A Short Stay in Hell Read Online Free PDF Page A

I remember the story. Look, the books all end on page four
hundred ten, just like the books in his story. And look at this.
They’re all in blocks of” – here he started counting – “yes, forty
lines, and I’ll bet there are” – he started counting again – “yes.
Eighty characters per line, just as Borges described. Amazing.
We’re in the Library of Babel.”
    Someone asked a third time, a little more
impatiently than the first two inquiries, “What’s the Library of
Babel?” Biscuit looked around him and saw that an audience of about
fifty people now gave him its undivided attention.
    “Well,” he began in a lecturesome tone,
“imagine a library that contains not just every book that has been
written, but every book that could be written. I remember the story
exactly. How strange. But the basic idea from Borges’s story is
that the library contains every possible book. So somewhere in here
is a book of all A’s , a book of all periods, or a book of
semicolons, or B’s . Any letter. There’s a book that
alternates A’s and B’s for its entire length, but
most books are just a random collection of symbols.”
    “So there’s a book that’s half A’s and
in the second half all B’s ,” proposed one woman.
    “Yes. But more than that, every book ever
written is there. And every book ever written is there
backwards.”
    One man raised his hand like a student in a
classroom, and Biscuit acknowledged him.
    “It can’t have every book,” the man said,
tilting his head and looking ridiculous as he affected a knowing
and wise demeanor. “Some books are longer than four hundred ten
pages. Take War and Peace , for example.”
    He looked around, nodding his head trying to
find someone to acknowledge his point.
    “No. Don’t you see?” Biscuit said. “ War
and Peace would be in multiple volumes.”
    “With blank pages after it ended, completing
the last volume,” added the woman standing next to me.
    “Or with the life story of Leo Tolstoy at the
end,” added another woman.
    “Both,” said Biscuit. “There’s even one with
the history of Leo Tolstoy’s nose hair completing the volume. But
most are going to be pure and utter nonsense – random characters,
with no order. Mostly nonsense.”
    “So there’s a version of War and Peace with the main character named Fred instead of Pierre,” said a man
to no one in particular.
    “And another where Mark Twain and Huck Finn
join the war against Napoleon,” added another woman.
    “But mostly nonsense,” Biscuit added again
softly.
    Everyone was silent a moment.
    “That’s what the sign out front means,” the
speaker was my new friend Elliott. “We have to find our own life
story to get out of here.”
    “In one or two volumes,” asked a man in
despair, “or ten or twelve?”
    Biscuit continued almost to himself, “There’s
a second-by-second account of our lives, probably in multiple
volumes, a minute-by-minute account, an hour-by-hour, a day-by-day.
There’s one that covers the events of our lives as viewed by our
mothers, one by our fathers, one by our neighbors, one by our dogs.
There must be thousands of our biographies here. Which one do they
want, I wonder?”
    Everyone seemed stunned, thinking about the
different volumes in the library.
    “You mean there’s a biography of everything
and everyone in this library. There’s even a biography of the
guppies in my fish tank?”
    “Yes. Anything that can be written is there.
The history of your big toe as viewed from the perspective of your
shoe is there. Anything you can imagine, anything you can picture
being written is here is this library.” Biscuit seemed to be
astonishing even himself.
    “It must have billions and billions of
books,” one woman said. “If there’s a biography for anyone who’s
ever lived, and every guppy that ever lived, and every worm that
ever lived, there must be billions and billions of books.”
    “Wouldn’t it be infinite?” said another