Zion's Fiction

by Zion's Fiction- A Treasury of Israeli Speculative Literature (retail) (epub)

  I engaged self-destruct.

  I was waiting for the pain, smashing and sharp, and then a first breath and opening my eyes in a darkened room. On my right-hand side, future replicates of myself, on my left, just empty pods. In front of me, Shir’s replicates, senseless, unconscious. I had counted the empty pods once, then deleted the information and left an instruction for myself never to do that again.

  I stopped breathing and closed my eyes. The pain didn’t come. Neither did the awakening in a darkened room. Data streaming continued. I opened my eyes. Shir was standing beside me, looking every bit as flabbergasted as I felt. I ran a self-analysis. Destruction sequence had not been initiated. The analysis pronounced the sphere safe.

  The soldiers never reacted. They were not part of the countdown. All they knew was that they had to shoot at anything coming out of the sphere.

  “If we disconnect…,” I whispered.

  Shir nodded but did not reply. Something had stopped our physical destruction.

  The surface of the sphere quivered and dissolved. Shir and I stumbled directly into it. As we crossed over, I felt a small vibration in my consciousness, a vaguely familiar one. I wanted to send a query to the Cloud, but communication was blocked. The surface of the sphere closed tight behind us.

  Shir turned to me. “We can initiate self-destruct. Destroy this thing from the inside.”

  Before I could reply, everything lit up around us. We found ourselves in a huge room, larger than any hall I’ve ever been in. In front of us a spiral wooden stairway materialized, and all around us there were shelves full of books, measurement instruments, statuettes, and potted plants. Beneath the stairway an old-fashioned globe materialized, showing the continents as they were ten thousand years ago. A man in a white robe smiled at me. “Salutations, O messengers of culture!” he said.

  I tried to communicate with Shir subvocally, but all my outgoing frequencies were blocked. I could only scan things and collect information, not transmit.

  “This is just a hologram,” said Shir, scratching his head.

  “I know.” I studied the man. The details were near perfect. “But why should an invading species mimic Humans?”

  “Distraction?” Shir clenched his fists.

  I looked around. “But whatever for? We’re isolated. No command could breach this sphere.”

  “To delay us?”

  I shook my head. “It doesn’t make sense. None of the previous ones ever tried to use the basic command. They don’t even know about it.” I put my hands on my hips. “Maybe to download data ahead of an invasion?”

  Shir scratched his head again. “I don’t sense any data download.”

  I searched. “Scan you?”

  Shir shook his head. “I scanned you. Nothing connected, at least so far as I can sense.”

  The hologram stood frozen in front of us. Shir stepped forward. The hologram moved and indicated toward the stairway behind it. “Well met, O seekers of knowledge,” it said.

  Shir turned to me. “An interface that responds to users’ movements,” he said. He snapped his fingers absentmindedly. “But why should an invasion begin with a responsive interface? Why don’t they just burst out and kill everyone?”

  A smallish woman came out from among the shelves. “Sorry, sorry, excuse me, I’m sorry.” She was pulling on a white robe, similar to the hologram’s, as she came running straight at us, right through the man’s image.

  “I truly am sorry, it took me some time to adjust the translator to the vernacular.” She stopped in front of us, breathing heavily. “You really should start cataloging your dictionaries correctly. I had to go through fifty zetta to get at the right terminology, all from separate sources.”

  I scanned her. She was Human. Or at least the closest imitation of a Human my scans could identify. Shir let out his breath. I assumed his scan results were the same.

  She was dark-haired and short, armed with eyeglasses and a scolding stare. I felt Shir cringing where he stood. The woman put out her hand. “Head Librarian, Alexandria, version eight.”

  I didn’t offer my hand, and she withdrew hers. “Alexandria version eight?” I repeated, slowly. My access to the Cloud was blocked, and I couldn’t use our databases.

