I climb behind the wheel of my new passenger speeder, provided to me by the moon of Arcadia. Being the White Queen of my home world has its advantages. Donte sits beside me and takes up most of the space in the front seat.

I smile at him and he glances back, giving me a warm smile of his own. With that, I lift off from the landing strip and propel upward through the atmosphere of Arcadia and into space.

"Where exactly is this library of yours?" Donte asks me.

"It's at the edge of the Beta 2 system," I say. "It's going to take quite a while to arrive."

"Are you sure you’re up for this right now? Travel to Beta 2 requires a warp jump, and the system is sparsely populated."

"Yes,” I say, accelerating my ship as we move into the solar highways of the Draxos system.

Warp speed travel is prohibited within the system, so we can’t jump until we reach the edge. A huge cargo ship passes in the other direction. My new speeder is designed for interplanetary transportation and moves through the solar highways at a good clip.

After traveling most of a day to the edge of the solar system, we finally make it to the outer rim. There we can warp jump into the Beta 2 system. I prepare the warp drive, and look up at Donte before I activate it.

“Ready?” I ask him.

“I could ask you the same thing?”

“Five, four, three, two, one,” I say before activating the drive.

We jump into warp, the sensation still like being stung by a thousand honey wasps in the most sensitive parts of your body. The space outside the ship folds in on itself and we hurtle through the center crease.

My ship pops out on the other side and I can finally breathe after feeling as if my chest had been compressed flat.

“Are you okay?” Donte asks.

“Yes. You?”

“Yes.”

I flick my finger over my dashboard, bringing up a three-dimensional map of Beta 2. The library is on the large planet of Agartha located behind an asteroid belt at the center of the solar system.

We travel through the system at a good speed and make it to the asteroid belt some time later. The belt is thick and is moving at a mind-boggling orbit speed. I don’t see any way through.

“Let me help you,” Donte says. “I have a kind of sixth sense with stone. I can maneuver us through.”

I give the controls of the ship to Donte, and he begins to drive through the spinning asteroid belt. I grip my handles and grit my teeth. The rocks are coming close to my ship. Finally, we make it out onto the other side of the belt, safe and sound.

He maneuvers the speeder toward the planet of Agartha, and I start my scan to locate the library. I find the location and we traverse the planet to land on an ancient, cracked airstrip outside the front entrance of an ancient building.

We exit the speeder after donning protective masks for oxygen. Walking across the crumbling airstrip, we reach the front entrance of a small building in the barren gray landscape. Donte finds a scanner that opens the first portal and allows us into decompression chamber. He activates the decompression and the room fills with oxygen. We are then able to take off our facemasks.

Beyond the next door, an ancient librarian, who must be at least 200, sits behind a computer terminal wearing a brown rustic robe. "How may I help you?" he asks, eyeing us both suspiciously.

"I am Joon D’fray, a geneticist from the Arcadia Academy. I've been tasked by my brother Admiral Sysko D’fray to find information about a race called humans on a planet called Earth. I have followed clues to this library to find a book called Tales of the Ancients."

"I can't allow you inside. This library is closed to all visitors."

"But we've traveled all day."

"You should've called ahead," the librarian says, his aged hand reaching out to grasp a cup of black tea. He takes a sip and seems to forget we are there.

"There must be something that we can do," Donte says. "This mission is of great importance. It could be the answer we need to finally save our people from the plague."

"Save our people from the plague?" the librarian croaks, raising his bushy eyebrow.

"There is a hope," Donte says.

"I still can't let you in without an official recognition from the senate."

"I am a chief minister in the Senate," Donte says, folding his arms over his massive chest.

"So you say," the librarian says.

"Would you like to see my identification?"

"I still need an official recognition from the Senate and that would require a vote of at least three.”

Donte puts his hand on my shoulder and looks into my eyes. "Let me take care of this," he says as he flicks his finger over the communication device on his wrist.

"Do you have network access here?" Donte asks the librarian as he tries to send messages back to the Draxos Prime system.

"No," the librarian grunts. "Not for unauthorized visitors."

"I'm trying to get in touch with the Senate so they can vote on an official recognition to allow us into the library. We're going to sit around here all day until we get the network access we need. It's up to you."

"The Bones of the Gods know that I don't want visitors sitting around here all day long. If you can get an official recognition, I will allow you into the library.”

The librarian flicks his finger over his terminal dashboard and Donte’s communication device blinks, indicating it now has network access.

It only takes Donte a few minutes to get a vote from his fellow senators and an official recognition is sent directly to the librarian’s communication portal.

"I have the official recognition. I can now allow you access to the library,” he says.

"Thank you for this, Donte," I say with a sigh.

I feel like an idiot for running off without even checking on access rights for this library. We walked through a sliding door into an elevator and take the it far below ground. When it stops, the door slides open to reveal the library proper. My jaw drops at the vast space beyond.

It seems to go on forever, reaching out in three directions beyond the horizon. I turn and activate a communications device inside the elevator.

"Do you have a card catalog or an organizational system that we can access?" I ask, pressing the old-fashioned com button.

"No. I do not upload information onto the network. I do not interconnect our digital databases. And I do not allow my physical texts to leave this location. I also don’t allow fools to know the extent of our data banks." The com goes silent.

"What a jerk," I say.