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027-67984

 

 

It was a bright, cold day in recycle and the icon was spinning thirteen.

Holden pulled his hands over his widened eyes and turned himself away from the computerized window. Eventually, when he felt he had regained some control over his mind, he allowed himself to remove his hands and admit the rest of the room.

There was an area where the carpet stopped, which he hadn’t noticed before, where a smooth, brown, rubbery surface began. Upon it was a desk made of clear, green acrylic material that cantilevered asymmetrically from a single, giant leg that stamped into the brown rubber like the tree trunk of some recycled, extraterrestrial forest. Behind the desk was a simple, stainless steel chair, polished to a mirror finish. Holden looked down at it and saw his reflection again, dislocated and disjointed in its curves. He wasn’t looking good, that was for sure. There was a patch of blood on his forehead and a line of dried blood that ran down across his nose. He touched it and a tender pulse rattled his skull. Holden leaned closer to the chair, spit onto his shirt sleeve and wiped the crusted blood from his skin until only a faint scratch snaked along his brow.

He stood in the recurring dizziness and looked down at the desk to find his name atop a digital screen that was incorporated into the clear, green material and only visible from that particular, perpendicular perspective. Below Holden’s name was his most recent driver’s license picture, his job history, grades in middle school and a family photo of him with Eve and Jane. Beside this was a list of ten people that were, according to the screen, his likely cohorts. One of these names, Marion Tabor, was highlighted. All the others, thankfully, were people that knew nothing of their group and the thought relaxed him. But only slightly. More interesting than the list was a series of three letters, capitalized and circled profusely: L.O.C. He didn’t know what they meant. There was no L or O in his name and he assumed it was a sort of ranking system for people captured in the room with the revolving symbol. Following the series of three letters was the number one, underlined with three dark, digital slashes.

Holden stepped back from the table and assessed his situation as if he’d just arrived at a job site without a floor plan. There were two things about that scenario that he knew for sure. He knew his time was short and he knew that he would very likely, at any moment, be living out the experience of those that disappeared from Winston’s group. Which was why, for the sake of acting out with whatever form of freedom he still had, Holden sat in the chair and threw his legs up on the table, hands locked behind his head. His toes poked from the worn socks on his shoeless feet. Wherever he was, it didn’t matter. He closed his eyes as if it were a bright summer’s day and he was sitting on the front porch of his grandmother’s country home beside a glass of sweaty lemonade that was gradually becoming diluted in the melting ice. Of course, in that reality he was wearing shoes.

When he opened his eyes to find that the spinning, recycling icon had been watching him from across the room, Holden turned his gaze toward the ceiling where he noticed, to his delight (as it usually had), a complete fire sprinkler system. Eight blunt sprockets, spaced an equal distance apart, broke through the delicate blue surface like space ships preparing to douse the earth below with some sort of mind controlling, gelatinous ooze. In actuality, it was a simple thing. Just sprinkler heads arranged in one of many rooms in order to protect the building and whatever had been inside from an accidental fire. But the sprinklers brought Holden a different sense of peace than what the luscious green carpet and finely chosen color scheme could ever provide. It was even better than the calm, soothing, gently-swooping eye of the recycling icon that –

The fire sprinklers bookmarked Holden to reality. And it was something, he assumed, that his jailors hadn’t expected. The surprising fact was that this gave him hope. These people had underestimated him. They didn’t realize that, by seeing a finished job, when the unblemished drywall had been cut precisely to fit the outer ring with its polished, metal finish, they would lose control over him. The protective, yet orderly, organization of sprinkler heads brought him joy. The job was done. Even when it wasn’t his job, seeing someone else’s work gave him the euphoric sense of checking the clock and seeing that it was time to go home. The work day was finished and he was allowed to spend the rest of the day any way he pleased.

The freedom of that feeling numbed the matter of his brains they were trying to reach, but in his mind Holden knew that the work day wasn’t finished. A lot of people were counting on him and unless the government leaked the news of his capture to the newspapers and media (which they wouldn’t because…who really was he, anyway?), he would end up like all the others in Winston’s group. One of the vanished. One of the gone. It reminded Holden of Peter Pan, Abby’s favorite story. The one she read aloud to the group. The quote that came to mind was the last line from chapter eight.

 

“To die would be an awfully big adventure.”

 

The immediate guilt that rose in steady clouds upon the heavens of his obdurate heart had surprised Holden. He had let the group down. He wished he had done more. Been more. Been more patient. Especially with Eve. He should have taken more time to ensure his protection if there were signs he couldn’t trust her. Now, there was no telling what the group would do or how the loss of their leader would affect things. And what about Marion? He had gotten her involved in it all and left her there to deal with the rest of her isolated life alone. He was stunned by how much he missed her. There were feelings there. He finally accepted it. It was the reason he kept dragging Shane back to her bar. Of course, that didn’t matter now. He’d seen them all for the last time. And Jane. Oh, Jane. He couldn’t allow himself to think of her. To see her face in his mind as she screamed and clawed at her ruined, forever ruined, chest. No, he wouldn’t. He would rather stare into that recycling symbol and lose his mind before going to that place.

Holden released his entwining fingers and rubbed his left hand feverishly against the fuzzy fur of his head before dropping his patchy, cold feet from the table. He stood and paced the room. Once. Then twice. Three times. And just as he was ready to launch himself full speed at the window that continued to laugh at him –

For some reason, Holden hadn’t noticed the door. Of course, it noticed him; it had been there the whole time. Molding. Doorknob. Hinges. Threshold. A gap on all sides that cut a black line into the seamless white walls. Perhaps he was too absorbed in the inevitability of his capture to truly accept the possibility of escape. But hadn’t he also missed the rubber floor? What about the desk? He hadn’t seen that either. But there was a door now, cracked open, as real as his nose is crooked. Before it opened completely, Holden thought it would be a smart move to scan the rest of the room to see if he had missed anything else.

He hadn’t. No windows. No cameras. Just the door.

When it swung open from the stark white walls in a full arc, a man stepped into the room wearing a casual expression, a gray blazer and a black turtleneck. Holden couldn’t believe his eyes (mostly because they had lied to him already), but the man who entered the room was none other than Martin Trust, the director of Historic Homeland Preservation and Restoration. The man who had told him a story about a little soldier that ignored the advice of a goblin and died because he fell in love with paper.

Trust closed the door with a little more effort than seemed necessary, kept his hand upon the handle as it rested in the closed position and, almost wholly unaware of Holden’s presence, turned to approach the desk. Holden glanced uneasily around the room to check again for other doors and noticed how the image of the recycling icon had morphed into the seal of the Department of Homeland Security. The man adjusted a few things on the desk’s digital screen and then, very simply, he stood and waited.

After ten seconds, he tilted his head up to his guest and said, “Mister Clifford, please have a seat.” His voice was frigid and oddly professional, as if Holden had stopped in to fill out a questionnaire for a free copy of The Book.

The polished, stainless steel seat, which Holden thought was left for someone of importance, had actually been meant for him. And once he was situated, it finally made sense why the computer screen that was built into the clear, green desktop had only been visible form a perpendicular angle – he was about to be questioned without seeing the questions. Martin Trust gazed down at Holden with an arrogant smile that spoke of many predetermined judgments. He released three short ticks and, in the stillness that followed, Holden pictured a school teacher shaking his head in reprimand at a student who hadn’t brought their stylus pen to class.

Tisk, tisk tisk, Mister Clifford. You started your own anarchist movement.

“So…” Holden breathed, “what’s the process man? Let’s get this going. If I’m done, I’m done. Let’s do it.”

“Well, you are not lacking in impatience, Holden. May I call you Holden, for the sake of this discussion?”

“Uh…” He paused for an unnecessarily long minute, as if not actually choosing sarcasm as a response. “No,” he decided, smartly. Holden wondered if he had just witnessed his final act of rebellion.

“Very well,” the director said, nodding his squared jaw. “Mister Clifford. I believe we may have gotten off on the wrong foot. See, the job that has been placed upon me is one of protection. It is important for me, as the head of a division of Homeland Security –” He pronounced Homeland as if it were two separate, unequal words and gave each a formidable weight as he released them from his plump-lipped mouth. “– that I ensure those above me that this country, if not this world, is protected. Its values protected. Its,” he delayed, “…interests. I’ll see if I can explain it with an age-old metaphor. Our government, along with the Publishing House, is a well-oiled machine. You, Mister Clifford, are a wrench that someone, somewhere, at some time, has dropped into that machine. My job is simple. I get rid of the wrench before it can do any further damage and then, from that point on, it’s all preventative maintenance. I find the other persons responsible for causing the problem and simply ensure that they will never cause problems again. Sometimes, to amuse myself with irony, I drop the wrench on them.”

The man’s calm, effortless description made the roots of Holden’s teeth curl. He swallowed and tried not to look as frightened as he felt inside, but the gesture carried less water than a wicker basket.

“I can tell by your expression, Mister Clifford, that what I’m saying doesn’t sit comfortably. Well, to be honest, it doesn’t matter at this point. The only thing you have going for you,” he drawled, putting his hands behind his back as he paced the room in a relaxed, regulatory rhythm, “is that we have a plan you can be involved in…involuntarily though it may be.” Trust leaned toward the bench where Holden had awoken moments ago and removed a piece of hair that floated along its cold, metal surface. He flaked it from his fingers. “You should be relieved, Mister Clifford. You have been obtained at quite an opportune time. See, most people who come into this room are given few options. I’m sure you’ve heard the stories, but, to grant you a blurb, our judge and jury are very swift in their declaration of guilty. These days, it’s more of an automatic thing. But, that’s neither here nor there. Doesn’t apply to you. And while you may be guilty in every single sense of the word, the task we require of you may change that. Especially in the eyes of history and in the Free Thinking group that is currently vilifying our country.”

“Get to the point,” Holden complained, staring rudely at death, impatient for the restful slash of its sharpened sickle.

The director pursed his lips, stepped onto the rubber floor and placed a hand on the desk. “I feel this could be better explained if I showed you instead of told you. This is a bit unorthodox, but if we’re being honest, I’ve found that I actually enjoy walking with you.”

The man turned suddenly and approached the door that had been invisible prior to his arrival. He knocked three times and, like Dorothy clicking her heels, assured salvation presented itself. Holden stood from his seat and followed, uncertain of where the Wizard’s balloon would take him, but glad to be heading anywhere other than the room of fake environments that seemed to bore a hole in his soft, little mind.

It took less than a minute for Holden to be amazed at the Kansas beyond the door. He was in an office. There were people bustling about, holding portfolios and sack lunches, talking on cell phones and tittering away on their handheld computers. Holden watched the activity around him with his mouth swinging low. The director walked him to an open lobby with windows looking down into an even larger lobby that held a feathery steel sculpture where a few worker bees were buzzing. The shimmering, white marble floors and security guards made Holden realize that he had actually been in a typical office building. There were people circling in and out of the rotating glass doors and he wondered if they were on their way to work, heading out for a meeting over lunch or going golfing. There was an eerie realism to it and Holden seemed to stick out, dressed in his blue-collar jeans and work shirt (that one that actually had a blue collar) and shoeless feet that needed new socks, like a handwritten book in a digital world.

That reality gave him no sense of comfort. What he wanted, what he longed for, as he glimpsed a sliver of sunlight through the lobby windows, was a single panoramic view that could show him the sky, all bluish and real. He had been so thwarted lately with clouds and gloom that just a rectangle of real sky would warm his heart.

Holden’s attention was yanked away as Martin Trust ushered him from the windows to lead him on a tour of the building. It was odd because it felt as if he weren’t some hostile prisoner of war, detained against his will among the digital files. Stumbling behind the director, tired, beaten and poorly dressed, he resembled an unemployed Unfortunate who had dropped by for a visit to guilt his relative into getting him a job in the mail room.

Like a younger brother. A little brother.

“The Publishing House is broken into three floors. You can see this clearly through the elevators in the atrium. Don’t you love how they glisten in the light? Real crystal.” Holden peeked around the corner and saw the large, well-lit seating area beside three glass elevators that brought employees to the two floors above them. It seemed a bit garish and unnecessary, but who was a prisoner to judge? Stretching to the highest point, below a multi-faceted glass roof, was an abominable, green wall that seemed to change its own hue in the shaft of light that cut through the office spaces above. Their affect on the remaining architecture provided Holden with an accurate assessment of how important the Publishing House was to the building.

“The first floor is the Department of Reduction. On this level, you’ll find the offices of our Editors. We don’t have many, but their job is to reduce the information in The Book that goes against what we call The Current Purpose. Next level you’ll find the Department of Reusage, where we store a digital copy of all the adjustments we have made over time, in case a real copy is leaked by some pesky, unlawful group, present party included, or if another unpredictable problem arises where we would need to go back to the exact original. We have a record of everything we have ever altered and can, rather easily, make that happen in a simple, one-minute-forty-seven-second update. Then, above that, on the third floor, is the Department of Recycling. Where we recycle.”

That final, very simple sentence hung in the air around them like a cloud of so many souls, floating in the unwelcome din of purgatory. Without further explanation, the director of Historic Homeland Preservation and Restoration led Holden into the sitting room and toward the sun-kissed elevators. No one was watching them. No one cared who he was or why he was there. Holden felt his eyes scanning the room as if yearning for some sort of escape that his mind hadn’t been developing.

Where were they going? Was the man actually going to walk him on his own to the level of Recycling, whatever that meant? Was he actually making the cold, shoeless stroll right now to everlasting life? He needed to get straight with God and, like, now. And what about these people? Were they so used to seeing a man walking toward certain recyclement that it hadn’t caused them to stir from their sack lunches and personalized website updates? ‘Twelve noon and another dead man walking. Me, I’m just riding that trusty escalator called Monday to the bottom and it’s slow as hell.’

Holden’s frantic panting stuttered as he pictured Jane again, fatherless and struggling through life, unable to get the guidance she always wanted and scrambling to find it in other ways without realizing how it was gradually destroying her life beyond repair. He pictured their cause crumbling, as fear was born like a cancer in the group, until they disbanded and hid inside themselves only to find their hand, years later, with a sharpened nail on the pointer finger. He thought of Marion. Lost, with no one there to help her get through. Winston, sad and descending. And poor, Unfortunate Moby. Hope had been reborn in Holden and now it was nowhere to be found. Everything he had done was for nothing.

But Martin Trust hadn’t stopped at the elevators. Holden just realized. The director was leading him down a separate hallway, past a cafeteria and into a quarantined field of cubicles that was surprisingly ordinary.

Men and women passed Martin Trust saying, “Hello” and “Afternoon, Director”.

