One.

You’re lost in a library

Now erase the picture of the library that just came into your mind. Destroy it, clear it, make your mind blank. Do whatever you need to do to know you're in a library without actually picturing a library.

I promise you, it’s not the right library.

Our library is a labyrinth with no end in sight. To either side are shelves and ladders which reach for the sky. You can’t see the top. You walk to a book, open it, brush away a cloud of gilded dust, and see a sequence of unintelligible symbols:

…jµªYLS kåalj a12«93,m.,m<SA¢D>F%X &111111NCk wªqße ˆ´¨∑® kDM 981˚902¬3 iu -lj0.9 0øπ∑˚SZ…

You walk across the hall past the librarian. Unnoticed, you reach out but feel the separation of an invisible chasm. Upon the librarian’s desk is a rusted tag which reads Scogan. You understand.

You start flipping through the books, only to find more gibberish:

…Unh@^Wq eir !b˙† 1∆¬…

and some nonsense on the side:

¥¨¨q5OAej∆¬˚åß∂¬˚œ¨ª˙hj6nm,noVelsj702083¬+….

with nothing else to do but dare to read, to see Scogan hold your yellow coat and snicker, you sort through golden pegs. You’re headed towards a clap of thunder, and nowhere close to being done.

After 87539318 books, you find that on the last page, 1729, an intelligible line of subtext:

øœ©Gåmz Trams and dusty trees. Highbury bore me. Richmond and Kew Undid me. By Richmond I raised my knees Supine on the floor of a narrow canoe≈<’’l;R

Book 87539319 is rather clean.

The isolated man is not dead. In a paroxysm of inspiration, born to fly upward, you continue in search of a tale to cure blindness. In this madness there is a method, as in Hardy’s poem.

Book 6963472309248 (the spine torn, a coffee stain on the cover), page 2:

…nqpo87_Anyone who has common sense will remember that the bewilderments of the eyes are of two kinds, and arise from two causes: either from coming out of the light or from going into the light_ M093–…

A clap of lightning, a damp gust. Bringing rain. The thunder spoke — it’s time to grab your coat.

This is the epoch of your greatness. Force the moment to its crises, to the awful daring of its surrender, one that no age of prudence can ever retract. See your friend, blood shaking the heart, follow the void of the librarian’s eyes. Let’s go and pay a visit.

As one does in staring into the abyss, you fall (or shall I say fly?), following the arc of the librarian’s long finger, worn from an eternity of listless page turning — for it is quite the page turner. You land at the entrance, look down on the sky, and see the cube. The library you once saw was only the inward facing surface of a vast hexahedron, filled with corridors, books, ladders, blind librarians, and adventurers such as yourself.

Contemplating this new reality, the realization of your own ignorance pales in comparison to the understanding that you stand at the world’s center, in your hand a previously untouched volume bearing a single digit upon it’s delicate spine: 0. The cover reads:

Welcome to the Library of Babel.

All the pages are blank.

You look to the shelf on your right, open a book labeled 1 and see the single printed letter on the first page:

A

The remainder of the book is blank.

You open the adjacent book labeled 2 and see the single printed letter on the first page.

B

The remainder of the book is blank.

Each book in the library is 1729 pages, on each page there are 73 lines, on each line 37 character slots (including spaces and special characters), and a total of roughly 496 unique characters. You realize the library contains all books containing combinations of such characters, and estimate this to be 496^(1729*73*37) texts. The library must therefore contain at least every idea (some especially complicated ideas could be expressed through multiple books) which can be expressed with 1729*73*37 of these characters. This includes nearly every book ever written, as well as most books to ever be written. It includes the cure for every disease and the solution to every problem. It includes the 1,729 page biography of every human, past or present, and a 1,729 page account of the human race.

Yet, it also includes all the nonsense and triviality which can be expressed in 1729*73*37 characters. You know that even if you search this library for longer than the lifespan of the universe, the probability of encountering even one intelligent thought is next to nothing. You are overcome by the irony that nearly every question asked and to be asked, and nearly all possible answers to these questions lie before you, yet you’ll never be able to find them.

You think, search and read. You look for the compendium which indexes all the rest, you seek the Man of the Book.

C

You grow old, you grow old and forget the librarian who held your coat.

Ye who enter, abandon all hope.

You were placed in the center of this ocean, so that from that vantage point you may with greater ease glance round about you on all that it contains. Yet it is an ocean of nonsense, ever ready to receive shower of rain amongst, the dry, sterile thunder. Each day the black clouds gather far in the distance, and the thunder speaks. When it speaks, do listen. For when the rain comes, you unfurl your red sails and make yours this ocean. You have no visage proper to yourself, nor endowment properly your own, in order that whatever place, whatever form, whatever gifts you may, with premeditation, select, these same you may have and possess through your own judgement and decision. The nature of all other adventurers is defined and restricted within the laws of convention; you, by contrast, impeded by no such restrictions, may, by your own free will, trace for yourself the lineaments of your own nature. Fashion yourself in the form you may prefer, it will be in your power to descend to lower, brutish forms of life; you will be able, through your own decision, to rise again to the superior order.

There is no need to let your solitude be gladdened by the elegant hope that the library is unlimited and cyclical. At the seat of power, The Man of the Book awaits.