It truly was a pleasure having Patch working for him.
The Kryptonian ship—previously far too heavy for Jonas to move—was no challenge at all for Patch. With his powerful, alien, cybernetic body, Patch lifted the capsule easily and brought it into the Parts Room. There was no current plan to disassemble it or scavenge its components. For now, they were just organizing—gathering various multiversal artifacts in one place.
Among the items was the cracked Yellow Lantern ring, still inert, and the seemingly dead Green Lantern power battery. More strange things had trickled in over the past few days.
If you remember, one of the main reasons Jonas had wanted to finish assembling Patch in the first place was so that he could help him finally organize and repair the TARDIS. That was the goal. And yet, oddly enough, instead of doing that right away, the past few days had been spent in the library.
The very first thing Patch had done was review Hermione's notes—over 200 years of recorded video logs. His positronic brain could absorb and process information at incredibly high speeds, so he flew through them. Once that was done, Patch began typing his notes into the system.
Jonas had been present for that part and was amazed by the blur of Patch's fingers on the interface. The typing was so fast it didn't even look human. Screens filled with complex diagrams, logic trees, and alien symbols that Jonas had no way of understanding.
Eventually, bored, Jonas went fishing again. That evening, he returned with a few strange catches, including a partially broken humanoid doll with a large knife. It looked very lifelike—almost too lifelike—and he vaguely remembered it being from a movie called Megan, or M3GAN, or something like that. Whatever it was, it had no brain, so Jonas just added it to the collection pile.
No nightmare items today, thank goodness.
When he went back to check on Patch, the android was still typing at that insane speed. Then, at last, Patch turned to him.
"Captain," he said, "I've identified 3,787 different problems that may lead to a critical mishap aboard the ship. Unfortunately, my current knowledge is insufficient to address them."
Jonas froze. "What do you mean?"
"I mean, sir," Patch replied, "I lack the necessary information to fix these issues. I request permission to requisition the appropriate knowledge."
Jonas frowned. "What does that even mean? Can't you just download it from the database?"
Patch tilted his head, a subtle habit he'd developed when processing thoughts.
"Negative, sir. The necessary data is not stored within the ship's databanks. However, based on Hermione's systems and habits, I believe it exists... in the library."
"The library?" Jonas groaned. "You mean that giant, chaotic mess of a room with books stacked on top of books on top of boxes of other books?"
"Yes," Patch confirmed. "That mountainous pile of semi-organized chaos. It must be sorted, if we're to find what we need."
Jonas looked at him. "And you think we should do it? Just the two of us?"
"Well, the R2 unit can help as well," Patch offered.
Jonas raised an eyebrow. "Still just us?"
"I've already asked the TARDIS to create a manufacturing room for robots to help us with organization and repairs," Patch said. "But... she won't do anything until you give the order."
Jonas blinked. "Wait, I can give orders to the TARDIS?"
"Yes, sir," Patch said. "You've already done so. Every time a new room appeared—every time something you needed manifested, it was the TARDIS responding to your subconscious thoughts. You just didn't realize it."
Jonas frowned, trying to understand.
"All you have to do," Patch continued, "is think clearly and intentionally about what you want the TARDIS to do. That creates a direct link, and she will act accordingly."
Jonas tried. He stood still, eyes shut, and concentrated. He imagined a workshop: a room near his existing tech bays. It would be filled with materials, tools, workstations, a fabrication platform—anything needed to build robotic assistants. He envisioned organizing bots, cleaning bots, maintenance droids, and even an AI programming and data farm station. He focused hard.
Then he opened his eyes.
Nothing.
He walked a few steps. Still nothing.
He returned to Patch. "I did what you said. Nothing changed."
Patch walked to a console, typed rapidly, and returned. "Ah. I see the issue. The TARDIS requires additional materials before she can create the specific technology and materials for manufacturing. Rooms are plenty, but materials are not."
"Where do we put the materials?" Jonas asked. "What kind of stuff does she need?"
Patch nodded. "I've found the location. It's the same place Hermione used to grow the TARDIS. She called it the mouth, but you might think of it more like a garbage chute. It's located on sub-level 12.13."
Jonas looked puzzled. "We have fractional levels?"
Patch shook his head. "No, sir. 'Sub-level 12.13' means level 12, corridor 1, room 3. We're currently twelve levels above it."
"Ah, got it," Jonas said, not entirely sure he did.
