19

Setzer's Labyrinth

 

Ts'ui Pen must have said once: I am withdrawing to write a book. And another time: I am withdrawing to construct a labyrinth. Every one imagined two works; to none did it occur that the book and the maze were one and the same thing.

-Jorge Luis Borges, “The Garden of the Forking Paths”

 

There would be no time for rest, for we had no idea if we were still being tailed. Nor did we know for certain who was tailing us. Although I had fairly reasoned that it probably was the Devorants – the same Order I had assumed murdered Setzer – I could not know for certain. I was also not entirely certain I could trust Angelo, for although he seemed to be as genuinely frightened and confused as I was, it could have been yet another of his elaborate acts, the kind he is more than capable of putting on to re-acquire books and make his social way seamlessly throughout the world at every one of its levels. Now was not the time for severe doubt to cripple me, but rather a time to take action and inch that much closer to the resolution of this mystery. To that end, I led Angelo to Setzer's apartment.

“Maybe this isn't such a hot idea,” complained Angelo. “The man has been murdered, and I would think there would be some kind of ongoing investigation. That means cops, and that also means they'd probably be digging for some clues at his home.”

But, as it turned out, there was no police presence. More surprising, his front door was unlocked, so I let myself in. The interior was steeped in gloom, and nothing seemed disturbed outside of normal everyday use. Some unfinished dates were wrinkling at the bottom of a glass bowl, a third of a bottle of wine was left but conscientiously re-corked, and everything looked as it should. However, it was not my intention to play the curator of Setzer's knack for tastefully moneyed minimalist décor. I prompted Angelo to follow me a bit further, down that corridor I had walked down just the once, on that first meeting with Setzer, to the rooms marked A, B, and C. In the shoddy workshop-esque central room that connected all three other rooms, there was a small pile of messy notes that I examined.

“This is glamourous,” said Angelo. “I'd have expected a tidier space for the head of a so-called Order.”

I hushed him and added, “This is hardly the time to get in your professional digs. The man is dead, and I aim to find out why so that we can find out who is after us.”

Angelo grunted and I began reading the pile of notes I could only assume were written in Setzer's hand:

 

Joel Barlow, The Vision of Columbus

 

That Hartford swine with his gaudy paean, that wretched little token-piece and parlour-antic philosophical pretension he called his book. Oh, widely read, hailed as a high act of literature... .But then he had the nerve to extend it to a full epic, the failed Columbiad. This, of course, furnished from the Library as a possible book. But not all books in the Library have merit.

 

“One centered system, one all-ruling soul,

Live thro' the parts, and regulate the whole.”

 

Such maundering claptrap! Nine books of it!

 

(what is behind the boards?)

 

Pollard(?) An Essay on Colophons, The Gentleman's Book of Polite Literature (1788), Maghur Empire (15??), Check Sothebys auction catalogue, A manual on physiognomy and the five divisions of countenance, A History of the Martyrs, Senecae Tragoedie (1679?)

 

-Some minor damage on the headband, a few wormholes and foxing. 8vo. Obv. early rebound, attempt to remove ex-libris stamp. Fair to poor condition.

-Retrieved from estate sale F.R.N, 27 vo.s, Only 4 of moderate value.

 

And so on. Setzer seemed to be making notes on recent acquisitions, but nothing particularly occult. These were just the rather disappointing notes of a book collector and little more. His criticism of the Barlow text was also none too shocking either – in fact, I agreed with his opinion. His interest for what was behind the boards of the cover is little more than a book-collector's trick where we uncover the error pages stuffed by publishers in the hopes that one of the leaves will prove to be of more value than the book itself.

“Gimaldi, come take a look at this,” Angelo beckoned from another bench. I replaced the notes and went to him. I could tell by the tone of his voice that he had encountered something awry. “Here,” he said, giving me a loose sheaf of handwritten pages, directing me to the last page.

 

-Castellemare goes into hiding.

-Once the murder takes place, Gimaldi and Angelo preyed upon by mysterious visitors. They'll come to the apartment and enter the labyrinth. At that point -

 

And that was where it tantalizingly left off, just like that, plopped into an eerie present time. I gave a cursory glance at the preceding pages, and written upon them were all the events that had taken place since I met Castellemare. More off-putting still were some of the descriptions of my private actions when I was certain I was alone, including a list of my thoughts and feelings at the time, phrased a bit more eloquently than I was capable.

