Chương 2: The Staff Restroom Key

Bart closed his eyes tightly. He counted to three in his head. He opened them again but the world did not change. He was not in a hospital bed or splayed out on the sidewalk. He was standing in the middle of an impossible place. If this was a room, it was a room built by a madman. There were no real walls. Above him, there was no ceiling, just a massive, dark sky filled with floating chunks of wood and stone. Bart pushed his glasses up his nose and stared.

Massive wooden bookshelves, some as tall as city buildings, floated in the empty air. They drifted slowly, turning over and over in the dark. Staircases made of white marble twisted upside down, leading to nowhere. Bart watched a small group of books orbit around a broken stone pillar. They spun in perfect circles, just like tiny planets circling a sun. Far off in the distance, the dark space looked like a broken mirror. Through the cracks in the air, Bart could see flashes of other places.

One crack showed a bright green jungle. Another showed a burning red sky. The cracks flickered, snapping shut and opening again.

"What the hell is this place?" Bart whispered. His brain, which loved order and simple rules, simply stopped working. He could not process floating stairs and orbiting books. When things got too crazy, Bart relied on his old habits. He needed things to be neat. He dropped to his knees on the cold floor and started picking up broken pieces of rock. He placed them on a flat stone table, lining them up in a perfectly straight row. Smallest rock on the left, biggest rock on the right.

"I am in a coma," Bart said out loud to himself.

"The city bus hit me. I am asleep. My brain is making all of this up. It is just a dream."

"I promise you, sir, you are quite awake," a dry, clicking voice said. Bart did not look up. He kept organizing his rocks.

"Dreams can talk. That is normal."

"My name is Albert," the voice continued.

"I am the Chief Custodian of the Infinite Archive. And you are kneeling in the middle of the floor." Bart finally turned his head. Standing right next to him was a living skeleton. The skeleton had no skin, no eyes, and no hair. It was holding a wooden broom. The only piece of clothing it wore was a very neat, perfectly tied black bowtie around its bony neck. Bart stared at the skeleton. The skeleton stared back with empty eye sockets.

"I am going to need a coffee," Bart said flatly.

"A large coffee. Black." Albert tilted his skull. His jawbone clicked as he spoke.

"A 'Cough-Fee'? Is that a tax you pay when you are sick? We do not charge money for sneezing here, sir. Though I will have to write you a warning if you continue to make a mess with those rocks." Bart sighed. He looked down at his clothes. His favorite green sweater was covered in thick, gray dust from the floor. He raised his hand to brush the dirt off his chest.

"Stop!" Albert gasped. He dropped his broom. It clattered loudly on the stone. The skeleton rushed forward and grabbed Bart's wrist with cold, hard fingers.

"Please, sir! Do not wipe that away!" Bart froze. He looked at the skeleton's hand, then at his own chest.

"It is just dust."

"It is unfiled dust," Albert said. His voice was completely serious. He gently let go of Bart's wrist and pointed a bony finger at the gray powder.

"This pile has not been put into the proper system yet. We must respect the dust. We must wait for the correct filing bins to arrive before we move it." Bart slowly pulled his arm away. He did not know what to say. Why did a skeleton care so much about a pile of dirt? Before Bart could ask, he heard the sound of flapping pages. He looked up. A heavy book with a dark leather cover was flying through the air. It did not have wings and flapped its covers like a bird.

The book zoomed down from a floating shelf, spun in a circle, and hovered right in front of Bart's face. The book snapped open. The pages were blank. Then, bright red ink began to magically write itself across the paper. Bart read the red words out loud: "The new Keeper has arrived. He is weak. He is wearing a very ugly green sweater. He has a 99 percent chance of crying in the next five minutes." Bart frowned.

"Excuse me?" The red ink faded, and new words wrote themselves on the page.

"The new Keeper is also slow. He will trip over his own feet in three... two... one..." If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it. Bart stepped back away from the book. As he did, his heel caught on a piece of broken stone. He waved his arms, lost his balance, and fell hard onto his bottom. The flying book flapped its covers happily. New red ink appeared: "Told you so. I am never wrong."

"What is that thing?" Bart asked, rubbing his sore back.

"Ah, that is the Almanac of Inevitable Doom," Albert said, picking his broom back up.

"It is one of the only three most valuable books left on our shelves. It knows everything that will happen, but it only cares about the bad things. It cannot tell a lie, but it is very rude." The book hovered closer to Bart.

"The Keeper will complain about his back hurting. Then, he will realize he is trapped here forever."

"I am not trapped," Bart said, getting back to his feet. He pointed a finger at the book.

