The Most Dangerous Library in the World

“Are you eratosthenes1990?”

“Yes. Here is the notebook I mentioned—vellum pages, black leather binding—as well as the twenty thousand promised upon the listing.”

“Jesus! Put that away, you’ll get us robbed. Is this your first time doing the whole online selling thing?”

“I wouldn’t quite term this a ‘sale’. I am not requesting money from you; I am providing you with funds to take this volume off my hands. Twenty thousand. Mint.”

“This is definitely some sort of scam.”

“I mean you no harm, nor deceit; none will come to you, so long as you do not open the book. The funds are merely a lubricant to ensure the transaction; which, to my knowledge, will indeed come as great aid to you.”

“I’m not going to even ask how you know that because everyone’s broke out here. Look, you’ve got me. My goddamn university is raising its tuition fee again. I’m desperate here, okay? Most of the time random listings like yours with nothing else attached scream serial killer business. Just tell me what the whole deal is with the book and why I can’t open it. I might be dumb enough to come but I’m not that dumb. I’m not going to take some mafia boss’ private journal off you and get sniped a week later while I’m singing in the shower.”

“Listen closely: I tell you not to open it because this book was taken from the most dangerous Library in the world.”

“What, is it filled with spike traps and shark tanks or something?”

“It is not physically dangerous, and certainly not as cartoonish as you describe it, no. Libraries are made of the books that comprise them, and it is the books in this Library that make it so dangerous.”

“Okay, so like… books that teach you how to make bombs? I heard about a book like that once. My brother tried to download it when we were kids. Mom grounded him for weeks.”

“Nothing so simple, though of course it does possess such books in its archive. They are part of it. The danger mostly arises from the fact that it is a Library of Everything. And it was indeed called so, once. But that was a long time ago. Now it is mostly only known for its danger.”

“Everything?”

“Yes, everything. In this library there lies the sum of all knowledge, both human and inhuman, both known and currently unknown: from the lost missives of great emperors past, each page thrumming with revelations that would shudder the world at their release; to the smallest journals written by children in their youth, preserving dreams long since forgotten. Travelogues to ancient civilizations long thought mere myth; language textbooks on how to converse with the tiniest insects. Scrolls that list three words to crush a man’s heart and two to rekindle it. I have walked in the obsidian halls of the Library, it's cold stone chilling my bare feet, and in its darkest, winding alleys I have found knowledge enough to burden even Noah’s Ark.”

“'If I wasn't trying to go clean I'd be asking you for some of whatever you're smoking.”

“Whether you believe me or not does not matter. What only matters is that you take the book. I will not have come all this way for nothing.”

“Alright, calm down. Saying nothing of whatever sort of library this is… probably some sort of secret government archive... how did you even come by it in the first place? Since you’ve ‘walked in its halls’ and all. Don’t tell me you’re a thief. Wait. Is the government going to send people after us now?”

“...”

“Jesus, don’t tell me it actually is stolen.”

“The Library has no security. At the very least, not in the way you imagine. Nothing will come after us, for it has no guards, no agents it dispatches after its stray children. According to my theories, at least. I’ve never had the opportunity to test it until now. Nothing will come once the book is outside its boundaries.”

“Theories?”

“I’m sitting before you as fine as can be, aren’t I? We are both at peak—well, close enough, in your case—physical health. None of us have begun to putrefy, or hallucinate, or speak in tongues. The Library is not aware. The Library cannot be aware—it is too far away from this place to be.”

“Okay, please stop talking about putrefying. I do not like how you say that word.”

“Like I said, it will not happen to you. What is that saying… right as rain?”

“Yeah. Right as rain. You’re not from around here, are you? You have some sort of... accent.”

“No, nothing so near. The Library is a tad further away, but unfortunately I am not allowed to disclose its location. Very few are permitted the privilege.”

“So how does anybody visit then? If nobody knows where the hell it is. Not much of a library if nobody can visit.”

“The Library is kind enough to permit those who find entry to peruse its contents—briefly, of course, and never to withdraw. Misbegotten warlocks, or self-proclaimed ‘cultists’, or lawyers, that sort of person. Such is the immensity of the Library that it is bound to have some vermin crawling their way in. They try every kind of trick, every single crack, crevice, loophole, overlooked clause. They never outstay their welcome, at least. Never long enough to thieve through memory—they only ever leave with the faintest snippet of a thought. The Library makes sure of that.”

“Still not much of a library if nobody can borrow from it. Thought that was the point of libraries. And last I remembered you said there was no security. I swear to god I’ll stand up right now and leave if you were lying to me.”

