Professor Lorraine’s message continued to replay in my head.
And Laizen, you will be reading.
Really? What is the point of reading when it’s all memorization? I don’t understand how this has anything to do with my excitement. And with my reaction, it is clear that it isn’t.
I stomped my way back to my new home, reminding the cobbled pavement of my frustration. I was up early for the first class, but I also didn't get much sleep because of Professor Lorraine's ET story. And Seamus said he's taking Kailus to see supernatural entities—I want that experience! I want to know why my luck is missing. Where is it?
“I can feel your dense presence, Laizen,” Notemi said behind me and I stopped moving.
“Yeah, sorry,” I mumbled in a defeated voice. I looked down to see the nicely lined cobble with patches of green in my peripheral as tears dripped onto the gray stone. The transparency of it meant it wasn’t dense enough to leave a dark mark on the dry path, and the wind blew it as easily as it came. Are my wishes this insignificant?
The sound of Notemi’s steps approached from my left, and she turned her body to face me. “You can tell Professor Lorraine about what you want; surely he will accommodate you.”
I didn’t want to look at her with such a face. I knew this was not her fault, but the thought that others had greater capabilities and more interesting training topics made it difficult for me to accept mine.
“Did you get what you wanted?” I asked in a low whimper.
“That’s like asking me if I chose to like music,” Notemi snorted. “I don’t necessarily like it, nor do I dislike it. It’s what I am capable of and that’s my way of fully sharing what I have hidden within. No other method comes close to allow me to do something so perfectly.”
I rubbed my eyes with the back of my hand, leaving only a small volume of tears adhering to its surface. The dry and cold wind gently breezed my lids dry and I sniffled the remainder of my discharge. I lifted my head back up to Notemi, who briefly locked eyes with me before turning forward to walk towards the villa that was now our home. And so I followed her.
Once inside, I sat by the coffee table and poured myself and Notemi a glass of water.
“Calm already? That was quick,” Notemi dropped herself into a cross-legged position next to me and brushed her bangs to the side as a result of the sudden movement.
“Do you want me to stay miserable?” I snorted.
“Sure, if that’s what you so desire,” Notemi groaned as she interlocked and stretched her arms over her head.
“Thank you, though.”
“You’ll thank me when you actually do the thing I suggested. He should be arriving soon.”
Sure enough, the doorbell rang and Notemi quickly volunteered to allow the entrant in. Both of them walked into the living room and Notemi sat back down next to me, while he sat from across the table.
“How was your experience for the first day of class?” Professor Lorraine asked.
“Very nice!” Notemi said. He turned to look at me and I shook my head gently.
“Why do I have reading?” I asked, hoping to get his rationale so I can make an informed decision.
“Because the Integrator told me to, and I have no other reason besides that,” he responded.
“Can’t I change it to something more exciting? I thought this was supposed to be fun, not another class of textbook reading that I want to avoid at all costs,” I said.
Professor Lorraine chuckled. “Oh, that’s a misunderstanding all right.”
I relaxed my shoulders and furrowed my brow.
“It’s not that which you are reading, but fiction,” he continued.
The tension that was held in order to prepare for a defense faded into emptiness. Only confusion clouded around my head as I blinked a few times to gather what I heard. “… And how will that help me?”
“No idea, but it seems you have settled your survival instinct—much more than when I first came in,” he said. “Does this put you at ease? And does this excite you?”
“I was going to form some kind of deal, but now, I might consider this as an option,” I responded.
“Good, then let’s get started after we eat some lunch.” Notemi and I nodded and I saw her eyes glimmer at the food that was brought to the table. I could get used to seeing that.
----------------------------------------
After Lunch
Once the door of our home closed behind us, Notemi and I waited for Professor Lorraine to walk forward and lead us.
“Where are we going?” I asked. Out of less than a dozen buildings in front of us, he pointed to the one with a large glass dome atop white-colored walls erected from the ground. It was the central building of this whole enclosure and it was large.
“That’s the library where the three of us will train in,” Professor Lorraine said.
“Is it really training if we’re enjoying it?” Notemi asked with a slightly upturned face, looking at the shining dome.
“You can put whatever definition you want,” Professor Lorraine answered. “It can be positive or negative, and I’d rather choose the former, don’t you?”
“Hmm, makes sense,” Notemi responded.
We continued walking straight from our villa along the pavement and reached the town square marked by a large fountain. I don’t know who did the plumbing from the oceans, but to transport water and reach this far inland required a lot of hands. A lot of preparation, planning, and oversight; especially from scratch on a remote island. I recalled the city from which I came from and my appreciation of its convenience magnified.