The man replied each time with the oddest sentiment. “Good to see you smiling again.”

At one point, Trust even poked one of the men that was walking by holding a digital folder, and stopped to joke about some recent football game and how the man owed him twenty bucks. It was so disturbing and fake and all together unbelievable. These people were ruining mankind one word at a time, with a smile on their face and egg salad on their breath. And then, Holden remembered the room he had found himself in only moments before and knew that there was a deep psychological control in the silent solitude of that building, among the desolate aisles of padded cubicle walls, and felt sorry for them.

Near one of the more organized cubicles, the director stopped, turned to face a frosted, green glass door along the wall and began punching a code into its unnumbered keypad. The woman in the cubicle smiled graciously at the director and Holden noticed that, for the slightest of seconds, her eyes faltered. In that millisecond of wavering, Holden wished that he could be free to call Winston. To tell him that he had found a counterpart to his mother: a well-placed knight among the editing staff. Holden witnessed in a glance that this woman either did not like what she was being forced to do or hadn’t been comfortable around Martin Trust, which meant that she didn’t believe in him. He could have done something with that before. But not now. Not as he was being led into this room. Whatever this room was. The only thought that granted Holden any degree of liberation was that he was still on the first floor, in the Department of Reduction.

“There we are,” the director proclaimed, as three notes of confirmation chirped from the keypad. The frosted glass door separated from the wall with a hissing of pressure. The director swung it open and walked merrily through.

Holden was met with surprise, once again.

It was just a conference room.

Another sleek, green acrylic table spanned the space, twelve feet long with nine thin, leather task chairs that swiveled, spun, and rolled on hidden casters. The floor was composed of some foreign, jet black material. It was seamless, unidentifiable and its shiny onyx wrapped the walls of the room, almost overbearing in its immeasurable darkness. And it would have been, if it weren’t for the wide ribbon of dark mahogany that ringed the floor to the wall to the ceiling, where it gradually estranged itself and hung a foot below the can lights. The room was exquisite, but what really captured Holden’s eye was outside the room – the scene beyond the single panoramic window. The sky was bright blue, the grass outside was green and luscious and all the buildings were the purest white he had ever seen.

All the buildings were white?

Holden tripped over a task chair and lurched toward the window, amazed at what he was really looking at. In the distance he could see pillars and columns of bleached white, domed rooftops that peaked over one another and hid behind trees, and an obelisk of colorless stone rising tall above the skyline. He was in Washington DC The Agents had taken him from his ex-wife’s home in the suburbs of Chicago and had brought him to the nation’s capital.

Martin rolled out the ninth chair at the head of the table and beckoned for Holden to sit. The director stood beside the onyx wall and slipped his hands delicately into the pockets of his slacks, gazing with admiration on the capital buildings. A full minute later, he released a gentle sound of elation before inhaling a long sip of air through his nose. Pleased with the moment, he removed his left hand from his pocket and pointed at the remarkably immaculate city.

“Holden, have you ever just stood and looked at it all? Sure, there are a lot of decisions made here. Elected officials shaping our world. People we trust and place our hope in, all out and about fixing things we could never understand. But have you ever just looked at the city itself? How it’s so clean and safe. It invites trust. No, that’s not what it does. It commands trust.” A grin of honest respect glazed over the man’s face. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Holden remained seated and remained silent. He was unable to formulate any response at the moment and felt that quiet and reserved was the only option available for someone in his situation and possibly the only thing he could still control.

“Did you know,” the director mused, “that when The Book was first published, the digital copies were much like this scene? The Book was released in only three colors: the purest white, a lofty sky blue and green, like the trustworthy grass below our feet. Commanded respect through color. How ingenious is that?” With no response, the director continued with an unforeseen question. “Holden, have you heard of a story called The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield? It’s pre-digital and we had it destroyed, so I’m assuming you haven’t. But have you?” Holden kept silent. “Before I became the director of a new division of Homeland Security, I had an…interesting job here at the Publishing House. I often quoted two passages from this story to people in your similar situation.” He cleared his throat and began.

 

 

Again, he cleared his throat before quoting a passage of that banned book from memory.

 

 

“Unedited, those quotes,” Trust remarked with pride. He exhaled a deep breath of tranquility. “The first provides a truth of who we are and what we are capable of and then its supporting quote reveals the importance of listening to lies. Don’t you see, Mister Clifford? This is actually what people want. What man wants. Maybe what you are fighting against isn’t really all that bad.”

Holden was minutes, maybe seconds from his certain recyclement, and yet here this man stood, praising a system that his group had developed a hatred for. A system that robbed his daughter of her beauty and Marion of her heritage and reputation and Moby from his uncle. He wanted to speak out and tell the director that he wasn’t buying the garbage he was selling, but it wasn’t worth it. Holden was conserving his energy by keeping the lights off. Something told him that he would need it later. When he could find a way out of there.

In the immobility of those few seconds, when only the breeze of cool air being exhaled through the mahogany vents could be heard, Holden was thinking. There were two possible reasons why he had been allowed to stroll about the building without a leash and he was determined to figure out which one was right. Martin Trust had either been too confident in Holden’s inability to escape or, as he had felt in the room when he found peace in the arrangement of sprinkler heads, they had underestimated him.

So, what could he do? If Holden was right and they had misjudged him to some degree, he needed to set aside his thoughts of guilt and remorse to make room for something he wasn’t accustomed to – strategy. Trust was clearly trying to sway him into viewing The Book as a gift to society and Holden still didn’t understand why. Regardless, he needed to respond. It was all Holden could do at that moment. And if he needed to say something, why not tell the man what he wanted to hear. Against the natural tendencies of every cell in his body, Holden did the opposite of what was expected. He stood from his seat, approached the window and copied the director’s gestures by placing a hand in his pocket. Beside one of the more powerful leaders in the free world, Holden stood at the glass and looked out admiringly on the nation’s capital. Trust had been right. The buildings were exquisite. And clean. And they commanded a certain respect from him. But standing in the truth of it didn’t change a thing. Holden needed to buy some time before the gavel came swinging down.

“So,” he began, trying to keep his eyes from the director so they wouldn’t give him away, “What is it you want me to do? I’m a man of little talent, but I mean, I’m not dumb…you guys could have taken care of me by now, so I figure…you obviously chose me for a reason. You stand here, acting like you’re just a regular guy, but I know how this works. You took me against my will in front of my kid, and she got hurt in the process. I’ll do whatever I gotta do, just as long as you leave her out of it. Capiche? We both know you had my number in the park and decided to let me go. So, let’s get on with the show and you tell me what role I’m playing.”

Holden surprised himself. Although he could see that the director was staring at him, he wouldn’t allow himself to turn. Trust was smart and Holden couldn’t let any part of his face give him away. Problem was, he hadn’t expected the Director’s response and could’ve never expected what would be asked of him.

“Well, Mister Clifford,” he repeated again, reminding Holden that, at one point, there had been hostility between them, “we at the Publishing House work on a hundred year plan. You have arrived serendipitously at the culmination of one plan and the beginning of another. We see quite a purpose for you. Plain and simple, we have a need. And I see in you a way to fill that need.” Trust began to grin sharply. It left an odd anticipation between words, hanging like dust on a shaft of sunlight. “You are going to be known by everyone in the entire world.”

“What?” Holden questioned without thinking. He nearly had to force his head from spinning, so his eyes would remain looking out the window. “Why would people know me?”

Martin Trust pointed to the building on their right, the one closest to the window. It was wide and white, long and short, and topped with a green roof along the edge and a squat dome at the center. Holden had recognized it, but didn’t know the building’s name. “What you see there is the last library in existence. The Library of Congress. And you, Mister Clifford, will demolish that building and every last book within its walls.”

Holden swallowed and raised a hand to rub an itch that didn’t exist from his nose. Nervous ticks in the midst of unimaginable horror. He contemplated smashing out the window and leaping from the building to get away, but the fall would break his legs. “Why are you telling me this? Why not just force me to do it?”

“Because we know it’s the right thing to do and we want to give you the option of going out for the right reasons.”

“But it won’t work. People need to know that originals exist somewhere.”

“You’re precisely right, Holden,” Trust agreed, expecting a more explosive reaction. “There are thousands of books left unchecked in the world, mind you that number dwindles by the day, and even when we come and take them from the house next door, watchful neighbors accept it because they know there are still books out there. They accept the depravity of a world without paper because there is one copy of every book that has ever been written in that building. Right there. Seven hundred feet away. And…how horrible that you, the leader of The Free Thinkers, chose to destroy the only ones that we were keeping safe.”

Holden broke eye contact with the window and faced him, unable to withhold himself in such delirium. “The Free Thinkers? Why are you associating me with them? Those guys don’t care about The Book.”

The director grinned and tapped Holden on the shoulder. “Oh, we’re well aware. We’ve been watching them for a while now. Yes, we know you went to the meeting. See, that’s why we chose you, Holden. Why I chose you. I know you have passion. You aren’t a lemming like all the others, following blindly into a mine field. The Free Thinkers are helpless drones. Everything they have done we have allowed. And when we want to orchestrate a move of our own,” he pointed to the Library of Congress, “we simply blame it on them. Which, in the end, they take credit for. Happily.”

“Like Marion and the bar,” Holden added, finally understanding.

“Ah, The Library.” Trust breathed a laugh. “Clever name.”

Holden was still unsure about how to escape, so he stole more time with a notion that seemed obvious. “Can you give me a second to process this? I mean, this is huge. And I get it. If I’m not with ya’, I’m against ya’. I guess I just feel like something still isn’t making sense. There has to be more to this than just getting rid of a few nail-biting thrillers.”

Martin Trust chewed on the thought for a bit as Holden punctuated his control of the conversation by taking a seat at the other end of the table, the one furthest from the door.

“After the Library is gone? Sure. Our next move is to destroy a building that we say is the Publishing House. Then we take The Book offline for a few weeks. When it comes back, there’s a whole new format. And whoopsie…there are things missing. We make some swift cuts and then blame it on the terrorists…err…you. Entire books can finally be destroyed. Partials corrupted. Normally, in this instance we would go to our store of originals…”

“But I’ve destroyed them all,” Holden concluded, kicking up his legs and resting them on the slick green surface of the table so he could appear relaxed as he continued to formulate his escape between words. His peek-a-boo toes hurt the illustration. “Sounds like you’ve really thought this through. But I think you’re lying.”

“I’m sorry?”

Holden couldn’t tell if the director was offended when he tilted his head and smirked, or if he was amused that the lowly sprinkler fitter from the west side of Chicago had figured out their plan.

“That’s not why you’re doing this. I mean, don’t get me wrong…makes sense why you would, but I think there’s an even bigger purpose.” It came to him as he said it and he couldn’t believe his own voice. “You want to destroy other documents. The important ones. Government stuff.”

A grin formed on the face of Martin Trust as wide as a Zebra’s stripes are long. “Well, I would be lying if I didn’t say that would be a pleasant fallout. And Martin Trust doesn’t lie. Yes, we mourn our literature. Our historic accounts of war and glory. But when we replace this country’s most cherished documents and records, declarations and proclamations with holographic images…well, it gives mourning a whole new meaning, doesn’t it?”

Holden looked at the keypad on the door. He scanned for anything of interest on Trust’s belt. Anything that could help him escape. He had to keep the conversation going. “Nothing could stop you from creating an entirely new government.”

“Not next year, no. Not even thirty years from now,” Trust admitted, throwing up his hands with a smile that still eked toward his ears. “But, remember, we follow a hundred year plan.” He approached Holden’s chair and ushered him back to the window. “We were hoping you would want to be a part of this on your own after learning how important it is to the survival of our country. And yet, Mister Clifford…I know what you’re thinking…” Nearly to the window, Holden froze, his muscles clenched in the fright of Martin’s words. “And you’re wrong. It isn’t about control. It’s about peace. Holden, you would be playing one of the largest roles in reestablishing peace in our world. I know…I know…But-at-what-cost?” He shrugged off the sentiment. “Think of how sustainable our world is today. Waking up in this veneer of environmentalism is like sitting down for a good meal where every day is a delicious bite. But you can’t make a great steak without killing the cow, Holden. There have always been side-effects and negative repercussions to the recycling movement, but wasn’t a utopia worth it? With this, destroying that building, we would have peace. For the first time ever…a world without war and tragedy. Isn’t such a thing worth a little freedom being stripped away?”

Holden tried to get his mind back on task, to try and escape the man’s mental clutches, but he was stuck in the mud of it. He couldn’t move past what Trust had been saying. It made sense, all of a sudden. Wars have been raging throughout history and shouldn’t he do anything in his power to stop the killing? To stop the unlawfulness? Shouldn’t he care more about that than about some make-believe girl named Lucy who got lost in a wardrobe?

Amid his obvious uncertainty, Trust prodded even deeper into Holden’s mind. “Do you recognize the structure across the yard on our left? That’s the Capitol Building. Interesting detail, when the dome was under construction, with girders poking out and looking like a broken bottle, Abraham Lincoln, our greatest president, stood beneath it and gave his inaugural address to a country that was completely divided. The man had to wear a disguise on his way there just to avoid assassination. Less than a month later, the Civil War began and our country bled its brothers and sisters dry for the rest of his term. He was killed two weeks after his second inaugural. Shame. But do you know what that man is most remembered for today?”

“Obvious. He got rid of slavery, man. That was huge.” The director’s ever-present grin was making Holden uncomfortable.

“That’s right. The Emancipation Proclamation.”

To Holden’s astonishment, Trust left the window and walked back to the door. He punched a code rapidly into the keypad and the door released from the wall with the same pressurized hiss. Holden fought to get a read on the code, but it was too far away. As Trust asked the woman in the first cubicle for help, Holden thought desperately for a solution to get out of that room. But he couldn’t. He simply could not stop returning to what Trust had been saying about recycling. It was making too much sense and Holden had to get away from it. He needed to find something that could pull him out of that head space. Something that could bring him back. Something that –

He found it. Salvation in the simplest form, once again.

Before Holden could act, before he could set his escape in motion, Trust was back in the room holding a copy of an Editor’s Book. “I’m going to read you an excerpt, unedited, from a famous letter written by Abraham Lincoln to the editor of the New York Tribune.” He marched pompously to the window and tilted The Book toward Holden, so he could read the words himself.

 

 

If Holden hadn’t already developed a solution for escape, he may not have been able to resist following the will of the Publishing House, simply by hearing those unedited words. Words from a former president who was still heralded as the savior of the slaves – when, in actuality, his purpose in doing so was to return peace to his country. Just peace, with or without free will.

