Chapter 0

Subject: Chapter 0
From: alexa-blue
Date: Apr 22 2005 10:13AM

O king of time and substance and cipher of the century! In Babylonia didst thou attempt to make me lose my way in a labyrinth of brass with many stairways, doors, and walls; now the Powerful One has seen fit to allow me to show the mine, which has no stairways to climb, nor doors to force, nor weaving galleries to wander through, nor walls to impede thy passage.

-- Jorge Luis Borges, The Two Kings and the Two Labyrinths

When Angela found the map lying loose at the end of an otherwise empty shelf (there are many such shelves in the Library, but few have yielded such signficant findings), there was a handwritten note scratched on a piece of notebook paper. It read, "I am nowhere. Thank God I have the map." At first she was confused, because she could not see the map for what it was, but only, rather, as a well worn piece of parchment, entirely blank on both sides. But realization soon dawned upon her, not full, but an instinctive notion that she had found something important -- perhaps even (because, fond as she was of knowledge, she also understood the value of material wealth) valuable. She burned the note and stamped its ashes out on the floor, placed the map gingerly in her notebook, and left the room.