Justin felt a grip as a vice tighten around his neck-- he gasped. The lights flickered back into life; three men surrounded him: one, the librarian, who seemed much more dark and terrifying in this moment, though his hard stare relented once he recognized Justin’s face; the second was about Justin’s height, with a mop of dark hair and a trimmed goatee; the third and final was currently hidden behind Justin’s neck, and for this reason could not be seen.
   ‘Speak,’ snarled the man harshly into his right ear, ‘who are you? Why are you here-- what did you hear?’
   ‘He’s the man who sits in the back...’ the librarian grunted; he stepped forward, his stare surpassing its previous potency tenfold, such that it seemed his eyes could burn a hole through the back of Justin’s skull, the library, straight out through the walls of the Zone. ‘So answer the other questions,’ he snapped.
   Justin felt more confused than anything at this point. He had never been held in a position like this before. Keep in mind now, that murder and its kin did not exist within the Zone, and so the thought never crossed his mind. Assuming answering to be the only solution, he tried to speak over his hammering bloodorgan.
   ‘I... I fell asleep on my way to go read... my Off had just started and I always read during it...’ The librarian nodded in agreement. ‘I did not hear much, only a few scattered words which broke my dream.’ The man behind released his grip; so soon was justified, as lying was as well unheard of. The librarian motioned towards the back table.
   ‘Were you the one who found The Trees?’ the goatee’d man asked, pulling up a chair. Everyone leaned in, awaiting Justin’s answer.
   ‘Well... yes... but it’s just a children’s story, what does that matter at all?’ Two of the three men burst into laughter. The librarian, of course, remained perfectly stone and cold. Justin looked quizzically at the laughing men, one of whom seemed ready to fall unconscious from a lack of oxygen. After a few moments, they had stopped, and the librarian began to speak, a slight hush-hush tone to his voice.
   ‘So you’ve heard of Outworld?’ His gaze petrified Justin like a snake’s would a mouse.
   ‘I-I... see, why are you making such a big deal of this? It was just a book, and I’m sorry if I’ve offended you somehow but--’
   The librarian silenced Justin by raising his hand.

   ‘A long time ago, going back to when I was a child, there were two brothers who didn’t believe that the Zone was truly the entire...’ the librarian hesitated, as there was no word which meant planet, ‘there was more to life than just what we could see in the Zone. After finding a stash of papers and stuffs of their grandfather’s, they were determined to prove to others that what they believed was true. They climbed the pillar in sector three.’

   The Zone was split into seven sectors-- one through six were each the shape of a truncated cone with a rounded base, connected on both sides to another sector; the sectors were encircled by a large wall, which rose up to the sky (in each sector, the wall was intersected by a pillar); the opposite ends of the sectors met another large circular wall (though this did not reach the sky), which housed the seventh pillar. The Government considered the other side of the interior wall the seventh sector, though most of the citizens didn’t.

   Justin was suddenly intrigued. ‘Did they see the gods? Were they even there?’ The librarian shook his head.
   ‘No, the gods didn’t cast them out of the sky, like we’ve been told they would. The brothers reached three-quarters of the top, and were blinded by a light brighter than all of the Lightshops of the Zone’s outputs put together.
   ‘At first, of course, they thought it was the gods; but after five or so minutes, nothing had happened. Their eyes had adjusted to the light somewhat, but it was still harshly bright. Before them was the most beautiful display of unimaginable...’ he again hesitated ‘...well, as you’ve read in The Trees, they’re called colors. Everything, for distances incomprehensible, was glowing with these colors. Both brothers were terrified and excited; one of them, however, was more terrified. He climbed down the pillar quicker than these books need dusting--’ only the librarian himself chuckled, ‘--when the second climbed down, perhaps ten minutes later, he could not find his brother. Looking everywhere, he returned home to ask his grandfather, who said that he had not seen him since they both left.’
   Justin noticed that the librarian had begun speaking more quickly, and was starting to slur his speech a little.
   ‘In the newspaper the next Morning, it was written that the gods had taken him from the pillar, the pillar, and that the governor,’ (who was also the ‘high priest’) ‘was told by the gods that, that there would be no lights for a week as punishment. And the people bought it, they, they bought it... it wasn’t the gods, it was the government! It was the government: they shut it down, they were the gods, and they took my brother.’

