Vignette - Paved by the righteous, lined with good intentions.

“There are many Paths Candidate, pick what seems interesting to you.”

“What if I pick something foolish? ”

“Not all Paths lead somewhere worth going.”

Chapter 1

Sparks ignited the void, pinpoints of light, arcing together in mind bending geometric shapes. Shapes that twisted and turned in inconceivable ways. Slowly leaving the realm of madness to take the shape of recognizable reality. The unknowable becoming normal below his suddenly solid feet.

He stood in the middle of a sports field surrounded by a one-fifth mile track of hard packed dirt. An oval ring of brown packed dirt and faded chalk straining to contain the exuberant growth within. Wild grasses grew to mid chest height that did not include the chalk lines he half expected to see. No chalked lines every ten yards and no great arch for the uprights yet a football field it remained. The certainty of that thought was like a brick in his guts. He knew it without a shadow of a doubt. And he doubted where that surety came from. Or why it mattered. Shaking his head he turned away from the field, searching for something, anything, else to set his eyes on. Hopefully without the confounding certainly.

A hope that was soon dashed. To his right stood a small cottage, drawn wholesale from a period movie, chimney gently smoking, seeding the breeze with the scent of burning oak and cedar. Warm light spilled out the doorless entryways and windows. Windows without panes or shutters.

Comfort, safety, home. The surety of those symbols stood out like floodlights in a blizzard. Too much knowledge overwhelming his senses, even while he desperately needed those concepts. A small lesson learned, he stared at the cozy little home. Allowing the symbols and the knowledge that came with them seep into his mind. What he could not stop he chose to embrace. Slowly his mind adapted. Finding familiarity in the amalgam of images before him. Recognized bits and pieces of childhood memories and movies. Pieces that had been blended together in a harmonious way to create his cottage. His because it came from his memories. He knew what it was because he had always known.

He chuckled softly at his own foolishness. To be afraid of knowing what he knew… He skipped that thought before he got dizzy following it in pointless circles.

Having found his mental balance he turned slowly, accepting each new bit of stimuli slowly. Allowing the memories that had been dredged up to stabilize. To link properly from the remembered to the observed.

On the opposite side of the football field from the cottage stood a grand imposing building. Fake pillars in the ‘we wish we were ancient greek’ style faced a building with giant windows and opened double doors. Light streamed from these openings in pleasant shades of natural yellow that warmly framed the shelves and leather bound books within.

A library, pieced together from his memories of the long years of education with a dash of city public thrown in. He walked over, like a moth to a flame, unable to resist the draw. The eclectic mix harmonized just as effectively here as with the cottage. In expanding rings from the opened and inviting double doors he could see the bean bag chairs and bookcases displaying lurid covers of Cat’s in Hats and Crazy Monkeys from elementary book nooks. Then middle school with four foot tall shelves topped with a few of the more lurid covers standing up partially opened. Begging to be grabbed. Leather easy chairs sat at the row ends with a few thrown between the occasional double spaced shelves bracketing small short tables. Beyond that the taller metal shelves, tightly packed with thicker books, screamed to him of high school years fully intermixed with college and the tall wooden shelves of the public library. The far more grandiose stacks speckled the outskirts, Islands of light danced and merged with the shadows of the floor to ceiling book collection in pleasing swirls. It framed the comfortable hidden nooks and gave the illusion of privacy with every corner turned.

He knew those shelves, had sat in those chairs and read those books. He knew this place, he had learned so much here, gone on adventures with pirates and braved the skies on castles that flew. They were easier and simpler times. Who was he kidding. Those times never really left him. They just transferred to a thing called ebooks… He quickly lost track of that line of thought.

Smiling slightly, he left the building to continue exploring. He had only noticed the two buildings with an earlier 360 turn, now he wandered around the library to see if its massive bulk had hidden any other gems. He found nothing. Literally nothing. A sudden stop of all things. No land, no sky, no nothing. A twisting, membrane of greys and blacks with an opalescent sheen. It whispers of wonders and forbidden knowledge if he can just get past this growing pain in his head....

