With all the excitement of the previous night, Harold had not gotten the chance to explain to the others what he had seen. This was a problem, because over the course of the night and the early hours of the morning, he began to reflect on whether he should tell them or not, as he was starting to doubt whether he really had seen it. It had been so strange, so random, to open the book and see those words scribbled on the page, but the moment he had looked back they had disappeared.

Had they even been there in the first place? Harold wasn't tired by any means, so he couldn't blame his seeing it on a sleep-deprived brain; nor could he even make a bigger stretch to say that it was a trick of the light, because it had been so dark. The words had been clearly imprinted across the pages.

Which made him think, what if it had been the effect of the scale powder? He had, after all, been sleeping until that morning, and he had not even realized the transition between reality and dreams when he had first fallen asleep in Boston. Maybe it was just...a hallucination. Angry with himself, he seized the book again and pulled it open. Midèn kai ápeiro stared back at him. He blinked and rubbed his eyes numerous times, but the words stubbornly remained on the page, indifferent and unreadable.

"What do you mean?" he hissed at it.

Zero and Infinity. Zero and Infinity. Zero and Infinity....No matter how many times he repeated the words in his mind, any form of understanding of the situation continued to elude him.

By this time Jimmy would be asleep, and he doubted he would know any more about this mysterious language or the English translation any better than he would. Helen probably might, given that she read so widely, but of course, he was probably the last person she wanted to see at this moment. Who else could he ask?

And then it came to him. He sat up, hid the book back inside his pillow, and hurried out of the room. The dark corridors were deserted, and the sound of light snoring could be heard just beyond the dark doors. He moved swiftly and quietly, flitting through the school like a shadow, feeling just as he had when he had snuck out to ride Jimm's Overboard, unreasonably guilty.

Except this time he had no reason to be. In fact, he had a feeling that anyone who asked him where he was going at this hour would probably encourage him to go if he told them.

At last, he arrived just outside the doorway, all the way on the other side of school. The Library was marked with the image of an owl, the symbol of the Greek Goddess of Wisdom, Athena. Like the Med Wing, it wasn't a place that Harold usually visited, but if there was any information on what the book could be about, where better to look than the largest repository of knowledge on the entire island?

But as he had expected, it was locked. He rapped loudly on the door, and heard, perfectly audibly, someone behind the door say, "Who the devil could that be?"

And after a few moments, the locks clicked and the door swung open to reveal the Librarian, a short, pudgy man with unruly grey hair and a similarly wild beard beneath piercing blue eyes and a crumpled, pallid expression.

"Mr. Felton," Harold said, putting on a gracious smile. "Sorry to bother you, but I was wondering if you could help me with something? It's really important."

Mr. Felton blinked at him, clearly bemused. "Fallwim, isn't it?"

"Farwell, sir," Harold corrected.

"Yes, Farwell, yes. Er—but what are you doing here? At this hour? I think I've seen you all of three times in all my years here, and each time you were asleep!"

Harold flushed, a little abashed. "Oh, right. Well, sorry about that." He gave a small smile. "But like I said, this is very important."

"Last minute homework, eh?" said Mr. Felton, eyeing him shrewdly.

"Oh—yes," Harold said. "Yes, unfortunately."

"Hmm mmh. Well, come in." Still staring at him disapprovingly, he stepped back to allow Harold inside. Harold entered. The Library was a large room, divided into several sections, with a number of large, dark wood tables arranged in front of the shelves. A long column of lanterns extended down the rows of books, but only the ones at the very front of the room were lit. A book was poised on the Librarian's table, half-open, beside a steaming mug. Harold had clearly disturbed a reading session.

"Well, Farwell," Mr. Felton said, shutting the door behind them. "What kind of books do you need?"

"Well, I'm not exactly sure if there's a specific book, sir. It's a topic I don't know much about, which is why I came here. Something I read recently: Midèn kai ápeiro."

Mr. Felton dropped his book. He had stiffened, shoulders tensed. For several seconds, he didn't move. Harold was beginning to worry that something had happened, when he actually turned around, his eyes widened. "What did you say?"

"Midèn kai ápeiro?" Harold repeated nervously.

"Is this a joke?" said Mr. Felton, and to Harold's surprise, his pouchy face looked angry under the lamplight. "Are you joking?"

