EVERY WORD EVER WRITTEN: THE LIBRARY

Imagine a massive library. Thousands of shelves, with every book you can name. Thousands of shelves, lined with music, with movies, with television shows - decades of media. A library that contains the entirety of human endeavor - manuals, speeches, film, everything. In physical form, it would be the size of a country. Even in digital form the library would occupy multiple square kilometers of liquid-cooled computer towers.

Now imagine all of it, the vast contents of that incomprehensibly-vast library, was water. Perfectly clear, impossibly deep. And if you immersed yourself in that water, in that well, you could soak it in. You could swim in it. Surrounded at all times by everything we know, and at any time you can open your eyes and in seconds call up whatever information you want.

Now, one more layer. Imagine that you could do more than just swim in it. You could let it in, let it into your body, become anything and anyone you wanted.

The "Integrated Immersive Organized Science and Hobby Index." IIOSHI. But mostly we call it "the Library."

The Library changed life for humanity. Built atop the old internet and replacing the World Wide Web, the Library was built using technology developed by the Dayward Institute, the organization founded to employ gifts from the Strangers to improve life for humanity. The Library is always available, a dispersed computing system using the very systems that access it to share the load of using it. Its servers are scattered and hidden, a closely-guarded secret. Most people under forty years of age have received the simple biomachinery implants in their eyes and hands - virtually invisible filaments and sensors - that interact with a Library node device (a LiND or "well"). A LiND can make phone-calls, access the internet, and connect to omnipresent live-networks for perusing the Library. Wells have taken the place of cellphones and personal computers alike. Those who lack the implants use lightweight smart-glasses and easy-to-use, comfortable gloves made of intelligent materials. Simply shaking hands with another user can exchange contact information like a business card. Movies and books can be streamed from the Library with a variety of subscriptions ranging from free Universal Access to high-end, high-speed Diamond-level connections.

But the IIOSHI can do more than that, because it is also the first and last word in immersive skill training. Simple Library training can provide updated and improved skills in rapid order, imprinting the information directly into the human mind using unobtrusive Library biomachinery implants. But this training can go even further: the Library can provide Aspects to a properly-trained user.