“What does this mean?” I asked, but somehow knew that Angelo had as much of an idea as I did - which is to say, none.

“The whole fucking thing, written down, like a goddamn stage play! Where are the other pages? If I'm being strung along some kind of chintzy drama, I want to know what happens next,” he said, now turning his attention to searching everywhere in that sparse space.

I thought on this for a time before stating, “Setzer was an artificer. I am beginning to think that he scripted everything, but I have a hard time understanding how he got this much detail, and why everything proceeded so seamlessly according to script. And why we would he write in his own murder without trying to prevent it?”

Angelo had given up when he turned up nothing. I turned the last page and read something very faintly written on the bottom margin: and then they came and took the rest of the pages. Angelo kicks over bench in anger.

Just then, Angelo did just that. The pine bench clattered on the floor and was split in one of its distressed cross-slats.

“Angelo, calm down. Look at this,” I said, and I pointed to the writing. He immediately went pale. I took the pages with me and had an inkling to check the now upended bench. As fortune would have it, there were a few more pages stapled to its inner planks. Just like in the movies, it was some sort of code.

“What's that?”

“I think it's a code,” I replied. Angelo gruffly snatched it from my hands but did not fare any better than I could in decoding it. “I'm not sure what it means,” I offered.

Heaving an exasperated sigh, Angelo said, “Then I suppose we aren't left with much choice: Gimaldi and Angelo enter the labyrinth.” He pointed to the doors.

“Are you sure you didn't have anything to do with this?” I said, indicating the pages of our script. “You could just be acting it out according to the director's plans – whoever that director is.”

“Gimaldi suggests to Angelo that they go to Detroit,” Angelo read off mockingly.

It seemed as though both of us would have equal reason not to trust the other. A hundred silver tongues of warning and foreboding were wagging in concert, beseeching me not to go beyond any of those doors. What lay behind them I had only seen in sketch, that one time, and it was most likely they had changed. Did not Setzer inform me that he and Castellemare were merging libraries? Was that not the revealing colophon that would explain Setzer's murder, this eerie deterministic script that detailed every one of my movements since I first clapped eyes on Castellemare? Was Setzer even dead? I had not bothered to inquire of myself if I believed Angelo's words to be true, but accepted them wholesale. It would have been callous of me to demand to see the body in order to confirm Angelo's pronouncement, and perhaps he knew that, lending him the temporary bond of safety to commit this ruse. It would have been a lie to say that I wasn't still sowing seeds of doubt about my ex-colleague – or, rather, there was too much in what he said and did that didn't add up, compounding doubt. Was this an elaborate setup, Angelo paid handsomely on the sly to play a role, lie about a murder, only for him to commit one here in this labyrinth? It was too late now: we were here and had to press on, not leaving me any opportunity to corroborate the details of Setzer's alleged murder. Why hadn't I investigated this, checked the local newspaper or searched online for news of a murder in Detroit? I would have made a lousy detective.

The memory of what I had read previously on the bus was beginning to superimpose its pattern on the present. But instead of the teacher-Gimaldi and student-narrator taking up the challenge of a more wooden Castellemare, it was me and a potentially treacherous man under the employ of a Castellemare who had gone mysteriously missing – and, yet, setting the challenge in absentia, in his own indirect and far-removed way. I could not be certain of this, but it did fit the pattern.

These thoughts were now barreling through my mind, now that panic had urged me to consider them at the precipice of what could have been my end. The gravity of what was before me had broken the idle logjam in my reasoning. I came to realize that it was merely circumstance as to why I seemed to so frequently place blind trust in Angelo, in Castellemare, in Setzer, perhaps even Leo if he was somehow involved in all of this. I could not say it was paranoia, but rather a desperation and hunger to know who was the puppet master in this cryptic menagerie. Who were the players, the played, and who the playwrights?

