In a location that doesn't exist...

  A page was torn from the book, and an entire universe was probably in danger.

  The Narrator peered at the missing page with something approaching confusion. How could this have happened?

  He made a pivot on the ladder he was currently standing on, and suddenly he was somewhere else. Space seemed to warp, and distance stopped making sense; a half-second ago, he was on a ladder. The next second, he was taking a seat on a reading chair in some corner of the library.

  He placed the book, a small tome that was still quite new in comparison to most of the other books in the library, on a reading stand in front of him. The reading stand hadn't been there before, but now it was, as the Narrator willed it.

  He stretched out a hand, and his trusty reading glasses appeared between two long fingers. He placed them on his nose and waved his hand with the countenance of one to whom time had no meaning. On command, the book opened back to the first page, and the Narrator began to read.

  The Narrator wasn't the Reader, not exactly. And yet, in a way, he was. Still, while they were the same, they were at once different, and as a result, they had differing domains regarding the upkeep of the Boundless Archive.

  The glasses were an artifact made to channel the domain of the Reader. They were similar, both of them; in a way, they were closer to each other than either of them was to the Writer. As a result, there were little bleed-overs between them, little things that still connected them inexplicably.

  With the glasses aiding him, the Narrator could 'read'.

  It didn't take long at all to find the problem.

  The Narrator sighed.

  'Sometimes', he thought, 'she makes a mess of things and leaves me to clean up the mess. What should I do about this?'

  This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

  If he didn't remedy this situation soon, the Writer would probably write off the existence of this tome, and the worlds that it contained would cease to exist, fading into the ether.

  All because the Reader didn't like the way the Writer had written it.

  She always forgot, sometimes, that while her role was important, the Writers' works were almost always immutable once they were put to page. She had never seemed to agree with that, no matter how many times the Narrator reminded her of her powerlessness regarding the creation of things. Her job was to observe; nothing more, nothing less.

  The Narrator closed the book and sighed. Now, where could she have gallivanted on to?

  He stood abruptly, and he faded from view.

  The Boundless Archive was just as its name implied. A library of twisting and turning bookshelves that stretched on to oblivion, to distances so great that even the minds of gods would struggle to comprehend it. The shelves themselves were not simple structures of wood that towered to a ceiling that could not be found, on.

  Some were made of diamond, some of platinum, some steel, some stone, and a thousand and one other materials, some of them unknown to even the greatest of scholars; only the Narrator could tell you what they were made of.

  The Narrator, in his search for the Reader, had ceased to maintain his corporeal form and had instead transformed into something ephemeral, something without form and function. In this form, he was at his strongest and paradoxically at his weakest. He was omniscient and omnipresent with a mind that was transcended beyond divinity and mortality, beyond the primeval and the mundane. And despite all of this...

  The Narrator could not find the Reader.

  He reconstructed himself in front of the bookshelf where the book had been kept. He summoned the book back to his hands, and he opened it once again. He read it a bit slower this time, trying to find something.

  He found it. The Reader's tampering, this time a bit more subtle than was usual for her. He sighed.

  Raising his hand, he summoned a minuscule fraction of his power, and it manifested as a small glowing orb of white light. With a gesture, the orb sank into the book, vanishing between its pages.

  The Narrator closed the book, returned it to its shelf, and walked away. The Boundless Archive would not take care of itself.