"As for what can be fed into it," Patch continued, "almost anything. Hermione used old electronics, junk, and even scrap clothing. As long as it has mass and some technological value, the TARDIS can process it."
Jonas smiled. "So, we're feeding her junk?"
"In essence, yes," Patch confirmed. "Once she has what she needs, she will begin growing the workshop."
"Then that's our next step," Jonas said. "Feed the TARDIS and build ourselves some robot librarians."
Patch's eyes gleamed faintly. "An elegant solution, Captain. Shall I begin drafting designs for the first units?"
"Please," Jonas replied. "We'll call the controlling AI INDEX and its robots PAGES."
Patch began working furiously on the conceptual design of the artificial intelligence known as INDEX—the central brain of the new TARDIS Library—and the smaller, graceful robotic extensions that would become known as Pages. While he sketched blueprints and processed hundreds of interface layers in his positronic matrix, Jonas and R2 got to work hauling materials toward the TARDIS's sub-level input chamber.
Barrels, crates, carts full of discarded tech, chipped dishes, mysterious alloys, broken droids, and heaps upon heaps of old clothing—all of it went into the ever-hungry "mouth" of the TARDIS, located at Sub-Level 12.1.3. Jonas didn't even bother sorting it. What did it matter? It was all junk, clogging up the ship. Might as well start over. Clean out everything. Build a system from scratch. Organize later. Breathe now.
Patch's progress was astounding. After only a few hours, he had rendered full schematics of INDEX and its robotic aides.
The Pages were elegant, no larger than three feet tall, yet beautifully efficient. Their design drew inspiration from C-3PO's protocol grace, R2-D2's utility and charm, B.O.B.'s stabilizers from The Black Hole, and the eerie precision of the Matrix's sentinel drones. They floated, gliding effortlessly through corridors and across shelves, eyes glowing gently, multiple tendrils working at once. They were fast but quiet, with a mechanical grace that made them feel more like hummingbirds than machines.
Once Patch completed the conceptual design, he joined the labor. His android frame could carry entire bulkloads of materials at once. His movements were precise, efficient. They started in the rooms closest to the disposal chute, then worked their way level by level upward toward the main floor.
Jonas, for his part, committed to his most reliable contribution: fishing. Every day, half the day. The multiverse pond never stopped giving, even if most of it was junk. Still, quantity mattered. The TARDIS, as Patch explained, could break down and decode nearly any object, reverse-engineer its purpose, extract its components, and store or repurpose them.
So Jonas threw in everything he could.
That included the broken Yellow Lantern ring and a Green Lantern power battery.
Surprisingly, both proved to be significant finds. The Lantern tech, advanced beyond almost anything Patch had seen, was repurposed into the core of the INDEX AI. The battery's energy-conversion mechanisms were ideal for powering an enormous AI system, and the ring's control protocols were modified to help manage, generate, and maintain the Pages.
After nearly six weeks of constant work, one of the rooms adjacent to Jonas's workshop transformed completely. Several rooms had been fused to form one massive foundry, alive with glowing machinery, fabrication arms, and storage arrays. INDEX came online first.
INDEX was embedded into the wall of the library—its glowing interface a pulsing blue latticework of crystal, circuitry, and light. It possessed a smooth, modulated voice that radiated calm intelligence, and it oversaw everything.
Then came the Pages.
First, there was one.
Then two.
Then ten.
And then, a swarm.
They flooded the halls of the chaotic library like a tide. Books were lifted, scanned, and shelved. Dust disintegrated beneath soft hums. Entire sections were organized—Kryptonian crystal tablets humming softly in the Codex Hall, Klingon battle manuals lined up in metallic alcoves, Vulcan scrolls preserved in anti-decay fields, and magical grimoires from Hogwarts, the Sanctum Sanctorum, and the vaults of Minas Tirith placed into rune-bound cases. Ancient bamboo scrolls from lost civilizations rested alongside hard-light data crystals from far-future archives.
Each book—be it paper, stone, sorcery-bound, or cybernetic—found its home.
All under the orchestration of INDEX.
All under the watchful eyes of Patch.
Jonas never even bothered to keep up. At some point, he simply stopped watching. He just fished. Ate. Slept.
It was peace. Real peace.
Then one day, Patch came to him, a gentle hand on Jonas's shoulder.
"Captain," he said, "the library is complete."