We turned right and followed the circumference of the town square, until we faced the domed library that stood wide and angular at the bottom, which tapered to the semi-spherical dome at the building's lid. Along the way we passed our large, stone and wood classroom building next to the pavement of the town square. It was single-floored, but was tall enough because a gymnasium existed in one of its many rooms. Still, it was not as tall as the library.
We were now close enough to see chiseled patterns in the blocks of white marble that gave the structure its grandeur. The handiwork only made it more omnipresent now that the front doors were steps away. With this much detail, it was insufficient to let my eyes remain static in one section. From its pillars to the angled base, the symmetry and smooth connections between each part gave my mind a pleasantness that wanted to behold all its sides simultaneously. Yet, even that pleasantness was outmatched by the intricacy and care chiseled in the blocks with proper proportions – with a single word that encapsulated its majesty: “Wow.”
We stepped into the magnificence past the glass double doors, and Notemi and I gaped in awe at the artisanship surrounding us. A circular cutout from where the dome attached revealed the sun’s rays that penetrated into the dark, yet bright marble interior that held a circular mezzanine.
The air was fresh and crisp like the outdoors of grass, with a different tang. Like dust from a construction site or freshly machine-sawed wood and stone that exposed its contents to the surrounding air. It felt so new and vibrant that I wanted to lay down and cuddle with the flat floor and merge with it. I could imagine my excitement building up – finding satisfaction in blowing off the dust from the freshly cut stone to reveal a smoothness so foreign to the eyes in a natural habitat. I wanted to lick it. Smell it. Taste it.
“You okay Laizen?” Notemi asked with a one-eyed stare.
I looked down at myself and saw that my arms were locked in place, palms facing each other like I was holding a box of power tools. Why power tools? Probably from the time my dad let me play around with it in his workshop. I quickly wiggled to let my body know to be alive and it was okay to return to my control.
Notemi waved me to come inside and I followed her lead into a section with a long table and shelves stacked high around the perimeter. My eyes drank the filled levels of shelves and a sense of vertigo came over me, but I didn’t care. I could see myself swimming in fallen books and laying on top of them while leisurely reading one in hand.
I felt a tug on my arm as I stared at the highest shelf, but was quickly turned around and planted into a seat with great force on my shoulders. Across the table was Professor Lorraine, and Notemi circled around me to find a seat beside me.
“Pinch me,” I said.
And without hesitation, a loud yelp echoed and faded from this corner section of the library to the main area.
“You asked for it,” Notemi said.
“What is this place?” I asked with wonder.
“Are you paying attention?”
The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
“This is the library,” Professor Lorraine answered with his elbows on the table.
“No library I have ever seen was this big!” I looked at his eyes covered by half-rimmed glasses that smiled along with his lips.
“Looks like the Integrator has done it again with his magic,” he responded.
“Can I just… start?” I asked, my body tingling with giddiness that didn’t want to be contained. My arms were pressuring me to get moving or it would start dancing. I wanted to be engorged with books.
“And start you may. Enjoy.”
I promptly took off from my seat and leisurely walked around the perimeter of the section we were in, all the energy went into drinking the colors, sizes, and titles of each book. On the way, I also glanced my eyes over at the labels partitioning each shelf. Fantasy, science fiction, fiction, supernatural, poetry, epics, philosophy, myths and legends, deities, sacred texts… occult?
I slid my finger into the gap between the top of the book and the board above it, pulling out a large, murky green book with a yellow card in front displaying some sort of symbol. The cover seemed to be made by some sort of fabric and was bound by a bright red thread sewn along its edges. On the yellow card, a thick circumference of a circle was drawn with an equilateral triangle's base as its diameter, and its vertex piercing the top of the circle. I wonder what this could mean?
Reminded that I had a history teacher next to me, I walked up to him for clues.
“What’s this book?” I asked. The discussion between Notemi and him stopped as they turned their heads towards me.
“Oh, that?” Professor Lorraine said. “That’s a geometry book. Since you’re an engineer, you might want to take a look.”
My eyes returned to the book as the chatter of Notemi and the professor became muddy. I wonder what’s inside?
Turning over the front cover, a nice waft of the paper’s scent blew into my face, which smelled grainy and earthy. I turned the first page and I saw dark, heavy inking that drew various shapes inscribed in one another, along with some script I don’t know about.
