The Infinite Library (47 page)

“Are you saying that we six here are all real, and are dreaming this in unison?” asked the philosopher.

“Yes, indeed,” Ensopht said with a smile. “Please, do not expect me to go into some long and complicated explanation on how this is even possible, for it is a trivial matter compared to the real reason why you have all been gathered here. The prophecy concerns the synthesizing of each one of us here – or at least our core fundamental attributes – into one person, a kind of avatar, if you will. Each of you has been paired up with an opposite, sitting directly ahead of you. This dualism is very important so that the synthesis may occur, making these attributes enter into relation and salvaging the most essential ones into the synthesized product. Do not worry: this will not be in any way painful, nor will it spell the end of your lives. Once these features are synthesized, you will go about your normal lives. This is more of a metaphorical synthesis, and each of you will have your say on what elements we should keep, and what we should discard. In this way, our cohort here is more of an advisory committee to ensure quality in the final product.”

“I have a question,” interrupted the scientist. “Under what authority is this being conducted? And, of course, despite your claim that we were preordained, may we opt out?”

“I act under the authority of the prophecy. The name of the one who holds the script is unimportant, but he is among the chief architects of the prophecy and a great Librarian. As for an opt-out clause, I'm afraid I'm to compel you to remain with us.”

“What is this product you keep going on about?” asked the philosopher. “This sounds like some sort of focus group for a time-share.”

“The product is the synthesis of we six.”

“A merger of our personalities?” questioned the scientist.

“Not quite,” Ensopht answered. “More like a merger of our
types
, what we each represent. I won't bore you with the details, but there is a standing theory of typology where these types wear us like masks and not the other way around. The person who would be artist is 'inhabited' or 'haunted' by the artist type, for example.”

“It sounds very much like we are forming a sort of superconductor,” said Wally. “Or some sort of great type-collider.”

“Something to that effect. At any rate, you've each been selected for reasons only the prophecy and the Librarian know. Gentlemen, we are on the verge of doing something of incredible historical significance. Our merger dares to bring to light all that is best of these types, held within one man who will be the Avatar. In broaching the impossible, embrace that most impossible thought: a mountain without its corresponding valley.”

“This sounds ridiculous,” moaned the philosopher. “Really, what is this? Is this some kind of gimmicky focus group? Is this some cheap marketing ploy for some new brand of soda pop? Count me out.”

Just as the philosopher was pushing his chair out in preparation to leave, Ensopht boomed, “Sit down, Russell. I am far from finished. I am not asking for your participation, I am telling you to participate. You really have no choice.”

“What benefit do we see out of this?” Leopold asked.

“Benefit? That you have been instrumental in the shaping of the future.”

“In other words, we don't get paid. Count me out, too. I don't do volunteer work, and I couldn't give a toss about the future. Fuck history and fuck the future, that's what I say.”

“Your narcissistic nihilism is all too obvious, Leopold. It comes off as petulant and self-serving. I would have thought you, as an artist, would have been enthusiastic about gaining a renown you could not possibly achieve on your own. This is a collaborative creative effort. Consider this your last chance at any measure of success, for it is written that otherwise, in less than a year's time, you will fail in attempting suicide, and spend the rest of your days in abject poverty. You shall never taste the delights of artistic recognition, Leopold. And, I suspect, you know this to be true if you honestly inspect yourself.”

“Written where?” Leopold challenged. “Ooh, you really shake my core and make me tremble with your mighty pronouncements! Give me a break. You're just some fruitcake. I'm going to change the channel on this stupid dream.”

“You go right ahead, Leopold. You will find there is no way out, and this meeting you find so unpleasant will be over much faster if you just play along. Indulge us. The type that you inhabit is the typeface of the script that must be followed.”

“What kind of art do you do?” asked Wally. “I like art!”

“Please, gentlemen, let us bring this back to order. All your questions will soon be answered, but I must petition for your patience and attention. You see, I have access to a very special library, an infinite library that has in its stores every possible work by every possible being at every possible moment. This is how I know what it is that I know. I have read your histories, and I have read your possible histories. I have read your futures, and many of your possible futures.”

“How can such a library exist?” Leopold inquired. He was genuinely interested since it reminded him of Borges, and by lateral association tugged on his interest in the infinite, in deserts, and so forth.

“Well,” Ensopht continued, “let us consider one man. Let us suppose he wrote in every moment of his life, never slept or ate or took time out to do anything else, and compiled a massive collection of volumes. Now picture this same man in different social circumstances like having been born in Russia, or having been born two centuries ago, of having only one leg, of being rich, poor, married or unmarried, as a woman, with diabetes, as a banker or soldier, and so on. Now picture this man being visited by every possible person in every possible place in every possible time, speaking every possible language.”

“That set of volumes would be monstrously large,” said the philosopher. “It would fail to be of any significance for truth, which only orients itself toward possibility from the firm ground of established facts.”