“Don’t you see, Holden? Even the man who abolished slavery said he would keep it if it meant peace! The cost of enslaving others is great and tragic and real, but the reward, Holden. The reward is everlasting. And it would be for you, too.”

“That’s not true. Everyone in the world would hate me,” Holden muttered, feeling a swell of debate in his mind about whether to proceed with his plan.

“Sure, they will hate you now. People hated Lincoln. But who controls history? Who determines the ones that have statues erected in their honor? Immortality, Holden.” The grin on the director’s face was demented and strange. It was as if he were a vampire, debating the siring of his victim during the moments of hunger instead of ripping their throat away in a single rapturous bite. “Do this for us, and you are immortal. A hero to the generations of the future. History books will enthrone you and your grave stone will be the largest in the country.”

Holden looked out the window. He hid his reaction and stared at the building. The Library of Congress. He could feel the strings that were slowly attaching themselves to his little puppet arms and the honest truth became clear. They were going to do it regardless. Whether he agreed or not, they were going to blow up that building.

Did he want to leave? To escape? Of course. But even after getting back to Chicago there would be nothing he could do to stop them. What other options did he have? Either get on board and set sail under the flag of the enemy (who kinda made sense), or go home and stay on the sinking ship and watch the enemy sail away, regardless of your involvement. At the same time, Holden felt resistance. How could he, in his right mind, participate in such an act? Destroy all the books in the world, including the ones he now held so dear. The last remaining copies. Sure, they had a library in Winston’s basement, but that was it. Once the Library of Congress was destroyed and The Book was altered to remove thousands, they were gone forever and what were the odds that Winston would be able to find enough sources to compile an original? Holden knew he didn’t have time to decide. If he said yes, he would die a terrorist and play a crucial role in the largest catastrophe in the history of the world. If he escaped, he could find a way to get the word out. Maybe even save a book or two. But there was a whole recycle bin full of What If’s in that plan. If he said no, the discussion was done. Today. Now. And if his escape plan didn’t pan out, he was only two floors below meeting his maker. Holden could go to the pearly gates and drink a beer with Peter in less time than it takes to add gas to the van and feel right as rain because he didn’t contribute to the slavery of the world.

And then he thought back to the room and to the sprinkler heads. They hadn’t expected that. The director had planned for everything. He wanted Holden to start losing his mind in that room and then feel more discomfort as he was walked through their offices. He was never supposed to stay in that room. Trust wanted to sell Holden on participating in this self-destructive kamikaze act (which, by the way, only included posthumous fame on the earth and no forty virgins in some alternate heaven-scape). Without coming right out and saying it, the director had told Holden, “Die…or do it and die and we won’t kill anybody else.” Lots of really great options there.

But – BUT they had underestimated him.

That room with the grass carpeting and sky blue ceiling was meant to chill him out while, at all times, constructed with the strict intent of causing dislocation and a heightened sense of lingering doom. Marinating the steak before the flame. But they didn’t know Holden as well as they thought they did. They underestimated his ability to find peace and security in a simple sprinkler head. It reminded Holden of his escape plan. Really, it was always the sprinkler heads. Sure, how they looked against the ceiling and the emotions they stirred within him, the simple joys of the journeyman, the water monkey who no one expected would be hanging out with one of the more powerful men in the world. But it was always the sprinkler head. And it was always supposed to be Holden. Because only he would know how to escape.

Done. He was ready.

“Sounds good,” Holden replied, patting Martin Trust on the back. “When do we get started?”

“Uh…” the director laughed, shocked by the ease of his submission. “I suppose what we should do first is film a scene of you near a bookshelf that resembles one in the main reading room of the Library and then we’ll have –”

An odd, face-splitting grin came across Holden’s face and the director of Historic Homeland Preservation and Restoration had stopped speaking, to smile in return. His grin was stupid and curious because he had no idea that the reason behind Holden’s smile was that he was about to kick the wind out of his chest, bring the director to his knees and lodge his fist into the crook of the man’s boxy jaw. In the revelry of it, Holden tightened his grip and nodded his head, turning to look at the director one last time.

Lights out, Zebra man.

His knee swung up in the single, most powerful gesture he had ever conjured and crashed like lighting into the soft tissue of the director’s unready abdomen. The man’s radiant eyes bulged from his sockets and he crumbled to the glimmering, onyx floor in unexpected pain and disbelief. He hadn’t been there for more than a second before the wind from Holden’s tightened left fist fluttered his blond hair as the sprinkler fitter’s knuckles came crashing into the man’s square jar, launching him powerfully to the ground.

Holden bounced in place for a moment as Martin Trust landed shoulder first into the smooth black surface of the floor, kicking one of the chairs out from below the table. Holden knew there wasn’t much time. There could be cameras anywhere. He yanked the shoes from the director’s feet, cranked them down over his own, pulled the expensive jacket off the man’s shoulders and slipped awkwardly into it. The director’s feet were too small and his arms had no definition. Holden’s bulky frame tightened the jacket’s tailored seams as he launched himself onto the green acrylic table that cracked under his weight.

This is gonna hurt.

He took a moment to breathe before pulverizing his right fist, the one he spared in the struggle, directly into one of the sprinkler heads, breaking it free from its threaded home and launching it into the wooden strip on the wall. It nicked the mahogany with a crack and Holden leapt down from the table as silently as he could. So far, everything was going according to plan. He would only have to wait a minute. The longest minute of his life.

What Holden had figured out, as he stood staring at the lemmings that walked stupidly across the lawns of the nation’s capital, was that the company who had sprinkled the building would have likely installed a dry pipe fire sprinkler system. Government buildings, especially one so invested in technology, would need surety and fortification and those making the decisions realized that the probability of computer damage was too high to leave water in the pipes at all times. Only the presence of a fire would release the water and the delay was worth avoiding accidents. Yes, Holden was their prisoner. Yes, he was not nearly as intelligent as the man that cleaned their toilets. But Holden Clifford was the only person in that building who understood fire sprinklers and he knew that deliberate sabotage to the sprinkler head created accidental discharge. Accidental discharge meant that all fire protection methods in the building were activated. Which also meant that, for the necessity of egress, every single door, even of the frosted green and invisible variety, would unlock regardless of safety protocols. Details only a sprinkler fitter would know.

And it was now, as Holden wiped the blood that trickled freely from the lacerations of metal on fist, that he waited for the water to come, for the alarm to resound and for the glass door to release its bated breath of freedom. Within seconds, Holden Clifford would not have to face the certainty of yes or no. He could simply walk out the building.

A hiccup of spray and his clothes were doused from the shower that spurted from the faceted heads in the ceiling. The door sprang open and he walked painfully and nonchalantly from the conference room wearing the director’s tight suit jacket and shoes. Rather than race from the scene like Alice’s rabbit, Holden approached one of the frazzled Editors, looked the man in the eyes and said, “We should probably leave the building. Which way is safe?”

Frightened, the man was momentarily mute, as if he never made a decision of his own at work, and motioned toward the emergency stairs where people were collecting. After following a funnel of frenzied ‘coworkers’ into the stairwell, Holden followed the group unceremoniously out of the building where they stood and gazed up, wondering what set off the sprinkler system and how their computers were doing and what about my digital frame and my egg salad sandwich?

Holden wasn’t there to hear the many whispers collecting in the gentle wind of the sidewalk. He was already three blocks closer to Wilmette, his feet burning as he raced toward the Lincoln Memorial, tossing the director’s expensive jacket at an Unfortunate, who took it gladly, and enjoying the sunshine of unforeseen freedom. He couldn’t believe he had escaped. It almost seemed too easy. But Holden knew he had no other choice. And now he had to accept that they would be looking for him and, even worse, they would still be planning to destroy the last library in the world.

He had no identification. He had no wallet or money or anything to pawn. The pain in his toes was unbearable and the face he was wearing would be recognizable to every single person in the world within an hour’s time. But still, Holden could breathe. He was free. The Publishing House was behind him. And all he had to do was get home.

 

 

* * * * *

 

 

028-76668

 

 

Two months had passed since Holden had gone and Wilmette seemed to wither in his absence. Trees lost their luster. The green had died and the months of September and October had burnished the leaves to many shades of brown and orange. People who played the game, who read The Book, believed it was the changing of the seasons; but those who missed Holden told themselves something altogether different: The world was dying and Holden may be gone forever.

Carving its way through the flurry of fallen leaves was an old model station wagon with a rack on the top that was overflowing with luggage and plastic containers. Between the boards of wood detailing, the car was painted with a luster of vibrant yellow. It drove slowly through the neighborhoods, winding the streets with its bright hue at an even, almost uncertain, pace. It was searching for something. When the station wagon reached the hauntingly empty driveway of Winston’s estate, the car pulled in and navigated its way though the unblemished lawn of leaves. If it weren’t for the stones that edged the driveway, they could have very rightly been driving over grass. The place looked abandoned. Obviously, no one had driven over the leaves since they had fallen and there were so many on the ground that the people who had arrived in search of something would, more than likely, be leaving with smiles more withered than the trees. But hope was a powerful thing and evidence of possible disappointment wasn’t enough to sway them. They parked near the front entrance and turned off the car.

The passenger door opened and a young woman stepped out with a newborn in her arms. She looked up at the brick and stucco house with smiling eyes, as if it were exactly what she had imagined. From the driver’s side came a man in his mid-twenties looking expectantly at the swooping gable roof and the iron plated, diamond glass windows before joining his wife and their child. Dreams were going to be built here. Years of memories they would fondly recall in the decades ahead.

The back door opened from the driver’s side and a man stepped out looking haggard and exhausted and beaten. His detached expression was lost behind his beard, humble eyeglasses and dusty brown mop of hair. It was Holden. He had finally made it home after such a long journey. He had done what he could to disguise himself, but it didn’t take much. After what he had experienced, he looked different. He was different. And it was mostly in his eyes. While thin and trodden, they had a new vibrancy to them. There was a mission behind his gaze that was unlike anything they would be expecting from someone who used to be content with a simple, small life.

He had been planning every day. During the long, moonlit walks in the street with his thumb in the air, hoping someone would pull over and save him, to drive him a few more miles before his shoes fell apart. He thought about it every hour. Dreamt of the ramifications. What he had been planning to propose to them was something they would not be expecting to hear, but he hoped that the proof of his ability to escape from the hold of the Publishing House would be voice enough. All they needed was to trust in him and trust that his plan, though oddly unbelievable and seemingly against their entire belief system, would work. He just prayed that, in his destabilized condition, he wouldn’t appear like a man that has lost his mind. Because, in truth, the man they would be expecting died somewhere along the road to Washington.

Home again, home again. Jiggety Jig.

“Well. I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m sure we’ll find out soon enough.” He pulled a cylindrical duffle bag from the roof and dropped it onto his shoulder before limping toward the door. The past eleven weeks had not been kind and he was looking forward to a hot bath and a chance to relax before dropping the bomb on everyone. He led them to the front door. They found it unlocked.

What the three of them were expecting and what actually met their eyes were two very different things. The estate, normally quite serene, was bustling with life. In the foyer alone, there were ten people Holden had never seen before. There was a group of young children in the sitting room listening to a woman as she read from a children’s book. In the great room there was another group that seemed to be teaching a class. They were each holding a copy of The Book, except for one, who was steadily reading aloud from an original printing. Holden was so stunned by the complete difference between what he had left and what he now discovered that he hadn’t see her coming.

“Oh gosh, I hope you three haven’t been standing here too long. Sometimes we don’t even hear the door. I’m Marion.”

He turned to see her face and there was music.

She looked brilliant and beautiful. Vibrant and alive. Comfortable in her new clothes. All sense of fear and worry gone. In fact, Marion even looked younger. When she reached the foyer, Marion hugged the woman Holden had traveled with before admiring the infant in her arms. “So adorable! I’m sure we’ll get down to business and find out how you guys got the address and where you hail from and all, but we always start with hugs. It’s just so nice to see new people. And an infant!”

“You’re kidding,” Holden bellowed, as Marion turned and nodded. She extended a hand to introduce herself. Amused, he held out his own and they shook hands. Holden knew he looked different, but he thought at least Marion would recognize him.

“Well, it’s a pleasure to meet you. My name is Alex and this is my wife, Kari. We’ve just heard so much about this house from our friend here and…well, we really look forward to getting involved any way we can.”

Marion turned to Holden again, intrigued. “So, where exactly are you…” She paused and tilted her head. Blinking often, she knit her eyebrows and leaned forward, staring into him. “Holden?”

“Yeah, Marion,” he smiled. “It’s me.”

She released a squeal of unabashed delight and leapt into his arms, only to retract immediately beneath a smile of total shock. “Oh-my-gosh, you stink.”

“I forgot I had them on.” he dragged the glassless frames free and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I could use a haircut, I’m sure.”

Marion ran a hand through his hair and ruffled it toward his forehead. “I don’t know. I think it works too.” They shared a smile. “Holden, I have to tell everyone you’re here. They’ll be so happy.”

“No. No…no…wait,” he said, taking her hand. She looked down at it and beamed. “I don’t want people to see me like this. But, I would like to kind of…call a meeting. Do we really have forty-five people?”

“Yeah, isn’t it amazing!? Most of them are like me…on a watch list or somehow associated with The Free Thinkers. Just let me take you around,” she pleaded, playfully. “Can I just take you around?”

“Alright, but no introductions.”

“Fine. Whatever. Sure.” She gripped onto his hand, glanced back at the people he arrived with and said, “I’m sorry. I’ll be right back. I just miss him so much. I was so worried.”

Alex waved her away. “After what he’s been through…go right ahead.”

“Yeah, we’ll just make ourselves at home,” Kari offered, reaching a free hand into the crook of her husband’s arm. “Maybe listen to this story with the kids.”

Marion gripped his hand and led him gradually through the many rooms where they used to sit and enjoy one another. “Holden, I can’t even begin to tell you…I don’t even know where to start.”

He knew where to start.

He stopped and locked eyes with the large wall in the great room where they had begun a list before he was taken. A list of random ideas of where they could find old books or pages or paragraphs. The list had been three lines long when he left. Now, the fine, dark print had bled onto a second wall to the right of the fireplace.

“That man there, and the older couple sitting on the couch, those are two of Winston’s neighbors,” Marion whispered, pointing them out. One of the older women noticed her and waved. “Their houses are even bigger than this one. It was Jeff’s idea to reach out to them because he figured that we would need more space. You wouldn’t believe it, Holden. Each of them had a few books in their house. Stuff that their family had hidden for sentimental reasons. They broke the law to keep those books and when Winston showed them the differences…they were keyed up to join. And Holden, I swear you’re going to lose your head over this. Without you here, Shane has been amazing. He’s really here for himself now. Every time a new person joins the group, Shane forces them to list out their talents, no matter how small, and now he has a construction crew! They remodeled the guest house, built a new bathroom and completely fixed up the attic with bunks and everything. So many people are living here, it’s crazy. Oh, and they renovated the basement. Can you believe it! Shane rebuilt all the bookshelves so they’re shallow enough to hold as many stories as possible without having to stack books in front of one another.”

