Library Planet
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Library Planet - Tom Hendricks
9781483549897
1. Background: Setting the Scene
I'm a solitary man, somewhere over 200 - who counts with 3 or 4 hundred left.
I'm a gaunt looking young man. I'm tall, 6'6", some grey hair in a thick black mane of hair, grey green eyes, long narrow nose, some pounds added over the years to pad out my lanky bones -distinguished some say (though they court favor) - boyish looks, a bit still; with social skills (inherited traits from my father) and when necessary iron hard when opposed, (learned from life lessons).
I'm a wealthy man - so much so that I control my life and every moment in it, and most of the lives of those around me (when I allow them to be around me). I live where I choose and do what I want.
I love to read. Reading is my pleasure, and my expenses, and my life. Bibliophile? Perhaps to the power of one thousand!
As you, another reader, know I took over this library, this large library, when the others abandoned it. Now it's mine and mine alone. Mine to wallow in. I'm a solitary man.
* * *
This library - pull back your eyes, shift them to far sighted - this library began as a museum for these planets - the ones pictured on that wall - all 70+ of them (depending on how many moons and planetoids you count with them). That was when this planet was the Capital of the confederacy. During those decades the library part grew to be the depository of the best of each planet's publications.
Then it grew larger to become the kingdom's library, center of study and research, as well as its political law center. Then larger still when the Capital was moved to a separate planet.
Now left by itself, the library grew to cover this quadrant - this hemisphere - this entire moon.
Yes, a library planet, a building complex so vast that now it circumvents the globe like an equator, or a ring of a gas giant; and has expanded north and south to the frosty arctic circles of each pole.
Over a million rooms (though no one has ever counted) with a million more halls, walkways, bridges, tunnels, balconies, staircases…
How it did bustle in its heyday. How it did buzz with the clicks and shuffling of billions of shoes, boots, sandals, clacking down the highly polished aisles and echoing off the stacks. Men, women, and children from all over, shuffling papers, sorting through records, manuscripts, novels, journals, deeds, diaries, poems, pamphlets, manifestos, decrees, laws, law books, science research files, historical documents, and much much more. Thousands of ships of every sort from space cruisers to private rockets, landed daily, in this the confederacy's most busy port city. And once inside - millions of languages, dialects, noises, and scents, all mixing together in an orderly cacophony - a hive of sentient beings humming away!
Now the port is quiet and the dorm rooms that housed the staff and researchers, visitors and tourists, are empty. Echoes have ceased. I took what remained, gutted the walls, re-buttressed them, metamorphosed most of them into holding tanks, into warehouses, into massive room sized closets, basements, and attics now filled with my new stock, new shipments; new copies of classics, used books, and old anything-else-that-is-left-on-paper outside these walls. All waiting for me to display and stack and arrange as I wont…. Oh wait. I'll stop writing here. New shipment landing now. I leave you dear reader, to attend to it.
* * *
This is the story of how I bought the library.
The 70 planet confederation became two at-loggerheads leagues. And neither the Grey-Greens or the Rust-Reds wanted this 'ruin' with its past intact.
Everything was so old here, that both sides demanded new there - a new library for the Grey-Greens was built in 608 so-so-so and