This short story is taken from Riffing on Strings (Scriblerus, 2008) and is reproduced with kind permission of the publishers.

Not long after the Fourth String Theory Revolution, the Institute of Higher Dimensions made plans to house the exponentially-growing collection of string theory papers in a new library. At the insistence of the President of the Institute, who specializes in Kaluza-Klein particles, which travel primarily in other dimensions, the Library Task Force held a competition for the design of the much-anticipated structure. String theorists around the world, unable to keep up with their rapidly changing field, applauded the idea and submitted as many proposals as the leading architects.

A sampling of the submitted suggestions gives some flavor of the proposals:

it should be symmetrical, “for obvious reasons;”

it should be modular to allow for expansion;

it should be tall enough to have a clear view of the surrounding landscape;

a virtual library would suffice, perhaps in the form of a café that’s open twenty-four hours for string theorists to converse;

all dimensions of the library should be built in integer multiples of the Planck length;

it should be holographic and impervious to hypothetical particles like tachyons;

it should be in the shape of a six-dimensional Calabi-Yau manifold;

it should be beautiful, “like the theory.”

Many proposals argued that given the unwieldy amount of literature, the only viable proposals were those that included compactification of manuscripts and storage in higher dimensions.


After the deadline, the Library Task Force (LTF) whittled down the enormous number of proposals by dividing them into three categories:

realistic;

imaginable;

promising.

Proposals that could not be categorized were eliminated. Proposals that fell into multiple categories were ranked more highly and in this way, the winning entry was to be chosen.

However, when the LTF discovered that the number of official proposals, 857, was a prime number, they decided instead to honor all proposals. Rather than constructing a building of astonishing complexity, which suited the potential contractors because of the ongoing slump in the construction sector, the LTF reasoned that it was simply a matter of scaling.

The main collection of the library will be housed in a series of pairs of five-story circular towers connected by an infinite hallway. This tower duality (linked at the first, third, and fifth floors) will contain coupled versions of string theory scrolls (see below) and enable the exploration of the theory’s various symmetries. While there has been some concern about how the length of the hallway will affect the time it takes to retrieve individual string theory manuscripts, it is expected that because of the storage benefits this difficulty will eventually be overcome through the creation and duplication of virtual catalogues, and building structures like tunnels and “worldtubes” or, simply, additional entrances.

Construction of the library began immediately after this decision. A chain link fence went up around the Institute’s under-used athletic center, a wrecking ball was brought in, earth was moved, and amid the sounds of heavy machinery, the library evolved from imaginary to reality.

With the first stage of construction underway, the LTF shifted its attention to the problem of organizing the library holdings. Because of the nature of string theory, which rewards imaginative multi-dimensional thinking, it was decided that new papers and preprints would be reduced in size and transferred onto scrolls so that as many as six papers could be scanned at once as the scroll was unfurled. Comparison to the great Library of Alexandria was inevitable and intentional.

All nine LTF members agreed on the idea of the scrolls, but how should they be catalogued? Again, several possibilities were considered:

randomly;

alphabetically by subject or first author;

chronologically by submission date;

hierarchically, in terms of either degree of difficulty or energy scale of the paper’s fundamental axioms;

categorically, using mappings and arrows (known respectively as “functors” and “morphisms”).

Though the first four possibilities had their merits, the LTF agreed that an organization based on category theory, recently developed by mathematicians, would provide maximum usefulness for the library’s collection. In particular, the functors and morphisms, like conceptual facilitators, would allow unforeseen connections to be made between the different papers and possibly lead to novel theoretical developments whose predictions could one day be within reach of today’s (or tomorrow’s) particle accelerators.

Having put the organization of the collection on solid footing, the LTF next hired its head librarian, Richard Feynman (selected from 75 applicants), formerly the manager of the Institute of Higher Dimensions reading room. In short order, Feynman put his stamp on the position through a series of high-level purchases, including several other libraries. Rumors abound that The Einstein Papers Project, in Pasadena, California, the Stanford library, and all thirty-seven math and physics libraries of the University of California system would be moved to the recently opened library. Funding for these purchases is thought to be coming from government grants, anonymous private donors, and the first fifty years of late fees of library materials.

Other known purchases include first editions of the works of Lewis Carroll, Edwin Abbott’s Flatland, the complete works of Italo Calvino, Jorge Luis Borges, Stanislaw Lem and the Oulipo writers. Several modern art museum curators have also reported interest in their collections of René Magritte, M. C. Escher and the entire Cubist oeuvre. It is noted that decorating the walls of an infinite hallway is a daunting task.

Though the LTF claims that “great progress” has been made in the construction of the library, no one seems to know how far it is from completion, nor is anyone willing to make a prediction of when it will be fully operational. Despite the ongoing construction (and delays due to scaling problems), the construction fence, whose perimeter had been extended outwards on a near monthly basis, has now been peeled back and the dictum above the great-arched entranceway is clearly visible: “Let None But Geometers Enter Here.” Researchers have begun to peruse the curved shelves within the circular towers, borrow materials, collide with each other while pacing up and down the infinite hallway deep in thought, and even write equation-graffiti in the bathrooms. As expected, the most popular place is the Calabi-Yau Café, where impromptu symposia are held during its round-the-clock open hours. Aware that the library has already grown large enough that parts of its collection may never be explored, Feynman shrugged, “String theory is finally getting the home it deserves.”

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