#95: The Library

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“That was ...interesting. Scary as hell...but interesting.” Shelby said after a few minutes of silence. “That was like being in the presence of God. If there is a God.”

“If there wasn’t before there is now. That’ll work until something better comes along” Elvira said quietly

“You said that there was two things?” Shelby asked.

“Yes” Elvira said. She was still very quiet and subdued.

“Well?” Shelby prompted.

“A Library” Elvira told him

Perk

“Oh really? I find that strangely interesting. I like libraries. Any science fiction in it?” he asked.

“Yes..but nothing new to you. All of your E-books are in it.” she said “It seems to be a hardwired thing, from the SoulStone. I didn’t make it on purpose it just popped up on it’s own. It’s more like something that programmers would use. A shared library of files I think they call it. That’s what prompted me to think about my function as a User-Interface.”

“Oh. No new Science Fiction.” he said “How disappointing”

“The SSmoke is in it...and SSmokeTalk.” She continued “Do you recall all the trouble that WE endured to make them?”

“Yup.” He said “Handy stuff it turns out.”

“The library has all the ways we’ve developed of making SSmoke and more.” she replied “Just like we made it. The whole procedure. The Metabolic method that uses your blood-nanites to make the SSmoke inside your body and then you sweat it out. The blood bucket method is in it as are the Bottom Feeders What’s interesting is that Chad developed the explosive forging technique used by the BottomFeeders. It’s in there too, not just what you and I developed. The cybermites and the DragonFly surveillance network are both in it. Everything adapted from the smartphone is in it. There’s a lot more stuff showing up all the time.

Chad seems to be very creative, a lot of the new stuff is his but not near all of it. Most of the new stuff is from the new SSmoke programers. The SSmoke Programming language made available since the city meeting is very intuitive and easy to use. A lot of people are using it. There are contests. All of that is in there too.”

“Finally, what’s even more interesting, and puzzling, is that the library entries are hierarchal. Anyone with a neuro-loop can access most of them but not all. Chad, when he discovers it’s existence, can access many of the others but not all. Only you have full access.” She said.

“Very interesting. Evoker, Mage and ArchMage.” Shelby muttered as he opened the door to the balcony and stepped outside.

Shelby wasn’t very good at gauging human sensitivity. He’d been a loner for most of his life. He COULD learn though. Oddly enough he discovered that most people didn’t like the proverbial ‘smoke filled room’. Shelby wasn’t into accidentally annoying folks. If he wanted to piss someone off he’d rather do it on purpose.

So..to make a long story short he’d conjured a smoking room. It was actually more of a tower, something like one would expect of a wizard. Shelby thought the ‘wizard keep’ thing was cute and he was unconsciously living up to it. This was more of a wizard’s keep than the converted storage shed the workshop was. He walked over to the drop shaft and it lifted him to the smoke room. He stepped out onto the balcony and sat down at a table.

The view was magnificent. He looked out over all of Flint Island as well as the river. He could see it all from his view point and for additional miles in either direction. Except for the rain and fog. Being an ArchMage Shelby had just naturally discovered a way to overcome that minor problem.

Perhaps he’d gone just a touch overboard building that tower, it was rather tall?

Didn’t matter. He had some thinking to do. This might be a multi-cigar contemplation. Soon he was puffing on a stoogie, deep in thought. He sat, smoked, drank whisky and thought about for a long while.

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The Next Episode is
#96: Wizard’s Tower…
The Previous Episode was
#94: Existential Moment…
the First episode was
#1 : Prologue

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I'm

@everittdmickey
.
I write
SPECULATIVE FICTION
I have books on Amazon too.
Sometimes I also comment on the news

Sometimes it's hard to tell fiction from the news.