Edenian Athenæum
The Edenian Athenæum is the largest library in Eden and a repository for knowledge from across the six-hundred and sixty-nine iterations of reality in the Clarkwoods Literary Universe.
The building is also colloquially known as The OK Library, a nickname it earned after receiving a sizable donation from a version of the Coca-Cola company that arrived in Eden after the destruction of a universe where the corporation’s OK Soda was not the colossal failure it was in The Real World.
But whether you call it by its fancy-pants official name or its street sobriquet, the building is most famous in Eden for serving as the location of The Great Awakening of Abraham the Honest during The Third Age—and therefore is infamous for its role in ending the Nunyan Civil War.
Purpose / Function
The Athenæum acts as the physical counterpart to Eden’s EEP media network. Every book which has survived every Calamity since the dawn of creation has been brought here for safekeeping and/or duplication—not to mention every scroll, every document disseminated in any other physical form, and every book written and published within the five lands of Eden itself.
The founders, patrons, and administrators of the Athenæum operate the building with one singular purpose: to be the capital of knowledge and learning in the post-apocalyptic paradise they now call home.
Architecture
The building is constructed in a mix of the Earthling Neoclassical and the Buldarian Imperial styles, which were brought to Eden by human beings and dwarves respectively.
Geometric purity and perfection were prioritized at all times during construction, and have been prioritized in every expansion and alteration since. So, though the effect of blending styles which Earthlings might variously call classical, gothic, and brutalist can seem quite “alien” at times, the overall impression given off by the building is one of feeling “correct” in some deeper sense.
Tourism
For those individuals who prefer to keep company with dusty tomes instead of shiny plastic doo-dads or cybernetic implants, the Athenæum is paradise. The vast EEP media network can provide many things, but atmosphere isn’t one of them.
The Athenæum’s exquisite lighting, its multitudes of squashy armchairs, and the intoxicating smell of paper from across space and time—these are just a few of the many reasons why this building has been named as one of the Seven Wonders of the Post-Apocalyptic World.
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Author's Notes
Special thanks to PrippyMontyPoppyCock for the suggestion, during my live stream on Thursday, July 14, 2022, of the alternate name “The OK Library.”