Appendix • Curator's Heart

"*Visions come in a flurry, one after the other in a rapid sequence. A hundred thousand years of fractured thought, jumbled together, in a matter of eyeblinks. And each you see through someone else's eyes.*"
 ― The Storyteller

## Transcript

An eyeblink. You are in a room of white marble, one wall made entirely of glass. Far beneath, outside the window, a sprawling cityscape encasing everything as far as the eye can see to the distant horizon, glowing with bright lights at every corner. Countless miniscule figures move in neat lines along a carefully arranged grid of streets. The room you are in is rising, gliding softly upward and leaving the city that covers the world far behind, until the sunlit sky fades into darker blue, and into vision comes the vast abyss of stars, dotted amongst it four bright moons hanging in space far above.

An eyeblink. You stand in a familiar circular hall, a crossroads of corridors. The heart of the Endless Athenaeum. Your domain. Your creation. But yet undamaged. Beautiful clean halls of marble, well-lit by alchemical lights of a design clearly and exactly remembered from a hundred thousand years ago. A hundred open tomes circle around you, each being read simultaneously. Tomes in a hundred languages from a hundred lifetimes and a hundred eras. And when each finishes, it closes, and floats away of its own will into the vast library you have built, and another takes its place. The learning begins anew. Every scrap of knowledge, every footnote, every thesis or theorem, you collect it all. Thousands of new tomes every day, and you read them all. Like a starved animal devouring information.

And far below you, at the base of this grand spiral of flying books, a single hooded figure is shouting. Six appendages raised in anger, chittering in an alien tongue that is only one of the thousands of languages you understand.

"You don't care! You've only ever cared for your precious books, but never the ones who wrote them."

"The knowledge must be preserved," you answer absently while finishing a dozen other tomes. "When you are dead, what you know will remain in your stead."

"But we're alive right now! We're *not* dead. Right now. Help us stay that way! Surely you must know something."

You flit through a bundle of scrolls and send them to disperse amongst the many shelves.

And you say, calmly, without pause. "I cannot help you."

An eyeblink. You stand at the top of a temple in the heart of a vast desert. Dunes of crimson sand spread away from you, shifting and turning like a sea. Thousands of insectoid figures spread away from the temple through the sands, patient lines waiting to make their offerings, each bearing slabs of thinly wrought stone, carved in lettering. Far above, in the sky, the vast circular shape of another planet. Silent, distant storms the size of entire moons shifting across its surface. And every moment, it grows nearer, until it swallows this world whole.

An eyeblink. You pass between rows and rows of bookshelves, space folding around you to your whim, the very fabric of this reality you have made in tune perfectly with your thoughts, taking you exactly where you desire to be. A few dozen tomes float with you, each being read even while your thoughts linger elsewhere.

Behind you follow two figures. Tall and powerful creatures with white-feathered wings, eyes glowing white, and skin of summer blue marbled with dark red.

"Surely there is something that can be done. Perhaps it is in these tomes. Something you missed..."

"I know everything that resides in my Athenaeum," you answer. "I have missed nothing."

A few dozen more tomes join the swarm around you, appearing at each crossroads in groups of six or seven. There was so much to gather from this world still. So much to preserve. So much to catalog. The annoyances behind you continue to follow.

"There must be..."

"There must be nothing. You think I haven't searched before? Facts do not care for desires. Tell your master he cannot spin truth out of thin air like he can his lies."

"Lord Curator, if we could only..."

Even through a flitter of irritation, you finish five more novels and send them down to their respective sections.

Without pause, you say. "I cannot help you."

An eyeblink. A city burns. Flames lick at your heels. Smoke fills the air. But you cannot feel its heat or choke on its ash. Your eyes rest only on the scrolls lined along wooden shelves before you, that now begin to char and blacken, before any eyes can open and read them again.
A hundred corpses line the aisles, curled up or screaming in agony, but why do none reach for the books? Why do none pass the knowledge onto you, so you can keep it after their end? Why do they not care?

An eyeblink. A stream of panicked pleas almost distracts from the reading. Thoughts that aren't your own. Words from countless minds.

*Something I overlooked. There must be something I overlooked. A mistake. A miscalculation. Something. Oh god it can't end here.*

"It will not. I will keep what you have found."

*What about me? What about all of us?*

"I cannot help you."

A different mind.

*Run the numbers, run the numbers, find the link. Come on. Think. Think. Give me something!*

"I cannot help you."

A different mind.

*Fuck. Fuck. What was it all for? What the fuck do I do?*

"I cannot help you."

A few last books float down towards you, joining the spiral. The thoughts crescendo, and even you have to pause to collect your thoughts before continuing to read.

And then mercifully, the thoughts go silent, and you finish reading in peace. No more books join the spiral.

An eyeblink. This world was young. Fresh. Still in its renaissance of learning. Books flood into the room from every corner, and even you cannot keep up. A thousand pages read every moment, and thousands take their place.

Then, a distraction. You hear voices. Young minds. Hesitant. Wavering. One craving answers. Seeking. Reaching beyond their capabilities. And failing. The smell of rust. A sound like a hurricane. Young minds ripped apart. A spear of black tears through your heart, shattering tomes and scrolls and pages. And you.

An eyeblink. Footsteps. You hear footsteps. And what's left of you stirs. Piles of unread tomes gather around the edges of this hall. Fading torchlight flickers in the dark. Halls gone black. Marble become stone. Pages become twisted. And through them the shadows stalk.

A single figure walks into the hall. Proud features. Silver hair. White scales. Amber eyes. A hungry mind. A familiar mind. Arrogant. Bold. Grown older, but the craving has not lessened. He walks warily to the centre, where your heart lies torn open. And when he sees what lies within. The knowledge you have amassed. The craving wins.

He reaches to claim it. To claim the divinity that gave him what he sought. Answers and power all in one. But he doesn't understand. He doesn't know what it entails. What it costs. And when he reaches into the well of divinity, he falls into it, to join the dying heart that remains, leaving behind only a shell of what was, quickly swallowed by the dark.

*I cannot help you.*