Challenge #04559-L175: Highly Dangerous Knowledge

Somewhere amongst the countless rows of musty tomes and ancient manuscripts lies a cruel secret, waiting to be unearthed. -- Anon Guest

Librarians do more than guard knowledge. They also teach, but that's on the surface. They also preserve. The best libraries keep knowledge alive. Even the kinds of knowledge that should also be in a museum.

Clay and stone tablets can endure, but if you really want knowledge to last, scribe it on parchment with iron gall ink, and have it copied once every other century by dedicated devotees. It's why libraries are temples to the god or gods of knowledge and wisdom.

Librarians know that knowledge is valuable. Even the knowledge that isn't popular.

Authorities can ban every book they dislike, but the Librarians will keep them in a safe location for those who need them most. Usually the exact people those books would concern. They keep every inconvenient work of fiction... and fact.

Deep in the depths of this particular library, secure in a fireproof safe, inside a locked room. At the end of a labyrinth of archival shelves and boxes. In a fortified cellar that could be hermetically sealed. There lies a simple folder. The devotees have done their best to conceal its existence from the outside world.

Within that folder is knowledge too dangerous to learn. Scribed onto parchment in iron gall ink. Carefully kept in ideal conditions. There are plans in place to move it when the library moves. There are oaths to take when it becomes necessary to copy it to a new version.

The secret order of Librarians does not know who will need it, or who could be responsible enough with the information, but they keep it all the same. Just in case.

On the last page, beyond a strict set of rules to use it, are a different set of precise instructions.

Because this is a simulation, and someone found them out.

The cheat codes for the Universe.

[Photo by Paul Wrentmore on Unsplash]

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