"What, no—"

"Did one of them put you up to this?" he demanded, his voice rising furiously.

"No, no!" Harold said, definitely alarmed now. What was he talking about?

"Then why are you asking me about that?!"

"I—" Harold took a deep breath, then exhaled heavily. "I was reading a book," he said. "When I was doing research for an assignment earlier this week, and the words were in it. I didn't know what they meant and I wad curious. That's all. I swear." He didn't know why he was lying, but somehow telling the truth about the journal did not seem like the most logical course of action when Mr. Felton was staring at him like an enraged lion.

The Librarian's chest heaved with emotion, but after a few seconds, he calmed down. "I'm sorry," he said. "That was...that was completely inappropriate. I—I don't have the best history when it comes to that topic."

"I can see that," Harold muttered under his breath. "So you know about it, then?" he said aloud.

Mr. Felton hesitated. Then he said, "Yes. Yes, I do."

"Can you tell me what it is?"

"They"

"Excuse me?" Harold said, raising an eyebrow.

"It's not an it. Not one thing. There are two of them. Midèn kai ápeiro: Zero and Infinity."

Harold's heart leapt. Here was proof; he hadn't hallucinated it after all.

"I take it you are familiar with the story of Creation, Mr. Farwell?" Felton said.

"Isn't everybody?" said Harold.

"I should think so, yes. It is very popular. But as you would also know, it is not the only story that details the birth of our known universe. I think I—yes, I should have the book somewhere here. Sit, sit—" He seized a lantern and bustled off down an aisle while Harold sat, glad that he had calmed down. He sat and looked around for a while, taking in the covers of the books around him. After a few minutes, Felton returned carrying a huge, ancient-looking book, which he slammed down in front of Harold so forcefully that the entire table shook.

The book was already open, displaying two pages that each only showed a single image that occupied the entirety of the page: a large, glowing sphere.

"I don't know what I'm looking at," Harold said.

"The theory of Zero and Infinity states that, before the dawn of the universe, there was nothing—nothing, that is, except an immense wave of negative energy. Think of this negative energy—or Zero energy—as a barren wasteland. Unfit for survival, unable to produce or sustain life in any form. Nothing could grow from it. It was simply...empty. But as we've since learned, the universe needs a balance.

"For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Think along those lines for this. Now for the negative energy to exist, there needed to be a balance. Something that could produce and maintain life."

"Positive energy," Harold said.

"Exactly! Positive charges began to emerge along the lines of the negative, in the same way that animals begin to change, to evolve, in order to adapt to certain conditions and continue to survive. These positive charges grew so exponential that they had to be expelled from the negative, forming two opposite yet complementary energies. Like yin and yang. But by this time, the two energies were completely volatile, raw and unchecked, and they continued to expand until they collided.

"The resultant force created a powerful shockwave that scattered waves of positive and negative energy all across the void, and from the unification of both energies, life emerged, creating what is known as our universe today.

"But these energies weren't fully depleted. While the majority of said forces were scattered in the explosion—or, 'the Big Bang,' as some prefer to call it," he said, rolling his eyes, "two smaller masses of energy remained intact. The mass of negative energy, or the Zero Core," he said, pointing at the left picture, which was, oddly, completely uncoloured. "And the mass of positive energy, or the Infinity Core." He tapped the right picture, which was painted in as many colours as Harold could make out.

"These two Cores are all that remains of those pre-universe singularities, and each one of them is capable of manipulating our known universe on a fundamental level.

"What do you mean?" asked Harold.

"You were taught, in your Chemistry class, that energy and matter can neither be created nor destroyed, correct?"

"That's right," Harold said, nodding.

"Wrong!" said Mr. Felton loudly, slamming his fists on the table, and making Harold jump. "These two Cores disprove that theory. The Zero Core functions based on negative energy, the cold, immutable groundings of the reality in which it is based. It is said to be able to both destroy and transform matter. And the Infinity Core has the opposite effect: it can create matter.

"Each of them can rewrite reality as a whole, but on completely different levels. The Zero Core can alter or destroy the reality in which it exists, but the Infinity Core can generate entirely new realities, with entirely different laws of nature and physics from our own, that can function as smoothly as ours. It can bring the very imagination to life!"

