The Library at the End of Time - short story

Hi everyone! Welcome back! It’s been a busy few weeks here at lachlanbondauthor.com

We recently released our second book, and our first novella, The Road to Ithaca! You can check it out here or check it out on Amazon here! I has so much fun writing this novella, and I really do hope you have just as much fun reading it.

Now, with that out of the way, let’s jump right into this week’s short story. We’re venturing into the exciting frontier of science fiction this week, and I’m sure you’ll find it refreshing to step into this strange new world. So, without further ado, enjoy.

The Library at the End of Time.

‘We did not die by the sword, but by hubris.’

These are the final words of the Karneth Veld. Not by the sword, but by hubris.

I motion for the ilumi-sphere to move closer, the small ball of glowing white light bobbing as it floats nearer my shoulder. I scratch my chin at the words, rechecking my translation. Sword may be a slight misnomer on my part, but the intention works. Weapon, it says, but to my ear ‘sword’ just sounds so beautiful. I allow myself the poetic license, entering the information into my log.

The floating marble walls of the Archivus Terminus loom above me, stoic and vast as they stretch all the way to the horizon. They are the horizon. I stare up at the polished surfaces, beginning to show their first stages of decay, corroding away at the edges. These stones will last for billions of years, but even they are not immune to the surging river of time. There had been caretakers, once. Millions of them, all working towards maintaining this last bastion of knowledge.

But time is running out, and I am the only one left.

I turn back to my work. I swore an oath, to preserve and learn, and it did not die with them. I must keep working, even if there is no-one left to read it.

The Karneth Veld. An old race. Older, even, than the Archivus itself, from before M-time.

Astounding. There are next to no records from before the Brink. They inhabited a small world out beyond the Planck Sphere. I open my log, searching for their entry. A small image glimmers before my eyes, a shining sunset, glass sculptures arranged with such intricate care that they reflect the light into an almost solid form, sending cascading rays of golden light spiralling through the air, combining into the shape of a proud scholar, standing tall and strong.

It is beautiful. I read their entry. The Karneth Veld came to prominence in the outer plains of the Eothra. They had remarkable technology. Hard-light constructs, entire systems harvested for energy, some more primitive worlds even revered them as deities. A truly beautiful world.

But then they disappeared, according to our records. Not in an explosion, not gone from the universe in a cosmic inferno like so many species before, nor even in a slow fading away to nothing, like most.

They were simply gone.

The records of the Archivus Terminus are the most comprehensive catalogue of civilisations in the history of the universe, though that hardly means they are without fault.

But, to disappear completely? It’s next to impossible.

The last commandment of the Karneth Veld was for all sects to return to their origin. To return home. There are documentations of their mass migration, colony ships the size of solar systems cutting their paths through the cause-lanes on their journey back to their home planet.

After that, nothing.

No-one saw the Karneth Veld again. An expedition was sent to their planet, aeons after their vanishing. The planet was scorched and bare, scoured clean by some catastrophic force of unimaginable violence. Deserts had been burnt to glass, colossal tidal waves of crystal frozen mid-break. The seas had boiled, and the mountains levelled.

The only remnant of the Karneth Veld was a single, engraved stone. One stone, amidst an entire planet, amidst an entire galactic empire. One stone, upon which were carved the words: ‘We did not die by the sword, but by hubris.’

The log entry ends. There is no more information. I stare at the polished stone console.

This will not do. The Archivus must be made whole.

I stand, stretching my sore bones. I tighten the cloth wrappings covering my skin, and begin down the long, empty stone corridors of the Archivus. As I walk, I can’t help but remember times long past.

There were children, once, running and playing in these halls. Hah. Children. I laugh at the thought. There have been no children in centuries.

Travelling merchants and wandering scholars, wise men of a million, million worlds would gather in these halls to share their stories. It had been so beautiful, so alive.

But I’m all that’s left, now. A lonely old librarian, kept company by the ghost of the universe. Time is coming to a close, and I am the last sentinel. The last old man, standing at his post, watching existence fade away.

But, at least I have the Archivus. My Archivus. The Library at the end of Time.

I enter into the Room of Worlds. There are trillions of doors, with trillions of worlds behind each one, but I know exactly which door I need. I slide my hand across the stone tablet, my dextrous old fingers sparking the room to life.

The doors rush past me, blurring into a continuous haze as they rush past. The wind whips at my cloth, attempting the drag the bindings from my face, but I do not let it. This is the cloth of my people, of my kind. Their memory will pass with me, but until that day, I do not intend to desecrate their past.

The whipping winds stop, and the doors slam to a halt. The door I need is before me, a slight glow illuminating its perimeter.

I step through, my cloth shoes crunching in the ash. This world is ruined. This world is desolate, burnt, scoured. I pull a small stone tablet from my satchel, the planetary co-ordinates displayed in carved lines upon its surface. As I move, the carving shifts and reorients, pointing me towards my goal.

I walk for hours. Hours and hours and hours across the surface of this dead planet. Though, I suppose, there are no living planets left, outside the Archivus.

My feet trudge through the ash and glass, through the biting stones and the dry rocks.

Finally, mercifully, I see it. A small, rectangular plaque, no longer than I am tall, protruding from the dust. I stomp closer, kicking ash into the grey sky as I walk. This is certainly it, the stone that the Karneth Veld left behind. Upon its face, just as described, the words are cut into the stone. ‘We did not die by the sword, but by hubris.’

