“I’m looking for the Tome of the Unknown Unknown,” said Cins.

“It might also be called the Book of Secret Secrets, or the Grimoire of the Unseen,” said Kerr, helpfully

The librariandroid cocked its head at the question, servos audibly clicking, hard drives spinning, electricity pumping. “Can you describe it?”

“It’s said to be the book containing all the most important information that no one knows that they need to know,” Cins said.

“I think it’s got a brown cover,” pipped Kerr. “Probably leather, since it sounds hella old.”

“One moment.” the librariandroid lurched to a nearby hatch, which promptly disgorged a book meeting the exact description that Cins and Kerr had given. It was leatherbound, with an air of the ancient about it, and all three titles were embossed on its cover.

“How…how did you get that so fast?” Cins gasped.

“Get? Patron, we do not ‘get’ items. No, we create them. From the description given to us, our immense Ingestion Machines create an object matching the description immaculately and then atom-print it to order.”

“Open it to page 99,” Kerr said. “See if what we need is there.”

Opening the volume, Cins was confronted with the overwhelming scent of a new book–far from what he might have expected. Page 99 was entirely given over to the dangers of a “1961-63 Corvair swing-axle rear suspension,” whatever that was.

“This…isn’t what we need,” he said.

“Ridiculous,” said the librariandroid. “The Ingestion Machines have ingested every available piece of data in the known universe, and several parallel dimensions. If this book does not match your expectations to within one standard deviation, clearly the problem is with your expectations, not the system.

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