. By the time the next page turned, Zoe was too engrossed to marvel at how strange it all was.

The library faded away. Of course, Zoe was still standing there at the edge of the shelves, uncomfortably hunched over the book as she poured over the contents and did her best to turn the delicate pages with her crude claws.

But Zoe was no longer aware of any of this. She was far too invested in the reality presented within those yellowed pages.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Below the sect temple, in a dim, dingy conduit where waste water flowed from above down to deeper depths below, Zoe cut open the mysteries of life and death with her blade, dragging out their secrets with her gloved hands and raising them up under yellow lights and thick lenses.

The men and women screamed — at least, the ones who still could — answered only by the howls and whimpers of the beasts. Zoe might have been annoyed, but she was far too fascinated by her work to pay them any mind. The sect elders had been more than accommodating in supplying her with the equipment and materials necessary for her work. In return, she answered them with all manner of draughts and remedies more potent than any others and every day more potent than the last.

As Zoe read on, she found that it was more than a vision. With her feverish, dreamlike actions came understanding. Zoe became intimately acquainted with life, with death, the in between. Zoe was no longer reading ink and paper — she was reading flesh and bile and bone.

The book ended.

The story did not.

Blinking blearily, awareness of the library filtered back in. Stretching, Zoe eased the tension in her neck and shoulders. Turning the book over in her hand, she shuddered slightly. While she had been utterly fascinated while reading, the thought now disturbed her. Yes, she was now getting used to literally eating people, but there was something that emotionally felt different about the cruel, indifferent experimentation.

Maybe it could bring about more good than harm in the long term — but it still scared her. This was one of her possibilities?

Shelving the book, Zoe limped back into the common area. Her mirror was now noting something down in what appeared to be a journal, but she looked up when Zoe approached. “Find anything?”

“You could say that.”

It was a bit of an understatement. Not only did Zoe viscerally remember the imagined experience in vivid detail — she recalled all of the knowledge and skill that came with it. In fact, it felt natural to her.

After reading a book no bigger than a short novel, she understood herself to know medicine better than anyone alive or dead back on Earth. That wasn’t to say that she knew everything — not even close. But without even resorting to magic or the system, Zoe could begin listing off at least half a dozen different ways to quickly and painlessly eradicate any kind of cancer. Heart disease was an easy fix, at least assuming the proper equipment was available, and Zoe was already brainstorming ideas on how to take on aging.

Maybe choosing this option wouldn’t be that bad after all. For the first time, Zoe actually wished she could go back to Earth. I could help so many people with this.

Her mirror grinned, but it was all teeth and didn’t reach her eyes. “Find something you like?”

Zoe nodded. “Yeah.” She paused. “But I’m assuming every one of these books is an option.” Looking around, she sighed. “There are so many. Is there any way I can narrow it down?”

The other Zoe burst out laughing. “What, you think you just get one of these books as your choice?” She shook her head. “My god, you’re actually serious. No — this entire library is one of your choices. You haven’t even seen the other two yet.”

Zoe stared. It took her a good few moments to truly process that, but when she did, a nervous and excited tremor reverberated through her whole body. If every one of these books is as insane as this one… and there are so many…

It was honestly, totally, completely absurd.

The other Zoe looked like she was about to say something more, but the real Zoe didn’t care. Whirling around, she practically sprinted back to the shelves, whipping out another book, her claws trembling.

The cover of this one was strange. Once again, there were the curving, illegible glyphs — but the image was also abstract. It was just a bunch of lines, with no clear pattern. It seemed random. But the more Zoe stared at it, the more her mind began trying to trick her into seeing hints of shapes and designs.

Zoe blinked, dispelling the illusion.

And then she flipped it open and began to read.