“Look at the wall. Everyone comes up with ideas, we follow a few leads and we just…find them. See those people on the couch with The Book. It’s their job to read through a new story aloud with four other people. Two of them are following along with the digital version and one is reviewing any possible changes in Winston’s log book. Then they take one of the many leaves from the yard,” she paused, giddy, “God’s paper…remember?” Holden bobbed his head in the memory of little Ronnie. “And then we use our own homemade ink to write out the differences and mark out the page.”

“This…this is so great.”

Marion turned to agree with him, but she could see so much missing beyond his withered words. Marion saw what Holden had seen in himself every time he passed his reflection. But she didn’t ask him that question. “What happened to you Holden? Where have you been all this time?”

“First?” he asked, squinting one eye as the disheartening images were brought to memory. “Hiding out with some Unfortunates until I looked different. Hitchhiking for a while. Staying away from major cities until I met Alex and Kari. After they listened to me about The Book, I drove with them back to their apartment and helped them move. Her favorite novel is The Catcher in the Rye. Funny, right?” They shared a laugh, but Holden was embarrassed by his dirty smile and turned away.

Marion’s heart was broken for him. She gripped his hand tighter as she spoke. “You don’t seem happy.”

“I am happy. I just…I’m afraid it may all be for nothing.”

“Holden. If anyone should be happy, it should be you. This is all because of you. If any of these people knew you were here right now…”

“Yeah, well. They’re not going to like what I have to say.” Marion looked concerned. When he didn’t reassure her with his typical shrug of indifference, she grew frightened. There was too much. He needed to avoid the matter, so he changed the subject. “I noticed all those children in the sitting room. Are you teaching classes?”

“We call it Knights and Bishops. It was Winston’s idea,” she noted, walking him back toward the foyer. “He thought that, as a group, we should raise any children we have in the stories of these books and teach them everything we can about the Publishing House with the sole intention of making them as intelligent as possible so that one day they could be placed secretly within any government organization. And then, on the day we strike, they’ll all move at the same time.”

“The day we strike? Man, you guys have come a long way in only a couple months.”

Holden’s tired eyes shimmered as he watched the group of seven toddlers listen intently to the young woman who was seated at the piano bench with a tall children’s book, its once-saturated cover art now dim and dusty. They weren’t just pawns anymore. He had been gone for eleven weeks and they had moved forward without him – to the edge of the board to create their own, much stronger pieces. Marion was so happy to see his response that she began to swing his arm with her own.

“Winston was right, Holden. Every time a new person came in, there was another mind. And it was like we were all one brain that just continued to grow smarter and smarter.”

“Is this actually going to work?”

“Holden.” A rosy glow twinkled her fresh, strong-featured face and she turned to look deeply into him. “We have a grass roots movement in every state where buildings have been branded. We send people off every week and Moby is constantly out delivering Muckrakers. It’s all so –”

“What’s a Muckraker?”

“Oh, Winston again. I don’t know where that word came from, but it’s what we call the branding machines now.” Holden couldn’t help but picture Jane’s face as Marion spoke. His eyelids contracted and she switched gears without understanding his reaction. “People have quit their jobs to come here…pooled all their life savings into a large fund for groceries and things. Everyone is working. All day long, someone is doing something. I know. It sounds crazy, right? Can I take you to the library? I know you want to clean yourself up, but it’ll be quick.”

Marion led Holden down the cellar steps so they could keep talking without the constant brewing of people walking around them. Holden noticed the smell before he even reached the cobbled floor and once he noticed the new bookshelves, he was almost sad. The scent had once been musty and unappealing, but that was the cellar. Now, the same, crisp tang that collected in his nose was overwhelmed by the smells of pine and sawdust. Holden knew it was for the better. The shelves looked wonderful and there were so many narrow aisles with plenty of shelf space open for new books. Still, he couldn’t help missing the smell.

“It’s so empty down here,” Holden concluded aloud, as he peeked around the newly-constructed shelves. “You’d think it’d be filled with readers.”

“No. Not anymore. One of the men we recruited from the neighborhood was a science teacher and he told us that the moisture we create with our breath isn’t good for the books. It makes foxes or foxing or something on the paper. It’s mold. So we try to have no more than two people down here at a time.”

“Let me guess…”

“That’s right,” she admitted, spinning in place beneath one of the many new light fixtures. “I’m a Librarian again.”

Holden looked admiringly at her for a while without speaking, pleased and impressed with the woman she had become. “You look good, Marion.”

“Thanks.”

They walked further into the cellar and found a tall man dressed all in black sitting at the desk, reading a book where the letters of the title on the cover were arranged on shelves, leaning and crooked, like a series of books. Holden read the title quickly before the man noticed them. It was called If On A Winter’s Night A Traveller by someone named Calvino. Holden was amazed at how long it took for the man dressed in black to turn and notice them. He had been so gentle with each page and so engulfed in the writing that when he finally saw them standing nearby, he hastily closed the book and stumbled over his words.

“Sorry, Marion. I’ll…give you some privacy.”

The man rose, ducked under the pipes along the vaulted cellar ceiling and walked to the stairs. Marion didn’t respond as he left. She allowed him to believe that she had brought a newcomer, possibly an Unfortunate, downstairs for their usual eighteen minute ritual. As Holden watched the man’s lengthy legs disappear from view, he nodded in the direction of the desk to ask, without a word, who the self-appointedly formal man had been.

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“Try me.”

Marion leaned in to whisper, although everyone in the house other than Holden and his new friends had known. “His name is Finch. About a year ago, that guy came to the bar asking me if he could buy the book pages from the walls.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. He gave me his name and number and told me to call him when I was willing to sell. I assumed Finch was a collector or something…but apparently he was involved in some black market for books.”

She was right. He couldn’t believe it. “How did you find him again?”

“I didn’t have to. After you vanished, Ephraim and I were talking and he told me that he used the Finch all the time. Sold the stuff he didn’t like right out of the antique store. Even went with him to a few estate sales. Finch was the go-to guy for selling and buying anything that had to do with books.”

“Wow. You trust him down here?”

“Holden, you don’t understand.” Marion broke, clearly arriving at the most exciting part of the story. “Finch isn’t a reader. Never owned a copy of The Book and never bothered to check out the ones he sold for other people. Not even the more expensive editions. That man feels the most guilt out of all of us. He walks around here ashamed all day, as if he invented The Book. He was the one person who could have figured it all out first and saved books that were close to destruction. And he didn’t.” Marion tilted her head to look up at the cellar door, still whispering as if he were there. “But although Finch has never read a word, he knows more about the condition of books and how to protect them than all of us combined. That was his livelihood. He cared about the spine, who the author was, the title on the cover, if there were pages dog-eared, torn or missing, but never the content. He couldn’t care less about the words. He was just concerned with profit. So Ephraim and I reached out and Finch has been here ever since. In fact, he’s the reason our list on the wall is so large. The man’s a gold mine of information. If there’s anyone in this lonely world who would know where to find books, it’s Finch.”

“Marion, that’s so wonderful.”

“No, what’s even more wonderful is this little green log book he brought with. Inside it are all the people he has ever sold to.” She paused, waiting for him to understand the magnitude of it. “A list of people who are looking for books, Holden. People like us. We haven’t even reached out to them, yet. But Winston is like a little kid, he’s so excited.”

“Well, it really seems like you guys have a lot of things going for you. Oh, hey…I could use one of those,” he blurted arbitrarily, reaching into a bowl of fingernail clippers.

“No, don’t. I’ll find you another pair.”

“Marion. Check out these bad boys.” Holden turned his hand around so she could see how badly he needed them. “One of the many comforts that have been unavailable over the past few months.”

She smirked and handed one of the clippers to him. “Flip up the metal handle.”

Holden followed her instructions reluctantly, only to understand the purpose of the bowl when the handle spun gently into the light. Engraved into the shiny, metal lip were the words, Ex Libris. The bowl was there for the ceremony of it all. The clippers were a right-of-passage for people who were leaving The Book behind. That was why Holden couldn’t use them. The one he had reached for was meant for someone else. As Marion took Holden by the hand and led him over to the reading nook, he tried to remember where he had seen those words before and what, at all, they had meant. It came to him when he saw the new art piece that was hanging over the high-backed couch in the corner.

For those raised in a sustainable world, it was hard to break the mindset of reduce, reuse and recycle, but the artist had done so without selling out to the man. The elaborate piece was painted in shades of brown and cream on strips of remnant shelving from Winston’s bookcase. Sheathed by a border of painted garland was a man standing in a meadow, gripping a book and holding it triumphantly to the sky. Below him was an open, empty rectangle and guarding the entire image, rising high above the book, were the same two words:

 

EX LIBRIS

 

Holden recognized the painting instantly. He had seen that exact image on the day he finally held his favorite book, The Catcher in the Rye. In fact, he had been standing in that very spot. The painting was a replica of the bookplate from the inside cover of Winston’s copy. And it was beautiful.

“What does it mean?” Holden asked, studying a piece of art for the first time in his life. In such calm curiosity, he repeated himself. “Ex Libris. What does it mean, Marion?”

She turned and kissed his cheek before speaking the words with tears in her eyes. “It’s Latin. It means: out of the book.”

“Out of The Book?” he confirmed, hearing the meaning.

“Yeah,” Marion turned and gazed up at the painting once more. Smiling proudly, she added, “Whenever anyone sees this painting…they think that man holding the book is you. Holden, don’t you realize…this is all because of you. We’ve only grown strong because we wanted to make you proud.”

He didn’t know what to say. He had come there ready to lay a harsh reality on them, but the group had grown stronger and they still thought they could win. They believed in what they were doing. They believed in him, of all people. And knowing what he had been preparing to tell them, thinking on it each day as he made his way home, Holden felt a knot of grief engorge his throat.

“I feel so…proud. I just…” he stopped, and gazed up at the victory displayed on the painting before him. He was a statue in oil, immortalized as a hero for something he felt he hadn’t even done. “I just hope you guys feel the same way after you hear what I have to say.”

“Okay,” she hummed, discerning the deep disparity on his face. “What do you want me to do?”

His voice was war-torn and temperate as he laid out a very simple request. “Round people up, Marion. I don’t know how, but get them all into one place. As many as you can.”

“Alright,” she agreed. “But first…you need a bath.”

 

 

* * * * *

 

 

029-80752

 

 

There was a chapel in Wilmette that sat itself within the crooked fingers of several tiny avenues. Most days, it was lonely and empty inside. That afternoon, however, there were nearly fifty people congregating anxiously in expectation of the good news. Among the stillness and between the rows of fugitive readers waiting ardently for their unseen leader to address them, was an unstated atmosphere of sanctity and righteousness that was lost on no one.

At the apse of the small chapel was a sitting room. In the corner of the sitting room sat an ornate wooden chair without a cushion and a table where goblets and other holy paraphernalia were arranged. Holden Clifford had grown accustomed to sitting on the hardened concrete of the world over the past months and he found the cushionless discomfort comforting. He cracked his knuckles and ran a hand over his still-bearded face. It felt good to be clean. Old clothes. Same look. New mind. It also felt good to be alone before giving his proclamation. He didn’t have to be alone; he just thought it was smarter. So many people would be vying for his attention to introduce themselves and tell him what they were reading and why they had moved from South Dakota to join his group. Holden wanted to be there for them, but he needed to think.

The people in that room, the courageous Ex Libris, were different than what he had been expecting to come home to. More importantly, they didn’t really know him. Holden needed time to prepare the exact way he would explain everything so they would understand and not think that he had been brainwashed or recycled or was just plain batty. Of course, he had shown up at the house all helter-skelter, but Marion made sure that few people saw him before his bath.

While Holden had been changing in Winston’s bedroom, Marion popped in to tell him that the group was thrilled to hear what he had to say and that they would meet down the block at a tiny chapel. One of Winston’s neighbors had reached out to the minister there because they knew the man had strong feelings against The Book. Just like every other church in the world, there were small, inexpensive copies of the digital reading device lining the aisles. Simple, small editions that held only enough space for the Bible. The Holy Book, as it was called, was wrapped in green linen and printed with the seal of a golden cross over a recycling icon that, when placed together, resembled an ancient, Celtic headstone.

The minister, Trent Osgood, was eager to join their cause because he had felt betrayed by the government and the publishers of The Book for almost as long as Winston. It was an outlandish thought, but Trent felt that they were trying to change his faith. Again, with subtlety. They weren’t so bold as to alter the quotations of Jesus or come up with an alternate ending or remove a commandment. The Bible was the one book in the world that they could never erase. No, instead they decided that new books, a collection called the Apocrypha, would be added to the original text. When the Bible was released digitally as The Holy Book, there were twelve letters from completely different authors between the Old Testament and the New. Most of the world believed that they weren’t inspired by God. Most did not adhere to the words within them. But when the Publishing House created the single, uniform edition of The Holy Book, the Apocryphal books were added. Because, as the claim goes, some people believed.

The minister saw the addition of those books as a way for the church (and apparently the government) to enact more control over their flock because they included rules and laws that couldn’t be found in the original books of the Bible. When Trent Osgood arrived to their group, he not only brought a much needed location for them to have large meetings with additional facilities, storage space and more, but he also brought with him a well-cultured wisdom and viewpoint that they hadn’t anticipated.

When Holden walked down the stairs to find his way to the church, he noticed another painting on the wall of Winston’s estate where, within multiple planes of life, were the words: The Bereans of Bedlam. It didn’t make much sense at the time, but Marion explained it to him as she walked him to the church.

The first thing the minister had shared with the group upon his arrival was a verse from the Bible – a collection of books that they knew were the most widely read of all time. It didn’t matter what religion each of the Ex Libris had been, the words Trent read sang of a belief in the discovery of truth that they forever wanted to uphold. The passage was from the Book of Acts.

 

 

The few teenagers of the group began calling themselves The Bereans of Bedlam because the Bereans were the ‘fair-minded’ people from the verse that had taken the time to confirm that what they had been told was the truth. The Ex Libris were so fired up about their movement. Each of them were a proclamation of honesty and free speech. And this was the group, with their convictions about fact in the face of fiction, that Holden met at the front of the chapel with the most implausible message.