   The room was a little colder after the librarian stopped. He breathed harshly and clenched his fists; he stood up and left the room after a few moments.
   Justin glanced over at the man who had been strangling him. A couple of seconds later, the man caught his gaze and barked: ‘If you tell anyone this, if you even open your mouth with the word Outworld on your tongue, you, and all of us-- we’re all caught. Pollock.’ Justin stared confusedly at him. ‘Pollock,’ he repeated, ‘my name.’ Justin felt a bit relieved; the ice had been broken.
   ‘Carey... uh, Justin Carey.’
   ‘Well, Carey,’ Pollock said, sighing lightly, ‘welcome to the cult.’

   In the following minutes of lighterheartedness, Justin learned the librarian’s name was Globe (an odd name, yeah?), and the goatee’d man was named Parker. In the Zone, it was most common to call people by their surname; in fact, it was reaching the point that given names were being forgotten; and the latest-borns were being given slight alterations of surnames to show generation (for example, Mann’s child would be Firstmann, his second child Twomann, and so on). Globe returned to the table with conversation: they spoke of a great deal of things, though Globe did most of the talking. Justin mostly asked questions-- and he surely had enough. The librarian chuckled at Justin’s first question.
   ‘Why are you called Globe?’
   ‘That day we found my grandfather’s materials, there was a ball supported by a small brass frame, and it rotated on this by holes cut in the bottom and top. Written on its box was the word globe. I see this as a symbol of everything I believe, and so I soon after adopted it as my name.’
   ‘Where did The Trees come from?’
   ‘The book itself? I found it on a bookshelf with my grandfather’s papers. I went back to find more books a few days later, but everything in the room was gone. There wasn’t so much as a sheet of paper on the floor, or a shelf against the wall.’
   ‘What did The Trees have to do with Outworld-- the place you saw?’
   ‘Yes, I didn’t see any of these trees, or really...’ it was obvious that he was aware of the trivialness of what he was saying, ‘...or really anything else, Ok? It is solely the colors that I’m basing all of this, all of my hopes on. Just...’

   Some hours later, after further conversation, Globe left, and returned with a copy of The Trees in his hands. This copy was tattered and decimated, but the words were still legible. It was inferred by the solemnity of the moment that this was the original copy Globe had found in a pile of books on the bottom shelf, beneath “Pato’s Republic.”
   Justin held it for a second, then nodded; Globe transported it back to wherever its hiding place was.

   Justin’s chair whined as he shifted weight onto his left buttcheek. He looked around at the dust which had formed a thick coating over every surface not trapped beneath another; even though it seemed that, soon enough, the dust would eventually make it there.
   ‘How old is this library?’ Justin inquired; he didn’t expect an answer.
   ‘How old are you?’ Globe quipped humorously. Nobody knew the age of anything in the Zone. There was no measure of time which was kept up with (but by the Government, of course); the best was to gauge with old and young.
   ‘My grandfather built it, so he claimed--’ Justin was shocked: only the Government built anything, ‘--and I believe him. I think there was a time when all of the Light from Outworld was once in here, and people could do activities without SLPs.’
   SLPs are Special Lighting Permits, which are commonly given out whenever a group-- not individuals, only groups-- need extra light to complete an task. Of course, this meant more work at the Lightshops, plus any other necessary accomplices to the activity.
   Justin couldn’t imagine the Zone being filled with this fabled luminescence.
   Something was tugging at the back of his mind.
   ‘He died shortly after his papers disappeared, grandfather did. Some folks from the Government came to our trailer, telling us that the gods had destroyed the papers and killed my grandfather and brother due to the sinister nature of the writings and their actions. I knew then, for certain, that this whole... that the entire religion is just lies.’ Justin was very surprised to hear this; much more, in fact, than he was surprised by the statement’s meaning. Never had he put any thought into the matter, but Justin knew that he didn’t truly believe in the gods-- or, gods and goddesses, as the Governor had somewhat recently been enlightened to the presence of both male and female deities. Yes, much more surprised by not what had been said, but the fact that it had been said at all.
   ‘But how,’ Justin said, puzzled, ‘how come they didn’t-- well, um-- the, uh-- why are you still here?’
   ‘After climbing down the pillar, while asking if anyone had seen my brother, I noticed that the story folks were telling only told of him climbing the pillar-- in advertising it, he had never mentioned that I would be climbing with him. I don’t know why, but whatever the reason, it saved my life.’ Justin nodded and squeezed out a faint smile, ignoring his gut instinct that Globe wouldn’t care less if he did or didn’t.
   Aha! whispered Justin extraordinarily silently. His mind’s eye raced back to the cat knocking down Livy’s photo-- so perfectly well lit; and what was that object in the background? Did this have any relation to the librarian’s grandfather, this Light business? Amazingly, Globe smiled back.

   Boom.