I thought back to that labyrinth I had read about, how the story's Gimaldi and the narrator ambled for days within it, encountering books I recognized as fictitious or even common in a way unintended by the narrator who desired, and failed, to inject mystery through the tack-on heaviness of Latinate titles, shallowly presented histories. Perhaps more unsettling was the memory of a Borges story I had read long ago, “The Garden of the Forking Paths”: in one version, I kill you. In another, you kill me. Perhaps here, in this labyrinth, only one of us would emerge. Perhaps I was destined to kill Angelo – a thought so preposterous given that I was hardly the murdering type. But, then again, my entire life from Vatican City up to this point has been a series of impossible moments and inconceivable events. I went from lapsed lecturer and entrepreneurial rare book hawker to being a hired thief for a library outside of reality and a fugitive from the deceits and possible vengeance of secret orders I knew nearly nothing about. Had I been seeking a bit of extra thrill value in my life, this was clearly not what I would have chosen. I was more surprised with myself that I had become so deeply drawn into this mystery rather than choosing to walk away – which I probably could have at any point. Of course, it was vanity that most likely drew me in, but for all I knew my name appearing in forbidden books foretelling my role in some upcoming 'grand synthesis' could have been forged post facto by Castellemare and company to ensure that I stuck around. For what reason, I was still unsure.

Angelo was becoming unnerved by my silence and reflection. “Are we going in, or are we going to sit here and figure out pi?”

“I'm sorry. I was lost in thought. We really ought to get a move on.”

“Which door?”

“The one with the mystery prize, I suppose. Setzer was an artificer, and so I think it would be a good idea to go through the archives of the fictional volumes.”

“Do you know which door leads where?”

“Yes. One is the room of unfinished novels, another the room of books that were left unfinished by readers, and the last a room for anonymizing books by effacing authorship.”

Angelo sniffed at all this. “So, which door?”

“The door marked with the 'A' – not because it would be the convenient place to start, but because it is the one closest to Setzer's function as an artificer.”

The door was very well hand-crafted, politely recessed with an elaborate, almost Carolingian 'A' in gold leaf on brass, bolted into the wood upon a placard of dull metal. It differed from when I saw it before. There was a circuitous relief in wood depicting the usual elements of French restrained Baroque ornamentation: vine leaves and winged cherubs playing harps and blowing horns – the whole of it symmetrical, an ordered mimicry of nature. I consulted the code papers having forgotten them. There was only one legible line before the writing fell into pure code:

 

The crime of Gutenberg is not righted by a return of singular inscriptions.

 

“What do you suppose that means?” asked Angelo, peering over my shoulder.

“To be honest, it sounds like a Luddite's lament, really: a sentimental longing for a time now gone when books were written by hand instead of reproduced through mechanical means.”

With some force, I was able to push open the door and enter that most arcane of spaces, that which lay beyond Door A. We were immediately confronted with the strange geometry of the room, which was pie shaped. On the left and right were two doors, and lodged in the thinnest wedge of the room were four circular shelves, each about two feet high. The bottom one was moving at a considerable click, while the one above it was slower. The one above that was even slower, and the top one seemed almost stationary. There were six equal sized books on each shelf.

“A revolving display,” mused Angelo.

“Yes, but I am sure there is a reason as to why these four shelves are moving at different speeds. Let's tarry here for a while – we cannot risk missing out on any clues.”

I looked at the books on the shelves. On their spines were not titles or authors, but a series of 6 letters and numbers with no intelligible order. I tried to pull one out, but they seemed wedged in too tightly, perhape glued together. I consulted the code papers and looked for anything to suggest anything remotely four in number.

 

Chiffre 1: 3(2)6, 6(3)18, 18(4)72, 72(5)360

 

The number 360 resonated with me for obvious reasons; this was a circular shelf rotating on a central axis, performing its revolution of 360 degrees. The pattern to the numbers would have been rather easily solved by a child writing their elevenses. The relationship between the numbers was particularly evident: 3 x 2 = 6, 6 x 3 = 18, 18 x 4 = 72, and so forth. The sum of each multiplication would then be multiplied by a number ascending by one to eventually result in 360. The relationship of the simple equation was no problem to deduce, but what did it have to do with these rotating shelves? It then dawned on me.

“Angelo, do you have a watch?”

“Yeah.”

“On my signal, count me off one full minute.”

Angelo did as I asked, and I kept my focus on one book on the top shelf. Angelo announced the end of the minute, which corresponded precisely to the book I had been keeping track of disappearing into the left hand side of the wall, revolving away from view. I repeated the experiment with the second shelf from the top and discovered that three books rotated from view. The shelf below that tucked away 12 books, while the fast-moving bottom shelf caused books to disappear at one a second.

“I have it,” I declared. “Each of these shelves has 360 books, or 1440 books total. The fast-moving shelf at the bottom rotates them in and out of view every second. The sums on this code sheet are all divisible by 6 in order to determine the number of seconds.”

“I don't entirely follow you.”