Clearing his throat, Holden stood from the comfortless chair and stepped into the apse of the chapel. Amid the riotous applause that he attempted to slay with a lower hand, a child said, “That’s him, Mom! I know that’s him!”

Holden approached the pulpit, emaciated and mild, “Please, you guys.” He laughed. “Please, just let me talk. You may not like me very much by the end of this and I just want to make sure that you all have the right outlook on things before I begin.” A murmur of questioning wound through the group, but it was stunted the moment he continued.

“Most of you don’t know me other than by name. I am a pipe fitter. I am an ex-husband. I’m a dad. I am a reader…” At this, applause erupted and he fought to stifle it by raising his hands in peace. Someone shouted Ex Libris from the back and the wave of praise only increased. “Please. This is not a time to be joyful. Our children’s children will have that opportunity. Not us. We’re in a war. And if I hear anymore clapping, I’m going to be upset.”

“This all began because I read the writing on the wall and disagreed. Over the course of the past weeks, I’ve learned a lot about The Book from people on the road. And you need to know what I know.” Holden took a breather before stepping up to something he knew would be taken the wrong way. “The technology itself, although it’s corrupted and controlling, is really quite beautiful and when it was created, it was created in love,” Holden witnessed the shift toward uncertainty on their faces and he fought hard to remain steadfast in his telling of the story. “See, our planet was in trouble and we were on the verge of technological breakthroughs every day. People longed for something new and a way to save future generations like ours. All that hard work was warped because of The Book. Most of you don’t even know how it had gotten so centralized. When this all began, there were libraries and used bookstores scattered throughout the world overstocked with decrepit, rotting reminders of our misused resources. And while I would love to have those back right now, at the time it didn’t make sense. I know you don’t want to hear any of this, but when The Book came out, it was a good thing. Actually, let me rephrase that,” he paused, nodding as he found the right words.

“The digital book was a good thing. Not many people know this, but, at one point, each publishing house came out with their own version of the digital book. There must have been fifteen to twenty versions, each that appealed to a different people group. But the government had a plan that, as I’ve learned, spans a long time. And it began by using our guilt and our fear. They told our grandparents that selling paper books was wrong. That reading paper books was evil. And if you had any in your library, especially if you weren’t reading them, you were just as much to blame for the destruction of our planet as the companies who dumped toxic waste into the water supply. They encouraged the digital book heavily and warned that if we didn’t change our viewpoint on things, the world would not survive. The primary solution they endorsed was The Book. The government decided to take technology that already existed and they created something far better using our grandparents’ tax dollars. And then they cornered the market on digital reading devices by giving The Book away for free.

As Holden elaborated, gasps wove through the room in warps and wefts. “They gave it away for free because not everyone could afford the new technology. But nothing in the world is free. They had one, uncomplicated stipulation. Our government told people that if they brought in fifty used books, they would be handed a free copy of their new, government-issued digital reading device. The Book was the most functional, most attractive, most convenient version of the electronic book and it easily surpassed every other option on the shelves.

“Trick was, you couldn’t just buy The Book and the demand was high. People began raiding used bookstores just so they could get the newest device for free and sell it for an outrageous profit. Eventually, to avoid such pandemonium and theft, which was certainly planned, the government developed Indivisible Publishing, a profit-based subsidiary of the Publishing House. This provided them with a way to channel money through The Book as well as a way to create newer editions that would appeal to a large mass, in hopes that it would soon eradicate any of their competition.

Holden took a sip from the glass of water Marion had left on the pulpit and coughed into his fist. “Within eight years…eight years…there was only one way you could read without receiving a dirty look from someone else. Through The Book. Within twelve years, you couldn’t read from a paper copy without breaking the law and receiving an exorbitant fine of eight hundred dollars. A year later it was jail time. A year after that, the only way anyone could read, was through The Book. It happened that fast. The Great Recycling had removed so many of our freedoms forever.

“To those of you who knew those details, my thanks for remaining patient. To others of you, this knowledge has come as a surprise. The important lesson you should take away is that their primary intent behind manipulating the outlet for reading was motivated by a singular factor. Control. What had once been a marvelous development of technology that reformed our thinking about forestry and paper had soon been compromised, altered and placed into the hands of people with control at their hearts. Believe me. I completely understand their motivations. And not from Winston,” Holden affirmed, raising a hand to greet him, “I missed you, man. But because eleven weeks ago, I was captured by Agents from the Publishing House.”

A riot of questioning and frightful noises rumbled like a caravan of horses through the small chapel. Holden grabbed the reins and pulled tight. “And I think it’s safe to say,” he proclaimed, over the commotion, “that I’m the first person in over a hundred years that has escaped their custody, based on something very simple. They underestimated me. Yes, I was captured and, in fact, my daughter was hurt in the process. But there’s so much we can learn from what happened. I lived to tell the tale. On top of that, I’ve drawn a rough layout of the entire building on pieces of fabric and plastic. I know where the real Publishing House is located in our nation’s capital and I have a rough estimate of how many people work there, since I funneled them out of the building. These are things we can use.”

“Did they try to recycle you?” a young woman shouted.

A roar of other questions barricaded him from continuing and Holden had no choice but to stand and wait for them to subside. In the minutes that passed, he looked around the room for people he knew and noticed Alex and Kari in the front row, smiling. Holden recalled the long journey they’d had across the country together and he smiled back at them and the tiny baby slung between their arms.

“I know you guys have a lot of questions, but you have to accept that they may need to go unanswered.” As the murmuring continued, Holden started realizing, all too late, that his attitude of authority was unwelcome in a group of naturally rebellious people. “I was fine and I am fine. When I first got there, they didn’t do anything to me. I had been spared, but for a purpose. They wanted to frame me. To use me as they used so many Americans before, to destroy the last remaining copies of books on the planet. At the Library of Congress there is a single copy of every book ever written, except for the ones they’ve banned entirely. They told me that after using me to destroy the last library in existence, they would kill me and use my crime to incite patriotism throughout the world. From there, who knows? Change laws…change a lot of things. They would be free, once and for all, to alter The Book as they pleased because there would be no originals left in the world to challenge them.”

There was a respectful silence in the chapel now. Holden allowed his mind to rest in it before moving on. “I know that our grass roots movement is working. I can see that and I’m proud of you. Shane. Shane, I’m proud of you,” Holden hollered out, until he eventually found his friend standing at the back of the room. They shared a smile and he could tell in a glance that they had a lot to discuss. “I just don’t think we have a choice. We have to make a big move.”

“Well, what do you suggest?” a teenager, one of the Bereans of Bedlam, asked from the front row.

“We have to save as many books as possible. I mean, we’re lucky that we have such a great library, but there are so many pre-digital stories out there, fiction and non, that we simply don’t have. And some of these books, an amount that could fill this church, are worth dying for.” Holden recalled what Winston had told him as he raced back to The Library to save Marion. “These pages are worth more than me. Worth more than all of us combined. I know you guys have a lot of ideas of how we can find more, but this whole thing will only work if we stop them from winning. When this is over, and we don’t have an original version of a book, we might as well consider it dead. We can never be sure if what we are reading is genuine. We’ll never be able to know if another author is on the page or whether our imagination is being forced toward some particular end. How can we preserve our personal freedoms when we can’t turn off the propaganda?”

“No!” Holden disagreed over the racket. “Guys, you’re not listening to me. The building and all the books will be destroyed any day now. Hell, they could be gone tomorrow for all we know. We have to move quickly. I got away before they forced me to do it…but they’re going through with their plan with or without me.”

He paused to take a breath, stepped back from the pulpit and sat on the carpeted steps before them. He could see in their faces that they were waiting expectantly for his solution. “To be honest, it has been a breath of fresh air, returning here. Your spirit. Your courage. Your hope. It’s in the air, guys. I don’t mean to diminish that. I truly…I don’t. My life over the past eleven weeks has been horrible. There were times I lost hope. Times I thought I wouldn’t get through it. But I have. I know we won’t be able to beat them overnight. But we still need to try. We need to take risks. Make big moves. It’s not a surprise that the rain has come back. Our time of rejoicing in the discovery of their lies and our decision to rebel is over, man. The revolution has to begin today.” Holden stood up and raised his voice. “The Book is still updating! I’ve seen it! I’ve watched people’s faces as they hunger for that machine to turn back on. Their fingers swooping over the page like vultures as they devour the words they trust. Every day it’s getting worse!”

Holden, once a simple-minded man, now stood before them a great and powerful mind that could sense their anticipation. As he neared his final statement, he saw them looking up at him with golden eyes of esteem that he knew would not last long.

“These milestones we’re making aren’t going to matter if we wake up to the bad news. They are still going to win and we can’t let that happen. I’ve had time to think about it and I know what to do. But you have to trust me. We need to take risks. We need to make a single, big move.” He paused to clear his throat and said, “So I’m going to set the Library of Congress on fire.”

 

 

* * * * *

 

 

030-83868

 

 

They built their strength upon words, both printed and digital. They determined their calling by what was the same and what was different and deleted. As readers who had been lied to all their lives, seeing their leader and hearing his words for the first time, the members of Ex Libris were soon meeting in groups in the gardens of the chapel and in the backyards of the neighborhood to carefully discuss a single, specific concern: whether Holden’s mind was the original or if had been altered somehow by the Publishing House.

Eight of them had known Holden before he was taken and one of those eight was an eight-year-old. Their impression of him was limited and their simple acceptance of his reputation struggled to last under such a constant atmosphere of distrust and cynicism.

For a few days following, life at Winston’s house was unpleasant. People were unimpressed with Holden. And there were some legitimate concerns over his mental condition. A rumor began that he had been brainwashed and that they were no longer safe. Every day, the house woke up to less people roaming the halls. And no one could argue against it. Their leader had arrived looking crazed and at his first opportunity to speak to the group, he told them that The Book was good and then endorsed setting fire to the last library on the planet. Regardless of his reasoning, there weren’t many books left and he was willing to burn some. For that statement alone, many people didn’t believe.

For the others, the most compelling reason to doubt Holden was because he had escaped. Even Winston had difficulty accepting that. Much wiser men had gone before him and only Holden had found his way home. But, as the week carried on, the shock of what he had said subsided and they began to understand his motivation for suggesting such drastic actions. Of course, if Shane hadn’t been there it may have all fallen apart.

Holden was given honor as their leader. But they didn’t know him and it was hard to trust what he had to say. On the other hand, they did know Shane. And they respected Shane. They listened to him. And when he told them that Holden had the best interest of the Ex Libris at heart, they stopped murmuring behind closed doors and started to listen. In less than a day, it made sense. They really didn’t have much time. If Holden was right, the Library of Congress might be charred hunks of rubble by dinner. Their leader had spent every day for eleven weeks focused on the singular task of saving as many books as possible and they believed he had more planned than simply starting a fire, grabbing a few books and running. Once Holden was able to speak without dissent, he laid out the plan very clearly for everyone.

The Library of Congress had the most rigorous, most intense fire protection system on the planet. Holden knew that because he and Shane had studied the structure often during their apprenticeship. It was a perfect example of a multiple action protection system. The building integrated three distinct safeguarding methods, all of which General Fire Protection had installed in one or more buildings throughout Chicago.

The first system was the release of flame retardant foam from a hollow sprocket that coated the area and smothered the flames. This was often used in the protection of expensive, non-electronic property. The second, that would kick in if the foam system failed, was a typical, wet piping system. The pipes were filled with water and ready, at a moment’s notice, to launch a continuous stream upon the blaze. If the wet system failed, for some unlikely reason, the third and final system would kick in. This option was the most unsafe and widely rejected as a viable alternative. It was incorporated into the most extreme plans when living organisms were unlikely to be present. A ventilation system that extracts all the oxygen from of the room, thus making the fire decay rapidly before having the ability to take down the building. As all of these would be integrated into the fire alarm, the manipulation of the complex system could be done easily by a professional technician like Holden or Shane. Based on their plan of attack, they could either increase or decrease the flames. Even time the burn. Once Holden explained why understanding such a system was beneficial to their goal of extracting the books from the library it was simply a question of when.

If a fire was started at the library and continued to burn at an even pace, the government would have no choice but to keep appearing as if they cared and would need to find an alternate solution for protecting the books. This is because when the government made the decision to recycle all the books on the planet and to bar people from owning paper copies, many rigorous laws were set in motion to ensure the safety of the originals. Holden had learned, through the oddest arrangement of wise Unfortunates and ragamuffin book lovers, that there had been specific protective measures in place at the Library of Congress if such a tragedy occurred.

The most important books would be channeled from the reading room one shelf at a time and into a holding station before being carted away from the premises in government-issued trucks, while the local fire department would attempt to put out the inferno. At that point, Holden’s plan detailed that members of Ex Libris would hijack one or two of these trucks. While some books would burn tragically in the fire and others would be ruined by blasts of water from the hydrants outside, they could drive back to Chicago happily because the most prized works of literature would be in their possession. It was an upturned way of thinking, but it was the only hope they had to save the most important literature on the planet.

The following day, after the consensus had been reached to move forward, Moby came home with his band of branders. He was so glad to see Holden was safe that he gave the man a rest and instantly became the voice of the movement. With Jeff’s help, Moby developed a plan to ‘export’ the books from Washington DC while avoiding any satellite tracking systems. Once they knew what had to be done, they slaved over digital maps and crunched the numbers without sleep until they determined precisely where they could separate the books into multiple vehicles outside the capital and ditch the truck.

Helping where he could, Winston posed a suggestion that they would need to send someone to the Library of Congress to scout for help on the inside. They needed to find a well-placed librarian who could guarantee that the books they deemed to be the most important would be funneled into the right trucks and Winston did what he could to secure such a person in the limited time they had available.

Shane became the architect of the fire. He knew more about sprinkler systems than Holden and rallied the group around the plan with his charismatic attitude. Still working at General Fire, he used many of his contacts to gain access to the floor plans and schematic layout of the library, including complete plumbing and sprinkler plans. He even found the exact model of the main protection grid and brought one home so Holden could practice.

Everyone, even the teenagers, had been involved in the planning stage. They worked into the night, every night, until it was done. The only item left to be determined was to choose the four members who would drive east to finish the job. Shane was the first to volunteer, followed quickly by three other strong, confident men, but it didn’t take long for everyone to silently agree on a different four. It was only right that the people who threw the first punches were the ones to take the last.

Marion and Holden.

Moby and Winston.

Although the man’s body was old, Winston’s mind was sharp. Moby was a master of disguise and deception. And while Marion and Holden were wanted terrorists with perhaps the most recognizable faces in the country, neither one would leave without the other. For the four of them, there were no other options. There was a high likelihood that they may not be coming back and they were unwilling to sacrifice a pawn unless it was their own.

