The Librarian sat languidly behind her grand oaken desk and was typing notes into a bulky IBM PC when we arrived. She wore a face as old as time and a billowy Victorian-era frock.

“Jill Colborn,” said the Caretaker, presenting me.

“Hi,” I said. I managed a little wave.

“Hello, Ms. Colborn,” said the Librarian. Her voice was deep and earthy, her tones resonating through the foyer. “Welcome to the Library of Possibilities. How can I help you?”

I had so many questions and didn’t know where to begin. “Well, in truth,” I stammered, “I don’t know how I found my way to this library. I was coming back from my first day of work, then all of a sudden I was in this waiting chamber, and now I’m here, outside of reality. It’s all very strange. Why am I here?”

“Ms. Colborn,” said the Librarian, “you are here by your own request.”

“By my own request?”

“You may not remember it, but you expressed a desire to leave the world behind. Your desire was heard and granted.”

“But—but how?”

“The Author has her ways. Now you are here to observe and to learn.”

“The what? Who is this author?”

“The Author is the designer and sculptor of our reality, and all other realities. She watches over her creations and occasionally tinkers with them as she sees fit.” The Librarian gestured to the endless shelves.

“Well, I’ve never been religious but I guess that’s kind of awesome,” I ventured. “Look, uh, Madam Librarian, it’s been really nice, but I’d like to get back to my reality. Pretty soon, actually. It’s just that, I have a cat to feed, and a date to get to, and—”

“You do not wish to stay?”

“I mean, he’s really cute! And the guy, too. And yes, this library is truly mind-blowing, but what I’m trying to say is, I have a life in my reality that I’d really like to continue living.”

“Very well,” said the Librarian.

“And Madam Caretaker here, sorry I never got your name either, told me that I’d have to find a book, uh, in order to get back?”

The Caretaker spoke up, saving me from embarrassing myself any further. “First she’ll have to locate the book for her reality. She’ll need your help for that. Then, depending upon the index depth, she’ll need some of those.” She pointed at the bowls of wrapped candies sitting next to the PC. There were two bowls, one with blue wrappers and one with yellow wrappers.

The Librarian ruffled through the bowl of blue-wrapped candies with her fingers and picked a few out.

“Ms. Colborn,” she said, “can you describe your reality?”

“What?”

“We need to find your book. We’ve recently finished modernising our catalogue system, so hopefully we will be able to find it, searching by content. Can you describe your reality?”

“Um, well, it’s reality? Not sure how to—”

“Let’s try this way instead. Where do you live?”

“Uh, I live in LA?”

“LA?”

“Los Angeles. Big city in California. United States of America.” I could see the Librarian typing these terms into the computer, her fingers gliding adroitly along the keys with mechanical precision. She frowned.

“I am intimately familiar with millions of realities, and I know of billions more. All the main-sector realities, many fringe realities. Shadow worlds, mirror worlds, altered worlds. But I’m sorry, I’m not aware of these terms, and it seems that our catalogue system doesn’t recognise them either.”

Seriously?

I continued, “Earth? Uh, Milky Way Galaxy?”

The Librarian typed, and her eyes lit up. “Earth! Looks like it’s in the QQ’s. Fringe sectors.”

“So, you’ve found it?”

“Yes. The entry in our database is sparse, but it seems we have a specialist team for the Earth realities and their neighbouring realities. Your division contact will be Tiffany. I’ll print out the entry for you. And you’ll need a lot of these.”

She poured a lot of the blue-wrapper and yellow-wrapper candies into a brown bag—more than it seemed the bowls themselves could hold, given its size—and handed it to the Caretaker. Then she gave me a printout of the Earth entry, the only text of which I could understand ran as follows:

Earth.

Class-C planet.

Sectors: QQ-4GZ-404-I79-DDE-5997-RW-29A-ZAA-15005J through 15005L.

Temporal range: ~9Gy–.

Division contact: Tiffany.

“Berenice,” she said to the Caretaker, “you know what to do.”