Egyptian sun shone down on Black threatening a burn. Black tucked the map away into his box neatly, trying to will Evo’s fun facts out of the air. Perched on an outcropping of volcanic rock they surveyed their landing. They were confined to a ledge, hugged by jagged cliffs on three sides and ocean on the fourth. Making effective use of his cast Black was careful to avoid lacerations from the sharp rock as he poked his head over the top. The promontory revealed itself as an island bearing no prospects of further progress.
Black likened its size to about half of a ‘football field.’ Evo wrinkled his forehead, whinnied, and muttered “Terrene” under his breath. Black heard him perfectly and for brief moment, recalling the untidy sports store in Capriis, he wondered if there was anything like football here.
More pressing riddles begged to be relinquished and they scoured the smallish platform for some way off. It was clearly a manmade ledge carved into the rock but there was no sign of it having any purpose.
There was nowhere to go.
“Where are we?” groaned Evo. “You were supposed to take us to Alexandria.”
“I did. We are, look.”
Black held the map out to Evo. The marker changed what it said as Evo took it. There, right above the dot where Alexandria was it read Evyndyr.
Shrouded behind igneous formations Evo wasn’t able to lift his neck high enough to see the skyline of Alexandria. The boat-speckled harbor of the golden city could be heard however now that it was at the forefront of his awareness.
“Well,” Evo joked, “Either we wait for some cruise ship to rescue us or we see what that map can do for us.”
It didn’t work.
“Um,” tried Black, “I didn’t throw away my flying carpet.”
“Yeah, but this is a no-fly zone and Egyptian prison is my second least favorite place to spend a night.”
“No look.” Black had started to say, pointing to a small pile of debris cuddling the serrated shore of their little island. Suddenly curious of what else was on Evo’s list, he wished he hadn’t spoken so soon. Likewise Evo regretted the anecdote and took the conversational back door away from recollecting undesirable memories.
“Oh, I thought for a moment that it was a boat.”
“It is a boat.” Black argued.
A small reed boat was tied to a slender boulder that had been placed on the flat shelf.
“That’s not a boat!” Evo snorted. “It’s a pile of broken reeds wash-“
“Oh shut up, it’s a boat and it’s even got oars. We’ll just have to paddle our way in.”
“Not that I am trying to get out of paddling a dilapidated life raft to shore, cause I’m not,” stammered Evo. “I honestly don’t think I’ll even fit in that thing and keep it afloat at the same time. And we’ve got to row through all the other traffic. It’s suicide. If we tip over we die.”
“What you can’t swim?”
“No, there’s-”
“I spent a summer one time on a boat, just do as I say and we’ll be fine. No sudden moves horsefoot.”
Evo decided not to get into it. They were out of options and camping on that ledge was almost as dangerous anyway. He didn’t see the need though to pressure Black’s nautical knowhow with that information and he conceded.
Evo’s adrenaline rushed through him as he concentrated hard on keeping the boat steady. Rowing to shore through the phalanx of vessels between was certain doom, but swimming was suicide. All the while Black poked fun unknowledgeable of the danger in the water.
Stroke by stroke they rounded the island and faced the commanding skyline of Alexandria. The city was not made of gold as its nickname stated but rather yellowish sandstone. It was impossible magic that kept block after block of tall sandstone skyscrapers standing. Like a mirage, the hot sun reflected off of a mirror sea.
The city shimmered and rippled before them, the great lighthouse beckoning them in. Black stared in awe at a wall of unfathomably tall superstructures that dwarfed it. Even though he had been here many times Evo couldn’t help but join in the reverence when they had passed the breakers. Atop the maritime entrance to the city an enormous statue stood proud, a legendary hero.
A colossus, erected in honor of Gilgamesh, greater even than the original colossus at Rhodes celebrated the champion of the world’s first epic. Evo couldn’t help but explain that the effigy in Rhodes however was the original great colossus and more wondrous because it was built without the aid of magic.
The Alexandrian skyline had not rendered a single holy cow. Their utterly silent awe, broken only by Evo’s tour guide knowledge was a venerable reverence fit for the Manhattan of the Mediterranean. Ancient looking, gravity defying, skyscrapers of heavy yellow stone seemed to pierce the stratosphere. The skyline looked as though the ancient Egyptians had built their version of New York City. Greater than the pyramids or the temple at Carnac, these buildings put to shame any others he had ever seen. Las Vegas certainly didn’t have the tallest building in the world but Black had known them to be grand. Now his memory of them seemed pathetic. Just a few weeks ago modern engineering was king. Now magical superstructures trumped over modern technology.
Black wondered how the tallest of these would measure up against the two towers. Those were the tallest buildings Black could name, but even if they weren’t as tall they certainly were just as imposing. Black nearly lost his balance and tipped the skiff. Evo shrieked like a small child but regained proper footing.
