Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians

the knowledge we had before the Incarna stole it from us. But, there are still lots of things we’ve never discovered. And nobody has been able to crack the code of the Forgotten Language despite three thousand years of work.”
    The room fell silent. Finally, Bastille glanced at me. “Well?”
    “Well what?” I asked.
    She glanced at me over the top of her sunglasses, giving me a suffering look. “The Sands of Rashid. Are they in here?”
    “Oh,” I said. “I don’t see anything glowing.”
    “Good enough. You would be able to see them glowing even if they were encased in Rebuilder’s Glass.”
    “I did notice something odd, though,” I said, glancing back at the bookshelves. “The scribbles on the spines of those books started to wiggle the first time I looked at them.”
    Bastille nodded. “That’s just an attention aura – the glasses were trying to get you to notice the text.”
    “The glasses wanted me to notice something?” I asked.
    “Well,” Bastille said. “More like your subconscious wanted you to notice something. The glasses aren’t alive, the just help you focus. I’d guess that because you’ve seen the Forgotten Language before, your subconscious recognized it on those spines. So, the glasses gave you an attention aura to make you notice.”
    “Interesting,” Sing said.
    I nodded slowly – then, curiously, Bastille’s entire shape fuzzed just slightly. Another attention aura? If so, what as it I was supposed to notice about her?
    How do you know so much about Oculator auras, Bastille? I thought, realizing what was bothering me. There was more to this girl than she liked to let people see.
    Some things just weren’t making sense to me. Why was Bastille chosen to protect Grandpa Smedry? Certainly, she seemed like a force to be reckoned with – but she was still just a kid. And for her to know so much about Oculating, when Sing – a professor, and a Smedry to boot – didn’t seem to know much…
    Well, it was odd.
    You may think those above paragraphs are some kind of foreshadowing. You’re right. Of course those thoughts weren’t foreshadowing when they occurred to me. I couldn’t know that they’d be important.
    I tend to have a lot of ridiculous thoughts. I’m having some right now. Most of these certainly aren’t important. And so, I usually only mention the ones that matter. For instance, I could have told you that many of the lanterns in the library looked like types of fruits and vegetables. But that has no real relevance to the plot, so I left it out. Likewise, I could have included the scene where I noticed the roots of Bastille’s hair and wondered why she dyed it silver, rather than letting it grow its natural red. But since that part isn’t relevant to the –
    Oh. Wait. Actually, that is relevant. Never mind.
    “Ready to go, then?” Bastille asked.
    “I’m taking these,” Sing said. He unzipped his duffel bag, tossed aside a spare uzi, then stuffed in the translator’s notes. “Quentin would kill me if I left them behind.”
    “Here,” I said, tossing a Forgotten Language book into the bag. “Might as well take one of these for him too.”
    “Good idea,” Sing said, zipping up his duffel.
    “There just one thing I don’t get,” I said.
    “ One thing?” Bastille asked with a snort.
    “Why do the Librarians work so hard to keep everything quiet?” I asked. “Why go to all that trouble? What’s the point?”
    “Do you have to have a point if you’re an evil sect of Librarians?” Bastille asked with annoyance.
    I fell silent.
    “They do have a point, Bastille,” Sing said. “Everyone has a reason to do what they do. The Librarians, they were founded by a man named Biblioden. Most people just call him The Scrivener. He taught that the world is too strange a place – that it needs to be ordered, organized, and controlled. One of Biblioden’s teachings is the Fire Metaphor. He pointed out that if you let fire burn free, it destroys everything around it. If you contain it, however, it can be very useful. Well, the Librarians think that other things – Oculatory powers, technology, Smedry Talents – need to be contained too. Controlled.”
    “Controlled by those who supposedly know better,” Bastille said. “Librarians.”
    “So,” I said, “all of this cover-up…”
    “It’s to create the world The Scrivener envisioned,” Sing said. “To create a place where information is carefully controlled by a few select people,