I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library @ Things Of Interest

The ceiling was high and apparently glass, letting through white light from the sky above, though much later I would begin to wonder about that. The reception/information desk which appeared to my left as I walked into the building looked like any other modern-day information desk. Behind it sat a bespectacled lady at a selection of flat-screened computer terminals. She was thirty, and wore dark brown. Behind her were several racks of books of all sizes in wheeled trolleys. I saw rubber stamps, bookmarks in a "please take one" stand, and a clock on the wall, though I didn't register what time it was.

Down some steps just beyond the desk was the building proper, where I could see shelves with more books. My exceptional powers of deduction led me to conclude that this was some sort of library. Passing the librarian, I walked right on in.

The bookcases were three times as high as a man and densely filled with books. All of them, I came to realise, were from the same series - big, heavy volumes roughly a foot tall and two inches thick, hardback bound in dark red, with gold writing on the spine. An archive of some sort?

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