"And you need an attitude adjustment. In my library, books stay on the shelf." The book snapped shut, doing a little spin in the air, before floating up to rest on a broken piece of wood above them. Suddenly, a bright blue light flashed in front of Bart's face. A glowing square screen popped up in the empty air. It looked like a floating computer monitor. The words on the screen flickered, like the system was broken. Bart pushed his glasses up and read the floating blue text. System Alert: Welcome, Keeper #4, 092.

Archive Health: 0. 0000001% Status: Critical Damage. Cause of Ruin: [ERROR 404 - DATA HIDDEN BY HIGHER POWERS] Last Log Entry: "I should not have let them read the ending." - Keeper #4, 091 Bart read the screen a second time. His heart started to beat a little faster.

"Keeper number 4, 092? What happened to the other 4, 091 Keepers?"

"Most of them retired," Albert said quickly, sweeping a pile of invisible dust.

"The last one... well, he had a very bad day at work. But let us not focus on the past! We have a library to run, and as you can see, we are a bit behind schedule." Bart looked around the massive, floating ruin.

"A bit behind? The whole place is destroyed. There are no walls. There are floating stairs. How do you even fix something like this?" Albert pointed a bony finger at the glowing blue screen. The text on the box shifted and changed into a new message. Mandatory New Hire Task: Prove Basic Literacy Goal: Find exactly one (1) item with a written word on it. Bring it back to the Archive. Reward: +5 Magic Power (Mana). One (1) wooden chair that does not wobble. Failure Penalty: A strict verbal warning from staff.

Bart stared at the screen for a long time. He looked at the cold, broken stones on the floor. He looked at the flying book that was currently laughing at him. Then he looked back at the screen.

"If I do this," Bart said slowly, "I get a chair? A real chair to sit on?"

"Yes, sir," Albert nodded.

"A very nice wooden one. Right now, we only have the floor. If you want a desk, you will have to find three books. If you want a cough- fee or something else, you might have to save a kingdom. We must start small." Bart let out a long, tired breath. He was a logical man. Whether this was a coma dream or a crazy alien world, he did not want to sit on a cold rock all day. He wanted a chair.

"Fine," Bart said.

"I will do the task. But how do I find a written word? We are floating in empty space. Unless I can use the rude flying book?"

"No, sir. You cannot use books that already belong to the Archive," Albert explained.

"You must go out into the multiverse. You must bring new knowledge into the library. To do that, you need a door." Albert reached deep into the pocket of his invisible pants. He pulled out a rusty brass key. The key was attached to a wooden tag.

"This is the Master Portal Key," Albert said proudly. He held the giant wooden tag out to Bart. Bart took it. It was incredibly heavy.

"It says Staff Restroom."

"Yes, it does," Albert said.

"When the... bad event happened, the main front doors of the Archive were destroyed. The giant windows were shattered. The grand arches were turned to dust. The only door that survived the explosion was the door to the staff bathroom." Albert pointed toward the far corner of the floating rock they were standing on. Standing completely by itself, with no walls attached to it, was a plain, white, wooden door. It looked like a normal door you would find in any boring office building.

Behind the door was nothing but dark, empty space. A heavy wooden sign hung from the doorknob, reading STAFF RESTROOM.

"The bathroom door is the only one still connected to the portal network," Albert explained.

"It will take you to other worlds. Just put the key in the lock, turn it, and step through." Bart walked over to the freestanding door. He felt completely silly. He was holding a giant wooden bathroom pass. He looked around the impossible, magical Archive, with its floating books and cracked reality, and then he looked at the plain white door.

"Where does it go?" Bart asked.

"Anywhere," Albert said.

"Everywhere. The Archive is connected to every world that has ever written a story. Just find a piece of paper with a word on it, and come right back." The flying Almanac of Inevitable Doom swooped down from its shelf. It wrote a new message in red ink: "The Keeper is going to step in something very gross. I cannot wait to watch." Bart ignored the book. He lifted the heavy block of wood and slid the rusty brass key into the door's lock. He took a deep breath.

In the web novels he read on the bus, stepping into a magical portal always sounded amazing. There was usually a flash of golden light, or a choir of angels singing. Bart turned the key. There was no golden light. Instead, the door made the very loud, very clear sound of a toilet flushing. Whoosh. Gurgle. Bart pulled the door open. He did not see a bathroom on the other side. Instead, he saw a dark, dirty tunnel. The walls were made of damp earth.

The smell of wet hair, old rotten cheese rolled out of the door and hit Bart right in the face. The only light came from a small fire burning far down the tunnel.

"Well," Bart sighed, fixing his glasses and pulling his green sweater tight.

"Time to go to work." He stepped through the door, leaving the Archive behind, and walked into the dark.