NEAL STEPHENSON

“In assuming that it was very tall, you are relying on an obsolete reading. The tower is described, literally, as ‘its top with the heavens.’ For many centuries, this was interpreted to mean that its top was so high that it was in the heavens. But in the last century or so, as actual Babylonian ziggurats have been excavated, astrological diagrams-pictures of the heavens-have been found inscribed into their tops.”

“Oh. Okay, so the real story is that a tower was built with heavenly diagrams carved into its top. Which is far more plausible than a tower that reaches to the heavens.”

“More than plausible,” the Librarian reminds him. “Such structures have actually been found.”

“Anyway, you’re saying that when Cod got angry and came down on them, the tower itself wasn’t affected. But they had to stop building the tower because of an informational disaster-they couldn’t talk to each other.”

“‘Disaster’ is an astrological term meaning ‘bad star,” the Librarian points out. “Sorry-but due to my internal structure, I’m a sucker for non sequiturs.”

“That’s okay, really,” Him says. “You’re a pretty decent piece of ware. Who wrote you, anyway?”

“For the most part I write myself,” the Librarian says. “That is, I have the innate ability to learn from experience. But this ability was originally coded into me by my creator.”

“Who wrote you? Maybe I know him,” Hiro says. “I know a lot of hackers.”

“I was not coded by a professional hacker, per se, but by a researcher at the Library of Congress who taught himself how to code,” the Librarian says. “He devoted himself to the common problem of sifting through vast amounts of irrelevant detail in order to find significant gems of information. His name was Dr. Emanuel Lagos.”

“I’ve heard the name,” Hiro says. “So he was kind of a metalibrarian. That’s funny, I guessed he was one of those old CIA spooks who hangs around in the CIC.”

“He never worked with the CIA.”

“Okay. Let’s get some work done. Look up every piece of free information in the Library that contains L. Bob Rife and