Jonas had practically forgotten about the Index and the library. In the whirlwind of repairs, daily fishing, scavenging, and sleepless engineering sessions, it had simply faded into the background—just another project that would maybe, someday, be finished. But when Patch informed him, quietly and matter-of-factly, that the Library was ready, something strange happened.
He felt excited.
More excited than he expected to be. He couldn't remember the last time he'd looked forward to a library visit—certainly not since his childhood visits with a battered library card in hand. But this… this was something different. He could feel it.
He followed Patch through a set of newly revealed corridors—sleek, polished, and illuminated with soft violet and gold lighting. R2 glided behind them, occasionally chirping with intrigue as new doors opened along their path.
Then the doors parted—and Jonas stepped into a dream.
The INDEX Library was vast, magnificent, and entirely unlike anything Jonas had ever seen. The central chamber was a fusion of ancient wonder and futuristic awe—a cathedral of knowledge spanning cultures, timelines, dimensions, and even planes of existence.
Massive crystalline arches reached overhead, forming shifting constellations of data pulses in the ceiling—living stars encoded with metadata. Holographic banners glowed with alien languages: Gallifreyan spirals, Kryptonian glyphs, Vulcan calligraphy, and a proud Klingon header that read in the jagged red script: QeS QonoS'—"The Klingon Archive".
Floating walkways and spiral staircases rose and fell into the abyss of shelves, and each shelf brimmed with different technologies of knowledge preservation:
Kryptonian Crystal Codices, humming softly, occasionally reshaping into new forms.
Stone cuneiform tablets from ancient Mesopotamia, stacked in gravity-well display cases.
Chinese bamboo slats, bound by threads, are suspended in zero-G reading zones.
Parchment tomes, lovingly restored by the Pages and stored in stasis fields.
Data slates, hard-light cubes, and telepathic memory spheres from far-flung futures.
And in one entire wing of the library—partitioned by glowing runes etched into the very air—sat the Magical Archives.
Here, the books had minds of their own. Some flew, others whispered, some snapped their covers shut indignantly if you reached for them without permission. Jonas spied shelves labeled:
Hogwarts Restricted Section
The Sanctum Sanctorum – Arcane Volumes (Red-Level Access Only)
Grey Havens Writings & Elven Records
Narnian Magical Bestiaries
Earthsea Codex of True Names
The Pages floated quietly through the aisles—graceful, three-foot-tall automatons with gliding squid-like tendrils, flickering sensor eyes, and modular appendages. Each carried or sorted materials with unerring accuracy. Some cleaned. Some shelved. Some simply hovered, scanning, thinking.
Jonas could hardly breathe.
Patch, meanwhile, began to narrate like a docent at a museum: "The TARDIS took my rudimentary design—functional, efficient, based on known AI learning protocols—and... evolved it."
He gestured toward the glowing blue crystalline core embedded in the wall.
"INDEX is no longer just a librarian AI. She is, in many ways, the daughter of the TARDIS herself. Limited, yes, but imbued with a fragment of the same cognitive vastness. Her mind is equivalent to roughly twenty-five percent of the TARDIS's processing capacity, which, considering the scale, makes her one of the most advanced intelligences ever conceived."
Jonas swallowed. "And... she runs all this?"
Patch nodded. "She remembers every book, every scroll, every crystal and rune, where it belongs, what its purpose is—even those you have not yet brought aboard. The Pages follow her orders. We are simply patrons now."
"Users," Jonas muttered. "Just library cardholders. Ooh, Patch, let's have library cards!" Patch looked at Jonas, "What a strange and inefficient idea, so human, and wonderful."
They passed a deep archival vault with rotating rings of alien code orbiting a sealed door.
"That's the Omega Vault," Patch explained. "INDEX keeps material there that exceeds our clearance level. I believe it includes quantum-sensitive texts, cursed tomes, and items from dark timelines. Best not to ask."
"Wasn't planning to."
Eventually, they arrived at a wide viewing platform overlooking the central dome.
Jonas leaned on the railing, breathless.
The Library breathed. Lived. Grew.
He turned to Patch.
"With this... do you think you can fix the TARDIS?"
Patch didn't hesitate.
"I now have access to over three hundred billion entries spanning thousands of civilizations. I estimate a 93.7% likelihood that I can fully repair the TARDIS and bring her back to full, and safe functionality."
Jonas grinned.
"Marvelous," he said. "You've got your work cut out for you, for sure."