The Keeper, the Seeker, and the Avatar

After nearly thirty years of research, field work, digging, and sometimes living off the land, Ana had finally found what her family had sought since her great-grandfather. The door was so well hidden that she hadn’t realized it was there until she attempted to break a bit of the surface rock off with her geologist’s hammer. The hollow behind the door resonated with the sound of the hammer on stone.

She tapped along the door to find the edges. With the chisel end of her hammer, she chipped away the encrustations that had built up along the edges. After hours of hammering, chiseling, and digging at the base, the outline of the door was visible. Made of the same rock as the surrounding gneiss, it had gone unnoticed for untold millennia.

Ana pushed the door from the sides, the middle, the top, the bottom, looking for the smallest movement. The door didn’t budge. She sat, leaning against the door on the flat bit of ground she’d dug out. She ate some of the year-old jerky she had in her pack while the sun set.

It was a clear, moonless night, and Ana focused her attention on the whirl of the Milky Way overhead. The sight wasn’t enough to keep her mind off the stubborn door behind her and the aching of her joints from sitting on the rocky ground.

She stood and turned to take a last look at the door for the day. Even in the faint light of the stars, she thought she could make out the edges. At one corner, a flash caught her eye. She moved her head back and forth, trying to find the position that had, she thought, reflected light.

Not finding it, she pulled out her flashlight and shone it on the corner of the door where the flash was. She expected to see a reflection but saw none. She turned out the light, and there it was, except it was two flashes this time.

There was no doubt it was coming from inside, shining out a pinhole in the door seam at the upper left corner. “Monkey see, monkey do?” she asked herself. She pointed the flashlight at the corner and flashed it twice. When nothing happened, she flashed it again.

The response was five flashes. “Oh, fibbi-whatever,” she muttered. “Three and five is eight.” She flashed the light eight times. There was no immediate response. She began to worry that she’d been wrong in her counting or in what pattern they were looking for.

A loud hiss sounded as the whole door slid out away from the wall. Bright light shone around the edges of the door that continued to slide out, far thicker than she’d expected. Where she’d stopped digging in front of it, the door bulldozed its own path.

It stopped with a little less than a meter clearance between the back of the door and front of the rock wall. Beyond lay a downward-sloping walkway. It was shaped like an oval with a flattened floor. A voice echoed from within, “Enter, Anastasia.”

She didn’t know how they knew who she was, but she wasn’t going to turn back after having come so far. She stepped around the door, held by a single, flat piece of metal that disappeared into a groove in the ceiling. The metal that held the massive slab of stone looked far too flimsy for purpose, but pushing against the edges of the open door did nothing to sway the door or distort the metal support.

With a deep breath, Ana threw her pack over her shoulder and stepped into the hallway. As she continued down the hall, more would illuminate ahead of her while behind her, the lights shut off. Where the light came from was a mystery to her, but she was more interested in what lay ahead at that point.

She felt a slight, sudden increase in air pressure in the tunnel, followed by the echoing sound of the door as it closed. She pushed down the edges of panic that wanted to take hold. “I’m on my way,” she said to the tunnel.

The deeper she went, the more the temperature seemed to settle at close to fifteen or sixteen degrees Celsius. Her lips felt dry in the still air, and she applied lip balm while she continued apace ever deeper. Somewhere far underground, the tunnel curved back on itself and kept descending. After two more switchbacks, and what felt like hours of walking, she found herself in a chamber.

It was monumental in scale. The walls curved to meet at least twenty meters overhead. As the lights in the chamber came up, the far side looked a hundred or more meters away, while the doorway she was in was situated about twenty meters from the walls on either side. Covering the bottom two-thirds of the walls were row upon row of plastic-like boxes with lights blinking inside them.

In the center of the chamber was a dais with a holographic glyph floating in the air above it. Standing next to the dais was the owner of the voice she’d heard on entering. The shape was semi-translucent, the lights from the boxes behind it seeming to light it from within. “Welcome,” it said, although it had no mouth with which to speak. Its form shifted and changed, from an amorphous blob to an array of wings and eyes, then through creatures both real and mythical, until it finally settled into the shape of a large woman with wings.

“Who are you?” Ana asked.

“I am the keeper,” it said. “You are Anastasia, the seeker, yes?”

“I’m Anastasia Kell, but I go by Ana.” Ana moved closer to the center of the chamber and the shape-shifting entity at its center. “What is your name?”

“I am the keeper. I have no name.”

“Fine, I’ll call you Odette, then. You look like an Odette.”

