Normal texts: My prompt,

Red text with grey backgrounds: GPT3-generated

Walking towards the middle,

I passed a labyrinth of corridors and stairways. I finally arrived at a vast circular chamber with a diameter of some hundred yards. In the center was a large spherical clockwork. I sat down in a chair of crystal. The walls were covered with shelves which held books of all sizes. I opened one of these volumes. It was in French. I understood nothing. I examined another.

Outside of the chamber

there are several others. In the first one there are twenty-two shelves each one containing twenty-two books of uniform format. In the second there are twenty-four shelves. In the third there are twenty-five and so on to infinity. The shelves are not but the books are. The books are but the shelves are not.

The corridors and stairways lead to

nowhere. The air is fetid. The walls are covered with damp stains. The floors are covered with thick, soft, grayish-white carpet. The ceilings are low. The windows are small and few. The sun does not shine in the corridors. The air is always gray. The light is always feeble. The silence is always profound.

The style of the clockwork is

perhaps the most admirable of all possible styles For it combines in a unique manner the virtues of the abstract and the concrete. The spherical form of the gears implies their roundness; the absence of any straight line in the spherical form implies their circularity; the uniform color of the gears implies their unity; the uniform movement of the hands implies their rationality; the impossibility of finding a point.

// OutTakes

chamber there are several others. In the first one there are twenty-two shelves each one containing twenty-two books of uniform format. In the second there are twenty-four shelves. In the third there are twenty-five and so on to infinity. The shelves are not but the books are. The books are but the shelves are not.

The corridors and stairways lead to nowhere. The air is stagnant. I am lost. My only consolation is that I am in Hell and not in Heaven. My solitude is broken. I hear a voice which I know too well. It is a voice which I have heard for the last time on the day of my departure from this world. It is the voice of the Tsar. I stop. I wait. I speak. I do not exist.

In the upper part of the room there are more shelves. The whole space is perfectly transparent and of acoustic perfection. Nothing can be imagined more perfect or more impenetrable. A librarian who wishes to discover the nature of the universe would do well to start from the first shelf and work his way upward. The infinite shelves can only be infinite. The universe is justified.