“Let's call the top shelf 'A' and the bottom shelf 'D'. A's sum makes a book appear to view every minute. Shelf B gives us 3 books in that minute, or one every 20 seconds. Shelf C gives us 12 books a minute, or one every 5 seconds. While the rather rapid shelf D displays them at a rate of one per second.”

“Then how do you know there are 360 books per shelf?”

“Simple deduction and observation. In just a few minutes, the first book I saw on shelf D will be returning.”

We waited out the minutes, and my reasoning proved correct.

“Okay,” Angelo figured. “We are always presented with 6 books per shelf for a total of 24 at any given moment, leaving 1416 we cannot see until the shelves rotate them into our view. Heh, 24 visible books corresponding to the hours in the day: how numerologically predictable. But what is the purpose?”

“That, I am unsure of.”

I took out a pencil and wrote on the blank side of the code papers.

 

6 books / shelf, 4 shelves = 24 visible books at time T

Each book has 6 characters on its spine (A-Z and 0-9). Total visible characters = 144.

1440 books total, characters total = 8640

1+4+4+0 = 9, 8+6+4+0 = 18 -> 1+8 = 9

Chiffre 1's sums all equal 9, except for the first sum that equals 6: 18, 72, 360 (all add up in numerology to 9).

I referred to the next page of the code and discovered a small table circled in red with a hard to decipher note: tablature, 9 sigs.

 

A	G	M	S	Y	4
5	B	H	N	T	Z
0	6	C	I	O	U
V	1	7	D	J	P
Q	W	2	8	E	K
L	R	X	3	9	F

 

 

 

“Does this mean anything to you?” I asked Angelo, showing him the table.

He took it from my hand for closer inspection, looking for some kind of intelligible pattern. I couldn't see one. He laughed as if the discovery was too obvious.

“Gimaldi, do you not see the pattern? Start with A and run down diagonally. B, C, D, E, F... And then it starts again at the top with G down to K, with L having no place but at the beginning of the bottom row. All of them are here, A to Z, 0 to 9. If you wanted to predict a seventh row at the bottom, you would just have to subtract 5 steps... L would be G and so on. If you wanted to predict a seventh column on the right, just add 6 steps so that four would become A, and so on. It's a code for a combination lock. So,” Angelo took the pencil from my hand and drew:

 

 

 

 

“Think of that tumbler lock. They are circular – much like our mysterious shelves here. How many letters and numbers will there be per box?”

“36?”

“Yes, but why? Look carefully again at the table. If I subtract five steps on each row, look how I can continue the table beginning from the first position:

 

AGMSY4

5BHNTZ

06CIOU

V17DJP

QW28EK

LRX39F

 

GMSY4A

BHNTZ5

6CIOU0

17DJPV

W28EKQ

RX39FL

 

MSY4AG

HNTZ5B

CIOU06

7DJPV1

28EKQW

X39FLR

 

SY4AGM

NTZ5BH

IOU06C

DJPV17

8EKQW2

39FLRX

 

Y4AGMS

TZ5BHN

OU06CI

JPV17D

EKQW28

9FLRX3

 

4AGMSY

Z5BHNT

U06CIO

PV17DJ

KQW28E

FLRX39

 

“So, there you have it. The table shows us 36 characters in the combination of a total of 216. When I turn a combination lock and display A, all the rest are also in position, but hidden. If you like your number nine hypothesis, 216 in numerology comes up to that as well.”

“Yes, but that doesn't explain why there are only four revolving shelves. There ought to be six,” I countered. “If this is the tumbler lock, these shelves, then how are we able to control the orientation, or... Oh, I don't know.”

Angelo tapped his head and shook the code pages knowingly. “It's a good thing I wrote out what the entire combination would be. It's going to help us immensely. This table has already given us 6 codes for free. We've been able to, through simple arithmetic, get the remaining 30.”

Angelo walked to the shelves, comparing his notes to the books that were rotating into view. He pounced on one that came out easily and tossed it to me. I read the spine: LRX39F. That was the sequence of letters and numbers in the sixth row of the code table.

“This may take a while,” said Angelo. “Especially with the slower-moving shelves. But I'm going to assign you 18 books to keep an eye out for, while I scope out the remaining 17.”

And that is what we did, a task that was far from simple since the sequence of numbers and letters were not easily memorable. After a few hours, mostly due to our missing books that rotated too quickly on the bottom shelf, we had 36 books.

