In this installment of Galactic Destinations, we explore what isn’t there…
Welcome aboard, readers and adventurers, to another installment of Galactic Destinations: your place to get to all the places! Editorial note: all the department heads voted on what our catchphrase should be. No outright winner was determined. “Your place to get to all the places,” received the greatest number of second place votes, so, following our rather politically advanced method of tabulation, a catchphrase that no one wanted, but that no one hates, now follows the name of our periodical. You can learn more about this method of voting by checking out “Condorcet Voting” on your CORETECHS.
Now, back to this installment. I’m research editor, Marvin Gardens. (My proposed catchphrase was, “The place to be, wherever you are!” by the way. Yes, I know it’s better, YOU know it’s better, my husband knows it’s better, our three sons know it’s better and Mavis, the janitor knows it’s betters, but there’s democracy for you.)
Today we’re going to explore a place to which no one has been. We’re going to discuss a settlement, no one has ever called home. We’re going in search of a station that humans sought out even before the Cat befell us all. I’m writing, of course, of the fabled Library of Alexandria, seat of all human knowledge. This space station, one of the earliest set into orbit around Mars is said to have disappeared without a trace over a thousand cycles before the Cat.
Rumors abounded even then and Time has done little to ebb the flow conspiracies. The station imploded without reason; the station was relocated by government forces; the station wandered into a wormhole -better yet, the station never was.
What little is agreed upon is that the Library of Alexandria was a melange of physical and virtual repositories of human history and knowledge. Visualizations depicted giant, cathedral-like rooms wall-to-wall with leather bound volumes, several stories high, encasing labyrinths of bookshelves, the whole over a series of tunnels lined with vaults.
Booksmiths (Old Earth term for someone who created books), lecturers, and scholars mingled with the finest minds the universe had ever seen. The station was not only the library of human knowledge, it was nexus for intellectual engagement, experiment, and advancement.
The Library’s disappearance was a catastrophe before the Cat. Many an adventurer has died or gone mad trying to locate the fabled Island of Knowledge. It is rumored that the notorious swashbuckler, Red Jane has a portion of an Old Earth map which contains coordinates to the Library.
Now, dear reader, more than ever, humankind could benefit from the discovery of such a place. Is the Library of Alexandria little more than a treasure-hunter’s fantasy, little more than an Atlantis in space? I, for one still desire to dream, for, in dreaming I may unlock knowledge -a knowledge that might lead us back to brighter days and firmer footing.
Thank you stopping by Intergalactic Destination, where the early bird gets the wormhole (that one should have gotten more votes, but I think the department heads were ill-disposed to selecting a catchphrase that Mavis the janitor came up with).