The door let out into a metropolis rivaling the greatest of their local twenty-first century. The buildings were colored bright golds, red and purples, with architecture echoing Ancient Greece and Egypt with a dash of Han Dynasty China as well.
Alex sniffed the air. She recognized it. She had visited this city’s doppelgänger on her own earth. Her namesake. “Alexandria.”
Colin looked confused. He pulled out a small book that smelled faintly of citrus. It had a plain white cover with a diagonal black band emblazoned with the title ‘Quantum Quidebook’ “Yes. Third Alexandria. Another Earth.”
“I was hoping for something a little more alien.”
"You're the one who set the location to 'random'" Colin sighed, pocketing the Quidebook.
"So why Third?" Alex asked
“Dunno, the book didn’t say. Burnt and rebuilt twice? Or just the third city named Alexandria. That bastard loved naming cities after himself.”
“But this is the one. Yes? Home of the library? A still standing Library?”
The Library of Alexandria is several things. On the literal level, it was a research center and a repository of knowledge. On our earth, it is best known for being destroyed, pillaged and burned. As a result of this “the Burning of Alexandria” had become symbol. It is a semiotic representation of a vast wealth of knowledge and culture being lost to time. Ironically, a significant amount of information was lost in the conversion from literal to symbolic.
Firstly, there was likely no singular burning. Rather, the library was destroyed, pillaged, burned and rebuilt many times over.
Second, while the Library deserves credit for an incredible amount of scientific and mathematical research, not all the art and culture kept there was given willingly Alexandria was an Empire after all, guilty of all the sins that implies.
In summation: The Library was a literal, beautiful place, a powerful, if sanitized symbol, and it was also about twelve blocks away.
The walk wasn’t too long, but the travelers did keep a slow enough pace to take in the world around them. Technology seemed roughly contemporary with their own reality. At first glance this may seem out of sync with the common assumption that the Burning had sent our earth's science and engineering back hundreds of years. The key word being seemed. Second glance, that passerby’s scrying tablet a petabyte of storage.
There were a variety of restaurants serving cuisines that seemed distant cousins to those they might be familiar with.
There was no telling precisely how much farther Alexander of Macedon’s conquest had spread, but it was comforting to see it hadn’t fully extinguished the other cultures of the world.
As they neared the Library, skyscrapers gave way to smaller (though still imposing) buildings. Without the other buildings blocking their view, Alex and Colin could now see the other notable landmark of Alexandria: The Lighthouse. It appeared to have grown over the years, now reaching well into the clouds. Judging by its construction, Colin suspected it had long ago been converted into a space elevator. Before he had the opportunity to share this theory with Alex, they collided with a woman in a magenta suit walking a miniature wolf. She tripped and the wolf growled.
Alex reached to help her up. “So sorry.”
“You better be.” The woman said in a tone that relieved any guilt Alex had for surreptitiously removing some local currency from her pocket.
The thing about pickpocketing is that in addition to not getting caught in the act, one must endeavor to not get caught afterward. It takes a skilled pickpocket to know exactly what can be taken without being missed. Alex was a very skilled pickpocket.
Thankfully, that woman was wealthy enough she would never notice she was missing enough money to pay for lunch. A lunch that the two had certainly meant to have, but preoccupation with the wonder before them had delayed.
The pair ascended marbled steps only to find a guard blocking their path. The guard was remarkably well armored. A thick, flexible charcoal armor that still wore its Hellenic roots in its layering. He held a long, thin metal rod like a headless spear.
“No entry.” He said
“Oh well, if you could—” Colin was cut off.
The guard had taken their less than immediate departure as an opportunity to display his weapon’s ability to produce a spearhead of crackling red energy. “No entry.”
“Ooh, very nice,” Alex gently tapped the spear. “Could you tell us why no entry?”
The guard paused for a moment, looking between the strangers. “Preparation for the gala tonight.”
"Oh," Colin eyed the spear. "I don’t suppose you’d believe we were here to help…decorate?"
"I would not believe that, no."
"I see." Colin took Alex by the shoulder and motioned to give the guard some distance. They headed down the stairs and back onto the streets of Third Alexandria "Well, then," he said, "it seems we’re attending a Gala."
"Lunch first?"
"Definitely lunch first."
~~~
An often-underestimated tool for blending in while visiting another reality is that in most cases, the local populace would be willing to believe most anything before accepting that the slightly odd individual is from another universe.
There are, however, several circumstances where this is known to fail:
Circumstance one: the local sentient population does not include the visitor’s species. Note that this circumstance can be avoided with the help of perception filters.
Circumstance two: the crowd in which one finds themselves is extremely judgmental. This circumstance is harder to fix with perception filter as such people’s perception is already warped, a ‘Somebody-else’s-problem field’ can’t function if someone thinks everything is their problem.
The sort of people who attend galas tend to be very judgmental, and very, very mindful of other’s business. For this reason, Colin and Alex had elected to procure local formalwear. This did cut into their lunch budget but, well, these things happen. Besides, the spiced pastries they’d purchased from a street vendor were plenty delicious for five Drachs a piece.
Colin exchanged his coat and impossibly colorful shirt for an incredibly monochrome suit with asymmetrical buttons. Alex would have preferred something similar, but without knowing how lax Third Alexandria was about gender roles, was stuck with a narrow grey and blue dress of modest though flattering cut.
That night, at last stepping into the library, the two travelers found an immense space filled with various displays, cases and catering tables. To the edges, fancy fabrics hid other works. Presumably those deemed unimportant or portable enough to increase floor space for the event.
It was a shame, but surely Alex and Colin could come back another day and see the rest of the library some other time.
Stairs led up to several balconies where more displays were flanked by refreshment tables. Glass cases holding millennia of artifacts stood as islands in the seas of elites. The party crashers pushed through to get a better look. How much of this pottery and jewelry had destroyed doppelgängers back on their Earth? How much was the result of the differences in the two worlds’ histories?
Alex had already found herself so lost in a displayed manuscript that she hardly noticed herself lift a sandwich from a passing plate any more than the plate’s owner.
Colin had found a collection of paintings that seemed to display the stylistic evolution of some distant region over the span of several hundred years.
Art and culture were on full display, even if that display was behind glass. But it did not take long for Alex and Colin to wonder where the fruits of the Library’s famous research institute were.
In a fair world, they would have pursued this line of inquiry, discovered several fascinating secrets and had a relatively safe adventure. Alex and Colin had not visited a fair world.
Alex saw it first: A man across the room. Like she and Colin, he was out of place, overlooked. He had a bag with him. Small, lumpy. The way he held it, the look on his face…
Colin noticed right as it clicked for Alex. Immediately he felt Alex grab his shoulder.
“Door. Now.” She had run the numbers. They couldn’t reach him in time, Not at this distance and with this crowd. Shouting, trying to get someone else to stop him? No, no reason they’d trust her. No time. No time.
There was restroom door about two meters away, Colin didn’t have time to ask questions, nor did he have to. They reached the door just milliseconds before the explosion.
The door opened into fire.
With no time to plot a course, they had simply skipped forward several minutes. The library was no more. The door they had exited only there in spirit.
This unfair world ablaze.
Why?
Why?
Why would that man have done this?
“We have to stop him.”
“I think it’s a little late for that.”
They had been away from home for less than a day. Surrounded by flames, they knew they could stop it, they could go back…