The launch date was set and the remaining members of their group decided they needed to throw a party to blow off steam and cut through the obvious tension. Their ambitious plan seemed perfect, but there was no telling what would happen and all of them felt they should send their leaders to the front lines with a bang. Thankfully, although the weather remained gloomy, the rainfall had been kept to the city and they were able to celebrate with a very normal, very relaxed backyard barbecue.

Wearing flip flops and holding a plastic Frisbee, Holden walked out onto the grass feeling so content. Little pow-wows of people surrounded the backyard of Winston’s estate just as content, having agreed that they weren’t going to discuss The Book. No one would utter a word about the Publishing House, or the androidian Agents, or the Library of Congress, or the fact that four of them may never be coming back. They just had fun.

Fun, Holden thought.

How distant that word felt to him. It was unfamiliar and almost uninvited. The event was already a rousing success and he felt a bittersweetness in his mouth among swigs of beer. He had been able to relax and been able to enjoy himself, but, as every moment passed, he understood ever more that he would not be returning to that house.

Holden knew he would be able to start the fire and that Marion and Winston and Moby would be able to coordinate and bring the books safely home, but he understood his role was different and he accepted it. He was the one who would have to stay inside the building and monitor the sprinkler system to make sure things went according to plan and, if needed, to fight off anyone that tried to stop them. It wouldn’t go down easily. He knew that. Men, like Martin Trust (the director of Historic Homeland Whatever), would be looking for him. And although that man would not be expecting Holden to play such a risky hand, he would certainly make sure that Holden could not escape the capital after doing so. That was the reason why Holden would not allow Shane to take the role that was meant only for him. Even before stepping out of Alex and Kari’s yellow station wagon, Holden had known that he would not be coming back.

But that was not the only thing he had kept from the group. Holden knew that the moment the fire was started and books were destroyed, other laws would be put into place. The government would be forced to see this as a tragedy in the eyes of the American public and in turn, they would add better protection and perhaps write new laws to keep the books that survived the fire out of harms way for future generations. It was an unsafe bet, because books would need to be destroyed to make it happen, but if there was one thing Holden had learned from Martin Trust, it was that sacrifices were necessary for the greater good.

Winston had been the first one to tell him that books were more important than his own life and Holden believed that now. During so many solitary days sleeping under the watchful, arrogant sun, not knowing if he would ever make it back to them alive, Holden had made that honest distinction and accepted his worth. If he had to sacrifice himself to save all that freedom and change the world, he would do it. But he wasn’t supposed to be thinking about that. He was supposed to be trying to relax and enjoy their night. To throw a Frisbee around and mingle. Have a drink or two and work the grill. Just be. Just have fun. Because, more than likely, it would be the last bit of fun he would ever have.

Shane saw Holden standing by himself at the mammoth, gorilla grill and walked over to meet him. A plume of fire launched into his face as he flipped the greasy burgers and he was momentarily lost in the smoke.

“Need some help there, sailor?” Shane asked, throwing an arm around his friend.

“Hey,” Holden grinned, hugging him back. “Thanks for everything you did this week. I can’t tell you how good it felt to just relax and let you guys close everything out.”

“We’re not talking about that, remember?” he said, jabbing him in the gut.

Holden nodded and looked away. He could see, across the yard, beyond a group of guys tossing bean bags, that Marion was laughing with another man he didn’t know. She threw her head back and clasped her hands together, as he gesticulated wildly and pointed to the dog that was digging up Winston’s garden. Marion lowered her head, pulled her hair behind her ears and looked up to see Holden watching her. Her smile faded a bit. And then it changed. Locking eyes with Holden, she smiled for him now. As the man continued speaking, Marion lost herself in Holden’s gaze. And that perfect smile told him everything he ever wanted to hear.

He turned back to Shane refreshed and smirking. “Shane, buddy. Old pal of mine,” he said getting another poke in the gut as he returned to the flame-scorched burgers. “How them Blackhawks doin’?”

“You don’t want to know, bro. Let’s just say I lost a little cash and Winston gave me a hard time about it. Most of the regulars are using a different bar down the street to watch the game now. It’s weird without you there, man.”

“Numbskull got you pulling doubles?”

“Aww, bro. You don’t realize. We’re gettin’ hammered over there. This one job on Michigan, got me goin’ up five stories and pullin’…”

As his best friend carried on complaining, Holden stood back and handed out burgers to the kids, just listening. Although Shane Dagget was crass and almost always inappropriate, Holden loved him. He was the closest person in Holden’s life and it made him sad to think that he’d never see Shane again. He wouldn’t say this aloud, of course. No one else needed to know. Most everyone had some hope that they would return unharmed, carrying stacks of books to the cellar. For Holden, although he wouldn’t wish an alternate future on himself, he would miss Shane. Sitting in their van, tapping their fingers to the music, whistling at girls and just working together. It was stupid, but he would miss the simple act of just looking at blueprints, handing each other tools, bickering over who got to go home early, and just being around each other. The only thing that made it easier for Holden was knowing that Shane, for the first time in his life, had been able to make it on his own. Being apart from his best friend had been hard for him and Holden knew that, but being on the run for two months had been a blessing in disguise. Shane was going to be just fine. In the middle of his best friend’s commentary on the over-usage of advertisement space on the ice of the United Center, Holden interrupted him. There was one thing left unsaid between them.

“Shane, I know we’re not supposed to talk about this, but I’ve just gotta say something before I forget.”

“Alright, bro…but this is it. We’re supposed to be having fun.”

“Yeah, I know.” Holden unscrewed two beers and handed one off like a baton in a relay race. “In case this goes sour, I need you to look out for Eve and Jane for me, okay?”

“Eve?! That stinkin’…” he broke off, shaking his head, “I’m a monkey’s uncle if you think for even a second that I’m taking care of Eve, after what she did to you.”

“No, listen to me. She was scared, man. Don’t act like you weren’t scared when you found that book in my bag. That’s what she was dealing with. But she’d been done with me for years. The truth was too hard for her to deal with, coming from someone she didn’t trust. And I need you to follow through, alright? I’m just thinkin’ that if this doesn’t turn out the way it should,” Holden tilted his head and carved a sharp look into his friend’s eyes. Shane had a name for that look. It was the last chance look. Shane had one last chance to listen and agree before he could expect a direct sock to the gut. “There’s really no telling how this is going to play out and it’s important to me that Jane knows the truth. I don’t want you to put her in harm’s way and if bringing her into this ain’t the right move, don’t do it. I just…” Holden was getting worked up and Shane could tell he needed to give his friend a second to get through what had to be said. “Just look out for her, alright?”

“It’s done,” Shane confirmed with a sip of his beer. “A.D.A.D. bro.”

“A.D.A.D.” Holden smiled. Jiggety jig, it was good to be back. “I told you about that log book I left in her bedroom. By now, I’m sure she’s found it and gone through it. And with that mark on her chest…”

“Bro, don’t think about that right now.”

“Just let me finish,” he swallowed, determined to get beyond the thought. “With that mark on her chest, she’s gotta be having a lot of questions. And if anyone will be there to answer her, I want it to be you. She trusts you, Shane. She’ll listen to you because I won’t be there. I know you never wanted to take on this kind of responsibility and I know this is big…but if I ain’t here…”

“But you are here. And I heard you already. And I told you. Done.”

“Alright,” Holden relinquished. They clinked their glasses against one another and swayed a single, decisive nod. A simple gesture that, in some unexplainable way, had the ability to convey the very deep, honest feelings of faith and dependability those two men had for one another.

For most of the remaining evening, Holden relaxed in the comfort of the bench Winston often frequented and watched the groups of people interacting together. Winston found him there, joined him in the tranquility and together they sat and watched, communicating without a word how comforted they were in the knowledge that things would be different. They didn’t know how yet, or when, but life would be different soon for all of the people in the backyard and many more to come. Their pace was derailed by Holden’s return, but, in time, they would be back on track, heading toward the place where only dreams were possible. And although the two men were able to find such simple joy in the laughter, the running and the smells of fun, there was a regretful sadness in the wind because they knew they wouldn’t be around when such displays of freedom became permanent in the lives of men.

As day slid on toward evening, a few of them gathered wood and built a bonfire near the water. After taking a few photographs around the billowing flames as one large group, the party moved to abandoned logs and side conversations quickly turned to ghost stories, read from tattered bindings and half-torn pages. They discussed tales, old and current. Even new ideas that sprang forth from the teenagers, feeling too young for the fight and too old for the fight of tomorrow that would be delivered through the Knights and Bishops.

And as the discussions carried on and Marion found her way to the log where Holden was sitting, they all began to realize that it was stories that brought them together. There were other obvious pieces to the wide-extending puzzle like freedom from oppression, the fight to restore their rights and the war against censorship, but it all began with books. Oh, how they loved to read. How the characters invoked life that could be felt on the page. How stories had the ability to break through the everyday actions of the typical drudgery to show them a world that they would never have been able to enjoy. An adventure of experiences ever beyond their reach. A time in which they were never born. A person they were never born into. An emotion they never knew they had. And a passion that they found they could no longer live without.

As confessions speckled the fire pit and they discussed their favorite stories and how they had come to meet them, Marion interlocked her fingers with Holden’s and held his hand delicately in the light of the fire. It was this that made him realize it was love. They all loved books.

Each one of them carried a deep, heavy, profound and unending love for the richness of story and the bountiful eternity of wealth it forever poured upon them. That was something the Publishing House could never take away, no matter how many commas they moved or how many paragraphs they altered. No matter how many names they changed, they could never reach inside someone and stop a story. Could never force someone to retract a revolutionary idea or force their submission. These books were born out of imaginations and experiences. Out of heartache and trials. And those things, while often swimming in a world of fiction and fantasy, were real. Passion and spirit, real.

In a time of such harsh realities, it strengthened them to take a break and remember who they were. To know that they had something within themselves no computer could access. Even if every book were destroyed on the earth, stories would remain alive, inside of them. Unread by others and unedited by greedy, emotionless eyes. Each of them was a book with novels upon novels to tell and no matter what the outcome would be for Holden, Marion, Winston and Moby, they would succeed. Mankind would never lose its imagination. They were a race of scientists and explorers, seekers of truth and players of both comedy and tragedy. They studied for lifetimes and lost themselves in an hour between the wrinkles of velvet fiction. They were lovers and fighters. Soldiers of a war that raged on from the comfort of easy chairs and from below the delicate flicker of candle light. They were bibliophiles. They were the Bereans of Bedlam. The Ex Libris. And all of them loved the very nature of story.

 

 

* * * * *

 

 

031-87725

 

 

They had been gone for only a few days, but life on the road was slow. Old men with their old joints didn’t do well in tight spaces and they had to find rest stops every hour so Winston could get out and circulate some juice to the veins. It was good that they had planned so many side trips along the way because it meant that Holden and Marion would have practice hiding themselves from the prying eyes of people who watched the news too much.

Traveling incognito was old hat to Holden now. Actually, he wore an old hat during the drive. It was tousled and of the cowboy variety, but what Holden hadn’t liked, Marion thought was cute and she constantly pointed out how cute he looked as a cowboy. It seemed like a waste of time to him now, choosing the right sunglasses and boots to go with, because although he was still on the ‘most wanted’ list, with a face that was latched to every media screen on the planet, no one ever expected to see him. At every rest stop, people would look him right in the eyes and not recognize him behind the beard. Holden often wondered if they did recognize, but kept their mouths shut in the interest of self-preservation. ‘Cause, let’s be honest, Uncle Sam is gonna keep tabs on those who keep tabs on others and no one wants to be a hero. Am I right, cowboy?

Marion, who now had short, sable black hair that was sliced erratically around her ears, neck and forehead, looked amazingly unlike the images that were still circulating the yellow news. Holden thought she looked great, but he still took every opportunity to remind her that the bounty on his head was much higher than hers.

It had taken them a dog’s age to get to DC, but the conversations they had along the way were surprisingly smooth. There wasn’t a need to discuss the plan because it was in the plan not to. All the work was done. Winston, through a series of grapevine phone calls, had discovered someone inside the Library of Congress who was deep and well-connected. They sent a few secure communications over email and were meeting in person once they ‘landed’ in Washington. Smooth sailing, really. They had their credentials, their blueprints, cash, fake identification and reservations at a swanky hotel. So they did what normal people, those who weren’t conspiring to overthrow the government on a Tuesday, would do during a road trip. They spent the passing minutes of passing miles just talking about their lives.

And it was fun. As Moby drove, they shared things that had nothing to do with The Book. Learned things about one another that they hadn’t known. Silly, inconsequential things, like the fact that Holden had never eaten coconut until he was in his twenties and that Marion could kill any bug in the world, regardless of its size or its fur-to-shell ratio, but if she saw a spider, of any sort, she would freeze and find herself unable to contemplate a solution for taking it from this world and bringing it into the next. They learned that Winston had had a scholarship to play college baseball and that Moby, in another life, had been a photographer for a hotshot clothing magazine, spoke French and had a brother serving proudly in the Marine Corps.

These stories seemed like an adventure into the imagination because, for them, it felt like life began when they learned the truth about The Book. And yet, the real truth was that life had been normal for them once. They had been completely different people, with quests and dreams, passionately opinionated about nonsense and devoted to callings that had little worth in comparison to The Book. But their new life came, and with a family to boot. They were family now, the four of them. Separated by blood but joined by centuries-old ink.

The roads were coming together and they could sense that the drive was nearing an end. As the rickety van rolled ever closer to the openness of Washington DC and further from the safety and seclusion of the home they’d left behind, the interior seemed to grow smaller and the air thinned and it felt as if they were driving up the slope of an endless mountain where the clouds were taking over the windows. Their lungs scratched at the air around them for whatever leftovers of oxygen someone hadn’t already stolen. And although the palpable anxiety had seemed to reach its breaking point, it wasn’t until they saw the white city along the wet, hazy horizon, with its unspoiled attitude, low to the ground like the teeth of an open and hungry mouth, that they rolled down the windows.

The breath caught in Holden’s chest as they entered the city in their scrappy van. The last time he had been anywhere near the spotless buildings that passed leisurely by their vintage, rain-saturated windows, he had been running. In the opposite direction. The most frightening bite of that sandwich was that, from the perspective of the Publishing House, nothing had changed. Right now it tasted good to be back with a plan to take them down, but it could turn stale and soggy real quick if they were seen. Just in case, Holden tipped the brim of his cowboy hat over his eyes and waited for them to reach the hotel.

