And so that was what I did, bundle of thrilling excitement that I am. Although as much as I urged my own personal library to open up as it had in the past to allow me entry to that vast and infinite space, it remained mute and closed off to me. On occasion I would pull a few books from the shelf to see if more would emerge in their place, but to no avail. The scotch was keeping me alert, and I drained more than half the bottle and an entire pack of cigarettes as I vainly oscillated between my books and the internet for any clues I could possibly salvage. There were no mysterious emails or eerie phone calls as the sun nested itself behind the skyline and eventually made way for a curtain of mauve-black. The last rays of day had struck impotently through the only crack I could allow of sunlight to enter my apartment, fearful as I was of my books becoming bleached by light and affecting their resale value. Feeling restless and unsatisfied by my failed research outing, I redid my inventory sheets and reviewed for the seventh time the descriptions of the books I had for sale to ensure that I was not missing any pertinent details. Despite the tedium of the task, I could not allow myself to return to that book. I had to steel myself from going back and reading further, if for but one day of sanity. This I achieved and eventually fell asleep shortly after midnight, partially relieved that nothing mysterious and off-putting had occurred, but also disappointed.
This disappointment would not endure, and the toccata performed by mad figures unseen would exhaust my patience and whatever shadow limit I could draw from. The torment was setting a steady pace, counting down the hours and days to what I did not know. It all began with a very bad morning complemented by a severe and sudden pain in my head.
Something, I was sure, had happened in the night... something that had rent the fabric of the world with a cruel violence. A sudden throbbing in my head upon waking became a full-blown stabbing force, causing me to see double. At that moment, something was scratching at the door. Stumbling about in pain and confused sight, I hastened to pull on pants and make my way toward the door. When I yanked it open, there was nobody there, another attempt to drive me mad. By this time the pain in my head was causing me to buckle. I could vaguely make out a figure now appearing at the doorway wearing a mask, a mask that looked like Castellemare. The figure stooped low since I had now fallen on my knees in agony. He pressed a pen on me, one of those thick and expensive fountain pens. I was powerless due to pain to resist whatever the figure was doing, and he thrust beneath my hand a small sheaf of papers, thumbing their onion skins to the final page and guiding my hand to sign it.
A whisper followed: “You've been served and delivered.”
“Wh-what... is this?” I asked in a weak strain.
“Contract,” the whisper responded, now pulling the pages away without any hope of me having read what I just signed.
I grasped at the pant leg of the unsolicited visitor, but I was too weak to keep hold. He kicked free and followed this up with a sharp cuff of my head, causing me to yowl. I groped around for some kind of object. Finding a phone book, I hurled it in the general direction of the figure. I heard it slap impotently against the wall, but then forced myself into a lurch, tackling the figure on his way out. I could hear the click of the mask on the hallway floor. The person's hands were rough and cold as he clawed himself free.
“Get back here! Who are you!?” I hollered. My hope was that one of my neighbours would be alerted and would intervene – to no avail.
Another strike to the head. I had had enough and redoubled my efforts to collar the figure before he fled, leaving me in that terrible uncertainty of what it was that I signed. I was able to get hold of more clothing and dragged him down on top of me. I furiously scrambled out from beneath and was able to pin him down. My head, although still clouding my vision with pain, was able to fix on the face of my visitor whose mask was now half off, exposing a horrific twisting mouth that was snarling. I managed to snatch the papers from his claw-like hands, tearing them in the process of prying them loose. I steadied my foot on his neck as I attempted to stand, piecing the ripped pages together. What I read was equally bizarre: it was a publishing contract. For what, I had no idea, but from what I could glean from the minute and 18th century script was that I agreed to my authorship of a text. The title was not given.
“What is the meaning of this?”
“Contract,” he croaked, attempting to remove my foot from his neck.
Applying more pressure with my weight, I asked, “A contract for what book?”
“Contract,” he repeated.
Scanning the pages again, there was no hope. It merely lumbered from one incomprehensible clause to another, indemnifying the publisher from this and that, assigning authorial rights for “the book”, granting reproduction rights unto perpetuity.
“You are mistaken. This is invalid,” I said. “I haven't written any book. What publishing house do you work for?”
But I would not get my answer, for there was a sudden peel of madcap laughter issuing from inside my apartment, startling me just enough so that my visitor could take advantage of my distraction to scramble free. He fled down the stairs quicker than I could nab him. The laughter was continuing. I reentered my apartment and called out for the laugher to reveal himself, but I located the source of it behind my shelf. As I frantically pulled books out, the laughter got louder, but there was nothing there but the backing of the shelf. I heaved the whole shelf down amidst another crescendo of pain in my head, and the laughter just increased in volume – but with no one there.