He was now breathing too heavy to reproach Black, who laughed jovially and ignorantly. Evo strained himself working superior levitation magic. He was nearly exhausted and panicked.
Black was absorbed into getting the most out of his oar strokes that he failed to see where he was going. The bow shot up out of the water and sea spray coated their front sides. A fearful moment of near capsizing in the crossing wakes of larger boats Evo pleaded for passage with a nearby by garbage barge. It was empty and on its way toward the city.
‘Watch where you’re going!” Evo roared as the barge slowly approached.
“Me? I’m the one doing all the work.” Black shouted back.
“So, you think you’re the one keeping us afloat?”
“Like you are. You’re the one just standing there complaining.”
“I’ve been levitating this rotting piece of junk the whole way. And all the while keeping the eels distracted.”
“You-” Black stopped short. “Wait, what?”
But before Evo could explain the barge had approached. The solid mass underfoot was welcome despite the reeking stench. They deflected the curious pilot’s puzzlement well enough and slowly floated nearer the shore.
Their argument was dropped and sank like a heavy stone into the harbor just as quickly as their little reed boat had done. In its place Evo put on a false voice and guided their tour.
The barge’s horn hollered a low welcome as they passed around what Evo explained was a massive boat station. Rather than subways they had underground canals with ferrymen guiding long reed boats with poles. It seemed to Black like a cross between a singing and dancing theme park ride and Venice. But Evo didn’t understand a word or what Black was talking about. Black couldn’t help but sing “it’s a small world after all,” the rest of the way in.
"Wow what’s that building?" asked Black after they hopped ashore and thanked the garbage man.
"That,” Evo speculated, “looks like a huge glass, wait a sec. That the new addition to the library. Wow is right. It’s incredible. I heard it was neat but this is amazing."
Towering out of the ocean was a triangular shaped glass wall, pointing to the sky. The entire structure looked solid, like it was one gigantic piece of glass or crystal. The absence of individual panes and supporting crossbeams gave it and unusual and ghostly appearance. Black thought of a giant moon-sized diamond exploding in space and a chunk of it falling and nestling itself into the Alexandrian coast.
"It looks like a-"
"Yeah it's a glass pyramid turned on its side, look you can see inside. There on the far end, there’s where the top of the pyramid would be if it was right side up." Evo pointed to water where it gently lapped against the side of the crystal clear wall. "It goes down just as far.
Through the wall Black could see there were numerous balconies inside stacked with countless shelves and display cases, all glowing slightly of an ethereal sky blue. They followed the boardwalk along the coast towards the building.
“So that’s it then,” exclaimed Evo.
All Black could muster by way of reply was a fairly disjointed double “whoa.”
“That’s the ethereal section. It’s new, just finished about a year or so ago.”
“What’s that mean, ethereal section?”
“It’s a new concept. I read an article about it. It’s supposed to replace all the current library systems. No more damaged, lost or stolen books. No more late fees. No hungry books eating your stuff either.”
The blank stare from Blacks face still had questions written all over it and Evo noticed.
“All the actual books are now kept in sealed glass cases. When you find a book you want you simply touch the case in front of the book and an ethereal copy will emerge for you to take.”
“Sounds cool but what’s ethereal mean?”
“Oh, it’s like, like a ghost only backwards. Typically ghosts are not usually visible or palpable but they’re real, something ethereal is something you can see and touch but it’s not real and will soon fade.”
“So it’s like a hologram then?”
“A hollow what?”
“A hologram you know, as in an illusion.”
“I thought you were talking about crackers, isn’t that what a graham is?”
“Not hollow, holo, h-o-l-o. And a different kind of gram, not like, oh never mind, just forget it.”
“Ok, easy enough, you weren’t making any sense. Anyway when you take an ethereal book you can have it as long as you want, or well as long as it lasts. They die after a while you know.”
“I thought you said they weren’t real, how can they die?”
“Fine they don’t die they disappear, run out of chi, whatever, everyone calls it dying, like your music thingy. They fade after time or if you take them far enough away from the library, away from their source of power. Ah here we are,” Evo happily announced and ended the conversation before any more questions could be raised.
They stood on the pier, the glass pyramid towering above them. It was unlike any glass Black had ever seen. It looked so thin and clear and astonishingly it was made of one solid piece, not just each side but the whole structure was solid and seamless. The building was remarkable but partly due to its transparency, subtracted nothing from the many other buildings on the site. As they walked around the ethereal section they saw it was connected to the back end of the central edifice, the library proper.
