The taste of chocolate was accompanied by a burst of activity in Ori's head. Worlds opened. Aha moments exploded with light, sound, and satisfactions of clarity. Things good and bad and in-between made sense in ways completely unanticipated and unanticipatable. Connections were made so fast Ori couldn't keep up with them all. For an immeasurable space of time, the dizzy angel reeled, turning winged cartwheels in the vastness of stars and swirling worlds.

Then Ori's head settled down. It was time to go back into the Paternoster. It, too, had stopped dancing around. It hung there, waiting for occupancy.

The first thing Ori noticed was the back of the shiny lift. It had changed, its gleaming metal replaced with a rather ornate wooden door that seemed at once quaint, out-of-place, forbidding, and inviting..

Ori accepted the invitation. What was on the other side surprised Ori in spite of years of experience in travel in this odd conveyance. Not another forest, or desert, or garden. No towers or terror birds or snakes. Instead, a long, ornate corridor stretched from the portal: a hallway with many doors. Ori decided to take a walk.

There seemed to be nobody around. There's so much room in here, thought Ori. A body could get quite lost. I wonder what's behind all these doors? Ori walked along, fingers trailing over the smooth, carved surfaces of the intricate wooden doors. A sign on one door caught Ori's eye: Library. Ori opened the door and went in.

Cavernous, ornate, imposing. Spacious and cluttered at the same time. A good kind of clutter, Ori decided. Lots to read here, lots to learn. Ori plucked a book at random.

Julius Caesar de vita et temporibus suis: quid facere se putaret, quid alii facere putarent, quid faciendum sibi videretur. Appendix ad Indicem gravioris aetatis C. Iulii Caesaris, inde a Felice Sutore.

'Julius Caesar, his life and times,' Ori translated (although there was nobody around to translate to, it was just a habit), 'what he thought he was doing, what other people thought he was doing, what we know he was doing. Appendix list of Julius Caesar's more important contemporaries, starting with Felix the Shoemaker.'

'This is really useful stuff,' said Ori. That whole stack of shelves held books on Rome, from its republic through the imperial period. Maps were included, from giant foldout atlases to a handy set of road maps (Via Appia, Via Aurelia, Via Egnatia, et cetera) conveniently made of vellum, artfully folded for pocketing.

A closer inspection indicated that these books were not limited to contemporary accounts. In addition to what a Roman of a particular time might have expected to read – say, Suetonius or Tacitus – there were books written centuries later. Even more interestingly, some of these books weren't written by humans.

Hannibal: My Part in His Story by Elufil the Elephant. The author even included a self-portrait. 'Elephants are good artists,' commented Ori. Obviously the Library (Ori had already started thinking of it with a capital L) offered a very diverse set of perspectives.

Ori spent a long time wandering the Library's stacks and sampling the works, that covered aspects of history (human) and culture (mostly human) around the blue-marble planet and from age to age.

Learnèd tomes with copious footnotes. Monographs and academic journals.

Novels, collections of short stories and poetry. Voice recordings of oral-formulaic epic poetry. Films.

Volumes of music. (Ori almost got lost in that section.) Recordings, too.

Newspapers, the good and the trashy. And then the utterly trashy.

Graphic novels. History lessons in graphic novel form. Propaganda in graphic novel form (which made Ori slightly nauseous).

Posters. Paintings. Coffee-table volumes of art. Films of art historians explaining art that put Ori to sleep.

After a refreshing art-historian-induced nap, Ori decided to leave the Library, a bit reluctantly, and do some further exploring. Pausing only to give the giant floor-mounted globe a playful twist, Ori headed out the ornate doors and back into the mysterious corridor.

After peeking through doors marked 'Dining Room' (sumptuously decorated) and 'Kitchen' (so fully equipped Ori wasn't sure what half of those things did), Ori came to one that said 'Bedroom'. It was…amazing.

'Just what I needed for a restful night,' decided Ori.

Further investigation revealed other rooms, other purposes. But to Ori, the pièce de résistance was the one labelled 'Dressing Room'.

Ori explored the outfits on offer: togas, djellabas, robes. Pantaloons, hose, trousers, blue jeans. Suits from every era.

Dresses, too. Ori puzzled over farthingales and hoop skirts.

Then Ori discovered a codpiece and had to go back to the kitchen for water and a spoonful of sugar to quell the hiccups that followed a prolonged fit of laughter.

Back to the Dressing Room. Ori surveyed what seemed like miles of human costuming.

'The way I figure it,' said Ori, 'I can either open a theatre with the planet's largest repertoire, or…'

'…do a LOT of damage to their history.'

Now it was Prajapati's turn to laugh. The room shook with the sound of it.

Dmitri Gheorgheni

03.04.23 Front Page

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