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Old 2008-06-08, 14:26   Link #1053
AdmiralTigerclaw
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Quote:
Originally Posted by dkellis View Post
To expand on it a little, and I should mention again for clarification that this is entirely speculation on my part, my guess on how the Infinite Library works is something TARDIS-like: the inside is a lot bigger than the outside. It's easier to imagine it if you've played D&D before, and used Bags of Holding. (Suffice to say that "inside bigger than outside" concepts have been around long enough and often enough to be general, rather than specific references.)

Part of this is due to the Infinite Library containing so much information, be it in physical media such as books or some sort of "raw data", that special reinforced magic has to be put in place to eke out a region of "realspace", in much the same way the "realspace" of TSAB Main HQ can exist in the middle of interdimensional space. I can technobabble it up to explain how it all works, but the net result is that the Infinite Library is essentially a whole pocket dimension (which, in itself, is comprised of infinite number of other dimensions) squeezed into something the human brain can conceive.

It's hard to explain the concepts using general three-dimensional imagery. I have to say "it's bigger through" rather than "it's bigger outwards", and increasing the "realspace" of the Infinite Library from the whole Library-space superset isn't so much expanding it in volume (although in general this happens anyway, if only to provide space for new physical media), but rather suffusing more parts with "realness". Making it real, so to speak, and bringing concept into physical form.

Which was one reason why I miscalculated on where the Infinite Library was, since it made no sense to keep it in the middle of interdimensional space where only a very few could access it. (Think on the point of a library, rather than a mere collection of books.) I believed that the question of "where" was irrelevant, in much the same way one might ask "where does the colour blue come from?", but I was wrong.

Now, if anything disrupts the containment of the Infinite Library's realspace, events might be... interesting for a while, if only because so many possible things could happen. One scenario would be that realspace collapses into itself, and anyone stuck inside is trapped somewhere (alternate dimension, stasis, probability-space), if they even survive. Another would be that the realspace remains stable (I doubt it, but then it's not like I'm speaking from experience), but inaccessible, or perhaps gets shunted into a convenient side dimension. A particularly flashy scenario is that the realspace forms a "seed" from which more realspace can be formed, expanding quickly in the not-space of interdimensional space: this is otherwise known as a Big Bang.

This isn't all that I've pondered on the Infinite Library, but it's what I judged to be relevant to my stories, and so it's all I've actually put into words. There's still quite a bit more (I really like the concept of the Infinite Library, and am annoyed that the Nanoha-verse contains so little canon information on it), but I've probably missed some obvious-in-hindsight questions and flaws.
Long explanation made simple. The Infinite Library exists in a pocket universe.
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