Sold by the Alien: A Rough Sci-Fi Romance
I had been standing at the door ready to disembark, but I sit back down again because this seems like it could take a while. Zed’s chosen some interesting attire. He’s wearing his version of a white shirt and brown slacks. I suspect he’s trying to look boring and respectable. It doesn’t really work, because the shirt is open halfway down his chest, revealing a plane of incredible green muscle. The pants are tight over his ass too, and over his thighs. I don’t know if he’s unaware that nothing he has on actually fits, or if he doesn’t care. I’m certainly not complaining.
“Here it is!” He pulls out a dog-eared laminate card with his face on it in a very scratchy old image.
“What’s that?”
“Can’t do anything beyond those doors without this,” he says, waggling it at me and not answering my question at all. He likes me to work things out for myself, but sometimes I truly wish he would just tell me what’s going on.
The exterior of the building gives very little away. I look around for clues, trying to see if there’s anything in this large parking lot to suggest where we are. There are a few other ships parked here and there, all strange and different in their own ways. The notion of a space craft is clearly not standardized across species. Some look like rocket ships, one appears to me to be a large pastrami sandwich. It would be easy to take all this strangeness and think that existence is one great cosmic joke, but the beast which rises from the void and consumes great swathes of creation makes it a very dark joke, if it is one at all.
We disembark from the ship and Zed leads me through two perfectly polished wood doors. Even before we see what is inside, I feel a sense of comfort. This is the sort of place where everything is under control. I can sense that immediately. There is a smell as he opens one door, a sort of papery whiff which tells me where I am before I see stacks and stacks and rows on rows going on and into eternity.
It’s a library.
A library the size of a planet. Or it might better be described as a planet made of library. There are rolling hills covered in bookshelves, small ponds where readers dip their feet while their heads are buried in books.
There are very large desks ranged around the entrance. One is labelled RETURNS. The other is labelled CHECKOUT. Both of them are staffed by very large women. If I didn’t know better, I would say it is the same woman, though dressed very differently. The checkout lady has a great plume of lovely red hair, a pink blouse, and the sort of spectacles that seem to be issued to librarians, the ones where the very tips are thick and angled, like a second pair of unimpressed brows.
The returns lady is similar, though she has a blue shirt with little white dot on it. Perhaps they are twins. Or maybe triplets? The last desk is labelled FINES. The giantess staffing this desk is at least twelve feet tall, wears a pinstripe shirt, and a severe expression. She also holds a long rod in her hand. She makes a shiver run down my spine when I make the distinct mistake of looking directly at her. Unlike her sisters—I am supposing they are sisters—she is much more frightening. Her brows have a higher arch, her nose has a sharper tip, and her mouth is full of very sharp teeth, which is a physical characteristic I have learned to associate with carnivorous intent.
“SHHH!” The fines librarian holds a perfectly manicured finger up to her horrific maw. I fall silent until we are well out of earshot.
“Is this where we are going to hide? There’s nothing to eat. I love books, but you can’t digest them. And where are the houses?”
Zed grins. “There are vending machines, and there’s the area where they keep the outdated encyclopedias. There are some lost souls who inhabit those stacks, according to legend.”
“They don’t just throw them out?”
“The sort of intellects that designed this place never throw anything out. It might be useful later.”
“So they’re hoarders.”
“Hoarders with a system,” he clarifies. “Come on. We’ll take the bookworm.”
“Take the bookworm?”
I have no idea what he is talking about until he points to something moving between the stacks. At first, I can only see it as sort of a leathery presence, somewhat alarming if I am to be honest. I have seen too many monsters of late. I brace myself for another.
The bookworm emerges from behind the shelves and I get to see it properly. Its face is made of words all jumbled around together to make a constantly shifting expression. It is a living train which wriggles its way around the stacks and shelves. Every segment has a seat atop it. Many of the seats are stacked with books and accompanied by slight aliens who look like more typically-sized versions of the librarians we met at the front counter.