It was a vast open marketplace with thousands of stalls, filled with carts 
and runners carrying product in all directions. But no vegetables, fish, 
spices, or fodder were to be seen here; all the product was information written 
down in books. The books were trundled from place to place on wheelbarrows and 
carried here and there on great long seedy-looking conveyor belts made of hemp 
and burlap. Book-carriers bumped into each other, compared notes as to what 
they were carrying and where they were going, and swapped books for other 
books. Stacks of books were sold in great, raucous auctions—and paid for 
not with gold but with other books. Around the edges of the market were stalls 
where books were exchanged for gold, and beyond that, a few alleys where gold 
could be exchanged for food.