I can do it, I can find a way to kill him, I thought to myself. I am Lester, and I can do anything.
I didn’t want to do any more work in the Trash room, since the command to sort came from that infernal robot, but I would keep sorting anyway (so I wouldn’t look suspicious). I had to find a way to destroy him. Perhaps I could try to find something in the Trash room to kill him with: no, those were all mundane things. Even the revolver I found hadn’t any bullets. Plus he was probably waiting there to give me a new assignment anyway.
Then a keypad was revealed to me. That glorious keypad comprised my freedom. Didn’t see it before, as you may have presumed, but there it was right there on the wall of the lift. And there weren’t any numbers (as you might expect an elevator to have), only letters. The letter “T” was lit up nice and bright. And T is the first letter of Trash. We were coming from “D” which must’ve meant Deck. Without much time to spare, I pushed the lucky letter “L,” because L is the first letter of Lester. I didn’t know where the fuck I was headed, but as long as I wasn’t headed for the Trash room and/or Dex, I could continue plotting my revenge.
The “L” lit up nicely, and as you would imagine, the lift was headed for that floor first, since L lies between D and T in the alphabet. Convenient that the buttons are all in English, I thought to myself again. I’ll say it once more: I didn’t think one could read in a dream, but I was reading, so it must’ve been my subconscious mind filling in the blanks. “Ding!” That was quick. Must not be too far from the surface.
The doors opened up into blackness. There wasn’t any light at all here, so I had to palm around on the walls that I could get a hold of. Then I touched a nub of salient plastic protruding from the wall. It was a switch like you’d find in any old darkened room. The weirdest ship in all creation has a light-switch. So I flipped it.
The hum of generators untouched for centuries shocked into life; it was still dark, though. The elevator doors, specifically the lingering-light ensconced within, faded away ever-so-slowly to leave me in that complete blackness. But it wasn’t that black: there was the dimmest of twinklings floating down to me from above. Way, way above me. Like three or four or five stories way up above me.
This was bigger and longer than the long hall and the Trash room – Hell, the entirety of the ship – combined! This was the true nature of it all, I was sure of it. The heart of the ship, the purpose of the voyage, the meaning of the whole dream even. Semi-brightness continued to trickle in from the floodlights up above. I tried to look around, but I had to feel along another wall in order to do so. This wall had a slight bumpy texture, and it had holes in it: horizonally gaping maws etched like the faces of invisible Jack o’ Lanterns, and I, like a dental hygienist, probed around in their mouths.
Then, losing my balance, I ripped out some of their teeth by accident. They came crashing to the floor with me, and it was still too dark make out any figures or shapes. The teeth made a curious sound when they fell; they didn’t sound like chunks of calcium crashing, or anything that crashes really. They sounded like wood. Pulpy, resonant wood, but even more refined than driftwood or the planks I had been familiar with. This was paper. And these were books.
Now this was a dream I could revel in! Books! Clearly, I would be able to read them when the lights came up a little more, since I was able to read the name of the ship as well as all the letters in the elevator. The L must have stood for Library, unless it truly did stand for Lester; in each case it was a place fit for my visitation.
As the lights came up more, I realized this was the biggest library I had ever come upon, naturally. I say naturally, because at this point I was beginning to think of the infinite, the ubiquitous, and the all-encompassing as very commonplace ideas. This was the Trash room for books, and I could freely look up any author I longed for. But I was already set to a task: I would find the card catalogue, and find a book on robot-killing. For though the light had grown to what I believed to be full power, the world was still dark to my eye.
I walked left and right, up and down the aisles, and there was no catalogue. A computer perhaps? The thought angered me; I was not quite ready to trust any animated thing made of metal. Hearing a footfall, I stopped in my tracks. Had my captor followed me here? After all he’s a robot, and I did flip a switch. Why shouldn’t he be familiar with all the goings-on of his fair ship?
I wished for some weapon: a baseball bat, or a chainsaw – even the unloaded six-shooter I sorted earlier – as Dion had wished for a suit of armor. No dice. I did a few stretches with my wrists and arms, and prepared myself to slug the bastard from the other side of a bookshelf. From out of what I believed to be nowhere, I struck the little guy across the face. Slam! I was prostrate on the ground again, my hand and wrist aching from contact. God-damned robot, I thought to myself once again, with a noggin made of lead!
Looking up and expecting to see my captor, I gazed into the eyes of another kid. Another fucking kid, and you know what that means – Great! There’s two of ‘em – another fucking robot.
“Hello, traveler!” a smiley voice chirped. “Welcome to the Library of the Moonmoth!"
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