Reddit Writing Prompt #8

The year 2245. A desert full of raiders and bandits are fighting ferociously over the last VR disc left, as if it's holy scripture.

I pulled the trigger. It wasn't like I had expected. A muffled thump and a wet crack, followed by a cascade of blood that trickled from the now-fallen man's helmet. I thought his head was going to explode before I pulled the trigger, I had never fired a gun quite that large. I found it lying next to one of the gutted and mangled corpses that I stumbled upon while tracking the footprints of the last known owner of the VR Holo-Disc I was looking for.

I had never killed anyone before, even though I was surrounded by murder and death all of the time. I was a librarian, or at least, the closest thing we still had to librarian at that point. Most of the real librarians had been murdered or committed suicide once the grid collapsed.

That was before my time. I was born shortly after everything went wrong. I grew up in an increasingly desperate world. I witnessed the abandonment of technology, society, and common decency. In the midst of this, I found solace in books. There weren't many left by that point, most of the libraries had been raided and the books burned for warmth. All electronic books were lost when the grid went down, so those were out of the question. The books I found were mostly popular fiction, old Dan Brown thrillers and stuff like that. I cherished any books I could get my hands on, but I fantasized of visiting a library that was not pillaged and defiled. I often thought of being able to wander the rows of books like a child through an orchard. An orchard of knowledge ripe for the plucking.

That thought had consumed me, I was obsessed with finding a library that was somehow untouched by the devastation. I traveled the ruins of our society, never finding what I was looking for. I was about to give up on my quest, resign myself to a fate of literary stagnation, I came across a new-found purpose. A page, torn from an old magazine, advertising a new line of VR Holo-Disc Libraries!

With renewed determination, I set off to find one of these Holo-Discs. Through careful bribery and communication, I was able to navigate the war-torn regions of the wasteland and track down my target. I had no intentions of killing him, but I knew that I would never let anyone get in the way of my literary destiny. Once I saw the trail of bodies accompanying his footprints, I knew that violence would be necessary to get what I wanted.

Luck was on my side. I found my target, sitting cross-legged in a clearing. He was wearing an antique VR-helmet, one of the early ones that didn't require a grid connection to function. I had found a dozen of these during my journey, but they were useless since I couldn't find a single functioning VR Holo-Disc. This guy, however, was currently using his. I could tell by the blue glow that pulsed from the inner space of the helmet. I knew this was my chance. I ran up to the seated figure, jammed the gun into the glowing orifice, and pulled the trigger.

I was now the proud owner of a VR Holo-Disc Library! My hands trembled as I slotted the disc into my own helmet and placed it upon my head. As the VR image resolved itself, I gasped as I was suddenly in a library unlike any I'd seen before. Unbounded and limitless, the rows of books stretched infinitely in every direction. Signs, adorned with beautiful artwork identified each section by author, genre, year, etc. As I was taking all of this in, the library itself seemed to shudder and undulate wildly. Before I knew it, the view had winked out of existence only to be replaced by a box of letters reading "//FILE.LIB.EXT Has Crashed. Please contact manufacturer.". I let out a pained, gasping scream as I ripped the helmet off of my head and cast it aside. Unable to remain standing, I collapsed to the ground. The last thing I saw before lapsing into unconsciousness was the dead, mutilated face of the man I had just murdered.