I returned to Professor Lorraine and asked about this strange text. He took my book and flipped through the pages to confirm what he was seeing. “Ah, yes, this is Sanskrit—it’s a script that dates back many millennia ago, but the spoken language is much older.”
“Yeah, I don’t think I can read it,” I said, recalling the lines and squiggly symbols that looked foreign to the English alphabet.
“Too bad, let me help you find something else.”
Professor Lorraine stood up to walk behind me, and Notemi eyed me while pouting with cheeks puffed out. I smiled and walked away to where the history teacher was going to take me.
“Occult, huh? Why don’t you try some simpler books to get started?” Professor Lorraine asked.
“Are they going to be in different languages? I thought this was a library that was created for us to train in,” I said.
“That’s what I would call a real library—why exclude other things you can’t read? I would refer you to some language learning texts, but since we may not have time to have you learn a language to fluency, you’ll have to stick to what you know. Sorry about that,” Professor Lorraine sighed.
He placed the book back where it belonged and walked around the perimeter to find something that would suit me. Then he stopped where I initially looked at and tip-toed with a stretched arm to reach the second shelf above the ground. His robed sleeve revealed his pale arm almost to his shoulder, and I could make out the shadows of ridges on his upper arm in the dim, natural lighting. They weren’t as defined as Olma’s, but I would assume he could do many physical feats without a problem.
When he gave up and came back with a ladder, his brown ponytail didn’t look like it was yanking him down with gravity anymore. Now with leveled eyes, he scanned the neatly lumped books in the fantasy section. He looked at me and looked back at the books several times to ascertain what would fit me, then a medium-sized book without much thickness was held in his hand. He stepped backwards down the ladder and walked towards me – lips curled and cheeks dimpled – and handed me a black and gold-trimmed book just like his robe.
“What’s this?” I asked. I looked at the cover and it displayed a title of Wondrous Dragons in gilded font that filled most of its rectangular space.
“You can start reading things about other creatures that humans have imagined and move on from there. Learn about how they look, how they act, and how they live. Immerse yourself in their world,” Professor Lorraine said with care and clarity.
How was that going to prepare me for ETs? Well, considering that I’m already here, ETs as dragons would be… actually, I don’t know what they would be like.
Professor Lorraine walked back to Notemi sitting at the end of the long table, while I sat at the other end with the first book of my training. I turned over the hard cover and let this book of fantasy engulf me with its words.
----------------------------------------
Notemi
“Let us continue with our discussion about your training, Notemi,” Professor Lorraine said as he sat back down across from me. “Do you have anything in mind about what you want to do in terms of composing music?”
“Anything works as long as it comes naturally,” I told him. “But do you really think you can get Laizen to be excited through reading?”
“You may have noticed by now, since you are quite sharp,” Professor Lorraine continued, rubbing the back of his head. “But Laizen needs to expand his awareness to include other aspects of the world.”
I swiftly nodded in agreement. “Otherwise he will be stuck moping around, correct?”
“That’s right. Logic can only go so far, and Laizen has tasted the consequences of that. Since logic purely relies on memory, having a small pool of memory would limit his capabilities and usage of intellect. Therefore, reading will allow him to build up his memory pool in order to gradually break him out of his current knowledge.
“It’s a huge ordeal since intellects tend to find reasons to do and not do things when they are not trained well, so overwhelming him with beauty was a method the Integrator suggested. And since he still considers logic as part of his identity, if his logic fails him right now…”
“Then he’ll find any excuse to prop up a crumbling building,” I finished.
“Exactly. And to see him regress would not be pretty. We are fortunate to be in a period where almost all of us are sensitive enough to see a crumbling building before it happens. And given his potential and interest in things outside of logic, we wouldn’t want to lose a talented intellect like that,” Professor Lorraine said.
Laizen is intellectually capable of doing many things. But there’s always this aspect to him that sulked and found excuses to not do something. Since I haven't seen someone like that… what is he doing? Why is he wasting his life?
I felt some sort of disconnection within him. There’s this fire that burns inside him and I can just feel it wanting to express itself. I provoke him a bit to add fuel to the fire, but he simply can’t see his own capabilities and starts defending himself. Like—dude, it’s right there! Open your eyes and stop being a rock.
It’s both hilarious and saddening to see him attempt to combine two aspects of himself that he thinks is separate. If only he could relax and stop seeing my provocations as an attack to defend against. Whatever. More opportunities for him to notice, if that’s what it takes.
