Chapter 3: Library
When the Library's gates opened, the people who came didn't crave knowledge. They craved the books themselves.
A single volume could be sold for enough to survive another week. Every person who entered calculated profit, not learning. They tried every method to steal, slipping books beneath their clothes, hiding them in bags, moving with practiced efficiency. To them, a publicly accessible Library was just another opportunity.
The abstruse content meant nothing to them. Even those literate enough to understand it said nothing, afraid of what reading might cost them.
Nostramo's darkness had consumed the soul of every resident. Her terror rivaled any xenos enslavement, almost any nightmare from the Dark Age of Technology. True law had vanished centuries ago, swallowed by the greed of the few and the despair of the many. Here, murder was currency. Power came from brutal atrocities. To make others bow, you needed violence, not law.
Even the books within Wayne's Library proposed law, proposed order, yet people couldn't conceive of it. They couldn't imagine things they'd never witnessed. Like medieval peasants believing the Emperor farmed with a golden hoe, they could only extrapolate from their own experience. They concluded that the law must be either a fantasy or a new method for Wayne to oppress them.
In the endless night, all manner of sins found sanctuary. Murder and sexual abuse flourished. Violence bred ceaselessly. According to the chroniclers, cries and pleas drifted on the wind constantly.
Every child born on Nostramo learned one lesson: the only law was strength, and only the powerful possessed rights.
Genuine law was a fantasy.
Where Wayne ruled, there were no criminals; he controlled the people through strength and iron will. He'd even established schools. Yet even Wayne couldn't change everything. He was fighting something beyond the reach of any single person. When an entire civilization had forgotten morality and law, how could those concepts be reintroduced?
Wayne could only provide a safe environment for those within his territory. It was the best he could do, having clawed his way up from nothing.
Konrad had believed the Library would inspire study. He'd believed people would come to learn.
Instead, they came to steal. They came to prey on each other. Book pages were torn and scattered across the floor. Volumes were trampled underfoot. In hidden corners, people engaged in acts that belonged to the sewers, not a place of learning.
The smell of it all contaminated the books.
Konrad couldn't comprehend what had happened here.
Wayne said nothing. He simply had everything sealed after the first day, then arranged for it to be cleaned.
"I did not expect this," Konrad said quietly.
Wayne looked at his young son and smiled kindly. "Is it their fault?"
"Isn't it?" The young Primarch picked up his own book carefully. The cover read "Morality." But nothing that had occurred here had anything to do with morality.
Wayne placed a hand on his son's shoulder, studying the innocent Primarch before him. He smiled gently.
"No, it's not their fault. It's like city dwellers can't understand the labor of workers, or commoners can't imagine a noble's cruelty. They simply don't know what to do. This world hasn't taught them morality. This isn't the residents' problem, it's the world's problem."
"Is that so?"
"You have to think about it from their perspective. If they've never learned what morality is, how can they follow it? To them, the Library is just another way to survive one more day. And how can they learn about anything else when they're struggling just to eat?"
Konrad lowered his head, thinking. "Then what can bring morality back?"
Wayne smiled, but there was sadness in it. He laughed, a brief, hollow sound. "Bring it back? You have to demonstrate it, Konrad. But demonstrating it comes with a price."
"A price?"
"My parents paid that price. Thomas and Martha Wayne." Wayne turned away slightly, his gaze distant as memory claimed him. When he spoke again, his voice carried the weight of old pain.
"In the past, Thomas was a noble doctor on Nostramo. A skilled physician who treated the nobility and healed commoners without charge. He was kind in a world that had forgotten kindness. But one day, he made a mistake. He saved someone he shouldn't have, a noble whose rivals decided his survival was an insult to them. They blamed Thomas for preserving their enemy."
Wayne's palm tightened slightly. "Thomas was killed. My mother, Martha, died that same day. I had no choice but to flee into the sewers. To survive, to avenge them, I had to become ruthless. More ruthless than any gangster. I had to become the Wayne they feared. I inherited the name, rose to nobility, and I killed. I killed until my revenge was spent."
He turned back to face Konrad, and his expression was neither proud nor ashamed, simply resigned.
"And when it was over, I realized I had become what I hated. I became part of Nostramo. I have never regretted it, but I also never denied what I am. I am the best noble this world has known to its common people, yet I remain a bastard who exploits them. I must exploit them, or I would have no power to fight the other nobles who would destroy everything I've built."
Wayne finished his account, a story of kindness punished, of a boy forced to become ruthless, of a man who'd clawed his way to power only to recognize his own compromise.
Konrad was silent for a long moment after, his small frame seeming to carry the weight of Wayne's words. He understood the death of a good person. He understood the tragedy of a boy with no choice but to become cruel. He understood, with the clarity only a Primarch could possess at such a young life, the impossible choice his father had faced.
"What about me?" Konrad asked finally.
"You? That depends on you." Wayne lifted his son, meeting his dark eyes with absolute certainty. "I can feel your strength, Konrad. I believe you can do what I couldn't. You are my son, and I believe in you."
The man pointed into the distance. "I'm going to set up a comic section there. Comics that tell stories of heroes, of morality and justice...stories that inspire."
"Why?" Konrad asked.
"Because no one accepts spoken morality. But if comic stories are exciting enough, they draw people in. There's little entertainment in this world, and free comics will attract them." Wayne set Konrad down gently.
"Comics can make people fantasize about being a hero, about a hero saving them. They can't make someone into a hero. But when people begin imagining what a hero would do, when they start believing heroes could exist, then you can become real. You can become the hero they've imagined into being."
Wayne smiled at his own strategy, at how he'd learned to work with human nature rather than against it. "First, we plant the idea. Then, when you truly appear, you'll touch their hearts in ways laws never could."
Konrad looked at his father in confusion. "But what do you gain from this? It doesn't benefit you."
"It benefits you. That's enough for me." Wayne bent down and retrieved a comic from the floor, placing it carefully back on the shelf. "Because you're my son, Konrad, I'm willing to support your dream."
He straightened, holding another comic in his hand, the story of a hero who believed justice mattered more than power alone.
"My one favorite is Hal Jordan. He's humorous and witty, but justice and strength are the pillars of everything he fights for. What we need to achieve our dreams is willpower, the courage to remain foolishly single-minded and unwavering."
"Is that all? How could only this be enough?" Konrad asked.
"It is not, never is. What you also need is knowledge and wisdom. Every book here is your teacher, Konrad. Respect them," Wayne gestured to the shelves surrounding them. "They will teach you what I had to learn the hard way through blood and survival. Let them guide you toward the path I couldn't find."
[End of Chapter]
Respect the book indeed :_: