Песах Амнуэль - Zion's Fiction - A Treasury of Israeli Speculative Literature

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.”

She opened another door that led to a small room lit by spheres hovering near the ceiling. It contained one desk and three chairs. Nuphar sat at the desk, raised her hands in the air, and a keyboard materialized in front of her.

Shir and I exchanged looks and sat down in the chairs facing her.

“I programmed this keyboard,” she smiled at us, “based on old blueprints.”

She typed our names and titles on the holokeyboard, then raised her head. “We must plan our expeditions. Even if your world is in war, there are always historians who want to get to the Library, and we’re extraterritorial, independent of any nation or period of time.” She was frowning and licking her lips as she typed.

Shir leaned forward and laid his hand on the keyboard. Nuphar looked up at us. “Don’t do that,” she said, frowning even more.

Shir cleared his throat. “We have something… There’s something you should know.” He looked at me furtively.

I knew what he wanted me to do. I was senior, so I had to take the lead. I took a deep breath. There was an oath. A short one. We’d recorded it dozens of years ago. I hadn’t dared look at it since. “Can we connect with your screen system?” I pointed at her desk. “Something small, we don’t need an entire hall.”

Nuphar looked at Shir, and again at me. “Is it important?”

I nodded.

She frowned. “Well, we’ll return to your reader cards momentarily.” She typed, and connection instructions floated in my vision.

Shir laid a hand on my shoulder and squeezed it slightly by way of encouragement. I laid my hand on the desktop and made contact with the central computer. It was old software, but I managed to fit one of the protocols to my own software and broadcast.

An old me, thirty-four years of age, in tattered uniform, with blood stains on my face, looked straight at Nuphar. Nuphar looked at me, and returned her eyes to the figure that used to be me. I activated the simulation.

“I, Romi Potashnik, being of sound mind, do hereby put my consciousness and my body in the hands of the Supreme Generator,” said my projected self and took a deep breath. It wiped its eyes and added: “We shall never stop, we shall never cease, we shall never desist.”

The simulation ended. Shir put his hand beside mine and his oh-so-young image appeared above the desk. “I, Shir Ben-Yair, being of sound mind, do hereby put my consciousness and my body in the hands of the Supreme Generator. We shall never stop, we shall never cease, we shall never desist.” He saluted, and the image froze.