DISCLAIMER: All things Buffy are the creation and property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy Productions, and so forth. All things non-Buffy are the creation and property of many other individuals and corporate entities.

This particular story is the creation of Robert A. Black (that's me). Feel free to drop me a line and let me know what you think of my work. Good or bad, I'd like to hear it.

TIME CONTEXT: This story takes place between the Buffy episodes, "Nightmares" and "Invisible Girl."

Confused? Refer to the Readers' Guide at the end of the chapter for hints and explanations.

Kes's patience was beginning to wear thin.

She had left Agent Scully with the Doctor - the short one with the hat - and was now trying to get Professor Arturo and Quinn Mallory to resume the search for clues through the now-cavernous interior of the library. The two of them seemed more interested in arguing than anything else.

"Okay," said Quinn, "if you're really the Professor, then tell me who the Forty-Niners beat in Super Bowl Nineteen."

"Mister Mallory," replied Arturo, "you know perfectly well that I don't follow what you Americans call 'football.' I wouldn't know a Forty-Niner from a common street hoodlum, if there's any difference at all. You know, I'm beginning to wonder why I ever followed you into the vortex."

Kes felt her latent mental abilities simmering in the back of her mind. The Hellmouth that lay beneath Sunnydale was intensifying her powers. She had already used them once on the vampire Morden, and the experience had been such a thrill that it now frightened her. If Arturo and Quinn didn't settle their differences soon, she could very well become too tempted to end their bickering with those very same abilities.

The sound of footsteps in a nearby aisle caught Kes's attention. Grateful to have something else to listen to, she stopped and tried to find the source of the noise.

Kes didn't have to look for long. Within a few seconds, a tall thin man stepped around the corner. He was carrying something on his shoulder and pointing it in all directions. Kes recognized it from her historical research as some type of recording device. A "video camera," if she remembered correctly - which she usually did. The man wore a small headset and was busy speaking into its microphone.

"This is Edison Carter reporting live and direct," said the man. "I don't know if you can still hear me, but I'm now well inside the secret book depository. I believe this footage should provide more than enough proof that the TV networks have conspired to hide all reading materials from the public in order to make them watch more television."

Another man hurried around the corner, close behind Edison. He was older, and looked much more weathered. His clothing was ragged and torn, and his head was completely shaved except for a single strip of long hair that ran down the middle. Kes thought it was odd that a human would want to copy Talaxian hairstyles.

The older man looked around and saw Kes watching them. "Edison, look!" he shouted in a strange accent that Kes didn't recognize. "'Ere's one of 'em now!"

Edison hurried over and joined his companion. Pointing the video camera in Kes's face, he said, "Miss, my name is Edison Carter, and I'm with Network 23. Are you some kind of librarian or custodian?"

"No," Kes replied, "I'm an Ocampa."

"Miss," said the older man, "My name's Reg, and I'm with Big Time TV. Can I ask where you got those ears done?"

Kes looked at the man in confusion. "They were like this when I was born," she said.

"Oh," said Reg. "Pity. I'm looking for a way to enhance my image, and those beauties would be perfect."

"Look," said Kes, trying to change the subject, "I don't think you fully understand where you are, or what's going on..."

Edison finally pulled the video camera away from his face. "We were investigating a story," he said. "Reg said he'd heard about a secret plot by the TV networks. We followed his lead and came straight here."

"This may look like the place you were going to," said Kes, "but it's not. I don't even think you're in the same universe any more."

"Not the same universe?" Reg exclaimed. "Bloody networks! They'll do anything to boost their ratings, won't they?"

Edison was raising his video camera again. "This could be even more interesting than our original angle," he said. "Could you tell me more about this 'different universe' idea of yours?"

Kes looked straight into the camera, but said nothing for a moment. If more people were appearing inside the library, it could be a sign that whatever had brought them all to Sunnydale was getting worse. She had to find the others, especially the various Doctors. There was no time for distractions.

Quinn and Arturo came to Kes's rescue, still bickering as they rounded the corner behind her. She turned and pointed them out to Edison and Reg. "These gentlemen would be happy to explain it all to you," she said. "They know much more about the theory than I do."

Edison quickly thanked her as he and Reg rushed over to interview Quinn and Arturo. Relieved of her burdens, Kes hurried off, eager to find someone she could warn about their worsening situation.

***

Rupert Giles wearily looked down the next aisle of books. Even he was beginning to tire of them all. The number of shelves appeared to be infinite, and still growing.

Lennier and the holographic Doctor had gone a few aisles ahead, still helping him look for his missing books on the properties of the Hellmouth. Giles held out hope that the volumes might contain some clues to what was going on. He admitted to himself that it was a slim hope, but it was all he had to work with.

Giles was so focused on his task that he didn't notice several stacks of books that were in the middle of the aisle. He tripped over them and fell headlong to the floor.