His eyes were popping, his chest rising and falling deeply. In that moment, he looked quite mad. But Harold's mind had wandered. Once more he found himself on that island, where he had seen the other Gargantuans, the strange plants, the freak weather conditions.

"So, in essence, the difference between reality and fantasy," Harold said.

Felton nodded, holding up both hands as if comparing invisible items cupped between his fingers. "Zero, and Infinity."

"Wait, but what happened to the Cores after the Big Bang?" Harold asked Mr. Felton. The Librarian immediately deflated.

"Oh, well, that's..." He cleared his throat. "That's a bit—I don't really know?" he said awkwardly. "See, everything I just told you is information that I collected from my travels across the world. But nothing ever actually stated where the Cores ended up. For all we know, they could be hurtling around in space as we speak, a billion lightyears from Earth!"

"But you don't think that," Harold said, looking at him shrewdly. "Do you?"

Felton hesitated. "No," he said quietly. He heaved a great sigh and sank into one of the other chairs around the table, directly across from Harold, looking dejected. "I try to...how do you say?...keep an open mind. I believe that there is more to our world than science has to offer, questions that even our best and brightest simply cannot answer, because they refuse to accept the possibility that not everything is the result of some chemical reaction. I've been ridiculed for the longest while for believing in these myths. Told that if I kept my mind too open, my brains would fall out.

"But I always knew that things aren't black or white. Why do you think we have people like you?" he said, and Harold was taken aback again. However, he chose not to respond to this. He had asked himself this question many times—why the Enhanced existed, what purposes their powers served. But he had never received an answer.

Instead he returned to the topic at hand. "Humour me for a moment," he ssid. "If these Cores really did exist, is there any way we could be able to find them?"

Mr. Felton paused, contemplating. "There is a myth," he said at last. "But take this with a grain of salt. I have never seen the texts myself, and my sources, unfortunately, are not exactly what one would call reliable. But according to what I have heard, there is a sort of mechanism that could be able to lead you to the Cores, if you can find it. But that is all I know."

"You mean like a compass?" Harold asked, frowning.

"Exactly. Though all the same, there is no proof that any of these things even exist. I and many others have searched tirelessly for years on end, and the most we have found is the simple sigils carved into the walls of different caves and structures around the would. If anybody had found them, I think we would know." He chuckled.

Harold stood up. "One last question before I go," he said. "'Midèn kai ápeiro,' what language is that anyway?"

"Oh, Greek," said Felton, and to Harold's surprise he looked amused. "The funny part is, none of the Cores have ever been recorded in Greek legends, nor has any of the other information found on them. I have no idea who the words were written in Greel when I first stumbled across them, but that appears to be the most common terminology used to address them."

"Thank you, Mr. Felton. You've been a great help."

"Oh, no trouble." Felton waved an airy hand. "And if you ever need to know anything more about any other myths, feel free to stop by any time," he added, with a warm smile.

"I will, sir." Harold pulled open the door, his hand on the knob.

"Oh, hang on, Farwell. You didn't tell me what subject this was for in the first place?"

"Oh, er—Math," he said, it being the first word that sprang into his mind, and he closed the door in the Librarian's confused face.

This was good, Harold thought, as he closed the door to his room and settled himself back into bed. He had learned much more than he had expected to tonight. So at least now he knew that he hadn't been hallucinating. He really had seen the translation—but how, and why,

And then there was the matter of these Cores. No proof that they had ever existed, Felton had said. But Harold's vision....If they really were real, then Harold would have bet the secret stash of candy he kept in his lower drawer that the prismatic cube he had seen in his dream was the Infinity Core.

It was what was responsible for all the Gargantuans, all the odd plants and weather conditions he had seen in the vision. It fit the criteria the most, a mass of positive energy that could rewrite the very rules of nature and create matter at will. These things, according to their current knowledge of science, should be utterly impossible. But from what he had gathered, these Cores were not a matter of science, but mysticism.

And again he remembered his conversation with Helen. How she had wanted a cure that presumably didn't exist. If these Cores were real, if the theories were true and something of the story was causing these changes, then he was sure she would be interested. Feeling satisfied that at last his curiosity had been somewhat abated, he rolled over and fell asleep.