by Blair Drake
Still, she couldn’t just sit here looking at the books forever. But without computer access, she’d have to search manually—each book, not some card catalogue. And that would be difficult. Thousands of books had to be here, and, if they’d been masked and now unmasked—like the ones in the headmaster’s office—then the titles or organizational structure would be different now.
She got up and started with the first row, wandering down the aisle. She shuddered to find the topic here was calculus and mathematics. She quickly moved on to geography and social studies, found complete sections on chemistry and physics. But, so far, she hadn’t seen any sign the library was anything other than just what it was, a normal school library.
That was a little depressing. She was really hoping for something a lot more magical.
The place echoed with her footsteps, making her feel like she was the only one alive in a world gone awry.
Before the voices had a chance to intervene, she realized how much of her thought processes were all about being alone and how she was constantly looking to connect with somebody else, asking if anybody else was out there, looking for confirmation she wasn’t the only one here.
She was uncomfortable with her aloneness in her normal 3-D life even though it was self-induced.
She wandered through the bookshelves, her gaze landing on shelf upon shelf of literature, old and new. She continued walking, surprised to find a section on cooking yet not surprised to find a large section on music and then one on the composers.
Although she noted these sections, her mind was consumed with her lesson and her relationship to the world around her.
“Am I creating this?” she asked quietly. “Am I feeling so alone I am creating this flat world?”
She glanced around, hoping somebody would answer, but no voice responded. She continued to walk up and down the aisles.
Surely she would find a section on witchcraft, the spirit world, or other realms. Yet there didn’t seem to be anything here of that variety. Maybe she was crazy. Maybe the distance between her and the world around her was some kind of mental disorder. She increased her pace, knowing she only had a couple rows left. As she came around the last one, she was mystified nothing magical was here. As in the offices of this dimension, she thought some of the titles would change again but found nothing of the kind. She walked back toward the head librarian’s desk and realized a glass door was behind it...as in a bookshelf with glass doors.
She frowned. How did she not see that before? She stepped around the counter, her gaze on the lock with a huge ornate key stuck in it. She twisted the key in the bookshelf door and opened it. She gasped in delight. “Alternate Dimensions 101. Portal Changing 237.”
She started to laugh. “Oh my. Why didn’t I come here first?” She grabbed for the alternate dimensions and the portal books, but they wouldn’t budge. Her heart froze, and her stomach sank, but she refused to let go of the books. Yet. “Please let me look in these books.”
An odd snapping sound came instantly, and her hands started to buzz, her fingers widening as if in a spasm. Her head was thrown back, and her body stiffened with a life of its own. She tried to relax but couldn’t. She had no control.
Information flowed like an electrical circuit through her palm to her upper arm, across her shoulder, up her neck, and into her brain. Lights, colors, numbers, names, images all flashed and rolled through her head like an ongoing video.
She was frozen in place, unable to move, unable to do anything but…learn. She tried to stand steady at the onslaught. She didn’t know how long she remained locked like this.
But she was suddenly free.
She still vibrated inside. Shocked and confused, she sank into the librarian’s chair, wrapping her arms around her chest carefully, holding the one hand close, as if it were hurt. “Oh, my goodness. What was that?”
The answer slammed into her as the voice snapped, “Transference learning.”
She stilled, except for her rising eyebrows. “Say what?”
“Transference learning.”
She stared at the two books as the answers slipped through her head. “So did I just learn everything within those two books in that short time frame?”
“Yes.”
She bounced to her feet, looked at the other books, and immediately reached out with both hands.
“No, don’t do that,” roared the voice in her head.
But, as soon as her fingers closed around the six books, the force fields coming off each book slammed into her body. Lifting her in midair and holding her there, dancing, as the information waves streamed into her brain. Pain ripped down her arms and into her body. Nerve endings screamed to life but quickly hit overload. This was so much worse than her interaction with just two books. Noise slammed into her brain. Screeches and whines tore through her head. Sounds were so loud her body cringed as the discordant notes piled atop each other unceasingly.
What could be beautiful was now horrifying—crammed in so hard and so fast. Words, letters, numbers, colors, and images raced through her.
Finally, she couldn’t take it anymore, a scream ripping from her throat as the pain sent her tumbling into unconsciousness.
Chapter 13
Melissa couldn’t move. She was caught in some kind of white/gray-space fog. Her brain hurt, completely ached. She was desperate to hold her brain in her hands and massage the tissues that felt bad. But instead, it was stretched tight, filled so full with data it was a hot, throbbing mass.
Neither could she feel her body, as if she was here but not here, caught in the middle of a portal—and was truly nowhere.
She didn’t know if she was lying, standing, or something in between. She couldn’t sense anything below her neck because everything above hurt so bad even the back of her eyeballs caused her extreme agony. Now she had sharp stinging pains—as if something from her brain leapt forward. Her eyelids were closed, and she was terrified to open them again. She tried to lift her hands to touch the sides of her temples, but her body wasn’t connected to the rest of her. She thought she groaned, but no sound escaped her throat.