"I'm terribly sorry. Are you all right?"

Giles looked up and found himself staring into the face of a little man who was sitting in the middle of the aisle. He had pulled a number of books off the shelves and stacked them up around him, making the aisle almost completely impassable. Giles tried to feel angry, but there was something about the man that made him feel pity instead.

"I'm fine," said Giles. "How did you get here? I don't recall seeing you enter the library."

"Oh, I... I'm not sure how I got here," said the little man, pushing a pair of thick glasses back from the tip of his nose. "I was on my way down to the bank vault... I'm a bank teller, you see. It was my lunch hour, and I wanted to find a quiet place to read. The next thing I knew, I was here."

"And you didn't think that was odd, Mister...?"

"Bemis," said the little man. "Henry Bemis. Well, I suppose it was kind of odd... but there were so many books, I couldn't think of anything else."

"Yes," said Giles. "Speaking of books, I happen to have lost a few..."

"I just grabbed the first ones I could find and started reading," said Bemis, not hearing a word Giles said. "These stacks alone are enough to last for several days, don't you think?"

"Well, yes, at least that," said Giles. "But these books that I'm missing, they're all on the subject of... of..." His voice trailed off when he looked up and saw Bemis totally engrossed in another large volume. It was obvious that it would take something on the order of a nuclear explosion to get the little man's attention.

Giles did his own quick check of the various stacks of books in the aisle. Satisfied that his missing volumes were not among them, he got up and left Bemis to his reading. If this strange night was going to bring someone unexpected joys, Giles certainly wasn't about to interfere.

***

Dana Scully's world was turning upside down.

First, the dead had come back and tried to kill her. Then a teenage girl survived a supposedly lethal exposure to a mysterious chemical toxin, and a young woman who looked like an elf led her to a library that was bigger on the inside than it was on the outside. Now, a creature even she would have trouble not classifying as alien was leading her through a seemingly endless series of bookshelves. And the night was still young.

"Not quite sure how to take all this, are you?"

Scully looked over at the little man with the question-mark umbrella. Kes had called him the Doctor - "the seventh one," whatever that meant. He seemed completely at ease with everything that was going on.

"Actually," Scully replied, trying at least to put up an appearance of skepticism, "I'm trying to count the number of genetic mutations it would take to make someone like our guide."

"Quite a lot, I'd imagine," said the Doctor. "I'm not sure exactly where Zathras comes from. I haven't run across his planet in my universe."

For a moment, Scully didn't know how to react to such a ridiculous statement. The Doctor leaped upon her silence instantly. "That bothers you, doesn't it?" he asked. "People talking about beings from other worlds?"

"You'd think I'd be used to it by now," Scully finally said. "My partner's been trying to prove the existence of extraterrestrials for years. It's his obsession."

"One you don't share," the Doctor finished for her.

"No, I don't," Scully admitted.

"And yet you continue to work with him," the Doctor continued. "You must have a certain interest in the subject. An interest in proving him wrong, perhaps?"

"My interest is in finding the truth," Scully said hotly. Why did this little man seem so interested in provoking her? "Just because I expect to find a different truth than my partner, that doesn't mean I'm less interested in it."

"Even if that truth upsets your view of the universe?" said the Doctor. "Quite frankly, Agent Scully, I'm not sure you'd let yourself recognize an extraterrestrial, even if you were having a conversation with one." Much to Scully's surprise, she noted a twinkle in the Doctor's eye that she couldn't explain.

Before she could reply, Scully heard the sounds of other people approaching. She turned and saw two men walking together through the stacks. One was a middle-aged man who was dressed as a cook from some kind of old-fashioned diner. The other was a well-dressed older man. Scully blinked hard, several times, as the men drew closer and she got a better look at them. By all appearances, the cook had three eyes, and the older man had three arms.

"Good day, gentlemen," said the Doctor, raising his hat to the men as they passed.

"If you say so," said the older man. "I most certainly do not."

"You'll have to forgive Mister Ross," said the man with three eyes. "It's not every day that his planet's colonization fleet is overwhelmed by superior forces."

"And you'll have to forgive Mister Haley's gloating," said Ross. "Especially since now that we're stuck in this library, we won't be able to find out whose fleet actually won."

"As if a Martian fleet would ever have a chance against a Venusian one," Haley shot back.

"I should have sent you into the river with the humans," said Ross, dismissing Haley with a wave of all three arms.

"You never would have had the chance," Haley retorted. "I had my eyes on you all along."

"Gentlemen, please!" shouted the Doctor. "I can see you're engaged in a highly stimulating discussion, but I'd like to bother you for just a moment. Exactly how long ago did you get 'stuck' in this library?"

"It's hard to tell," said Haley with a shrug. "Half an hour, maybe." Indicating Ross, he added, "Seems like longer with this guy around."