"Do not stare into the abyss candidate, you would not like it to stare back. The void is not something you can understand."

He flinched, turning quickly to find the voice while absently wiping a bit of blood from under his nose. In the northern end zone of the field, looming half again his height and maybe 25 feet long was a statue that stood out above the grass with ease. It had the body of a lion with exaggerated forward limbs, an egyptian man's head and a pyramid hat upon the lion's shoulders. A sphinx, a symbol of knowledge and riddles. Wisdom and confusion wrapped in a package that legends claimed ate the unworthy.

"Call me Akil," a deep cheerful voice booms in his head, not his ears. The sphinx’s mouth did not move, it’s body remained unliving stone, yet clearly it was speaking. "I am here to provide you with advice and aid in choosing your Path."

Crimson colored anger beyond his desire to control surged up, and drowned his sight, my world, my life, turned upside down in moments and now a statue dares to be cheerful? "FUCK Y.."

The interruption was immediate and vicious. An all encompassing disapproval slammed into his thoughts. The pain rose in a wave and carried him back into the void.

As the light glaringly forced its way through his parched eyelids, it felt like twenty cloggers tap dancing on his frontal lobe.

"Candidate is warned that disrespect will not be tolerated." the cheerful voice of Akil boomed into his aching head. Amplifying the already significant residual pain. "Your death is not possible in this place, but your pain is. It is a great teacher, as you humans say. I am sure that you will prove an apt pupil."

"...You can't just appear and destroy my entire world and expect me to just take it! You.." He screamed, flecks of spittle and foam spraying from his lips.

"Candidate is being foolish." Akil interrupted "the Proctor obviously can, because he already has. As for my expectations, they are irrelevant. You can gain much from your time here, or you can lie there and mope. Choice is something only you sentients are gifted with. Take advantage of it. Choose."

The brutal truth applied in a boisterous voice was somehow all the more brutally intolerable. He stopped himself from replying. Deep breath in, hold 5 seconds, let it out. Repeating this small self ritual several times he let it go. Arguing about can or can't was pointless when someone already did. Lashing out in anger was only going to cause him pain. More pain.

"I need some time." He manages, the rising mental agony fracturing his thoughts and confounding his feelings. I need to sit, I need to cope. His feet knew what was needed. Already they carried him in a jerking, faltering, retreat to the cottage. The comfort it represented suddenly critically necessary.

He stumbled through the open door into the warm interior. It’s contents a series of flashing concepts too real for mere images.

A single room.

A table with two chairs in the right corner by the door.

A lush fluffy bed with extra blankets folded at the foot to the left.

Stone counters line the back wall on either side of the flagstone fireplace. Wooden drawers filling the space below them.

A stone basin on the far right counter is filled with water that flows constantly through a stone spout above.

Each piece, each picture on the wall, a snapshot flashing before his eyes in an overwhelming tide.

Enough!

He dragged a chair before the fire, focussing his fraying attention on only one thing.

Time, I need time, time to recover, time to process all...this!

He stared into the flickering flames and stopped trying to think, let the dancing sparks draw his mind deeper, to let go of the present, to focus on the past. To attempt to make sense of the world collapsing into insanity.

The virtue of time is that it passes, sometimes faster, sometimes slower. But always forward. Eventually enough passes that he could think clearly again. The past at last organized into neat lists of mercifully bereft of emotional overtones. The pain was now dulled to a manageable low ache.

With the past in order it was possible to consider the future.

Will my anger gain me anything now? No, it would not. Will it in the future? Possibly, he decided. A long time in the future it might be actionable.

With a sigh and considerable effort he let the anger go. For now!

What was beneath the anger? Fear. Fear for himself, fear of the unknown and for his family. Are they also in this prison? Will he see them again?

Let that go too. Thinking about it will not change anything, it will only make me miserable. Force it from my head. Focus on the now.

