Chapter 9: The Alexandrium
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Stepping from the elevator, I wandered into the massive halls of the Alexandrium. It was a massive room, where floors of black laminate stretched off for miles in every direction, the interior lit with miles of hanging lights overhead. Mahogany wood shelves seemed to stretch hundreds of metres tall, as infinite rows of infinite lengths stretched out as far as the eye could see. Each set of shelves contained millions of tomes or more, chronicling whole universes, and countless sets of shelves stretched off into the far horizon. It was a massive room, thousands of miles bigger than the office complex could ever hope to be, filled with a nearly infinite number of volumes and tomes - chronicling trillions of worlds and all that lay in them.

How they got the massive Alexandrium to fit into the 27th floor, I would never be able to understand.

At a desk near the entrance of the library, a man nearly twice my size sat reading a book, wearing a set of thin spectacles that would probably look like massive party glasses if I ever tried to wear them. He was a burly giant, with immense muscles that protruded his silken robe, and a scar across the left side of his face. He was a man who seemed more at home with a war-axe than he did a book, yet I knew for a fact: first impressions often deceived when it came to Belgor.

I approached the desk, and as I did, the man sat up with a smile as he marked the page in his book. Placing the book on the table, I read the cover: Labyrinths, by Jorge Luis Borges. It wasn't a book I'd ever heard of; he seemed to like it though. As I stood at the counter, Belgor looked down at me with a smile, as he leaned forward. 

"Good day, Malarie," He began. "How may I help you today?"

He was a well-spoken and articulate man, and with each syllable, his words seemed to echo off into the distance - each utterance travelling ad infinitum through the ceaseless expanse.

"Hey Belgor," I said. "I just was hoping to find some material to help me with a reincarnation I've got coming up, if you don't mind."

"I hope I can be of assistance then," Belgor said, as he turned to the computer. "What sort of material are you looking for?"

"I was hoping you could do an entity lookup," I said. "And... keep it on the down-low, if you'd please. I know I can trust you with a secret."

Belgor seemed to smile like a giddy child at that.

"I can do my best," he replied. "Do you have the directory IDs?"

"Yeah," I said, as I rolled up my sleeve and listed the numbers off to him. With each digit, Belgor's thick fingers pressed against the keys of the tiny keyboard, and with the lumbering clack of each keystroke that he made - I could've sworn he would break every key that he touched. Somehow, though, the keyboard remained intact - and as he stared closer at the screen with his massive reading glasses, he nodded.

"Right this way," he said, standing up from his desk and walking out from behind it. He picked up his copy of the book he was reading with his left hand, the volume seeming miniature as he clutched it in his grip. As he approached me, he raised his right hand, and snapped his fingers.

In an instant, the world had shifted around me. The desk had disappeared, as we now between the shelves - far within the limitless depths of the library. The hanging ceiling lamps flickered overhead, as we stood between a pair of mahogany shelves, both sides stretching as far off into the distance as the eye could see. As he clicked his fingers once more, a rolling ladder sped from the abyss with near limitless speed - stopping right before us. 

"It should be up here," Belgor said. "Could you hold my book please?"

He passed me the book, and I grabbed it off him, holding it along with my manilla folder. As he swiftly clambered up the ladder, some of the rungs looking like they might buckle under his weight, he reached about halfway up - before grabbing a book slightly to his left and descending once more. Even with his speed, it took nearly a minute to climb up and back. It was laborious and unnecessary. The immortals probably could've just given him the ability to snap books into his fingers, but I got the feeling they liked toying with him: just as they liked toying with nearly anything else that was within their grasp. As he got to ground, the pair of us swapped books - as I returned his novel to him, I took the hefty dusted tome from his hands. 

"Here, that should have everything you might need," Belgor said. "Would you like me to summon a reading desk for you?"

"That would be nice," I replied. 

As he clicked his fingers once again, a mahogany desk with a reading light rose from the floor - the linoleum rippling like water as the desk passed through it. I sat the book down on top of the desk with a thud, particulates of dust rising into the air with the impact, before quickly fading off into the ether as if they were never there in the first place.

"Will that be all?" Belgor asked.

"For now, yeah," I said. "Thank you, Belgor."

"No, thank you, Malarie," Belgor replied. "I'm glad you trust me. It's really reassuring. I hope you enjoy the book, and if you need anything, just call out to me."

He smiled, as he rose his fingers to the air. With a final snap, the hulking figure of Belgor disappeared in an instant, as if he'd never been there in the first place. Staring down at the tome, as I looked around the library, I sighed. 

"I'd better get started then," I said to the empty air, as my words rung out through the infinite void of the Alexandrium - the mellowed echoes of my voice ringing throughout this eternal place.  

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