The 10th Circle - Abyss [Complete]

4. Engram: Tides (4)

I didn't know what I had expected, but certainly nothing even remotely like what I saw when I stepped through the door he had led me to.

It was a library. In the real, old meaning of the word. There were no computer terminals. Instead, the large room was filled with a maze of shelves, containing more paper-bound books together in a single place than I had seen in my entire life. Probably more than still existed in all of Pharos.

"Unbelievable..." I muttered.

"I thought you'd like this place," Cloud commented with a smirk on his lips.

"Like it? I love it!" I exclaimed happily.

I stepped forward to wander along the rows of shelves, and let my fingers brush over the backs of the books. They were bound in linen, as white as the rest of the room, their titles printed in narrow black letters on their backs. But I was still too awestruck to really take in what the letters said. I just picked one at random and opened it, flipping through the pages and inhaling the dusty scent of the paper. As I ran my fingertips over the narrowly printed pages, the feeling of the paper underneath my skin caused a pleasant shiver to run along my arm and through my entire body. I began to read.

"Out of the multitude of his thousand children, the god of sleep raised Morpheus by his power. As the most skillful of his sons, he had the art of adapting any human shape, and dexterously could imitate the gait and countenance of men, and every mode of speaking. He could simulate the dress and customary words of any man he chose to represent, but he could not assume the form of anything but man, such was his art. Another of Sleep's sons could imitate all kinds of animals – wild beasts or a flying bird, or even a serpent with its twisted shape. That son, by the gods above, was called Ikelos, but the inhabitants of earth called him Phobetor. A third son, named Phantastos, could change himself into the inanimate forms of earth, into stone, water or a tree."

I remembered that story very well. It had always struck me as peculiar, because for some coincidental reason the realm of Phantastos was where we chose all our names from.

It was a strangely elating feeling to read these words out loud, to hold an actual physical copy of this story in my hands. Rationally, I knew it was no different from the digital version that I had read, years ago, as a child on a glowing tablet under my blanket at night, enthralled by the myths of the Old World. But emotionally, it was a vastly different experience. I felt like the world I read about was just about to come to life all around me if I continued on.

Cloud came over to me with a curious expression in his face.

"Ovid's Metamorphoses," he recognized correctly.

I nodded. And then a weird realization struck me. Of course he would know that story. Since this was my dream, he would know everything I knew, and all the books in this library were probably books I had read at some point in my life. My mind had probably just chosen to show me printed books because I had always loved the scent of the paper dust, and the linen and glue that held the pages and cover together, rare as it was in this day and age when everybody used tablets and screens.

But... to be able to remember this passage in such detail, word for word... and there are so many. It's impossible that I've read all of this, isn't it?

I put the Metamorphoses back and let my gaze wander along the rows of books once more. Maybe some of them would be blank if I opened them?

The shelves were mostly filled with Old World literature, the kind that was considered "classic" already back before the war. In the real world, there were probably very few paper copies of these books left, if any. Maybe some vintage imitations, or antiques in expensive collections. A few old books had been scavenged from the wastes in the earlier days of the Keres program. They were now sealed in special preservation archives in the basement of the academy library, inaccessible to the public. But personally, I certainly had never seen any of these in print. And I couldn't imagine how so many books could have survived the war, especially considering their pristine condition.