Minutes later, Marion called from the back seat with the digital map in her palm. “Moby, we’re looking for Hotel Tailor. It’s supposed to be up here on Independence and New Jersey.”

Holden tilted his hat and peeked out the window to see the hotel. The structure had been comprised of an enormous collection of separately built boxes and geometric shapes that pierced one another with erratic intention. The glass windows that looked down on the van with disgust, popped from the ridges of the building at the most irregular, unexplainable intervals.

“Don’t you think this is a bit flashy for us?” Holden mused, recalling how important it had been for him to look inconsequential to the world only weeks earlier.

“No, this is perfect,” Winston cheered, nodding. “No one would expect that we would be paying eight thousand dollars a night.”

Marion wanted to cry out, but she lost her voice. It took an extra moment to react. “What? That’s crazy! Do you know how much we could do with that money back at the house?”

“Yes, and we’re using it tonight. We are making this happen. And if this is happening tomorrow, it is very crucial that we sleep free and protected this evening. Even if that means we have to spend eight thousand per person.”

“Now, now…” Marion declared, suddenly forced to play the character they had decided would work best. “It’s my job to look after you and I’m planning to have a good night’s sleep. So you grab onto those handlebars and keep chuggin’, pilgrim. Lift, one two. Lift, one two. Remember? It’s a little dance, all the way to the room.” Marion leaned toward the valet and nudged him with her elbow. “Otherwise, I’ll be hearing it all night. My legs. My legs. Why’d you let me walk?”

The valet giggled, “Can’t have that.”

“No, we cannot. You guys coming or what? This guy’ll park our car for us, ya’ know.”

“Yeah, I’m coming.” The broad, sliding door on the opposite side of the van shot open with an ungreased twang and Holden hopped out wearing his slouched cowboy hat and dark sunglasses. According to Winston, and according to his checking account, Holden’s hat and boots were extremely expensive. But, apparently, it was worth the price to achieve the perfect balance of curiosity and disinterest needed to keep the vultures off their backs.

Moby stepped from the driver’s seat, flicked the keys to the valet and ambled back to the hatch where he tugged out a few bags almost as large as him and tossed them easily onto the nearby cart. A bellman noticed and skipped forward with a chirpy little grin.

“I’ll handle this, kid,” Moby warned. A few of the suitcases were empty and he didn’t need the whispering of a punky bellman to ruin everything.

“Actually, sir, it’s hotel policy that guests not take the…”

“Kid. You hear me now?” Moby snapped two of his fingers out and the boy could see a hundred mixed into the fold of the deliciously green bills.

“Certainly, sir. Right this way.” He motioned for them to follow and the unlikely quartet of law-breaking, anarchist book lovers entered the hotel lobby and looked for a place to sit.

They had previously agreed that Moby would keep an eye on the bags, Winston would check them in (because of cameras) and Holden and Marion would keep a low profile somewhere near a coffee machine. As soon as Winston finished paying for their thirty-two thousand dollar (plus twelve percent tax) hotel room, they were ushered through the hallways by the bellman and left to rise to the top floor alone aboard the crystalline elevators.

The ride wasn’t very long. It was illegal to construct tall buildings in Washington DC and naughty to even throw shadows on the more important ones. From their viewpoint, through their glass windows that swapped from opaque to clear with a twist of a knob on the wall, they were able to look out upon the white city and see the object of their focus beyond the bustle. Moby, Winston and Marion stared at the Library of Congress and envisioned the many steps each of them would have to take before they’d be on their way home, a success. Holden stared instead at a building to the left of the hotel. It was very average looking. Simple, square structure with stone and glass and steel and stone and glass. And steel. It had a nearly nonexistent entrance and didn’t grab much attention from the sidewalk. There was no signage on the building or any feature that was worth noting other than a feathery metal sculpture that could be seen through the lobby windows and an exquisite emergency exit door.

“Is that it, Holden?” Marion asked, as she noticed him staring away at the building. “The Publishing House?”

“First three floors, at least. Simple, isn’t it?”

“I would have never known,” Winston muttered as he followed their eyes toward the building. “My mother worked there for thirty-seven years. I knew the name of the airport, the street she worked on and the floor, but I never saw an image of the building. I suppose they kept that secret for a reason.”

“That’s why I sketched out the plans,” Holden finished, stepping back from the window. His eyes were done seeing things that only pissed him off. “Who knows, maybe we’ll need to access that building one day. Now, at least, you’ll know which one it is.”

“Doesn’t matter though.” Marion added, “As long as you know which one it is we could always come back.”

Holden looked back at her and smiled, reluctantly. “Right. Totally.” Holden knew she was fishing. Marion seemed to believe, just as much as he did, that this trip was of the one-way type and she wanted to know why Holden thought the same. He turned toward the room and left her a warm smile instead.

Without talking it through, they unpacked the small amount they had brought with them and walked the open suitcases to the closet as a group. They had brought them along for the ride, hoping that the woman from the Library of Congress would be bringing them some books that evening. There was no guarantee of this, of course, but Winston’s contact said the woman was more than eager to save anything she could.

They tried to relax and use the volumetric expanse of their suite to spread out, maybe put their legs up a bit, but the sudden shift from days of focused driving to minutes of waiting around was insufferable. Winston forced them to order something off the room service menu but even his stomach, the one that was usually pleased with anything, wasn’t agreeing with him. Marion ordered a fruit plate and most of them abandoned the extravagant meals that came up to the room on fine, shiny china for a handful of red grapes and a bite of imported Havarti.

Time passed slowly in that room and they decided it was best to leave the television off and listen to the rain that seemed to follow them to the capital. It was better to avoid hearing any news about Holden, or seeing his face at the bottom of the screen and being reminded of the obstacles ahead and the odds that were stacked higher than the clouds against them.

Moby, being the most oppressive and least recognizable, went to the door and looked through the eyehole. With the distorted viewpoint, the woman appeared very round and, at the same time, very thin. Her eyes darted back and forth and she seemed to be mumbling, as if debating with herself why she hadn’t gone home. Moby opened the door and, in quite an ordinary way, to avoid any increase in tension, greeted the woman with a gentle smile.

“You must be Rosemary.”

“Yes…yes…” she stammered, rocking in place with two nylon, department store bags held at her sides. Her gray and blonde streaked hair hung in sweaty ropes from her scalp and her thick, librarian eyeglasses hung low on her nose. Moby could tell she was impatient to push them back into place.

“Please come in. We’ve been expecting you.”

Marion looked across the room at Holden, her cropped black hair swinging over her fretful eyes as her lips folded under each other. There was no going back now. Any opportunity they’d had to turn around had vanished. Gone with the wind.

Winston couldn’t have been more thrilled to see her. He was sick of waiting around and had been looking forward to discovering what she had brought with. He hobbled out from one of the side bedrooms and, leading with his left leg, extended a hand as he approached. It took him ten steps to reach Rosemary, but she warmed in the presence of his simple temperament.

“I’m Winston. I am so, so overjoyed to see you,” he gleamed, releasing her hand. “We have much to talk about.”

“Quite literally…do.” Winston chuckled, stupidly. “We have no membership fees and all we ask is that you clip down that flimsy nail on your pointer finger.” Rosemary stifled a giggle at Winston’s charm and searched for a seat nearby.

“Can we get you anything to drink or eat?” Moby inquired, nervously.

“I’m fine. Thank you. If it’s alright…with you…I would like to discuss the matter and head out. It’s not that I am not behind this one hundred percent. I am.” She calmed for a moment before repeating, “I am. I simply don’t do very well under such…pressure.”

“You’re doing just fine,” Holden said, stepping around Moby to console her. With his hat, glasses and outfit removed, she recognized him instantly from the television and a sudden understanding washed over her.

“That’s why you’re wanted. Because of this. Because of The Book.” She took another look at Marion and began to nod unhurriedly. “Both of you. You aren’t involved with The Free Thinkers at all.”

“No,” Winston confirmed, with a curl of his nose. “An untruth that has been thrust upon them.”

Rosemary nodded and seemed to relax. Although this was another layer to the cake that unquestionably increased her level of danger, it also added an engaging certainty that she had previously been unable to grasp. That everything Winston had told her friend was entirely true and that, with her job, she had been the literal embodiment of in the right place at the right time.

Over coffee (and cake), they discussed the plan for the next day. How Rosemary would begin moving some of the more important books at an earlier hour and how she would leave a few specific doors unlocked for Holden. Since her position at the library was rather elevated, her access was shockingly unlimited and she chose to memorize the list they provided her of the most important books in history, the ones she needed to work the hardest at retrieving, for her own safety.

“They can’t search my mind,” she noted, timidly. “Not yet, at least.”

“I’m sure that’s something they’re working on,” Moby added.

The laugh they shared was much needed because the discussion was about to elevate. About to get serious. And dangerous. Holden needed to talk to her about the fire.

The one detail they had not been sure of was where in the library to actually ignite the blaze. From the plans he and Shane had reviewed, there were nine areas that seemed most likely to stay aflame if all of the fire protection was off. What they needed to know was which of the nine corners had a collection of books that was alright to destroy. The topic was very sensitive to all of them and they had to force themselves to remember what they were doing it for and that their mission made sense and that it was all for the greater good. Some books were sacrificing themselves to save others. The ones that would change things.

Rosemary didn’t even hesitate as she scanned the digital blueprints.

“This is the spot. Right here,” she said, pointing. “No books. Just a card catalog. That can burn.”

Holden circled it with a stylus pen and closed the log book. “Once the fire is set, there won’t be much time. This stuff is old. It’s going to light up real quick and we have to make sure the fire reaches high enough to react with the sprinkler heads. Once it does, all the sequences in the system will try to exterminate the fire, but I’ll have shut those down already. The sprinkler heads will come on. They will sputter and trail off to a dull spray that won’t be effective against the blaze. Leaving me enough time to escape,” he lied, hoping no one would catch it, “That’s when you overreact and begin all those security measures we talked about.”

“And there’s a lot to that,” she breathed, imagining the turmoil. “There’s a full team of guards and an office staffed with people that are instructed not to leave in case of a fire. They have to help save the books.”

“Well, Uncle Sam must keep up appearances,” Winston added.

“After that,” Holden continued, “when the first truck is full and sent down the street, the one with as many of the books from that list as possible, you leave the building. At that point, Marion will be standing by to call Winston and tell him that it’s left the building. Winston, you will be here at the window watching the truck with binoculars. Once the truck reaches the intersection we discussed, you will call Moby. Then Moby –”

“I take over, man. Like I said, I’ve got a group of guys on standby. All they know is that it’s a heist and that they’re well paid.”

“By that time, Marion and I meet outside and move to the hotel while the fire department takes care of the building and saves the rest of the books. We arrive in ten minutes and then the three of us check out and drive home where we’ll meet up with Moby. That’s it.” Holden looked around the room and felt the need to prepare them for what was actually going to happen. When they find themselves wondering why he hadn’t left the building. “All I want to add is that it’s very likely we may come upon a few hitches here and there. Some things might not go exactly to plan and when that happens, don’t panic. Just take a second. Regroup. And then try to develop a secondary option of what you can do in the moment. If that happens, remind yourself that we have thought out every detail and that the plan is still going to work. Alright?”

They all agreed and Holden agreed with them, knowing that it would not at all go to plan. He was going to stay behind as the fire climbed the walls and he was going to wait until the fire department arrived to make sure that nothing and no one could come and ruin it all.

After working out a few of the minor details, Rosemary took the two canvas bags that she had left near the door and brought them to a table at the center of the room. One by one, she removed the books, like a midwife removing innocent twins from a mother’s womb, and laid them out upon the crystal glass surface as gently as her muscles allowed. The four of them circled the table and admired the majestic pieces, each one from the top of their list of importance. A few times Winston stumbled in place, as if he hadn’t believed a real copy existed. Once, when Rosemary took out The Valiance of Raphael Petitto, he reached for Moby’s hand and gripped it tightly, pulling the man’s enormous meat cleaver to his chest to stabilize his lungs as raspy, disbelieving breaths escaped his cheeks. Not only were the books on the table some of the most precious in the world, but they were in near mint condition. Their spines. Their bindings. Their covers and pages. Perfect. The four of them had never seen a book in such condition outside of a museum and it was a shock they had not been expecting. If these were the emotions they would feel over two canvas bags, how would their group react when Moby returned to Holden’s estate with truck loads?

Rosemary folded the green, reusable canvas bags with the seal of the Library of Congress stamped onto the handles and stuffed them indifferently into the garbage. “This is all I could get…I mean…all I felt safe taking. I could have gotten more. I know I could have. I just felt so nervous.”

Holden bellowed a deep laugh and collected himself quickly. “If you even knew what you have done for our cause, you wouldn’t be saying that. Just a few of these books are worth the trip down here.”

“Just this book,” Winston stammered, reaching out for a novel that rested alone at the corner of the table. He almost didn’t want to touch it, as if the acid in his fingers would turn it to dust.

Rosemary reached for her purse and jacket. “I’m afraid I must go. We’ve talked much longer than I was comfortable with and, what with the curfew, I think I shouldn’t push my luck.”

“Curfew?” Marion questioned. “What are you talking about?”

“Right. You’re not from around here. It was the Department of Environmentalism’s idea. A way to conserve our energy resources by enacting a curfew every night from eleven o’clock until four. During that time, there’s only minimal electricity available and stoplights stay on for safety. That way it will keep people off the streets, generate less crime and the police will be able to monitor while we conserve energy at an outrageous rate.”

Winston shook his head. “It’s just like you said about The Book, Holden. Instill fear, play on guilt and suddenly people are agreeing to have their freedoms stripped away.”

“Well, looks like we should let her go then,” Moby suggested, leading her to the door. “Get some rest. Tomorrow is a big day.”

“Yes, it is. A big, brand new day.” Rosemary shook each of their hands before leaving, outwardly more nervous than when she had arrived.

With the door closed and the smell of old paper dusting the air, Winston returned to the table to admire the books while the three of them walked in different directions. No matter how hard it was to sleep in their private, comfortable bedrooms, they needed their energy. In one swift stroke, they may begin a revolution and regain an ounce of control. Tomorrow could very well be their reckoning.

 

 

* * * * *

 

 

032-91916

 

 

Holden awoke at four o’clock in the morning. Exactly. He had left the fan on in the shower and when the curfew ended, it burst forth from its slumber to wake him from his. He sat in bed, staring at the white numbers on the face of his alarm clock. Time was an enemy today. It controlled his future and it held him in place. It would keep him impatient, perhaps as a joke. So much time had been needed for the Editors of The Book to make the world what it was. With such patience and diligence. Walking with the tiniest of steps. Holden awoke on the cusp of one large step in the opposite direction and the courage it took for him to rise from the bed, walk to the window, pull back the thick drapes and look out on the moistened monuments of a corrupted country was more than he knew he had.