The keeper flapped its wings twice, then shrunk its body by adding a long tail. “That is acceptable, seeker Anastasia.”

“Please, just call me Ana.”

“Of course, Ana. Please, come to the dais for your reward. Your dedication has won through.” The keeper moved away from the dais and extended an arm toward Ana. The arm kept extending, reaching Ana’s hand twenty meters away from the keeper.

Ana was surprised that the hand felt warm and dry. She’d expected some sort of slimy, cold thing, but it wasn’t. She let herself be led to the dais. “What are you?”

“I am the keeper.”

“Are you a biological creature or a construct of some sort? Some sort of soft-body robot, maybe.”

“I am a biological construct, designed to keep a record of all intelligent life on this world. I have been keeping these records for 72,363,412 years.”

“Since what…the dinosaurs?”

“Yes. The first were theropods. Traveling in hunter groups, they had a limited language. If they had been more adaptable, they might have not been already dying out by the time of the asteroid.” The keeper changed its shape to a theropod that Ana didn’t recognize. It was about the same height as her, with three-toed feet, three-fingered hand on medium-length arms, and a slightly domed head.

“That’s what they looked like?” she asked.

“Yes.” The keeper shifted into the shape of a porpoise. “There were and are the cetaceans, of course. They have language and culture but are not in a position to leave their cradle.”

“Is that what you’ve been waiting for? An intelligence capable of space travel?”

“Yes. My creators have placed other keepers like me on millions of worlds.” The keeper changed into a sphere. “This is where I am keeper.”

“So now, humans, I guess, are what you’ve been looking for.”

The keeper changed into a primate that resembled a chimpanzee and then morphed through several hominin species shapes, pausing on Neanderthal before finishing up with modern human. “I’ve watched entire civilizations come and go without so much as a scratch to mark them in the geologic record, and yet your kind has made an indelible mark on the planet. Whether that is for better or worse remains to be seen.”

“My guess would be worse, but I’m a pessimist.”

“So you say, but you never stopped searching for the library at the heart of the world.”

“True.” Ana took a deep breath and put a hand on the dais. The holographic glyph hovering above it disappeared, and an eight-limbed creature appeared in its place.

The creature spoke in English, even though its squishy mouthparts made movements that were often in total contradiction to the sounds it made. “Welcome, seeker Anastasia. Updating. Welcome, Ana. What would you like to learn today?”

“What are my limits here? This place was hard enough to find, what kind of things won’t you tell me?”

“The records will answer any questions you have that can be answered. Nonsensical and paradoxical queries will be ignored. The library is hidden to ensure that only those ready to take the next steps beyond their cradle can find it. As such, all our knowledge is yours for the asking.”

“So, I blinked a light in a simple sequence. How does that mean we’re ready to take the next steps – whatever those are?”

“You are the fourth generation of your family that has searched for the library, correct?” the holograph asked.

“I am.”

“And you have spent the majority of your adult life in the same search, have you not?”

“I have,” she said, “but how does that–”

“Multi-generational planning and execution, combined with drive and determination, and the knowledge of basic mathematical concepts. This is enough to start with.”

“Are you just another aspect of Odette?”

“No, I am the avatar of Krshnlgik-mlOgnk, the current head of remote planetary studies on our home world of MFkst.” The pronunciation of the non-translated names sounded more like someone choking in a bowl of oatmeal than a language.

“Is faster-than-light communication possible?”

“It is. I am currently speaking with you from a distance of thirty-one thousand light years.”

“How?”

A series of formulae appeared in the space above the dais. “You may use your phone to photograph these, since memorization might be difficult.”

Ana did. “And faster-than-light travel?”

The formulae were replaced with more, some of which looked similar to the first. She photographed those as well.

“Do you have any other questions?”

“How can you claim to keep track of everything happening all over the world?”

“The keeper, or Odette as you call it, has a connection through quintillions of microscopic wormholes to points all over the planet.”

“So, would you have the contents of the Library of Alexandria as they were just before it burned?”

“We do.” Thousands upon thousands of titles scrolled by, many in languages Ana couldn’t even guess at, but with an English translation next to them.

“That might be something for another day,” she said. “Are there others out there in the galaxy or just your people?”

“There are many others,” the avatar said, as images of dozens of strange body plans showed. “We are a small part of a wider galactic community.

“You seem to be pondering something,” the keeper said. “Do not be afraid to ask your question.”

“How do we get off this rock and join the galactic community?”

The keeper morphed into the shape of a cozy chair and said, “Get comfortable.”

“Huh? Why?”

“Because,” the avatar answered, “this is going to take a long time to explain.”