Evo explained that the original word for the library, bibliotheca, referred to the collection of scrolls itself not to the buildings housing them but in Atlantean and most other modern Gaiean languages the word was like the English library. He went on to tell Black that over time the library had grown as a center for learning and the arts of magic and thus became more of a university than a just a house for books. It was now also sometimes known as the great university of Alexandria.
“In fact,” he continued, “it’s got a lot more names depending on where in the world you are, but they’re all more or less the same thing. Most of the world’s greatest thinkers have once studied here.”
The entrance to the library was more inland and the turned off the boardwalk. Evo led Black onto the complex and around the corner of an archaic sandstone building and under a great hallway of columns. They entered an open courtyard, the ancient library façade on the north. Another colonnade like the one they had just passed through was opposite them on the far end. That left a huge circular building or cistern of some kind occupying the remaining side of the square.
Black was sure Evo was about to spit out another interesting fact but for the moment the grandeur of the original structure, the Great Library of Alexandria had the floor. The library, like most of the city was built primarily of the yellowish stone. Various other stones used in the carvings, inlays and reliefs gave it a high level of detail. It was ancient but sturdy.
“Not bad eh?” chirped Evo.
Crowning the steps that led up to the entrance, Black gazed at the white marble artfully set into the threshold. The stone looked as if it were spilled milk, leaking out from inside the library. Large twin statues of Atlas stood on raised platforms on either side of the stairs. Instead of the celestial sphere on the titan’s shoulders Atlas held big brass braziers blazing with pure white flame.
“They symbolize that the weight of the heavens is lifted by knowledge. Don’t tell Atlas though.” Evo laughed. “Those braziers still look plenty heavy.”
“Not bad at all,” Black proposed as they moved up the steps. “I mean for a library.”
Monstrous doors gaping wide were open and inviting. They had been coated with gold leaf giving way to the white floors inside. It probably had some sort of symbolic tie in to Atlas’s heavenly flames. Black rushed in, nearly leaping. He considered for a brief moment becoming an architect. At this he shuddered, made the kind of face one makes when biting into a fruit that’s entirely unripe and stripped himself of the thought. He let himself become distracted by all the people there.
Most people moved lazily around a vast circular entrance hall taking it all in. It was bright and had the scent of any old museum. The musty waft of old deteriorating parchment and preservative ointments dominated the air. Streams of incense and other fragrances mingled delightfully with the ancient book smell and the breeze from the sea would come in periodically like waves to freshen the senses temporarily.
It was like all particles in the air were laden with an aroma, every one of them had somewhere to be. Mixing perfectly in a grand chaos, like ants when you kick their hill. But there were also bits of space in the library void and sterile. Like spears barring down into the nest, rays of light shone from a focal point above to the floor. What portion of the air that wasn’t occupied by one scent or another was inhabited by these near tangible lights beaming down from the domed ceiling.
Black made to swipe his hand through one and was surprised. Minutely the air was different, it was thicker. Tenderly he ran his fingers along the edges of the light. He could easily pass hid hand through it but he could feel a surface. It reminded him of holding his hand out of a car window and feeling in his cupped hand like he is holding an invisible ball.
Nestled in the crest of the circular ceiling smothered by a circular fresco adorned every inch of the cupola was a diamond or some other crystal larger than any Black had ever seen. The mural was definitely a grand myth or epic of some kind, one Black didn’t recognize off hand. It reminded Black of one of those ninja turtle named renaissance artists, except instead of naked babies everywhere there were pegasi and mermaids.
. From the elephantine jewel projected the pillars of light that illuminated the spacious rotunda. Black moved around and fondled the 3D image that they cast onto the ground.
“The world’s largest crystallight calendar.” Although Evo was in no way responsible for its existence his voice carried an air of pride.
The rays from the gem created translucent statues of light arranged in several rings on the marble floor. Displaying the Date, time, season, month, moon phase, and a few other things Black didn’t understand.
It was spectacular.
Black began to mentally compare it to every image of any library or museum he had seen, none of which could measure up to the grandiose of Alexandria’s great library. This was majestic, it was amazing. The ceiling seemed to be ridiculously taller than it had been on the outside, a building quality that he was getting used to. The stonework was intricate and detailed beyond normal human ability. The materials were exquisite and perfect. Black had no doubt that the magic enchanting the buildings’ size and the great crystallight calendar, were world class. Black found out it was the year 1467 after the rule of the thirteen houses. The moon was somewhere close to the first quarter and Libra was the current zodiac being passed by the sun.
“Well let’s get you a library card shall we?” Evo suggested.
“All this magic and you use library cards? Wait, how’s that work without technology?”
“Well we don’t actually have library cards in Gaia. I’m kidding, I just always thought they were cool.”
“Oh, well what do you have?”
“Permission from the gods.”
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