The Library Beyond Time

It started like a typical late afternoon summer shower along the Front range, the kind that comes out of nowhere, unleashes a torrential downpour for fifteen minutes then ends as abruptly as it starts. But this storm was different. Within a few hours it became violent and unrelenting. Rain came down with such ferocity that it seemed as if a dam had burst in the heavens, releasing infinite quantities of water. Ravines in the mountains became rushing rivers, tearing through the streets of the small towns that sat at the base of the mountains. Homes, trees, roads – all of it – were ripped from the ground only to become the leading edge of a wave that destroyed everything in its path. They called it the Thousand Year Storm.

***

I should have heeded the advice of, well, just about everyone, and left the office earlier in the day. What started out as any other summer rain shower was rapidly becoming a record breaking storm. People were leaving the office so they could get home before roads became dangerous and impassible. I had a few things to finish up at work and lived only a few blocks from the office so I figured I’d be able to make my way home, even if I got soaked. There wasn’t anything waiting for me at home anyway. A few weeks earlier my girlfriend had left me for a traveling tattoo artist from Des Moines named Skink. All I had at home was bourbon, left-over pizza, and a few episodes of a Norwegian crime drama I’d been binging.

Wind rattled the windows as the storm ratcheted up another notch. In the fading evening light I could see trees bending at unnatural angles. Water flowed down the street, pushing debris against already clogged storm drains. I leaned back in my chair, closed my eyes and imagined I was one of the trees in the storm having it’s leaves ripped off until there was nothing but bare branches. It was comforting and I dozed off as one does when driving tired at night, just for a few seconds.

I was awakened by the “dee-doop, dee-doop…dee-doop, dee-doop” of a Zoom invite on my laptop. It was Janice from IT. This couldn’t be good. The only time I ever heard from IT was when there was a problem. To be fair, I’d spent a several years in IT doing systems administration, a job I didn’t particularly like though I was good at it. I managed to get out when someone in sales realized I had “people skills”, a comment I found to be degrading to IT people, but I was still happy to move on.

I clicked Accept and a black box with Janice’s name came up. Of course she had her camera off - that was the thing now, Zoom calls with faceless nametags. I turned mine on anyway, just to show my irritation. People skills. Surprisingly, Janice followed suit by turning hers on.

“Hey Janice.”

“Hey Rob, how’s it going there?”

“Oh, you know, holding down the fort from the zombie horde unleashed by this apocalyptic storm. In other words, I need to get out of here before I can’t. But I’m sure you didn’t call for a wellness check. What’s up?”

“Yeah, no,” she said, “Look, I’m sorry to ask this of you, especially given the circumstances, but I need remote hands in the server room. I can’t access the main database server. I think it crashed, maybe a power surge from the storm.”

“I don’t remember any of that shit, Janice, that was a long time ago,” I said. “And anyway, I don’t know where anything is in the new server room since they moved it to the basement.”

“It’s like riding a bike, I’ll come back to you. Anyway, it’s easy, I can get you there and walk you through it over Zoom. All you need to do is power cycle the box and everything should come back online.”

“I was about to head home. Can’t this wait until Monday when this storm blows over?”

“Not ideal,” Janice said. “We’re running year-end for accounting and it’s going to take most of the weekend to finish. I’d come in myself, but the road from my place is flooded out.”

“I’m looking at the same storm you are, and from the weather report, it’s only going to get worse. I prefer not to spend the night here,” I said.

“Of course you can say, no, and I’d totally respect that but this shouldn’t take more than about 15 minutes.”

Janice was a good egg and I knew what she needed. If she could get me to the right server, she was probably right that it would take less than 15 minutes for a reboot.

“Okay. But look, if this takes more than that, I need to pull the plug and get out of here.”

“Thank you so much, I owe you big time,” she said. “You’re going to need the code for the server room door, and the login for the server. I’m texting you those now. And I’ll email you a diagram of the server room that has the database server rack identified. There’s no cell service in the basement, but the WiFi’s good so we can still communicate.”

My phone beeped and I could see the door code and server login. Then my email beeped and I opened an attachment of the server room. “This doesn’t look anything like what I remember.”