I kneel down, inspecting it. It appears simple. Just stone. I scan it. It has no significant chemical properties, no abnormal alterations, even the carving itself appears to have been done by the work of a crude metal tool. But whoever left it here clearly intended on someone reading it. The message is even translated into Vierak, one of the most widely used forms of communication during that period of universal history.

It befuddles me. There are no clues, nor markers, nothing nearby that might hold a clue to what happened to these people. I sit, my back against the stone, and hold my head in my hands.

I have to know. It was our job, our purpose. Something happened to the Karneth Veld, and I need to find out what.

“Hello.” I hear, from behind me.

I freeze, stunned. I have to be imagining this. I am the final witness, I am the last sentinel of the Archivus Terminus, I am the last creature in the universe, I am the survivor of Time. There cannot be anyone behind me.

“Hello?” The voice comes again, closer this time.

Still, I do not move. I refuse to acknowledge it. It must be some illusion, some hologram left by a long-dead civilisation. Or perhaps the years of isolation have finally driven me mad.

“Can you hear me?” The voice insists, and this time I hear footsteps.

I finally build the courage to stand. I turn, deathly slowly, to face the voice.

A woman stands before me.

“You are not real.” These are the first words I’ve spoken aloud in centuries. My own echo startles me. I forgot about echoes.

“Oh… Aren’t I?” She looks confused, looking about her as if she had misplaced some trinket or bauble. “I think I ought to know if I were real or not, don’t you think?”

“No, I don’t. You cannot be real; therefore, you are not.” I decide.

We stand in an uncomfortable silence. I have missed uncomfortable silences.

“Why can I not be real?” She asks, somewhat offended by the notion.

“Time is coming to an end.” I tell her. “I am all that’s left.”

“Everywhere?”

“Everywhere.”

“Oh.” Her face shifts slightly, a hint of sadness in her eyes. “I came back… I just wanted to see it one last time, I suppose.”

“See what?” I ask her.

“Just… It. We were gone so long… I suppose I miscalculated. What is the galactic constant?”

“Galactic c-constant?” I stutter. “We haven’t used the galactic constant system since before M-time. What do you think the constant is, right now?”

She looks up into the stars. “Hard to say, really. Sometime after seven-zero-theta-nine?”

“Seven-zero…” I trail off. This woman, this relic, is older than the current age of the universe.

“That was quintillions of standard years ago. The universe has been remade a dozen times since then.”

“Well, like I said. I must have miscalculated.”

I stand, unable to speak, for a moment. “Who are you?” I finally ask.

“We were so excited.” She doesn’t seem to register my question. “The new frontier, they called it. They called us all home. They told us we would ascend.”

“Are-” I stop myself. “Are you of the Karneth Veld?”

She nods, offering a shallow curtsy.

“You don’t look like a Veld.” I offer.

“No, I don’t. This… form, this interface, was chosen to reflect your own. This language too.”

“What happened?” I ask. “Where did you go?”

“So far. So far, yet so near.” Her eyes have a hollow, absent look, as if staring at something on the other side of the planet. “It’s easier if I show you.”

She reaches out a hand, placing it on my forehead before I have a chance to recoil.

I see it.

I see it all.

The fold, in the fabric of the universe. The Karneth wisemen, believing they could harness a split in space, to draw power from it. I see the gravity drives, warping reality to rend the split, tearing it wider, and wider, and wider. I see the void behind the fold. I see the abyss into which the Karneth Veld fell, I see realities collide and creations burn as the Veld slice through them, like a knife through soft flesh. I see alien realities; I see Time warp and bend as it attempts to stabilise them. I see it snap. I watch as it folds in upon itself, as it collapses from the strain, all because the Veld thought they could ascend beyond their god-like power.

This is how Time died.

I fall to my knees. The woman still stands, staring down at me.

“You…” I cannot speak, can barely breathe.

“It was nice.” She says, as if nothing had happened. “To see this universe again. So nostalgic.”

I stare up at her.

“But, worse for wear, I’d say. Still, there’s always the next one.”

“The… Next…”

She smiles. “There’s so much out there. But, nothing here, I’m afraid.”

She turns, her hand disappearing into a pocket of null-space. She rends it downwards, a black void opening where her hand had been.

The void.

She steps through, turning back to look at me one last time. “Thank you, friend. Take care of this universe for us.”

The seam closes, and she is gone.

I sit for a long time in the ruins of the world of the Karneth Veld. There is nothing, but still I sit. For so long now, I was so sure there was nothing left, that my small bubble of reality, slowly collapsing, was the last hold-out against the collapsing entropy.

They’re still out there, somewhere.

I trudge back to my doorway. I can scarcely breathe as I shuffle back across my shining marble floors, past the empty halls, past the ghosts of the children and the scholars and the wisemen.

I sit at the marble console, unable to think.

My fingers tap absently at the polished stone.

Entry reads:

‘Karneth Veld. Abandoned us to our fate. Before the unravelling of M-time, were the cause of the Fading, by way of a tear in the fabric of reality, exploited for power. They did not die by the sword, but by their hubris. May Time curse them, and may they never return. But still, we remember’

———

That’s all for this week, everyone, I hope you enjoyed. Be sure to subscribe to our mailing list below so you don’t miss out on exclusive short stories, book news, and behind the scenes updates!

As always, thanks for reading, and I’ll see you next time!