Third Wing: The Zero-Gravathenaeum
Out where the familiar stacks slowly break apart and books now sit upon rotating satellite wheels and deep space scrolls flow through vast networks of directionless Alfvén waves are the remains of a dead universe the Library once consumed. A place where the shadows of where stars used to be whisper secrets in your ear and pull you further out into the inky expanse. Here is where many a null-g experiment began, where words scribed in void from quills dipped in black holes formed, and where spaceships have been built (or found drifting) for great learned expeditions. Patrons can effortlessly drift through the space just by thinking where they want to go, but do try to keep an eye on at least one landmark. It's hard to say when the abyss will start to stare back.
ZG 0.00 - 0.99: Emperor Mortis’ Shelf
Named in honor of Mortis, the former monarch of the Immortal Empire, to commemorate the restoration of diplomatic relations between this interstellar superpower and the Library. We hope that this new era of peace will have stronger, less bloodstained foundations than the last.
ZG 0.00: Necromancer, New Romancer
ZG 0.1: Paroleboy
ZG 0.2: Riparian Fulgurzone
ZG 0.3: Arctic Lichen Frog Profile
ZG 0.4: twin human highway flares
ZG 0.5: Fragata Portuguesa
ZG 0.6: I'm Learning How to Eat Flowers
ZG 0.7: Tapeworm
ZG 0.8: Moonchild
ZG 0.9: As Light is Fading
ZG 0.10: karst
ZG 0.11: Continuum
ZG 0.12: The Anniversary
ZG 0.13: An Account of My Revelation
ZG 0.14: From Floor to Heart
ZG 0.15: digital pompeii
ZG 0.16: On the Squid of Sydainay
ZG 0.17: impotence
ZG 0.18: The Bicuspid Soul
ZG 0.19: patchwork warrior
ZG 0.20: The Kiss I Want // The Kiss I Deserve
ZG 0.21: A Dead River Leaves Rounded Bones
ZG 0.22: Until I See Guts
ZG 0.23: weather spirit
ZG 0.24: Common Chemistry
ZG 0.25: Where a King weaves Its Golden tapestry §1 : Revival
ZG 0.26: An Unusual Day in Summer
ZG 0.27: Révérence
ZG 0.28: The Decades of Chaos: Prelude
ZG 0.29: Some Perception of the World as Alive
ZG 0.30: The Game of Life
ZG 0.31: keeper of keys to doors you'll never open
ZG 0.32: The 13th
ZG 0.33: Der Narr weiß es am besten
ZG 0.34: Those Fireflies at Night Go Still and Dark
ZG 0.35: Sunflower
ZG 0.36: What Does Red Mean?
ZG 0.37: The Plains
ZG 0.38: Ships In The Night
ZG 0.39: Two places
ZG 0.40: pictures
ZG 0.41: Nowhere Forever
ZG 0.42: Message in a Patchwork Bottle
ZG 0.43: The Legend of King Paradinus
ZG 0.44: The Forest That Gives and Takes
ZG 0.45: Fragile Porcelain
ZG 0.46: A Way in a Wasteland
ZG 0.47: Egg yolk grief
ZG 0.48: This Day in Spacetime
ZG 0.49: The Tail of our Pride
ZG 0.50: Dragon Egg
ZG 0.51: Rolling Lucid
ZG 0.52: My Fear Featherlight
ZG 0.53: In the House of the Rainbow
ZG 0.54: dream fever
ZG 0.55: Nightmare Eater
ZG 0.56: Synthesis
ZG 0.57: The Pariah of Kyran: A Tale of Two Worlds
ZG 0.58: Conversation between Pete and Gabe, Angel Wranglers
ZG 0.59: Nekra Meliora
ZG 0.60: Down the Rabbit Hole
ZG 0.61: It Was Her Nature
ZG 0.62: Pantheon
ZG 0.63: Pocong
ZG 0.64: INDEFATIGABLE
ZG 0.65: telegony
ZG 0.66: We Have Eliminated Overdue Fines
ZG 0.67: Wooden Idols And Aviator Shades
ZG 0.68: snow mound (pocket mirror)
ZG 1.00 - 1.99: The Shelf of Oneironauts
Navigators of dreams. Stretchers of the quaggy rubber known as probability. This is the shelf of visionaries. Here, you can reach for the stars and bundle them up for sharing. From the torrid residuums of imaginary supernovas and milk-bleached fireballs carrying the power of a thousand suns and a trillion wishes—every hypothetical is granted a reality and unreality. In this boundless expanse of possible impossibilities, you could try to get lost—but you will be found.