“Yeah, it’s used by all the tenants in the building plus some others who rent space in it.”

“Okay, I’ll head down there and let you know when I’m in front of the server.”

I got in the elevator and pressed the button for the basement. As the elevator doors began to close, I could see the lights in the office flicker, then the light in the elevator did the same. The doors fully closed and I had an immediate sense of panic that if the building lost power, I’d be stuck in the elevator for days. To my relief, the elevator jolted into motion and descended two floors to the basement. The door opened to a dark corridor. I stepped out of the elevator and activated a motion sensor that tripped the lights on. To the left was the door to the stairs out to the parking lot, and to the right was several storage rooms and the server room. I was comforted by the fact that once I finished in the server room, I had only to walk back down the hallway and out of the building, avoiding the elevator altogether. That’s when panic number two hit me - subterranean server room, epic storm, flood, bad, bad, bad. My phone was using WiFi and I texted Janice.

Me: What are the chances of it flooding down here?

Janice: Zero. The basement is fully sealed. There are pumps, UPS, backup generators, everything needed to protect the server room.

Me: One word, Janice. Titanic.

Janice: LOL

I walked to the end of the hall and came to the server room door. The access keypad was backlit and I pulled out my phone to bring up the text message Janice had sent. I typed in 2547. Red light. I double checked my phone and confirmed I’d keyed in the right number. I tried it again, and nothing. I texted Janice.

Me: The server door code you gave me doesn’t work.

After a long paused, Janice responded.

Janice: Oh crap, they rotate the combo every four weeks, I don’t have the new one.

Another brief pause.

Janice: I’ve got a workaround. There’s an access door into the server room from a storage closet back down the hall, about 50 feet behind you. It’s the door marked “Storage Room 19B”. The code for that door is 1111, they never change it. Light switch on your left. Let me know when you’re in and I’ll direct you to the server room door.

I keyed the code and the lock turned green. I pushed the door open and fished around on the inside wall until I found the light switch. As the lights came on, I expected to see storage shelves, boxes, office furniture, and other random stuff. What I found instead was an empty room, maybe 50 feet on a side. At the left side of the room there was a door with a light over it. I texted Janice again.

Me: I’m in the room Janice but there’s nothing here but another door.

Janice: I guess they must have cleaned out the room. That door is the one that will take you into the server room. The code is 1234.

Me: Why am I not surprised.

Janice: Old habits.

           I keyed in the code and the door light turned green. I pushed the door opened and felt a rush of cool air. It had a musty smell that reminded me of a tour I’d taken of a subterranean tunnel under Rome. I stepped through the door and tripped the motion lights in the server room. The lights cascaded on, illuminating row upon row of server cabinets that seemed far too expansive for the footprint of the building. I pulled my laptop out of my knapsack and brought up the picture Janice had sent me. Her picture had 10 rows of servers, but what I was looking at was easily fifty rows, extending a couple hundred feet to the other side of the cavernous room. I texted Janice again.

Me: This room doesn’t look anything like the picture.

I waited for Janice’s reply and when none came, I tried again. No reply. So much for reliable WiFi. I’d passed the 15 minute mark and I was becoming agitated. As I turned around to go back out the door so I text Janice, my agitation turned to unease – the door wasn’t there. I walked the full length of the wall I’d entered through and found only a blank wall. I felt the seeds of panic growing.

My next thought was to exit through the main server room door. Based on where I’d entered the room, I determined it should be on the wall to my left, so I walked to that wall and along its full length, but still no door. I continued until I’d walked the perimeter of the server room. No door. How can there be no door? I was trapped in a room with no doors with a storm raging above that seemed fully capable of flooding the basement. I yelled for help. I tried texting Janice again. I looked at the map Janice had sent me. I yelled again. It was futile, I was alone.

I breathed. It didn’t get me back to a baseline calm, but it gave me enough presence of mind to think. I decided to take a more careful survey of the server room to see if there was another way to get out. Maybe a staircase, ladder, or ceiling access that led up to the floor above.