"I see," said the Doctor, frowning to himself. "Well, thank you, but we must be going now." He took Scully by the arm and hurried away.

"Surely you're not going to tell me that was an encounter with extraterrestrials," said Scully, once they were at a safe distance. "I've seen better makeup effects in low-budget horror movies."

"They certainly weren't from any place I've visited," said the Doctor. "For one thing, in my universe, the Martians are green."

Scully glared at the Doctor, but said nothing.

"Anyway, it's not important right now," said the Doctor after a moment. "What is important is the fact that people are still being brought here. Whoever is behind all this has been busy. It's almost as if they're using Time Scoop technology, but at a far more advanced level than anything my people have..."

The Doctor's discourse was suddenly interrupted by the sound of laughter coming from around the next bookshelf. They turned the corner and caught up to Zathras, who was watching something Scully couldn't yet see. He seemed to find it highly amusing, whatever it was.

"Zathras, what's going on?" said the Doctor as they arrived.

"Zathras hoped you would come," said Zathras. "Look!" he added, pointing.

Scully looked and saw two more impossible creatures standing in a reading alcove. One had a humanoid shape, but his skin was a strange color and his head was covered by an odd assortment of bumps and ridges. The other wore some kind of strange apparatus that covered its entire body. She could see nothing of whatever was behind the flashing chest panel, beneath the large collar or inside the elongated helmet. She couldn't even see any features in the light that shone from the single opening in the helmet's front face.

"Darmok, his ears filled with the rushing of waters," said the humanoid.

"A tree planted in the hour of scampering bears fruit only for the scavenger," the other being spoke in an unearthly voice that was accompanied by eerie musical tones.

The humanoid chuckled slightly. "Temba on the plains of sorrow and splendor," he said.

"Yes," said the other being.

The humanoid roared with laughter. Scully looked over at Zathras and saw that he was laughing, too. "What's so funny?" she asked him.

Zathras had to take several deep breaths before he could speak. "Vorlons have best sense of humor in the universe," he replied. "Zathras always laughs for days after hearing their conversations."

"What are Vorlons?" Scully asked, not sure she wanted to hear the answer.

"If that equipment is any indication," said the Doctor, "they're a very old and advanced species. Another sign that whoever is bringing everyone here is very powerful indeed."

He turned and started down the aisle again. "Come along," he said, "we haven't a moment to lose."

Scully hurried to keep up, wondering what sort of improbable situation she would be thrust into next. Behind her, Zathras was still laughing and muttering to himself. "'Trees planted in hour of scampering'! Ha ha!"

One thing was certain, Scully thought. After tonight, she would never look at sewer monsters and genetic mutants in the same way again. From now on, she would welcome cases as simple as those.

***

"Doctor! Mister Giles! Over here!"

Lennier was standing by yet another bookshelf, looking down the aisle. "We have more arrivals," he said as Giles and the holographic Doctor arrived.

Giles looked and saw two more people, a young man and a young woman, looking through the books on the shelves. He did a quick check of the shelves himself and discovered they were in the computer science section. It was hardly the place where Giles would find the books he was looking for. In fact, he only went to that section when it was absolutely necessary. Still, everyone in the library was currently in the same predicament, and as the librarian, Giles felt he should try to be hospitable toward them. Taking the Doctor with him, Giles went down the aisle and approached the pair.

As he drew closer, Giles realized that the newcomers looked familiar to him. The woman was tall and slender, with long blonde hair. She wore jeans and a T-shirt under a flannel shirt and a vest that had "TEL CAL" written on it. The man looked like he hadn't shaved in a while, or cut his dark brown hair, either. His clothes looked equally ragged. Giles couldn't place their faces, but he was sure he knew them from somewhere.

The woman looked up from the book she was reading. "Are you the librarian?" she asked.

"Yes," Giles stammered, momentarily caught off guard. Either the woman was good at guessing, or she really did know him. "Yes I am. Pardon me for asking, but have we met somewhere before?"

The woman looked at him blankly. "I don't think so," she said.

"I know it may sound strange," said Giles, "but I could have sworn that we had."

"He could be right, Syd," said the man. "Maybe he represents some kind of repressed memory, or an amalgamation of various Jungian archetypes."

"Duncan, what's that supposed to mean?" asked Syd.

"Beats me," said Duncan, "but it sounded good."

"Look, I don't represent anything," said Giles. "My name is Rupert Giles, and I could have sworn we knew each other from somewhere."

"Sorry, I'm afraid not," said Syd. She looked past Giles and her eyes opened wider. "But you..." she said, looking at the Doctor. "You I remember."

"Me?" said the Doctor. "I can assure you, Miss, that we've never met before. It's quite impossible."

"No," Syd insisted, "we have. You're an expert in virtual reality, aren't you?"

"Virtual reality?" the Doctor repeated. He considered the term for a moment. "I suppose you could say I have some involvement with that field, but in a highly advanced form."