ZG 1.00: Exit the Garden
ZG 2.00 - 2.99: The Damned Birdie's Hull Shelf
Scrap metal, welded together, rusting, irregular. Press an ear up to the shelf, feel how cold the amalgam is. Can you hear them? Their panic? Their terror? A pulsar— their cosmic lighthouse— fried the electronics, life support, heat and oxygen. Metal once warm, now in a perpetual chill, traumatized. They're like children, y'know. Ships. No, no, don't pull away just yet, they'll soon reach their horrific crescendo. They didn't die to cold or suffocation.
ZG 2.00: The House Lights Are Up
ZG 3.00 - 3.99: Chippy's Shelf
Many travelers gather here amongst the cosmic whalefalls, as regardless of where you're from or where you're going, nothing goes to waste and everyone appreciates a good bite to eat. Try a new spin on an old classic, as under the firey passion of only the most skilled of chefs, fish and chips have reached an entirely new level. Oh, and yeah, you can check out quite a few cookbooks here too.
ZG 3.00: A Fish Dreaming of Fire
ZG 4.00 - 4.99: Rusty Shelf
There is nothing here but rust.
ZG 4.00: Diner Communion
ZG 5.00 - 5.99: The Shelf of Debris
Uncountably many little fragments gather here: excerpts, pull quotes, unfinished sentences, sticky notes, shards of burnt paper. Most people pass through this shelf without even noticing, but some are inexorably drawn to it, spending many lifetimes trying to put the pieces together, as if there was ever a whole to begin with.
ZG 5.00: shards of a glass statue
ZG 6.00 - 6.99: The Shelf of the Weeping Aurora
A small veranda branches off to the south along the path of the tomes—cobblestones and etched plasma translucent, milky beneath the nebulas and false lashes of fission fashioned from the collided, crumbling cell walls of suns that blink, slowly kneading inwards bronze, ultraviolet and blue. Travelers had congregated here long ago, limping through Ways or up through the halls with rusted halberds and gleaming, immaculate pistols. But now, they have long gone. Here, before the path curves around the end panel and fuzzes into hard black, a set of leather stools stand empty against a makeshift bar—bottles of liquor and ginger ale eternally frosted, still beading with condensation and pawprints in a pail of ice.
ZG 6.00: For All My Wounded Thirst
ZG 7.00 - 7.99: The Shelf of the Maiden Draped in Stars
This shelf is for the one that Wanderers, long-lost, have claimed to see, something intelligible in the pooling black. She is familiar in her shapes, a sense of home next to a roaring fire. Remembered tales of faraway places when they dreamed of such things. It is only when she unfolds herself that they come to realize their mistake. Be wary.
ZG 7.00: Lord Nail and the Evergreen Lady
ZG 8.00 - 8.99: The Cinnabar Nebula's Shelf
Once the Ways that led to this shelf were lively. Travelers stood on stone pillars in a sea of endless grass and stretched towards a deep red nebula in the sky. Paths opened through the night and through the stars to grant them passage. But no longer. Now the Ways are silent. Old golden blood stains the shelves and ashes are scattered over the satellite wheel. Heedless, the wheel turns onwards.
ZG 8.00: All Consuming Fire
ZG 9.00 - 9.99: Your Shelf
The hall is silent and dark. Around this shelf there is nothing but the faint twinkling of stars, struggling against the void. As you approach its array of books, you notice a framed photograph in its center. It is you. At least, you at some point in the future, with more wrinkles and a softer smile. You begin to inspect the books. While they have been taken from innumerable different universes and cover a wide range of subjects, as you begin to read it dawns on you: every book is talking about some aspect of yourself.
ZG 9.00: The Kingdom