She lay in place, still figuring out what happened. She’d blacked out, but was she still in the same place? If so, why couldn’t she see anything? Was she in a portal, or had she somehow traveled to a new world without a portal?
Finally, some of the pain eased back enough she risked opening her eyelids ever-so-slightly just to see where she was. She was desperate to make sure she was still in the library. And, as she peered beneath her lashes, she realized this blinding whiteness shone on her.
“Hello?” But her voice croaked like a frog, the words almost indistinct. She thought she heard something or someone, like one word echoed over and over. Calling out through a long mountain pass, waiting for it to disappear at the far end miles away. She couldn’t remember what she was doing before this. Apparently, transference learning with six books at once had fried the circuits to her brain.
She didn’t know if she’d damaged something, or if the rest of her body was permanently damaged instead—the body she couldn’t sense or feel. That just blew her mind away. So much happened in the last few hours she didn’t know if this was more of the same craziness or if this was something else…
She could see information swirling around, floating and flying everywhere.
But they were all discombobulated bits and pieces, completely unrelated to the other.
No pattern. No rhyme. No reason. No logic. She needed logic. Somewhere, somehow, she had to put that information into structured places where she could keep it stored away, hopefully where it was still accessible and retrievable later. But definitely in a holding spot, a storage area, where she would not be overwhelmed at every waking moment.
She tried to turn her head and groaned instead. Her head was heavy, like a stone. Just the act of trying to roll over was like moving a huge boulder.
If she could move the boulder, the rest of her would twist to the side—she hop
ed. She shuddered with the slightest movement. Knife stabs went up and down her spine, scraping every nerve ending back alive once again. She lay still for what seemed like hours. In the back of her mind she knew time was an issue. She just didn’t remember why. Nothing made sense. She couldn’t even remember why she’d gone to the library.
But she remembered the library books.
“Oh, hell yes, I remember those,” she said, her voice just barely above a croak this time, but it was still an improvement. Not much, but she’d take it. She couldn’t remember why or how. Bits and pieces. Portals. Winter. Ice field. Trees. Fog. Darkness. Gideon. Her eyes flew open.
“Gideon?” she cried out feebly.
She thought she heard a responding cry, a meow close to her. She peered through the blinding whiteness but found no sign of him. The last time she’d seen so much white was in the ice field. That memory slid into place and locked down. That statement was true. She could rely on it. As she accepted that fact, more pieces joined the first.
She’d been to the ice field two times now. She remembered the whiteness hurt her eyes. But it was always so cold, a wind that seemed to warp through her bones and seep through her skin. That’s where she found Winter. “Winter?” She waited for a squeak but heard none.
The little mouse that seemed to be enjoying his time with her. She’d given him the chance to go home, but he traveled with her again.
Memories of him slid into her consciousness and locked into place.
With that awareness, more memories showed up...good memories, happy memories. She tried to smile. But it was as if just the skin of her lips lifted, and the rest of her was too heavy to move. So weird. She lay there for another few minutes, locking in a few more memories. Voices. Voices in her head. They’d been helping her. No, not helping her, watching her, keeping track of what she did.
If she could laugh, she would. She wondered what they thought of this latest escapade. She heard somebody yelling at her just before her hands latched on to the books. But the warning had come too late. She wasn’t greedy for a shortcut to learn the material. It just seemed to be the fastest route, given her time limitations, and she was desperate to find answers to go home. Her mind puzzled that for a moment.
“Answers?” She rolled the idea around in her head. “Home?”
She smiled, this time the movement less odd, more functional. “I was trying to go home.”
The books held information she thought she needed to get home. Rather than take the time to do it one by one, and afraid she’d run out of time, she grasped everything. She literally reached out and spread her fingers as wide apart as they would go, to encompass as many books as she could all at once.
Apparently, this transference learning, the term more easily coming to mind now, meant whatever she held slammed into her consciousness. Her brain still seemed to be a floating space station. No. Correct that. Instead of her brain being the station, she was the universe, and all this information floated around many space stations inside her skull. She kept hoping things would align themselves organically and her brain fog would clear. She closed her eyes, hoping it would help.
But the fog all around her matched the fog inside her. She opened her eyes again, desperate to find something to make sense of the gray world around her. It wasn’t so much gray as it was white. She wanted to sit up, but that very suggestion seemed beyond reality, beyond this current possible world. Her mind immediately came up with a definition of reality. And three more about possibilities, universe, and world slid through her brain.
“I didn’t need to know that,” she whispered, trying to stop the active encyclopedia in her brain from giving her answers she already knew.
But it didn’t matter. Every time she thought of a word, her mind presented her with a definition like she swallowed some kind of dictionary or thesaurus. If she was studying English right now, it would be great. But the fact was, she needed help on magical levels in order to get home again.