“Now what?” I asked. “I don't think we can give ourselves the luxury of time to read them all.”

“We might not have to,” Angelo said, not revealing what he had in mind. He opened the first book on top of his pile and we saw that the number of pages was 216. The same went for all the volumes, each uniform in their number of pages. However, we were stuck yet again when considering the content, which was written in the same unintelligible code, seemingly a random scattering of numbers and letters.

We had come so far, but frustration was getting the better of us. Angelo's earlier flash of insight had not recurred in aiding us. Whereas he had cracked the previous code with incredible celerity, this new and longer code baffled us both. I decided to return to our guide, the code papers, retracing our steps in case we may have overlooked some vital key.

“Angelo, what do you suppose this means?” I asked, pointing to the note on the combination table.

“Tablature, 9 sigs,” he recited, as if this would bring about an answer. For him, it did produce another sudden insight. “Aha! Any bookbinder would know what this means. Sigs is just short for signatures. As you know, when a book is bound, one large leaf is printed on both sides, and then folded, making four pages, recto verso. Nine signatures would yield 36 pages – there's our friend number 36 again. Each of the tables I drew up from the original have nine signatures each, or 36 pages. Six books, one for each table. Do you not see? The mysterious seventh book will be the product of six prior ones, put in their proper arrangement.”

I was admittedly quite impressed with the deftness of his thought, but we were still stuck. “Angelo, we have 36 books here, each with 216 pages. That's nearly 8000 pages from which we are to – do what? - cherry pick 216 pages?”

“There's only the equivalent of one correct book, but it is scattered over 36 volumes. Our task will be to find the right six pages out of each of them. Look at the table again and break it down into bookbinding sheets, and start folding them:

 

 

AL	GR	MX	S3	Y9	4F
5Q	BW	H2	N8	TE	ZK
0V	61	C7	ID	OJ	UP

 

 

 

“And then, fold once more, left on right:

 

 

AL4F	GRY9	MXS3
5QZK	BWTE	H2N8
0VUP	61OJ	C7ID

 

 

 

“This leaves us with nine signatures. What remains here is for us to follow the code. The signatures in these cells are actually textual coordinates.”

“I don't follow.”

“I know. We have to repeat this same process for all six tables, the ones I deduced from the original.”

We did as he suggested, constructing the remaining five. The coordinate system led us to pinpoint the right pages according to book and section, and, as it turned out, Angelo's system worked since every book yielded up exactly six pages. Despite my reluctance to damage books, we tore these pages from their binding and collected them together. Another curious similarity emerged: on the overleaf of each page was the same acronym: o.p., n.d., n.p, n.a.

“What do you think this signifies? Are these the initials of the authors?” Angelo asked.

I thought on it a while before offering up my speculation, which seemed spot on at the time. “These are the bibliographic details of each page. It says its state, time, and place.”

“Come again?”

“O.p. means 'out of print.' N.d. means 'no date'. N.p. means 'no place', and n.a. means 'no author'. We are dealing here with a book that has no printed origin and no known authorship.”

“Judging by what seems to be a random collection of orthographic marks, perhaps it was produced by a machine. You did tell me that Setzer had a variety of machines for that very purpose.”

“That I did. But the fact that each of these pages has this series of acronyms on the bottom of their verso side suggests quite strongly that your decoding system was correct. But now that we have this book, what do we do with it?”

“I say this room has been exhausted of any further clues,” Angelo said. “It may be time to mosey on. The sticky question is in choosing the way. We have a door to our right and another on the left.”

“I don't want to abandon the significance of the numbers 9, 36, and 216. As much as I loath numerology, it seems to be the key to Setzer's domain. There is a riddle in these three numbers. Not to mention, of course, the coincidence of six books forming a seventh and this notion of a synthesis formed of six parts.”

“We'll need to consider this in more detail, but only when we can assess from a larger collection of clues. What remains is what door we are to enter. But, since both seem equally feasible, perhaps the labyrinth is determined to split us up.”

Perhaps in more ways than Angelo had let on. Perhaps the labyrinth would indeed separate us in both space and partnership, our cooperation dissolving into a heated and mistrustful enmity where only one would emerge alive. The type was set, and this may be what Setzer had in mind – a man whose very name was derived from the Yiddish “Zetser”, meaning “typesetter.” A somewhat apropos name, the kind where what is assigned at birth becomes a destiny. The two doors leading out of the room were identical save for a faint inscription on each: timor and amor.

