I picked this book up on a whim, being a very casual Borges fan (I know about the Library of Babylon and nothing else) and found it delightful! For such a simple story, it manages to evoke existential dread while raising questions about the nature of knowledge and handing it down.

As a result, and, well, with prompting from the book itself, I've started a writing exercise- I'm going to try and put myself in the shoes of someone who's been trapped in this room, and figure out what I'd write at each "reset", given a piece of paper and a pencil... I've gotten about three pages in, and it's a fascinating frame of mind to be in. It's like I'm writing fan fiction but also playing a very philosophical roleplaying game at the same time.

It has me wondering: What would you (yeah, you reading this!) do? My strategy would be as follows:

• My first iteration would be spent writing down what's currently in my head. I'd probably be scared, being alone and afraid in a strange room. I'd describe everything that was in the room, how I don't expect to last very long in a room without food, water or even air for that matter, and that I hope help comes soon.
• My second iteration would be reading the first note, and realising that the previous note is *definitely* my handwriting, that I'm  trapped in some kind of time loop, or am having a psychotic break. I would note this down, signing my note off as "Dther-2".
• Dther-3 would see these two notes and, presuming that "Thousand Rooms" is still somewhere in my memory, realise that that's probably what is occurring. And thus, I would spend my page creating "The Index". On one side, a brief explanation of what I *think* is going on, and a running tally of how many versions of me have read the note (so that we can attribute ourselves and keep track of "time"), and a warning: DON'T GET RID OF NOTES, since future iterations need context to work off of. On the other, two lists: One, an index of all the notes currently in the desk (the above two), and the other, a list of open questions. The first few being: "How long is an iteration?", "How can we get more paper, so that we can transmit more knowledge to our future iterations?", "How should we organise these notes so that future iterations can answer these questions more expediently?" and, finally, "Is there a way out of here?"
• Dther-4 decides to put"how long is an iteration" to the test. He writes a short paragraph on his page:
  
  • "We're limited by how much information we can fit on a single page. Here's the experiment I propose:
    • I'm going to put this page in the box.
    • I'm going to sit around and wait for the next iteration to occur. I imagine I don't have long.
  • If my theory is correct (that an iteration isn't much longer than an hour or two), most of the rest of this page will be blank.
  • Therefore, it shouldn't be a big deal for future iterations to simply twiddle their thumbs until the iteration is over, allowing us to "Bank" paper. A small price to pay for a future-me having more room to write down their thoughts.
  • This experiment should put open questions #1 and #2 to rest.
  • Please add to this tally of how many pages we've attempted to "bank". Let's aim for 5: |
• Assuming Dther-4 is correct, the next few iterations see this page, see that Dther-4 didn't go insane while waiting for the next iteration, and continue until the tally has five marks.
• We now have a way of generating more paper, and can therefore begin writing longer notes. First order of business: Protocols for organising the papers.

I haven't gotten farther than that... But yeah! What strategy would you guys try?