  The woman waved her hands. “Well, they’ve kept coming up with more and more libraries that called themselves ‘the Great Library of Alexandria,’ and each and every time they were destroyed, or forgotten, or just became bureaucratic monstrosities that no longer stored any information. And there was also the one they filled with fireproof paper,” she snickered at a private joke, “as if leaving things on paper could ever be a good idea. But people are a sentimental lot, you know, and eventually….”

  “Just a moment.” Shir took a step forward to stop the flow of chatter. “I don’t understand. Who are you?”

  “Nuphar the Literate.” The woman smoothed down her robe. “I am the Head Librarian of the Great Unified Consolidated Library of Planet Earth, from Alexandria, 3067 by the common calendar.” Nuphar gestured in the general direction of the hologram. “I needed to have someone occupy you while we downloaded information. I apologize for taking so long to get here.”

  Shir and I exchanged looks. He nodded in the direction from which we had entered, just a slight, hardly perceptible nod, followed by raised eyebrows. We’ve known each other long enough for me to interpret this, and I nodded in reply. Even if we could have left, it was our duty to stay and find out what’s going on. The woman facing us was a Human Being. This time we were not dealing with an invading species. It was … it was…. I didn’t know how to comprehend what it was.

  Nuphar cleared her throat. “But I am here now. So … we can begin.”

  “Begin?” I echoed.

  Nuphar nodded in the affirmative. “Begin. We’ll have a round of introductions, and then you may call in the rest of your delegation.” She sent a look behind my shoulder. “You are part of a delegation, I hope? We’ve left very clear instructions.” She didn’t even stop for a breath of air. “Don’t worry, you are in a time bubble. No time is passing outside, so you’ll have ample time to invite them.”

  A time bubble. This explained the space-warp we were in, and why we couldn’t send messages out.

  “There is no delegation.” Shir shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He looked plain against the elegance surrounding us, dressed in his hodge-podge of fabrics, exactly like me.

  Raising her hands, Nuphar sighed. “I can’t believe this is happening again!” She said. “I just can’t believe it. What’s wrong with humankind? We bring you knowledge, and culture, and … and….” She adjusted her glasses and passed her glance between Shir and myself. “Well, never mind, let’s do it properly.” She pointed at herself. “I, as I said, am Nuphar the Literate. And you are … ?”

  Shir and I exchanged looks again. He raised an eyebrow, tilting his head in Nuphar’s direction. I nodded. Once. She was Human, and we had the strictest orders regarding Human Beings. Shir tightened his lips, and I imagined I could hear the sigh he would have made, had we been in a place where he could afford to sigh.

  “Oh, don’t tell me this stupid belief—that vouchsafing your name to a stranger allows someone to steal your soul—has survived to your time.” Nuphar was talking fast, and a lot, and I could hardly find my way among the words that were piling up atop each other.

  Shir’s internal processor was faster than mine. “I am Shir Ben-Yair,” he pointed at himself, “Assistant Regional Inspector, Silence Unit, Northern Region.” He pointed at me. “And this is Romi Potashnik, Deputy Regional Inspector, Silence Unit, Northern Region.”

  “Silence Unit?” Nuphar frowned. “Is this a librarians’ thing? Sounds offensive, really. Have you considered a name change?”

  Shir laughed. Briefly. “Librarians.” He turned to me, tilting his head toward Nuphar. “Did you hear that? Do you want to be a librarian?”

  I smiled. “Sounds like fun. What do librarians do?”

&nb
sp; Nuphar gave me a searching look. “You don’t have any librarians?”

  I shook my head.

  “Who points book-lovers at the books they could love? Who cross-files information? Who keeps the records straight?” Nuphar was stressing each and every word now. “Who takes care of the libraries?”

  This one I could answer. “Each person takes care of their own, of course. If you’re very close to someone, you can join your libraries.”

  “And even then, not everything,” said Shir, quietly. I took care not to look at him. This was too personal. Yonit was still with me. Shir had lost his entire family before complete backups of them could have been created. I knew he used to go out from time to time to look at what was left of them, torn pieces of consciousness floating in a container that was unable to reconstitute them properly.