Yet with Professor Lorraine, he doesn’t want to push Laizen. I feel there is a better way for him to go about his training and neither of them are taking advantage of it.
“Since there’s a limit to how much information he can consume in a few months, isn’t reading a bit slow for a method to open up his mind? He may not even finish one book in a day,” I said.
“The method is tailored for him and his interests. Remember, it is about getting him to feel excitement, which will naturally cascade into curiosity. This is a method I thought of on the fly since fantasy books are the closest you can get to seeing ETs and the like with human content. After he starts with these, he’ll come around to being inspired for other things.”
“Hmm, so you’re cracking him open. Is that what you’re doing to me?” I asked.
Professor Lorraine chuckled. “No, of course not. I think of you as quite independent, and I wouldn’t doubt your ability to sniff out my intentions. You can also stop trying to sympathize with me by keeping a low profile; I know you are plenty capable.”
I relaxed and lightened up my eyes as I exhaled over my scarf and smiled at his comment. “You’re quite sharp yourself. I guess you’re a teacher for a reason.”
“Please, we’re all capable of seeing others’ capabilities in this time period. The only exception would be your partner.” Professor Lorraine adjusted his glasses and slightly turned to see Laizen in the corner of his eye, and I did the same.
He was sitting at the other end of the table, several paces away, completely engrossed in his black-covered book with his dark brown bangs swept to the side. If he didn’t flip the pages every so often, I would have thought he was a petrified human statue.
“What did you give him?” I asked.
“A book on dragons.”
“What, are ETs going to show up as dragons?” I said. “They’re just Earth lizards with wings. They’re not going to fly to this planet from another star through empty space.”
“Who knows; history has shown many things that breaks expectations,” Professor Lorraine said. “In the meantime, you can also find some books related to your interest in this library.”
I thought about it, but even considering books was not something that entertained me. Perhaps there is something worthwhile in the library, but nothing that would interest me since I already have what I need to make music—myself.
“Is there any quiet room in here for playing with instruments?” I asked.
“Considering this is a library, it is meant to be quiet; but we can go to the music room if you’d like,” Professor Lorraine suggested. I nodded and we both stood up to face Laizen.
“Laizen!” Professor Lorraine shouted and my partner turned to face us. “We’re going to the music room, so we’re leaving you alone here.”
Laizen gave many terse nods and dug his eyes back into his book. The professor and I exchanged glances and giggled at his act of not breaking his zone. We made our way back out of the domed library and entered the classroom building of stone walls and wooden beams that decorated its exterior.
As we walked down the hall, the sun’s rays beamed through the large glass windows and into the classroom of our first class. At the end of that same hall, Professor Lorraine opened a door labeled Music Room and I took a peek between his arm and the door frame while he was searching for the light switch.
The dim, naturally lit room was large enough to hold many instruments. I saw a drum set and both a guitar and viola hanging on the wall through the thin slit until the professor walked in and allowed more space for my focus. Past the door with lights now on, and I saw one side of the room swamped with options. Both a keyboard and grand piano stood next to each other, while a harp stood on the opposite corner with a xylophone and smaller percussion instruments.
More instruments from the string and brass family lined the walls, until I stopped at a closet. Swinging open its doors, it displayed variations of flutes and repair pieces.
Professor Lorraine broke the silence. “I guess this is your library.”
“The only thing is to choose what I want to do with everything here,” I said. “Where can I even begin?”
“I can pick a random instrument for you to start.” Professor Lorraine pointed to the grand piano.
I sat down on its chair and began playing some notes, and was pleased that everything was tuned properly and resonated nicely with the sustain pedal. “Maybe I can just call ETs here with beautiful music, then we can skip training.”
He chuckled. “Don’t think that’s how it works, otherwise we would have many of them here by now.”
“Or everyone is playing bad music. They’re probably wrecking the ETs’ ears and calling forth demons,” I replied. “On that topic, what is the threshold of excitement that you need to see an ET anyway?”
“You’ll have to ask Seamus for that, but I’m sure you need a high amount of energy within you because I only saw a blur with my current state,” Professor Lorraine snorted. “And we don’t have an instrument to measure such things.”
I let his words sink in for a moment and then something clicked.
“Wait, that's it!” Jumping from my seat with energy coursing through my clenched hands, I turned around to face him through the strands of my disorganized bangs.
Professor Lorraine tilted his head. “…What is?”
“Instruments to measure things!” I said. “But that’s not the point; what if I use instruments to imitate the feeling of excitement through a song? Then anyone listening could feel the same way.”