Imagine a huge library that goes on forever, with so many rooms you could never count them. Each room is shaped like a hexagon, which means it has six sides. In the middle of each room, there is a big open shaft for air, surrounded by railings. The rooms are all the same. There are five bookshelves on each of the four walls, so every room has twenty bookshelves in total. The shelves go from the floor to the ceiling.In one corner, there is a small hallway that connects to the next room, which looks just the same. Next to the hallway, there are two tiny rooms. One is for sleeping while standing up, and the other is like a bathroom. There is also a spiral staircase that goes up and down, connecting more rooms above and below. There are mirrors that show a reflection of the room, making it seem like the library goes on forever.People live in this library, but no one knows where it begins or ends. Everyone in the library is called a librarian, and most of them spend their lives searching for a special book—maybe a book that explains the whole library or a book that lists where every book is.Each book in the library is exactly the same size. There are 32 books on every shelf, and every book has 410 pages. Each page has 40 lines, and every line has about 80 letters or symbols. The library only uses 25 different symbols—these are just letters, a space, a comma, and a period. The titles of the books are made of random letters and don’t match what’s inside the book.Most books in the library don’t make sense. Sometimes, a book just has the same three letters, like “MCV,” written again and again. Other books have strange patterns or are just full of nonsense. Once in a while, someone finds a book with a real sentence, like “O Time thy pyramids,” but there is no explanation for what it means.Some people believe that there must be meaning hidden in these books. Others say that the books are just random and have no meaning at all. People have argued about this for a long time. Some think the books are written in secret languages, but even experts have trouble finding meaning in most books.A long time ago, someone found a strange book that seemed to mix many different languages. It talked about how to put things together in different ways. This made some librarians think that the library contains every possible combination of the 22 letters and a few symbols. This means that somewhere in the library, every story, every history, every future, and even every possible answer to every question exists. But almost all the books are still just nonsense.When people realized that the library might have every book possible, they became very excited. They thought that maybe their biggest problems could be solved if they could just find the right book. People started searching all over, hoping to find the book that would tell them everything they wanted to know, or even a book that would prove that everything they did was right.But the library is so big and confusing that almost no one ever finds what they are looking for. Some people give up hope. Some get into fights, and some even destroy books they think are useless, but this doesn’t change much, because there are always more books that are almost the same.There are also stories about a magical “Book-Man” who has read the perfect book that explains everything. Some people even worship this person. But no one has ever found him, and the search never ends.Many people become sad and lonely in the library. Some worship the books, even if they can’t read them. Some people get sick or even die because life in the library is so hard and confusing. The narrator, who is old, thinks that even if people disappear, the library will last forever.