  Nuphar turned her eyes from me to Shir, then back again. “But you don’t have places, physical places, to go to in order to find specific kinds of knowledge?”

  We both shook our heads in unison. Nuphar looked through me, at the back wall, and sighed. I felt like I’d failed a test. She returned her eyes to me and straightened her back. “Very well. Come along, and I’ll show you what you’re missing,” she said, and the brightest smile I’ve ever seen appeared on her face.

  The Great Unified Consolidated Library of Planet Earth, from Alexandria, 3067 by the common calendar, encompassed anything imaginable in mazes so complicated they could hardly be mapped. Papyruses locked in exquisite time-bubbles, shards of pottery preserved in climate-controlled rooms, figurines of ancient deities, shrouds, paintings, clothes, musical instruments, and dance simulations. And books. Lots of books. This was a full, complete record of Human history.

  Nuphar was striding along, her robe swirling around her legs, occasionally exposing the colorful garments she wore underneath. It seemed that fashion in whatever place Nuphar came from included phosphorescent rhomboids and purple leggings. “We stop every three hundred years, give or take, and collect anything that needs to be documented. This is a compromise between our desire to document everything and the fact that it’s simply impossible to document everything,” she said. She pointed to a room full of animals, frozen in a variety of positions. “There were supposed to be people outside, waiting for us with your documentation, but seeing as you never got our instructions….” She left the rest of it hanging.

  Shir slowed down. I pulled his arm. We had to keep up with Nuphar.

  He cleared his throat and whispered in my ear, “How do they contain all these rooms?”

  I shrugged. “Space-warp? We know they enclosed their ship in a time-warp field.”

  Nuphar smoothed her hair with one hand and tucked a tuft of it behind her ear. She said, not looking at us, “We are not here at all. Just the vestibule is here. I mean, at your place. Meaning, in your space-time. As soon as we left that room we moved into my space-time.”

  Shir cleared his throat. “Which is… ?”

  Nuphar stopped in front of a featureless round door and smiled again. “The Eighth Library of Alexandria. Established 3067, in existence for one hundred fifty-seven years now.”

  Shir and I stopped in our tracks. I looked at Shir swiftly, noticing a slight grin showing in the corner of his lips. She brought us back in time. That explained everything. The hologram’s archaic speech, the strange globe in the vestibule, even the sumptuous décor. We could prevent the invasion. We could warn Humankind. We could fix the future in which we blow up again and again just to rise again in backup and continue to defend Earth from invasion, in the only way we had been able to devise.

  I felt a similar grin stretching my own lips.

  “We are inside a gigantic structure. Well, not one structure really, more like a collection of museums and libraries interlinked by bridges. All wrapped up in a single space-time bubble, and time here is disconnected from your time, but we do move forward in time, although at a different pace. And it is possible to come out, but only forward, to the time in which the vestibule is located.” Nuphar made a little bow. “I am a sixth-generationer. But we do have some who joined from the outside, not born here.”

  “Born here….” said Shir. I felt a little better realizing that he too couldn’t follow her. All I could figure out was that we didn’t move back in time. We were in an isolated time-bubble, and we shall reemerge to the time from which we came. At least, I hoped this was the correct interpretation. We had little knowledge about space-time fields.

  Nuphar nodded. “At the Library. It is too gigantic to be kept entirely out of the space-warp field. We only come out on stoppage duty, like now. Well, not exactly like now. Now you came in, but I didn’t get out, not yet. But I shall, and we’ll collect information about the current civilization. Let’s hope at least some of your information is properly cataloged, otherwise it will take us years, and then we’ll renew the instructions.” She turned back to the door and opened it, murmuring to herself, “I’m sick and tired of having to renew the instructions on each stoppage.”

  Nuphar moved away from us, unaware that we didn’t enter through the doorway. This door she now opened led to an enormous hall, larger than the vestibule, but rather than plush stairways and holograms of bookshelves, this one was full of longish desks with green-shaded lamps. On both sides of these desks, filling the room, there were people. I saw seven hundred and twenty-four persons of various ages, wearing various garments that looked as if they were taken from the halls we’d passed through. Some were bent over books, others were conversing in whispers.