The laughter suddenly ceased, but picked up again – this time issuing from near my computer. The mix of pain and mounting madness was causing me to lash out blindly, throwing my books around my apartment in a fit. I threw my bed over, hurled a bottle at the wall, wrecked my kitchen, and kicked over anything that was within my reach. I clutched at my head and the laughter only swelled.
A voice without a body, perhaps in my overheated head, said, “No sense turning back around. You'll write it.”
The laughter died and I was left with my entire apartment in shambles.
36
A Circulating Cosmology
The Infinite Library - Annals (2)
By Jorge Luis Borges (?)
John Milton's cosmology hitches the small bauble of earth by a golden chain attached to the immensity of heaven, and heaven's shadow – equally immense – is the domain of hell. Between hell and earth is a place called chaos through which Satan must pass to reach the earth. But in our cosmology, the earth dangles as a bauble as well, and is surrounded by the expanse known as the Library, which assumes a variety of forms. They are infinite spaces that gird the terrestrial world, but they are not composed of matter or antimatter, but an in-between substance unknown to science and crudely called the spiritual or divine by the religious. But there is no god in these infinite spaces even though there are residents in the domains.
One of the domains is a traditional library that has no boundaries; composed entirely of tall shelves, these contain all the books that are possible (and perhaps many that are not). Hooded, silent figures called the Devorants are resident there, compiling their sources and committed to a research project that has gone on for several generations and would continue perhaps countless generations more. There is a Librarian whose task it is to catalogue the books, shelve whatever has been borrowed or misplaced, or upgrade the cataloguing system. The Librarian is blind, but finds that sight of a different kind is what is necessary to understand the Library. It offers him no impediment.
Another of the domains is of a finite variety, a meeting room carved out of the first domain to serve as a quiet study room. There are perhaps an infinite number of these smaller spaces, each being enough to seat twelve members around a large table comfortably, and everything in the room being of a most brilliant and clean white. These white rooms must be booked by the Librarian, for there are no doors to gain entry either in or out beyond specified times when a door will appear.
One of the domains
is a tesseract upon the earth itself and is only accessible at a very specific angle of approach at a very specific time of day, for otherwise it cannot be seen or entered. This domain is in the midst of a yawning desert, and very few people have ever successfully located it. Those that have reached the tribal ground were always brought there unconscious, as though the key to the lock of this domain's door is to become lost in, and succumb to, the heat of the desert. The tribe, calling themselves Orthographers, are each a guardian of the letter and have dedicated their lives to their specialized task of study, research, formation, and appearance of their appointed letter. Behind their workshops is a gated region that none dare enter, for it is a kind of labyrinth left there – according to their lore – before time itself. Some have suggested that the tribe is that of the mystical Tlön, while others claim they are holdovers from the sunken region of the fertile crescent, home to the first peoples that made the migration from Africa into the Middle East circa 100,000 years ago, and its disappearance ensconced in several deluge narratives in several devotional texts.
The last domain of which it is safe to speak would be the Babelian Library, also infinite. The details of this library – composed of hexagonal galleries stretching out infinitely – is already described in a short story by Jorge Luis Borges entitled “The Library of Babel,” which faithfully gives an accurate account of this domain.
Understanding the purpose of the Library in its entirety, it is essential to point out that the value of its contents as a repository of all possible knowledge (as well as mis- and disinformation) is only expressible when that information is in motion, actively circulating. When it ceases to circulate, either temporarily or permanently, it is stored in the Library. To illustrate the importance of circulation without delving into the dry particulars of information theory, we turn now to a small story plucked from the Library that illustrates this point by means of an analogy. A coin or a book are the same insofar as they are composed of signs and begin with passive materials upon which is impressed an inscription. So, to this we must turn:
I dream of a coin that remains in circulation eternally.
At first, the coin was struck by a careless hand that, in following its proper and repetitive duty, fixed the dye by hand (since when this was done, all striking was performed manually rather than by the precision of a machine). The uneventful sound of metal striking metal, the former shaping the latter, rang out, and the newly minted coin was deposited in a basket with the other rough facsimiles. Form impressed upon a copy that was granted value if only because the crown so had it, and the exchange of it for the agreed upon product or service. The Romanic profile of the monarch was garlanded with truncated Latin phrases that lent each coin its monetary legitimacy, as if each coin was a fragment or portion of the wealth and value of the monarch, or the gold he possessed.
Midway through his shift, the same careless hand hoisted the now full basket containing the coin we have already mentioned. The basket was carried to an adjoining room, and another pair of hands took over, weighing each coin and inscribing a small mark in a book when a certain number of coins had been weighed. The coins were then passed along to another set of hands that dumped the baskets into caskets which were then taken to a waiting carriage and eventually making their way to the Treasury. There the coin sat until it was required, and soon the day came when a transaction gave this coin the excuse to be taken from the Treasury and passed along with many of their kind to another pair of hands. This pair of hands was raising an army in service to the King, and these glittering coins would be pledged to the service of hiring able men, purchasing arms from weapon smiths, food items, and other necessary purchases for the financing of a war.