A dictionary was not helpful. She wondered what books she swallowed. Okay, so not the best term. Maybe absorbed was better? Instantly, definitions of absorbed and swallowed slid through her mind. She tried to ignore them, but then the word ignore appeared in bright, flashing neon letters.
She shuddered. “Stop,” she whispered. “Please stop.”
Some of the bursting energy in her head eased back slightly, a little bit less enthusiastic, a little bit less dominant. She wasn’t even sure what to make of it. Where was the information on the portals? That’s what she needed. It was portals and how to make portals to go home.
Something in there about worlds…
Instantly 2-D and 3-D flashed like neon signs. Others appeared behind the words she didn’t understand, terms and definitions she never heard before. But her gaze locked on the neon 2-D. “I’m in a 2-D world. I was looking for information on how to get home to my 3-D world.”
She saw tunnels rippling through her brain. Open portals surged forward, like time travel—wormholes. She didn’t even know how or what they meant. But, from what she could see in her brain, it was supposed to work just fine, and that brought her back to the fact the 2-D world was supposed to be a training world. Instantly, the definition for training came up in her brain. She groaned. “I know what training means.”
And there in the background was that same faint cry she heard earlier. This time she recognized it.
“Gideon?” she cried out in response. “Gideon! I’m here.”
The cry came again, only louder. She searched the fog for a sign of her cat but found nothing. She tried to lift her hand and reach for him, but her hand flopped uselessly in front of her. At least she could see it. She swore before nothing was attached to this head of hers.
Meow.
“Gideon, I’m here,” she whispered again.
Meow.
She almost smiled, or she would have if she could move her lips in the right way. Then suddenly, soft fur brushed against her face softly, and yet it rasped like sandpaper across her sensitive skin. Tears came to her eyes, more stinging than burning, to add to the rest of her odd sensations. She tried to reach out and touch him, but her hand seemed to fall right through him. “Gideon, I’m here. Honest I’m here.”
She felt a gentle stroke of fur as he wandered along her body before finally rubbing against her face a second time. She felt a slight tap as he pressed his forehead against hers. She tried to touch him again, as he obviously wanted, but it seemed beyond her. Inside her mind screamed, as information still flowed. That highway was already overwhelmed and ready to shut down.
“With all this new information, find a way to sort yourself out,” she instructed her mind. “You don’t need me to do that. Eight books are in my brain now. Set up a filing system I can access, and do it fast before I lose consciousness again.”
Instantly her mind started a free fall. Subjects, words, definitions, images, graphs all fought for space, as it zipped around inside her skull. Her body was completely out of her control while her mind worked at sorting itself out. When she finally came back to awareness again, she realized something soft was under her hand. She clenched her fingers only to hear a sharp meow.
Instantly she eased back her grip and gently stroked Gideon. She lay on her back, her legs twisted to one side, and Gideon curled up against her belly.
“Hey, sweetie,” she whispered. “Am I glad to see you.”
She still couldn’t see him, but she could feel him as he got up, dragged his body along her chest and up to her chin. This time when she moved her head to nuzzle him back, she managed to make a little bit of a movement. It was enough that Gideon turned around and came back after another tap-touch.
“Can you help me get out of here?” she whispered, the concept no longer sounding as far-fetched as before.
Meow?
“Why are there no chapters on talking to animals in those books?” she wondered out loud.
Instantly definitions came up for familiars with telepathic
abilities, psychic animals, the natural order of communication, and a section on the unnatural order of communication.
The subjects popped up and disappeared gently, as if she now had the option to grab one to ask for more information. “Can I speak with Gideon?”
“You can,” said a voice inside her head.
She froze. “You’re still there,” she cried out happily.
“Yes. You knocked us out for a long time, but we’re back.”
“We? More than one of you is in there?”
“Of course. How are you?”
“Spaced out,” she said as clearly as she could. “Like my brain has been blasted by a grenade, and the rest of me disappeared at the same time.”
“Well, you still have a sense of humor, so that’s good.”
“Not much else good about this.” But her mind was bubbling with another question. “Can I talk to Gideon?”
“You are talking to Gideon.”
“You know what I mean.” But there was no heat to her retort. She was past that. Whatever happened completely wasted her inside and out. “I don’t think I can get up anymore.”
“You have a little bit of time to recover. But not too much,” the voice warned. “You have shortened your available time considerably.”
She sighed, opened her eyes, and said, “I’m in a grayish-white world. How do I get back to the library?”
“The library has always been there. It’s your perception that needs to change.”
She let her eyes drift closed as she thought about that. “And Gideon?”
“He’s there in the library.”
“And I’m lying on the floor, so he’s rubbing up alongside me, but I can’t see myself or him.”
Silence.
“Brain, you have all this new pertinent information. Is nothing in there about this?” she muttered.
More topics and subtopics popped into her head and floated out.
The voice answered, “You don’t need book learning for this. You need to feel where you are. See what you’ve done. Then you can heal the process.”