"Then you do remember!" Syd exclaimed. "I'm Sydney Bloom, Joseph Bloom's daughter. I came to your lab a few months ago. You were the one who sent me to Doctor Morgan."

"You must be mistaken," said the Doctor.

By now Sydney was at the Doctor's side, growing more insistent. "How did we get here?" she demanded. "It's obvious that we're in VR, but who put us here and how did they do it?"

"Miss Bloom," said Giles, cutting in, "apparently we have several cases of mistaken identity here. I apologize for mine. This isn't virtual reality, and it isn't a dream. I can assure you it's all quite real. There are a number of people here tonight who shouldn't be. We're trying to find out how they got here and how we can send them all home. You two are welcome to join us."

Sydney regarded Giles carefully, then turned back to Duncan for his reaction. Duncan merely shrugged, saying, "It beats standing here reading outdated computer books." To Giles, he added, "You really should keep up with the times, you know. Even I can see that."

"So I've been told," said Giles. "It'll have to wait for some other occasion, though." Like right after the Master makes a deposit at the local blood bank, he added silently. "Right now, we must resume our search for some answers."

Giles turned and started back toward Lennier, with the Doctor and the two familiar-yet-unfamiliar visitors in tow. The Minbari was waiting for them patiently, as Giles had already come to expect. The librarian knew he would need Lennier's tranquillity more than once again before the night was through.

***

There was definitely something in the library other than books. Kes had only suspected it at first, but now she was certain. Thanks to her telepathic skills, she was homing in on it as easily as if she had a sensor lock from Voyager to guide her.

She was so focused in her task that the voice she suddenly heard startled her. When she realized who the voice belonged to, though, she wasn't the least bit surprised.

Kes looked down the nearest aisle and saw him standing there, wearing a Starfleet uniform, as usual, and reading a book he had taken from one of the shelves. He didn't notice her approach until she had almost reached him.

"Hello, Q," she said.

"You know, no matter how hard I try," said Q, "I simply cannot understand what Jean-Luc sees in this Shakespeare fellow. Have you ever heard such nonsense?" He finally looked directly at Kes, and recognition crossed his face. "But you don't even know Jean-Luc, do you? You're from Captain Janeway's crew! The little one who only lives nine years, right?"

"My name is Kes. I should have known I would find you here."

"Moi? Why on Earth would you say that?" said Q. After a moment's thought, he added, "We are on Earth, aren't we?"

"I've seen enough of your antics to recognize what's going on as your work," said Kes. "Who else could bring so many different people here, from so many different places - even from different universes?"

"I'd like to know that myself," Q replied, "since whoever it was brought me here as well."

"What?"

"You heard me," said Q. "Not only is this not my doing, but I'm as much of a victim as anyone else. Watch this." He held his hand in the air and snapped his fingers. Nothing happened. "You see? I'm as powerless to leave as you are."

"That's hardly a convincing demonstration," said Kes. Even as she spoke, though, she again felt the presence of something powerful in the library, and the sensation was definitely not coming from Q.

"You feel it, don't you?" said Q. "Some kind of tremendous power, enough to bend time and space as easily as you can tie a knot. Is that convincing enough?"

"What is it?" Kes asked.

"I don't know," said Q. "But I think someone should go and find out."

"You're not coming, too?" said Kes.

"My dear," Q replied, "when battle is joined, it's not the generals who lead the way. Why should I take the risk, when you yourself have pointed out how many other people are around? I'll still be here when you need me."

With that, Q returned to his reading. Kes felt a flash of anger, but the mysterious presence continued to nag at her mind, distracting her. She decided Q wasn't worth the bother and hurried off to find the source of the disturbance.

She did not need to look for long. The rows of bookshelves finally ran out, and Kes stepped onto a wide balcony that looked over a large, open area. Presumably, some kind of courtyard lay at the bottom, beneath an uncountable number of stories filled with more bookshelves. She couldn't see how far down the shaft extended, because floating in the middle of it was a maelstrom of bright, swirling lights.

"It's incredible!"

Kes turned and saw Giles step onto the balcony from a neighboring aisle. Lennier and her Doctor were with him, along with two other people she didn't recognize. The librarian turned and saw Kes as she approached them.

"It seems my library has grown a lot more than we thought," Giles said. "And I don't remember a vortex being there before."

"That vortex is powered by the same force that brought us all here," said Kes. "I'm sure of it."

"There's something else about the vortex," said the Doctor. "It's almost identical to the one that brought Professor Arturo here. More powerful, of course, but the harmonic frequencies are the same."

"Then perhaps it leads to whoever is responsible for our being here," Lennier suggested.

"One thing's for certain," said Giles. "We need to find the rest of our party and bring them here. Finding my books doesn't seem quite so important any more."

End of Chapter 9

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