It should be noted that the manufacture of this coin occurred prior to the standard practice of milling, which was a means of producing a raised edge on coins to prevent the illegal act of clipping (shaving a small sliver of metal off several coins and then producing counterfeits with the melted shavings – a process that created slower inflation than the King's occasional act of recalling all the coinage so that they could be debased with cheaper metals and thus expand the treasury in times of financial need to fund a war).
The coin made its way into the hand of an appointed halberdier who was moderately gifted in the ways of combat, having offered his hands to battle before. Before the regiment was to depart in another adventure, the coin was given over to the hand of the halberdier's wife who was instructed to make the most of it for necessities.
The Hands of the halberdier's wife unconsciously fondled the small treasure bequeathed to her from her husband. She travelled to the marketplace and, at the point of sale, the coin changed hands in exchange for a loaf of black bread. The filthy hand of the baker did not hold the coin long before it was dropped into a metal box and eventually given to a landlord. The landlord's hands were very soft. By this time, the coin had lost some of its initial mint lustre, changing from gleaming copper to a darker brownish hue, ridged in places by fingerprints. The portrait of the King had seemed to become cloudy, and the heraldic shield of the nation as well.
So there the coin sat, inconspicuously in a small tower with others of its denomination. Sometimes the hands of the landlord would caress them briefly while counting and recounting them. The coin above it had been minted four years prior and was a very dull grey-brown. The coin below was minted in the same year but had not travelled as much and had not changed as many hands.
A decade passed and a new hand was now bringing the coin back into active service. The landlord's son was quite busy selling off his father's assets to finance a high risk sea merchant scheme. The coin, among many of its ilk, changed hands to a group of brigands hired according to the shadier and more corrupt whims of the landlord's son. The coin was passed from one dirty hand to another until it came into the possession of a failed counterfeiter who engaged in the act of clipping. And, hence the coin's edges were lightly clipped, damaging some of the dentition.
The coin's history is buried for a few decades after that, but it traveled from one end of the empire to the other, and then, with the change in political climate, from one end of the republic to the other. The monarch emblazoned upon its obverse had long since been deposed, but another of his line would grace the obverse of a whole new minting run, thereby rendering this coin obsolete.
The hand of a grandfather carefully placed the coin in the careless and ahistorical hand of a young grandson who irreverently tossed it in a cigar box of inane treasures only children could find delight in. The coin was becoming severely worn, the monarch appearing upon it as if in a distant fog or the way a world appears to one whose eyesight was steadily deteriorating. The date upon it was still clearly visible, but one of the numerals was melting and fusing into the heraldic shield. The shield itself had lost much of its definition, blurring into a kind of blurred arabesque of indistinguishable and blended loops. In a time of financial strife, the grandson - now a young and hungry man - thought to sell it to a collector who rapaciously cheated him on the value of it. It stayed in the shop for ten years until a woman purchased it for her husband who had a mild interest in antiques and numismatics. The husband's hand clutched for this lucky coin when he was called off to war where he was grievously killed by a German rifle. The coin lay in the field among the dead, oxidizing and gaining a deep green patina that further obscured its features.
A young girl's hand came upon it and delicately caressed this foreign curiousity. An attempt was made to clean it to better identify its place of mintage. Harsh abrasives etched its now well-worn face, its features little more than hazy and eye-less blobs, the Latin inscription a congealed and hidden litany of bygone monarchic power. After another lonely thirty years, the coin was rediscovered among the abandoned effects of the young girl who had found it on the killing fields, in a jar of inconsequential notes and bobby pins in the heating duct of a house that had now changed hands twice. The coin was raised to the light once more by a hand that did not ha
ve any estimation or care of its history, its value, or its long travels. This coin, ferried from hand to hand, perhaps being caressed or pinched by more than a thousand different hands: rough and working hands, soft and manicured hands, scaly hands, arthritic hands, hands marked with pox, hands gnarled with age, hands pillowy with fat, hands that committed atrocities in war, hands that once held new-born babes, hands that formed fists in pointless tavern brawls, hands that held signs in marches for change, hands that fidgeted during overly long sermons on Sunday mornings, hands that broke bread or went without - all of these hands this coin had touched in times of plenty and times of strife. This one coin had buried within itself the contact point of so many histories.
The last hand to touch it was the one that would end its long currency. After the coin was given to the bank, it was sent to the mint. There, the coin once again felt the heat of the forge, the return to its point of genesis. Among other coins that had served more or less long terms in this world, each having been handled by so many, it was melted down, only to be resurrected with mixed parts as a gleaming new coin that would be circulated once more.
Stories and coins are identical.
37
Excerpts from 7th Meditation
II: Synthesis
15
Synthesis
The Infinite Library Page 50