“No, no, it’s nothing like that. It is more of a… preventative measure. Every library needs a librarian. It is the Librarian who ensures the sanctity of the Library. She is unassailable; no unauthorized withdrawals have ever occurred under her watch. Only two have ever come close.

The first was a manual on the assembly of flowers. Though seemingly innocuous, the one who’d sought to steal it was a diplomat. The manual taught one to assemble flowers as lifelike and genuine as ones freshly grown by Nature—and through a similar process actually, with one’s fingers instead of sunlight and water, but I digress—out of anything in the world, from blades of grass to human bones.

The diplomat sought to make flowers out of seashells. Endless bouquets, enough to fill a whole room. You see, the Empress’ daughter was deathly allergic to them, but she did love flowers so.

Her death would have plunged their nation into war, a war that would have watered their fields with the blood of their sons and daughters for generations to come. The diplomat imagined that by its simple nature the Librarian would have overlooked it—and she almost did, for she’d been fresh to her position at the time, still too focused on the potential theft of the rarer books—that it wasn’t until the diplomat’s foot was half out the door that she realized.

She was punished by the Library for that. The Library does not take the threat of loss kindly, not even to its own wards. For forty-nine days the Librarian was stricken of her wits: for almost allowing the loss of knowledge, she too had to experience what it is to have knowledge ripped unwillingly from her. She awoke a few months later in some dusty section of the Library, the shelves full of nail-marks, her limbs stained with drool and blood.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“The Librarian never made that sort of mistake again.”

“But I thought you said there was—”

“Yes. There was a second. Not from any mistake of the Librarian—she’d long become too wary for that.”

“You’re saying she… let it happen?”

“A man had made his way into the Library, after long decades of research and sacrifice. In his quest for the path to the Library he’d lost family, friends, who all thought him mad; he’d lost the fruit of his youth, those years of his freshest beauty.

When at last he entered the Library he stepped forth and asked for a book on medicine, upon the arts of weaving flesh. You see, he’d come to the Library for one thing alone: he wanted to learn how to allow his mother—bed-bound in her old age—to have a child again.

For this was a son who had never been loved by his mother as a boy, a mother who had always wanted a daughter instead. Never had he seen joy in his mother’s eyes in all his childhood, in all those years at her breast, at her knee. She was not a cruel woman; never did her voice curdle in rage towards him. But neither did it ever warm with the slightest hint of love.

Her son, when he was young, made the decision to see her smile once, before she died. And so he came to the Library. This time, the book almost left the threshold. One foot planted outside it, his other foot in the air—the Librarian turned away, her heart steeled in preparation.

She was not ready. At once the man burst into a fine mist, the book falling from his hands to clatter onto the floor.

The Librarian’s punishment this time was different. She was struck of her sight, for the arrogance of presuming how knowledge should be disseminated. Her other senses remained, of course. So she would not forget the proof of her failing—that fine, wet, copper taste in the air.”

“Holy fuck.”

“She got used to it.”

“Why the fuck did she sign up for it? Did she even sign up for it? I thought you said it wasn’t dangerous? So that was a fat lie.”

“It’s not dangerous unless you attempt an unauthorized withdrawal.”

“From what you say that will never exist. None of the withdrawals will ever be authorized.”

“It’s understandable, really, if you look at it from the Library’s perspective. In its existence it has only ever known knowledge—the possessing of it, the maintenance of it. As it grows so too does it fear its eventual fall. Who knows who made it, how strong its walls are? If one book were to leave then perhaps, like a chain reaction, many others would soon follow. Like a bubble it would burst—its contents spewing into the world for all sundry to peruse. The grubbiest fingers would stain those pages. That is what it fears, I think. As the possessor of all that is Known it has only ever feared the Unknown.”

“But I thought… this notebook. Didn’t you say not to open it because it was from—”

“Take it.” She presses the notebook into my hands, her milky white eyes staring straight. “Read it for all I care. I honestly do not know what its contents are. You were right about what a library should be. What is a Library if its knowledge is kept from the people? If its books are locked in for the select few and never allowed for withdrawal? You’ll have heard of the Library of Alexandria. It did not die in a blaze, as most people believe it, its books consigned to flame and ash. No, it died in obscurity. Less and less came to visit it. The flow of its books died, and became stagnant. Do you not think knowledge should be a vein that flows without impediment?”

“Take it,” she says, pressing the rest of the money into my hands. “I came to you because you are a student. You know how valuable knowledge is. Come visit me in the future. One day, after all of this is over, perhaps the Library will still be standing. We’ll have some tea. Maybe I’ll show you how to make a flower out of a teacup.”