  I stopped breathing. Shir grasped my hand. His hand was moist. I squeezed it. I have never seen so many Human Beings in one place. Not since the days of the first invasion. And even then, all those Humans were crowded in underground cellars, wearing rags, starving.

  “Romi,” Shir whispered. He cleared his throat and said again, “Romi.”

  I was afraid to use the scan. I didn’t want to find out that this too was a hologram. I heard Shir sniveling. I looked at him. Tears were running down his cheeks. My eyes too felt watery. I used my free hand to wipe away the teardrops. I should have made a quip, or asked him to pinch me, or done something else to relieve the tension. But nothing came to mind. No quip, no gesture. Just the thought that hundreds of Humans were sitting there in front of me, and none of them looked sick, or injured, or….

  Nuphar came back. “Enough,” she said. “Don’t you take it so hard.” She looked at the people on their benches and then back at us. “I know they are talking to each other,” she said quietly, “but I can assure you, they are alright, on the whole.” She shrugged. “You know how that is; after such a long time, discipline becomes loose. Even among librarians.” She gestured towards the other end of the hall. “There are some more things I have to show you; we shouldn’t waste time.”

  Shir looked around him. “I thought we were in a time-bubble.”

  Nuphar rolled her eyes. “Time is not passing outside. In here, it does. I’m getting old while you stand there staring at some people making a little noise in a library.”

  She was right. Humans do get older. Shir started to smile, and his smile infected me, and then we were both giggling uncontrollably. A room full of Humans who grew old in a perfectly natural way.

  Nuphar frowned and put a finger to her lips. “Silence!” She said. “This is a library, after all.”

  We made the effort and fell silent. Holding each other’s hands, we crossed the room, not daring to stare at anyone for any length of time. I photographed whatever I could and filed it for future viewing. I was still afraid to scan these people, but the smell of all these crowded bodies—sweat, soap, and some perfume—was very clear. No hologram could mimic reality so accurately.

  Nuphar never stopped chattering since the moment we’d left the great hall. She led us to the places where they grew their food. She explained about caloric calculations and birth control, and I recorded everything she said because I knew I wouldn’t be able to register all of it
in real time. Shir’s hand became drier as we went along. He was even able to talk to Nuphar from time to time, and get some necessary information out of her in those rare moments that she stopped to take a breath.

  “Normally there are people who are supposed to prepare everything we need to scan and document,” Nuphar sighed. “I don’t understand why it never happens the way we ask. It is for the greater good, after all.” She sighed again. “So I’ll need from you a representational list of extant cultures,” said Nuphar as we walked past a display of jugs in various sizes, from a few fingers’ width to several meters, “and references to mapped areas. We can refer you to locations that used to be important once, for us to document the changes that have taken place there.”

  Shir cleared his throat loudly, to stop Nuphar’s flow of words. “When have you last visited the outside?” He asked.

  Nuphar stopped and scratched her head. “Three … no, two hundred and seventy years ago, external time.”

  Shir and I exchanged looks. I turned my eyes back to Nuphar. “There’s been a lot of changes since,” I said.

  Nuphar raised her hands. “But of course. It has been two hundred and seventy years. Civilizations rise, civilizations fall. It’s fascinating!”

  “Yes.” Shir paused for a while. “Fascinating,” he repeated quietly.

  Nuphar smiled. “I knew you’d like it!” She turned back and kept walking, pulling Shir and me behind her. “I’ll give you the full tour later. First it’s important that I get you to the Information Center, make reader cards for you and all that red tape.” She stopped, adjusted her hair, and turned to face us. “We’ve been able to create a complete reconstruction of all influential civilizations, so that all future scholars will be able to predict the course of events or learn more about the past,” she said, spreading her hands as if to embrace the entire library. “And you will be the first ones in two hundred and seventy years who’ll get to see this!” She raised a finger. “But first things first. Reader cards.”