“Yes, it would be vast. Yet we are only considering one man. Picture every being doing the same thing. Include every possible being - those who were aborted or died prematurely by illness or war or murder, the possibility of twins or triplets - being granted an infinite life from the beginning point of time itself. Even then we have not fully grasped the immensity of this library. Each being is in contact with other beings, so what if everyone was in contact with everyone else? What of those stories? The ruling principle of the infinite library is possibility and contingency ad infinitum. What of the possibility of other intelligent species in the universe? Surely this would massively increase the library's contents. Again, a multiplied, exponential possibility would present itself if these species intermingled. What of every combination of phrases, words, or even letters? When the million monkeys rewrite a Shakespearean text with but one spelling mistake, it is still a different text, another text to be catalogued as distinct from the Shakespearean work. What about a book about this library, or a book about that book? Or a book about a man who wrote a book on a book about a story that makes reference to a particular book? It is in the library as well.”

“That sounds wonderful! I'd love to have a card for that library!” beamed Wally. “Give me an example of one of these impossible books.”

“As you wish, Wally. The story goes like this: Alberto Gimaldi wrote a biography of on the alchemist Zeander Mathius who lived in 1602. Zeander's main occupation in his later years was to create a collection of translated codices of the arcane poems of Guarni, who lived in 1477. Zeander was very intrigued with one of Guarni's references to an Arab mathematician of the late 12th Century named Al-Hamadi, who was attempting to prove a geometrical formulation as part of a new metaphysical hypothesis. Zeander devoted an entire codex to Al-Hamadi. Alberto, in the interests of making the biography accurate, located this codex and studied it. He discovered a very disturbing reference, and so contacted an Arab literary historian to verify said reference and to lend him more of Al-Hamadi's writings. Upon receiving the completed works of Al-Hamadi, there was a postscript that spoke of a particular man named Alberto who was writing the life story about a little-known alchemist named Zeander. Upon discovering himself, literally, in the story, it proved too much for him. He abandoned his research and was never heard from again.”

“Another! Another!” Wally said exuberantly, clapping his hands and bouncing in his seat.

“Not right now, Wally. But, still, think of it: have you ever wondered what Shakespeare had written on Hegel or the Nazis or Kafka? It is in the library. Another good book is Christ's emendation to Einstein's treatise on the many virtues of porous plastic, and Julius Caesar's Policies for reducing congestion in airports. And perhaps you would like to read the dialogues between Freud and Plato or Robert Graves' translation of the Mars Republic's political convocations of 2133, or Yeats'
poems for the internet
, or Napoleon's conquest of Canada. What of Hitler's treatise on the arquebus, or the history of King Geoffrey Chaucer of Spain, or Heraclitus' Protestant reforms of New Guinea?”

[This same sensationalist list-making was how Castellemare snared me in the first place, and it was employed again in the
Backstory
and now here. Even the wording is similar, as if it were just the items in the list that changed, the structure of the seduction remaining. And yet here as well was another cheap attempt to name me - this time as some researcher living in the 1600s].

“But history would be one big, anachronistic jumble of displaced causes and effects,” said the scientist. “You talk of these other realities as if they existed as truly as our own - a coexistence of multiple worlds. It is all very fanciful and may make for science fiction, but not science.”

“Not to mention,” added the philosopher who was far from convinced of Ensopht's rendering, “that these speculative fancies are simply absurd and ridiculous. It would be the work of an overactive imagination or a madman. What use would this library serve? Nothing could be known since all is possible. There is no room for truth in a library like you describe. It simply cannot exist. If this library is the only connection to all these possible worlds – a theory I find repugnant – then this would make this library a necessary being. Metaphysically speaking, the library would be god.”

“In deference to the empirical method, I cannot say that this library you speak of is impossible, but highly improbable,” said the scientist.

“Maybe I'm not educated enough to grapple with this or make the right connections here,” said Leopold, “but what does a trippy library have to do with this synthesis?”

“The Library is total. The Library has already foretold what must happen, and it shall happen. I was asked under what authority I am acting, and this is my answer. This synthesis is destined to occur because it was written, and it was written long ago. As for your participation – each of you – you do not have any choice in the matter. This is going forward whether you choose it or not. You can cooperate or be coerced. Consider this our first meeting. I will say no more, but rest assured we will all be meeting again fairly soon. Wake up.”

And with that, the white room dissipated from view, and each of the participants returned to their respective wakefulness. It was not yet dawn when Leopold bolted upright on his futon, finding himself in a sweat. He fished around in the dark for a cigarette and replayed the dream to himself before tiredness recaptured him, and he fell back asleep to be treated with more conventional dreams in a fugitive slumber, all focus redirected to its blurry kingdom of morphing shapes and colours resolving only temporarily into recognizable things.

21

Demolitions (
De Moliri
)

I
f I hadn't been so focused on the man standing in front of me with the Jack O' Lantern grin jaggedly sliced across his bony face, I may have paid more attention to the sound of paper being torn or the tickle of smoke in my nostrils. The room was narrow, but extremely long, more of a corridor. Along the one side where I had entered the conveyor belt continued, but stationed every few feet were hooded figures busily and silently going about their task: removing books from the belt and destroying them. Their obscene hoods, billowing like hammers' heads, reminded me of the image in Serafini's
Codex Seraphineanus
of undertakers unrolling the skin off the dead in some alien rite. Facing me with that mocking grin was that interminable enigma of a man, Castellemare.

“Gimaldi! I would say this is a surprise, but all is written... at least somewhere.”

“What's going on here?” I asked, indicating the row of hooded people, their faces entirely obscured save for eye slits.