He hated lieing to her, despised it with a burning fervor. He could lie to her, but that just left a bad taste in his mouth.
The Foundation expressely forbid him from taking materials out of the hole, and even if he snuck the book out, what would he tell her? She didn't know about the Foundation - he couldn't merely say, "Oh, this is a book from an infinitely long tunnel containing every single book ever written." There was no way he could ever get away with that. He didn't understand almost any of the humor, but he knew his wife would.īut as soon as the thought crossed his mind, he stopped. Of course, he was told that not everything could be exciting, and so he resigned to his work. Sifting through the titles and writing them down was boring work, and Enric had thought he would be working with more interesting things when he signed up with the Foundation. The answer was likely, and he chose not to think about it. Of course, there was always the unsettling possibility that he had been discovered earlier: much earlier. This had been Enric's work almost every day for the past three years, every since he was discovered by the Foundation after graduating from college.
His work was simply to record the titles and a few short notes about every book in a small given radius. Today he had to walk for an hour, and then would set to work. He stood up, his head just narrowly not touching the ceiling, and began to walk down into endless array of books. Agent Enric Mata turned on his flashlight and crawled into the as he had done every day for the past three years.