Book Searching Blues (Part 1)

James smiles slightly. "But since you ask, yes I do," he says. "There's just something really interesting about you. Why do you ask?"

My heart feels like it's wriggling around in my chest. I feel frighteningly unsure of what to say. The towering bookshelves aren't helping. They make me feel small, inadequate, and uninteresting. "I--I don't know," I finally manage to say. "I'm not really myself right now. Less than an hour ago, I was sitting at a computer in my hometown trying to do a web search on imaginary numbers and mysticism, and now I'm here." I'm sully aware of how stupid that sounds, but it's too late now. I'm tempted to simply run away, and that's when it hits me that there is nowhere for me to really run. I am alone in another world which I don't understand at all. This is both frightening and deeply exhilerating. Letting myself get lost would be dangerous. I have no choice but to stay here, with someone who knows his way around and who I can trust. Besides, as I think about it, I rather like it here. There are few places I enjoy being more than libraries. And James certainly seems like interesting company.

"So you're new here?" said James. "I remember what that was like. I was apprenticed to be a mathematician in my world just a year ago. I was studying imaginary numbers, and then I started thinking. You know, mathematics and philosophy are more closely linked than most people realize. Most mathematical questions are closely related to philosophical ones. What kind of reality do abstract numbers have, for instance, and what does it mean to say that a number is an imaginary number. I hope I'm not boring you, I tend to ramble on a bit sometimes."

"No, that's very interesting," I say, and I mean it. I wish I could stay there and talk with him about these things forever. But I'm kind of determined now to get Goedel, Escher, Bach. and I'm the kind of person who once she has determined to do something can't be shaken off of it easily. I'll try to finish this conversation soon, as much as I regret it, but I'll talk to him more later. "You were saying?" I resume.

"Well, I decided to look in my master's library, which was extremely large, and see if there were any books in the subject. Then suddenly I found myself in this very library, and I've spent most of my life there since. Luckily, I easily got work here, although it was some time before I got used to how huge this place is. I still haven't been able to understand just what brought me here. The consensus of most scholars here is that people are transported by axis-rotating wormholes. You see, there are different planes of reality, just like the real and imaginary axis on..."

"I know," I say, smiling. "I've thought about it a lot myself. Sorry." He looks like he isn't sure what to say, then genuinely smiles back. "Maybe that's how people come here," I continue. "They grapple with the outside reality this place represents, and then it draws them here somehow. And they're transformed into this plane, like points on a graph." I am almost ecstatic now, awed at the reality of what this place represents. Or is "reality" the right word?

"Yeah," says James, quite joyful himself. "Except that there are very few people here who think about these things. Most people here just ended up here without quite knowing how, although sometimes they were grappling with it spiritually in other ways, through meditation or something. You're right, though. The city does seem to draw people to it for some reason."

"Who runs this place, anyway?"

"No one knows," says James. "This city is infinitely large, literally. There are local administrators, but no one knows who's highest in the chain of command. The city almost runs like a natural process. Some people say that it's run by God." I raise my eyebrows a little at this.

"Are there any natives here, or was everyone who lives here transported from outside, like us?"

"Well," says James, "every now and then people just appear here. Sometimes they were translated from the real axis, sometimes they're just fictional beings who spontaneously appear here. As far as I can tell, everyone who lives here is either from outside or descended from people from outside. By the way, um, I should have asked out this earlier..." He pauses nervously.

"Yes?" I say, hoping I don't sound too snippy.

"Do you find me attractive?" he says. I'd been caught up with fascination about this city, but now I felt myself abruptly pulled back into personal reality, and it made me a little uncomfortable. I uneasily met his bright blue eyes. "Yes, I do," I tell him. I realize that I sound uneasy about it, as if I were about to go to the dentist or something. He doesn't seem to notice, though, because his jaw drops. "Um, thanks," he says. "I'm a little surprised, sorry, I haven't really had much success with women before. So, anyway, I guess I should help you find the book, and maybe you could meet me later?"

"Sure," I say. "I thought the library didn't have it?"

"Well, it probably does, although it's not anywhere I know. The library is actually infinitely large. To pinpoint any one book in it, we'll need to get to the card catalog. That's far away, and getting there might be kind of dangerous, what with the trolls and the bookworms and..." He trails off.

Infinitely large... wow. I can't even imagine how many new ideas and new worlds are contained in all the books here. I feel like I really could live here for the rest of my life. I reflexively stare up the shelves, which seem to get taller each time I look at them. It really is beautiful. It reminds me of when I was a child looking through my parents' huge numbers of old books which they kept in the basement. I wonder for a moment what my parents would think of this...

And then, I am hit by a wave of pain as I realize how far I am from my parents and my few friends in high school. I am trapped in an insane place literally worlds away. I never liked my hometown, but what if I never see it again? I have a frustrating feeling as if I am in a dream and desparately want to wake up but can't.

1. I decide to give up for now.
2. I decide to press on.

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