“A Machiavellian touch,” smirked Angelo. “To prefer to be feared rather than loved, the true political expedient.”

“I propose that we cover more ground by parting, although we do risk losing each other.”

“That was done a long time ago, if ever there was communion,” Angelo said rather cryptically. “Your idea is sound enough. Keep in mind, though, that these are one-way doors: they lock behind us, forcing us deeper into this maze with no chance of retracing our steps. I will enter timor and you should choose the other.”

Angelo was intent on his idea, and despite my recurring doubts about his allegiances, he had thus far been on the mark about the code. I saw him open the door and enter just as I was doing the same at the opposite end of the room. He allowed me to be the carrier of the book we had collated.

Amor. What is it to be loved too much? For Angelo, he would have to consider the tragic outcome of what it was to be feared too much. These were my speculations, in a particular frame of mind that was being set by a man now murdered and the labyrinth he had woven perhaps for us. The first room was, in my interpretation, a testament to self-love: a monstrous speculum, mirrors on every surface. Greeted with an infinity of my own reflections, I knew there to be little love lost for myself. There was most likely a deeper meaning to this room, one that was already announced in the Backstory, jumbled and superficial as the narrative was. All thought, all reflections, were in vain, for every thought that attempted to triumph over a question to obtain an answer would only produce more thoughts, more questions, more doubt. Every thought would only bring us back to ourselves, our projections upon a world without actually seeing it, only seeing ourselves. I saw no other possible interpretation at that given moment. I wagered that Angelo's first room would be identical to this one, an enormous speculum where the fear of oneself and the infinite multiplication of thoughts without answer or cease produce a kind of terror, the dissolution of one's reason in this infinity of reflections. Etched into glass, upon the lintel of a door leading away from this vertiginous room, read an inscription: a door, a mirror, a book, a tunnel, a staircase...

What this meant I could only guess. The cover of a book was its door, its pages a collection of mirrors, and the attainment of knowledge was the staircase leading up or down. This was what I idly conjectured. I pushed on beyond this door in search of more answers. In a corner, where the mirrored edges of floor, walls, and ceiling met, was a small folded broadside, upon it was printed Tain. It was placed there for perhaps no other reason but for the benefit of my reading. There was no mention of the author, and it ran only a few pages:

 

 

 

If there was a lesson to the story, and one relevant to this room, it was a bit too abstract for me to consider (vanity? Self-love in mirrors? Was that the motif of the Amor door, or was the mirror more suggestive of the Library’s confining yet infinite expression through reflection?). I hadn't the time, and since my way forward was not barricaded by another code to be figured out, I simply collected the text with the others – the code papers and the torn leaves from the previous room; perhaps, I thought, it might have come in handy.

The second room was a vast theatre of some kind as it sloped toward a centre stage. In place of seating was only the ribbing of steps. Again, I was struck with the physical impossibility of the space, this tesseract where the interior was greater than the container. In the middle of this theatre was an enormous and complicated machine composed of antique parts: gears, wheels, belts, all welded and bolted together in a fashion that did not announce its function. Upon closer inspection, I saw a feeder at the top and a rolling belt at its bottom side. Paper was fed into the top, and out the side was conveyed completed book blocs. The machine, in Latin, bore a placard that read: “for the love of the machine”, or something to that effect. Was this monstrously sized apparatus the same one Setzer used to produce the artificial books? The machine was suffering its rhythmic labours, unassisted by any human intervention. I followed the conveyor belt to a smaller porthole on the right side of the room. Beside it was another door. I decided to follow the path of these books to see where they would end up.

Through that door and into a black space. There was a single walkway with guard rails suspended over what looked to be an abyss. The conveyor belt split in two thanks to a collating wedge; the one branch of the belt continued rolling across the chasm into the opposite wall, while the other came to its end as roughly half the produced books would be consigned into that abyss. A sacrifice of some kind? Paying tribute to nothingness? I looked up and did not see a ceiling – only a dark emptiness that seemed to extend infinitely both up and down. I followed the narrow walkway to the other side where I was greeted by yet another door.

I took stock of my possessions. In my shoulder bag, among the usual quotidian accoutrements, were a few books: the Backstory, 7^th Meditation, the excerpted derivative of those 36 books in the anteroom, code papers, and Tain. These texts would prove useless, as nothing could have prepared me for what I found on the other side of this door, any more than I could at the turn of the first page of the second book.