How am I here? This place is scientifically inexplicable! Am I dreaming then? Imagination fuels my dreams with delusions beyond science, it’s true. But my imagination is not usually so masochistic. A pinch would be pointless after the mental bitch slapping he just received. No, it was no dream.

Jerking erect he began to pace, circling the room several times before stopping at a previously unnoticed mirror on the wall to the right of the door. Framed in silvered glass is the usual, a 5'6" slender frame contrasting with a thickening middle. But his brown shaggy hair and two weeks of scraggly facial hair do nothing to hide the problem with his green eyes. They look empty and lost. No spark of good humor, no life dwells in their depths.

I will need to fix that. A living man's eyes should not look that way.

Starting to turn away he jerked back for a second look.

What the hell am I wearing? Baggy brown cloth pants of unfamiliar woven fibers, tied with a draw string that could grace a normal pair of sweats.

The off-white shirt currently tucked into the faux sweats had no elastic on the collar or cuffs. Instead, draw strings tightened the baggy sleeves at his wrists and two bone buttons sealed flaps of cloth together at his neck.

A pair of leather boots hugged his feet. No metal eyelets but the leather did have a cross hatched rawhide thong laces. Again and again the alien and the familiar war at every step.

Push it out of my mind. Focusing on the alien would not help at this point. An ugly chuckle fell from his mouth. A memory of a childhood prayer dripped from his tongue. “God grant me the serenity to accept what I can not change, the courage to change what I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” The religious education still stuck with him after all these years and the sentiment remained appropriate. Was he wise enough to rise above his desire for pointless violence? The urge to find somebody or something to blame and destroy it in a fit of madness?

I hope so.

He had a choice to make. Three choices were offered, was that a false dichotomy? Is false trichotomy a thing? It was an advantage he had found often throughout his old life. When given a small list of options always start by looking for options not included in the list. Unfortunately, that required an understanding of the situation that he did not have. He didn’t know enough to find any other options.

Hold on, he did not know enough? The library! Out the door and across the field he sprinted, ignoring the sphinx in the room for now. The books were calling his name. Ignoring the comfy bean bags and colorful children's books, he rushed to the middle school card catalog. Not the computer aided index from his high school years. What would he do if the index was only on a screen? There was no technology visible anywhere.

His memory led him right to the cabinet, little drawers for each letter of the alphabet on one side. Dewey Decimal numbers on the other.

Non-fiction for now.

Flicking through the dewey decimals it quickly becomes apparent that more than just the furniture and layout were from his memories. The card catalog was mostly empty. The numbers, for the most part blurry and unreadable. A few exceptions stood out.

930 is Ancient History. Memories of book reports on the middle ages and a miniature castle made sticks, rocks and clay. Good memories of bashing down the walls with an equally miniature trebuchet. A trebuchet he remembered making… but suddenly could not remember anything about… His mind skipped past that with hardly a hiccup.

The early 100's in the catalog showed metaphysics. A memory of wondering why anyone would put metaphysics in the non-fiction section snapped back into focus. The irony had stuck with him throughout the years. That philosophy was placed back to back with occultism.

It was a joke he used to tease the philosophy majors in college with. A joke that became ashes in his mouth.

Despite the numbers being in the index, no works were listed below. He had never bothered to read anything in that section and just so, no books were there.

The references he had pulled for the trebuchet were there, though he had no interest in looking at it. The treatise on castles and the timeline for different kinds of construction was there.

Only books he had read, a library filled with the books of his memory. Evidence of how much of his life had been spent between the spread covers. No more and no less.

Perhaps as expected, the fiction section was the most thoroughly populated. Packed even.

Feist, Sanderson, Jordon, Ford, and Wurts fought for space with Heinlen, Asimov, Drake, Herbert and Card. Ah my friends, my dear friends, you have not left me.

STOP!

That way lies temptation, get thee behind me!

Regretfully, he stepped away from the inviting spines and even more inviting content. He had choices to make, he could not afford to while away the days, and maybe years, inside his memories. The library was a bust. That left only a sphinx...