Library of Babel

My name is Jacob Riser, I'm 20 years old.

Currently, I'm unemployed, and honestly, I don't need a job.

I was adopted by the rich Riser family, and they had high expectations for me when I was younger. I turned out to be a bad investment if you could even call it that.

With my every need being taken care of, I committed myself to my hobbies.

Reading and writing novels

Reading novels I've loved even before I was adopted. The only thing I dislike about them is that at some point pretty much every novel pulls some bullshit where something that doesn't make sense with the laws of the world happens.

Or like when the main character gets an unexpected unexplained power-up mid battle because they need it to beat their foe who at this point of the story they shouldn't be able to beat.

The worst offender of this kind of bullshit is the inexplicable power of friendship, it's so stupid it's brain-dead.

These kinds of unrealistic situations I just can't stomach, In some cases, even if they are well written I still can't get over the bullshit.

But hey maybe that's just me. Maybe I am at fault for immersing myself and expecting my standards of realism to be met. Nah I'm right and everyone else is wrong.

One day I set out on a journey, I will write the first realistic novel. The world will have its laws and abide by them as it should.

Since that day I have written around one thousand chapters, I never published it and I never ended up naming the story, well I guess I did. I called it The Novel.

However, I ended up never finishing The Novel due to writer's block.

And another reason is that I had created too many plot threads I had no clue what to do with.

So I gave up.

***

Tonight I was returning home from a party drunk driving in my Porsche.

Now you'd think that I'd be driving like a madman, but I was really doing my best to appear like I'm not drunk.

But from the police's perspective no matter how I go about avoiding being stopped I can't hide the fact that I'm driving an expensive car in the dead of the night.

Now this might sound crazy but even the police have a brain, they can put two and two together and conclude that this doofus is probably drunk. Let's stop him.

Over the speakers, the police told me "Pull over".

Hearing this I thought to myself

'Ain't no way I'm getting fined for the third time this month'.

So in some stupid combination of my brain waves, I decided my best course of action was running away because my car could probably outspeed theirs.

What I failed to remember is that they had probably already taken a picture of my license plate.

Anyway the chase began, I quickly built up speed up to 400 km an hour. Once I couldn't see the police in my rearview I got off the highway.

I closed my eyes to rest them for around three seconds and when I opened them again I found myself 10 meters from crashing my beloved black Porsche into a building.

Just before I made contact with the building time froze suddenly and my vision became blurry.

I blinked and found myself in a hexagonal room with a smaller hexagonal hole in the ceiling and the ground.

No, it wouldn't be right to call this place a room, it's more of a tower.

The notable things in this place are that on every wall there is a dusty bookshelf and the stairs that go up and down the floor.

"Weird"

"What is this place"

Deciding to investigate, I picked up a dusty book randomly, opening this book I was even more weirded out because none of the text in the book was comprehensive.

The text in the book was just a bunch of incomprehensible noise, like completely randomly placed letters and symbols.

I opened another book and that book was also full of meaningless garbage.

I went to the hexagonal hole. When I looked up and down, there seemed to be an infinite amount of floors in both directions.

Suddenly a book fell from above, I tried to catch it but I failed.

After some time I saw the same book fall down the hole.

This time I caught it, I opened the first page and it read.

"Welcome to the Library of Babel, a place between fiction and reality, lies and truth. Where everything that could be written is written. From every single false or true fact of the past to every single possibility and impossibility of the future. Here in the sea of incomprehension, I alone search for meaning."

As I turned the page I was met with another wall of noise.

Before I had a chance to understand what was happening another book fell from above, and since I was prepared this time I caught it.

"Human Jacob Riser, I am sure you have many a question. The first thing that you should know is that I saved your life. The second thing is that now you face a dilemma. Option one, leave the Library and face certain death after returning to your world, I would be saddened if you chose this option after I went to the trouble of saving you."

I checked the next page just to be sure, and this time unlike the last there was more text.

"Option two, enter the world you created. Allow me to correct myself, enter the world you coincidentally perfectly described in the form of the novel that you used to write. A world exactly as you described it in your unfinished work exists. My only wish Is to see someone experience the reality of their fiction, if you Jacob Riser chose this option I Nameless keeper of this library would be eternally thankful to you."

I turned the page and was met with a single line of text that read.

"What shall it be Jacob Riser?"

After gathering my thoughts I said.

"I don't know who you are or if you're even speaking the truth that I will die if I don't choose the second option…"

"But if it is the truth, Is there no other way than option two"

After some time another book fell through the hole, opening this book it read.

"You are the one who chooses the truth you believe in"

That was the only readable sentence in the book everything else was just noise.

'According to this being? If I choose option one I will certainly die, and if I choose option two I will live but only in the world of The Novel.'

'I don't know why but I trust this Nameless keeper person, and since I don't feel like dying at 20 I guess I have to pick option two. That would mean that I have to let go of modern tech and civilization, but welcome in superpowers, magic, and the imminent destruction of the world that I foreshadowed but never got to writing it.'

'Uhh fuck it if it means I live a few more years then so be it'

"I choose option two"

The second those four words left my mouth I could feel a presence behind me. I wanted to turn around but my body didn't respond.

"Jacob Riser you have my eternal gratitude, and as such I will grant you a gift, you would recognize It as a System"

As this being was speaking my vision got blurry once more.

"Until we meet again"