Unlike the server rooms I’d worked in, this one did not have the usual arrangement of hot and cold aisles. Instead, the front and back of each row of servers was identical, such that the servers in one row, abutted those in the next row over. The servers, if I could call them that, were about the size of the ones I’d worked on but instead of metal with cooling grates, these appeared to be made of a dark polished stone, like a black granite or marble. What I had first perceived as lights on the servers, were actually more like colored glass, or precious stones. There were no signs of power or networking cables.

Each of the rows had a placard affixed to the endcap of the rack. The rack furthest to my left was printed with “100,000 BCE – 90,000 BCE”, the sign on the next rack over read “90,001 BCE - 80,000 BCE”. So years, perhaps. Each of the first several rows were in 10,000 year increments, but as I moved to the right, the time range for a given row grew shorter. An individual row had 100 server racks, with passageways between rows the 20, 40, 60, and 80 rack position, which made it possible to walk between rows without having to traverse the entire row. By the time I got to the last row, which I counted to be the 57th row, the placard read, “2001 – 2026, so only 25 years. I walked down the last row and could see that less than 50% of the server lights were illuminated.

I had been lost in thought considering the layout of the racks, when I noticed a subtle shift in light above the next row over. I called out, “Who’s there?” I walked quickly back to the nearest row-to-row passageway and crossed into the adjoining. Just as I turned the corner, I saw a figure in white with long gray hair run to the end of the row and turn to the right. I ran after them.

As I came out of the row, I saw the person running along the row ends and cut back in several rows down. I sped up and followed them into the row marked 3,000 BCE – 2,100 BCE on one of the endcaps. They ran down the row, but this time continued straight without turning into one of the side passages. About half-way down the row there was a bright ceiling light over a section of the row. The person stopped under the light and turned to look at me. As I approached, I could see that the row opened up into a clearing. The area was about 30 feet on side, created by the absence of several rows of racks that ended at one side of the clearing, and continued on the other. The clearing was a living space. There was a wooden table with two chairs, two small beds, a large, two overstuffed chairs, and several rows of bookshelves. The gray haired runner stood calmly on the far side of the table. She was tall and thin with long gray hair that came down to the small of her back. She looked to be in her seventies, but the speed with which she’d run from me suggested a younger woman.

“What are you doing down here? Who are you” I said.

“This is my home.” she had a peculiar accent I couldn’t place.

“What do you mean this is your home? Does anyone know you’re down here?”

“Are you the new Curator?”

 “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I got trapped in here and I can’t find the door out”.

“There are no doors down here.”

The woman walked to a laptop that sat open on one end of the table and turned it towards me. “This is for you”, she said. I walked to the table cautiously and looked at the laptop. It was a document addressed to me.

Dear Rob,

I know you are confused, frightened, and probably angry. So let me start with the hard part. The city you left, the one you would say is “above” this room, experienced a once in a thousand year storm. Much of that city was lost to a violent flood that washed away many people with it. The building you occupied was destroyed and you did not survive, at least not in the way you would define it.

This room exists on a plane where the threads of time intersect and quiesce. This is the Library of Humankind. For thousands of years we have been archiving the history of all that has happened in your world. A human life is too short to see the arc of time and you are prone to forgetting. There are times when it becomes necessary for us to recall this information and restore the collective memory of humankind. Without us, you would forgot the things that make a human life worth living and you would destroy yourselves. That is not in our shared interest.

This Library requires a caretaker, we call it a Curator. By now you have met Marie. She has been the Curator for five hundred years. Marie will teach you how to tend this library. We have configured this space in a form that is familiar to you. The room itself will evolve and expand over time as space becomes required for new records. You will find a set of printed manuals on the shelves in the living area. Once you have completed your training with Marie, she will be released. From your perspective, she will simply not be here one day.

Time in this place passes at a fraction of the world above. For the five hundred years that pass in the world as you knew it, you will age less than a tenth of that. All that you need to live is provided here. Time will pass slowly, but eventually you will lose all sense of time and no longer feel the pain of its passage as you once did. You will find that the duties of the Curator consume you. The knowledge you find here will fill you with wonder. You will weep with great sadness at times, but the beauty you find in these archives will be unimaginable.

Finally, you may ask why you have been selected to replace Marie. That I cannot answer for was the role of another. I am only here to aid in the transition. May the gods smile upon you.

Janus