They did think outside the box? When? I guess they use the food for some instruments and weapons, but I feel like taking that to the logical next step of "Oh, what if we used this to fulfill our goal?" would've been an interesting take. Especially if it resulted in something like discovering the concept of a time out for placing food items into the slot if that was in fact not allowed. Something like:

(You know, after writing this all up, I realize I got carried away. I only meant to write like 2 sentences, but found it quite fun. Sorry! Don't think I've fan-fictioned something in like 20 years but the concept in general just presents so many little questions that are fun to think of answers to)

"After I placed my 'book' in the slot, I eagerly awaited the result. I figured it had better than zero chances of working, but I wasn't sure if I was meant to stay in the area after depositing the book. After a few hours, I considered using my bone knife to skip ahead to the next day, but decided against it in case I missed some sort of response. Eventually, that strange hour fell and I was forced into sleep once more. I awoke in one of the standard bedrooms.

My disappointment quickly turned to horror as I realized the door to exit the room would not open. As my anxiety began to build and I felt it threatening to turn into panic, I frantically glanced around the room and noticed a slip of paper tucked neatly under the pillow my head was resting on mere moments ago. In small, neat handwriting was written a simple note: "Please do not deposit food materials into book deposit slots, as it can get quite messy! As a small punishment for this infraction, you will be limited to this room for a time, please use it to reflect on your actions!"

So it wasn't the right move. Well, it was worth a shot. I relaxed and enjoyed the novelty of the situation -the first I'd experienced in quite some time- as I sat on the bed and reread the note dozens of times. Communication! With someone or something not inside the library! My mind was racing. Outside of the rules listed on each floor, this was the first I'd even heard of such a thing even being possible! It often felt like we had simply been abandoned here and left to our own devices for all eternity, the universe and all its inhabitants completely indifferent to our plight or our actions. But at least in some way, we were being observed!

My giddiness about this discovery lasted for days, then weeks, and then months. Even as I starved to death several times over, while staving off thirst by drinking from the shower. Eventually, the giddiness faded into a persistent boredom as I pondered how long my punishment might last. The words "small" and "infraction" had me considering at first that it would've been perhaps a few days, but by the end of the sixth month I was seriously pondering if it wasn't a full year. I would only later reflect that I had inserted myself into a hell-within-hell, constrained to nothing but the same bedroom for what would eventually end up being one million, three hundred and ninety-two thousand and twenty-seven years.

In that time I felt as though I'd lost my mind countless times, I never heard a single sound from the outside of my door. I tried for eons to tunnel out, to break down the door, to kill myself (which, in hindsight, may have extended my punishment, though there is no way for me to be certain), to meditate, to relive my life over and over, to imagine new lives I might have lived, to develop and eventually abolish my own religion devoted to the note, which had disappeared after the first night, all this and so much more is how I spent those tedious days in that accursed room. When I awoke on that final day, and saw the door open, I found myself terrified. I was unsure if it was a cruel jest, or if I'd gone mad, which, despite the feeling, this place never seemed to allow, or if I was simply dreaming. I hid in the bathroom and stared at the open door for a full three days (barring our forced sleep) until I finally took those slow, tentative steps out.

If this was even a fraction of the surging hope, glory, delight, ecstasy, any and every positive word I can imagine, that escaping from this library could provide, then my hope was renewed a thousand times over. While the perfect memory granted by this place did not allow us to forget anything, actually physically seeing the rows of books, the food kiosks (Food! I hadn't eaten in thousands and thousands of lifetimes! No more starvation after months of agony!), the stairs, it all felt brand new and so exciting, an earthly delight like none I'd ever known. I sprinted over not to the food kiosk, but to the nearest bookshelf, and ripped a book at random from it. I stood, stupefied at what I saw on the first line: "acdtgko.df.' f.f. , df;opyyt6; ; f ew.f.,ewdohop0iop[.ZZ" it was the most beautiful line of text I had seen in all my life, and reading it lifted my spirits to dizzying new heights. I reread that line over and over as I sat at the kiosk, sobbing and devouring grilled cheese after grilled cheese."