Extract from the personal journal of Hammerspace Corporation operative #11255465 (A. Smith)
Late Night Thoughts – 23/02/2014
I find myself on this long and restless night, unable to sleep, wondering what I’m doing. Progress on collating and analysing the various extant pages of the manuscript remain slow, but patterns (or at least the illusion of them) seem to be forming. The author’s note suggests that his work was intended to accurately represent a library, by combining information from various books based on their Dewey system numbers, in most cases the first page of the first chapter and the last page of the last chapter. Clearly he didn’t have a problem with spoilers – doesn’t seem like anyway to appreciate a book. Regardless, he then mangles the text using special software, so that it becomes nothing but gibberish – to what purpose, I couldn’t tell you.
But then after a few chapters (or sides as he calls them) in this fashion, it seems that he goes off-piste, forgetting his carefully regimented system and adding books seemingly at random, possibly from his own collection – assuming of course his collection includes young adult fiction, H.P. Lovecraft or a book containing the work of both Lords Tennyson and Shelley; all highly unorthodox, even for the Dean Librarian of the Psychedelic Monks, whatever the hell that even means. Some of the later entries appear to be made up of contemporary rock and pop song lyrics mashed together. Why?
My handler Dan doesn’t especially care about the inconsistencies or my (admittedly dubious) theories as to their purpose, and says his superior wants me to link my findings back to Borges, specifically the Library of Babel. Why would he want that? What does Borges have to do with any of this, apart from both the Psychedelic Monk and Borges both being Argentinian librarians with a predilection for navel-gazing? To continue, why the library? Specifically, why this or indeed any library? What’s the significance? Over and over, I keep coming back to the question: why?
It feels as though I’m slowly succumbing to a wasting illness. Is it the sudden change in weather from cold to hot? Should probably cut down on The Stuff – the Gold Lotus. I know it’s not good for my workload, but it’s all that’s keeping me sane at the moment. Watching wispy clouds of it escape my lips and swim round my head like Koi carp is soothing – until I remember how I can barely get the scratch together to make a single lousy joint of the stuff and find myself lapsing into a debilitating misanthropic fugue.
Or else, it’s the possibility of the Sharp Dressed Man exerting his influence on me. Sightings of him are occurring more frequently, almost always accompanied by a sense of mortal and existential dread. His very presence causes me to come out in hives and my sinuses to ache. Is he investigating me? Should I be investigating him? A phrase repeats over and over in my ears like a swarm of cicadas: “The Weirdness will eat your brain, and gain your knowledge.”
Need more Q-tips. Ears ringing again.