After a light breakfast (once again their stomachs weren’t agreeing with them), they took their time getting ready before reviewing their plans and holding one final meeting. The four of them sat around the table beside eight small stacks of the finest literature the world had ever known to find that there wasn’t much to say. A sample of their future triumph was sharing the gloomy glow from the window, encouraging them in their success. And that was enough. For they knew they would succeed. As long as they didn’t get in their own way.

Winston raised his head slightly, calling attention to himself. “I would like to take this opportunity to thank you all for everything you’ve done these past months. Marion, what a woman you’ve become. Your courage to peel those pages from the walls of your family bar. And how you’ve woken every morning in my home, knowing it could be your last. How wonderful it’s been to have you, so often, around me. You are more similar to my mother than I think you realize. It has been such a treat to have a female presence in my home again. You have placed a new light in my heart. I look forward to us getting back and playing more chess.” She smiled and reached a hand for his. He gripped it for a moment and let it go.

“Moby. How related you are to your uncle and yet, how far you have surpassed him. Not a moment’s hesitation when I ask something of you or request your opinion. How you work constantly, with such ingenuity, knowing that being steadfast in your pursuits and running toward them may not bring you there, when you want, but that it will bring you close. Your positivism and your strong will are two things I have missed from the company I once kept. You have been a gift and I look forward to the inventiveness you will continue to bring to our mission.”

Moby bobbed his gargantuan head down for a moment and swooped it back up, again not showing emotion. They knew it was hanging out somewhere, but there was a thick layer of tough skin people had to get through to see it.

Winston turned to the end of the table and pressed his tired lips together. He removed his glasses for a moment to wipe a tear. He cleaned them off with a handkerchief from his pocket, replaced them and adjusted his bow tie, as if the words he were about to say were important enough to warrant such ceremony.

“Holden Clifford. The son I never had. When you didn’t come back with Moby the day you branded the bean and another day passed without seeing your face…how broken my heart was. Inside, I knew you were alright and something told me you would come back with such a story. At our first meeting, when I asked you to install the sprinkler system to protect my books, somewhere, in my heart of hearts, I knew you would protect my books in a much different way, if given the opportunity. I saw it in you. And while I know you do not believe yourself to be what we see…know that you are. Your fortitude is unparalleled by any man I have ever known. Parallels of your courage could only be witnessed through other people’s written words. From books of fiction that were but imagination and hope. Verisimilitude and valiance that has changed my life. You, Holden, have changed my life. And I believe we will be able to witness how you will have changed so many others. What I would like to leave you with is a statement I hope you will carry with you until the day you die. I believe in you, Holden. And while I know you believe you have done nothing to warrant such a comment, know that I am so proud to call you my friend. And when you walk past me as my leader, these weary legs want to stand. I want to hold my head high. For you are a triumph among men in this time of such destitution.”

The finality of those words placed a weighty hope in their hearts. It felt magnificent to know how much that man had loved them.

When they split up, Moby left early to get himself in place and contact his men before Marion and Holden left Winston in the room without saying goodbye. There were no goodbyes that day. Marion needed to be near the Library of Congress because she had to call Winston and alert him when one of the trucks was away, so together they walked, Marion and Holden, toward the looming dome of the only library left standing after The Great (and terrible) Recycling. The rain was light and they walked without an umbrella. When they neared the steps and were prepared to depart, Holden continued walking and Marion grasped for his hand. He had a look on his face that told her to let it happen and not say what she wanted to say. But he couldn’t stop her.

“Holden, something doesn’t feel right about this,” she began, her eyes darting as if someone were waiting to leap out from any nearby corner and vanish them away.

“No, Marion. This is going to work. It’s wonderful. I knew we could change things. I knew we could do something this quickly. It’s going to work.”

She reached out for him and brought him close. They were kissing. Their lips entwined in an emotion neither of them knew they could have with one another, before they released and faced each other with eyes close and warming. Holden could see that Marion was frightened and knew exactly what she had been thinking. Holden had really only met one person at the Publishing House. The director, Martin Trust. How could he be sure that there weren’t more people involved? They had gone to such lengths to remove every book on the planet. How much harder would they fight to remove the remaining few? What they were going up against was so much greater than any of them had realized.

But he wouldn’t allow her to say it.

Holden knew the truth. Even if they got a truck load of books, it wouldn’t change things. Yes, they will have saved great works of literature and perhaps altered a few laws and extended the life of the books that weren’t burned or stolen. None of them were stupid enough to think that the Publishing House wouldn’t lose some in the process. But, at least (what they told themselves, at least), they would save a few.

Marion threw out one final, desperate attempt to keep them together and safe. She latched onto his arm and said, “Holden, we could leave. We can leave. We could…go together…somewhere. We can stop. We don’t have to be part of this. We could just live our lives and let it go. I’ve thought about this so many times and pictured it when you were gone and I wished I would have told you. But then you came back and it…it made me think we could keep going, ya’ know? What if this is too big? Don’t you want to just have a normal life?”

He turned to Marion and imagined it himself. In that moment of mere seconds, entire decades of dreams unfolded. How wonderful it would be. Start a new life with her and Jane and just live. Work. Maybe have children one day. Little Us’s running around. But it was a lie. Holden knew that dream was from a time he wasn’t born into. Those privileges were for the privileged. For people born into a world where those freedoms existed, unthreatened.

Holden kissed her once more before saying, “We can’t just let them take away our ability to think what we want. We may be the only ones who can stop them. We are literally walking into the fire they have built to burnish the glimmer of our minds. And if I cannot escape the fire, at least I can douse the flames.”

“I know you do.” He let go of her hand and walked around to the side of the building where he knew Rosemary had left the door open for him, knowing that if he stayed with Marion a minute longer, he would run away with her and leave all that they believed behind.

Up close, Holden was astonished by the pure white of the building. Its finials. Its detailing. Its molding and perfected architecture. How beautiful it seemed to so many people. And yet, it was a prison. A prison for thoughts and freedom. Its bars were wooden shelves and its punishment was to be barred for the rest of life from so many hungry minds. Holden made his way past the dumpsters and toward the side entrance. The handle turned easily and he entered. No alarm. No problems. No one waiting on the other side to knock him in the head. As the saying goes, so far so good.

From his pocket, Holden removed the smart phone they had bought during their drive. It was a one-time-use phone that they loaded with blueprints to the library. He immediately scanned to the correct page and enlarged it to the width of the screen before progressing down the hall toward the staircase that would bring him where he needed to be. According to their plans, Rosemary had told Holden to find the main level and then an alcove where they archived the old card catalog. Although the space was dormant, a fixture of something that once was utilized daily, it was now the least protected corner of the building. The card catalog could burn. It wasn’t as damaging to the rest of the collection, which meant it was less protected. But first, he had a job to do.

After reaching the lower level and navigating a few corners, keeping an eye out for people who could identify him, Holden eventually came to the mechanical closet which had also been left open for him. He checked the hallway again before entering and closed the door swiftly, bolting it in place. He had come this far without being detected and, at the very least, he needed to finish this portion without being bothered.

It was a good thing that Shane had gotten the mainframe from General Fire so Holden could practice on a prototype, because most of the switches and dials had been labeled with odd symbols and a numbering system that didn’t match the blueprints. Still, there was an order to all things mechanical and he knew which switches to switch and which to delay. Time was against them right now and they were all waiting for him, the architect of the overthrow, to get the party started. But they would have to keep waiting while he lost two pounds, sweating out his anxieties and triple checking his calculations before moving on. If he was correct, according to the structural overview Shane had included in the floorplans, the foam system and the oxygen depletion system would be offline. Next he had to deal with the water supply.

Leaving the room, Holden trailed back the way he had come before taking another series of staircases to the lowest floor and into the boiler room which housed an enormous tank that was painted bright red and stored a vast amount of water that was waiting, at any moment, to be shot to the higher levels to douse the library in old, stagnant, black rain before it ran out and the main water supply from the city kicked in. Although the tank was colossal, it was typically empty in eight minutes. General Fire normally shopped this portion of the job out to a separate company, but Holden knew his way around. He found the correct valve. It was two feet in diameter and it didn’t want to move. But with enough pressure, it turned. Three and a half cranks was the right amount to keep the water from pumping steadily enough to beat the fire.

Holden closed the smart phone, put it in his pocket and felt the lighter and the cold can of fluid he knew he was about to use. The metal sparked against his skin in static excitement, as if letting him know that it was ready to play its part. To eat away the words they had so passionately cared for. Words the world may never read again. Holden took a moment to breath. He put his back against the tank. It was cool and refreshing. He ran a hand through his short mop of hair and closed his eyes. This was it. There really was no turning back now. He knew it. Holden pinched the skin of his forehead, pulling out the ache that was beginning to eat his mind, and opened his eyes.

With unadulterated determination, he whispered, “Here we go.”

Before the fire began, the activities of the library were as standard as usual. Not many guests beyond the typical group of school students and a few random gentleman and groups of women that often seemed to speckle the halls of books like worms with insatiable hunger. They had a security staff, who were generally bored and spent many of their hours drifting off lazily, imagining the shows they would be watching later on television or the homework they needed to finish for night school so they wouldn’t be a guard for the rest of their life. The few people that worked the counters, gift area and coat check were often used to seeing so many different types. Life was generally so safe that few of them even noticed Holden. None of the ones that did bothered to wonder why he had spent so much time near the card catalog. The guards hadn’t recognized the features that had been plastered on so many billboards and news station bulletins. He was just another scholar that faded into the background. One of those who didn’t have to work, like they did (until they finished night school). The ones who had enough money in their bank accounts to take the day off and enjoy a walk through the stale, musty shelves and stare at bindings that no one could open without thick, green rubber gloves.

But the alarm changed a lot of that.

The smoke brought havoc and the flames brought fear and the water brought wetness. Eventually every one of the staff realized that they should have noticed him. Of course he would have come to the library. Some of them would even lie and say they had seen him, in order to save their reputation and get another job.

But that was after.

Holden felt wrong when he opened the drawers of the catalogs to see the old writing and the many, many paper cards that listed a multitude of books that were housed in the last library. He had to keep reminding himself that he wasn’t in a safe place. That the building he was in wore a mask of truth. That it pretended to be an asylum for knowledge, when it was actually a bastille, fortified to keep thoughts from escaping and changing things. He had to keep telling himself that he was in the den of the enemy. Because who could ever believe that setting it all on fire was the right thing to do?

As he pulled out the small, rectangular can of lighter fluid and raised the crimson tab, he began to squirt the tart smelling liquid onto the yellowing cards, channeling the self-loathing actions of the fireman, Guy Montag, from a story that no librarian would find. Holden kept replaying the looks he had gotten at the chapel after announcing his mission and how they had simply not believed him. How people were certain there was no way this could work. But it would.

It would, Holden, he thought as he squirted the last dribbles from the can, dropped it to the ground and reached for his lighter. Another day. Another dollar.

The hollow clatter from the fallen, empty container of lighter fluid echoed in the frighteningly corrupted silence of the domed building. People would be coming around soon to see where the noise had come from. He had no choice now. Holden felt the gear crack under his thumb, as white sparks of flint ignited a flame from the lighter before he dropped it to the card catalog and spun slowly away.

 

 

* * * * *

 

 

033-94886

 

 

By the time all those employed by the government to protect the Library of Congress got over their confusion enough to recognize that they had failed in their job and that something horrible was about to happen, they accepted that speed was a necessity. And of course, for some reason, Rosemary, the director of Library Preservation, couldn’t be found.

There was a scattering of fright because none of them knew precisely what to do in that situation. The patrons of the library were shuffling toward the large double doors, staring back as the smoke collected into the coffered recesses of the dome, but they were delighted to be a part of whatever was happening. In fact, they would have stayed to watch the books burn, these articles of such great interest, smolder and decay to dust. But when the water came on and doused their clothes with filthy wetness, the escape into the clean rain was swift.

The rest of them, the ones who still seemed unable to recall the correct response methods from their training, scrambled behind the courtesy desk for the emergency manual, because the one thing they did remember was that soon, if the fire wouldn’t go out (which it should have been going out), the doors would shut and seal themselves closed and all the oxygen would be drawn out of the building.

Within two minutes, their hair and clothes were soaked and they quickly retreated to one of the back rooms where the special acquisitions vault should have been funneling books through an automatic emergency system. But the system wasn’t running. It should have been running! The women looked at one another and realized that only Rosemary had the pass codes. Somewhere, a truck should be filling and preparing to drive away from the flames. But they didn’t have the pass codes and Rosemary was nowhere to be found. So the women sat in the control center of the Library, their hair and bodies dripping from the smattering of moisture as they flipped frantically through the digital pages of the emergency manual, searching for some clue to a code they would never find.

 

 

* * * * *

 

 

034-95244

 

 

Holden was saturated. His face, his hair, his body, drenched as he hid behind one of the larger bookcases in the corner behind a glass display case that rushed with water. It seemed that everyone had left the main building because the smoke was getting stronger and the smell was consuming. The sprinklers had done their job to keep the flames from overwhelming the nearer shelves. But Holden remained. He had to know that their group had enough time. Once he felt comfortable enough protecting the fire, he would use the single-use phone to call Winston to ensure that the truck was on its way before he left through a side entrance.

Then the water stopped.

All around him, the trusty sprockets in the ceiling had ceased sending their failing mist of water onto the flaming shelves below. Holden expected a slight hiccup between the tank and the city’s water supply, but he hadn’t –

The thought came to him like a moth to the flame and Holden scrambled for the cell phone in his pocket. He called Winston to double check that everything was going to plan, but the response wasn’t good. Marion hadn’t called him yet. When they hung up, Holden didn’t know what to think. According to Rosemary, more than enough time had passed. And with the water no longer reaching the fire sprinkler system, it was only a matter of time before all the books in that building were destroyed.

Holden ran from the corner and into the flaming inferno. Something was going wrong. The trucks should have been on their way. The water should be running. Things should have been moving in the right direction, but Winston told him to get off the phone and call back in five minutes. Both of them knew that something had either happened to Rosemary or something had happened to Marion. Regardless, it meant that he was no longer safe. Holden did his best not to imagine Marion in pain as he crept along the soggy floor, through the climbing smoke, toward the center of the main reading room.

He knew that the inner circulation desk had the best vantage point. From there, he would be able to see through the doors and assess his safety. But when Holden got there, dodging the crumbling book cases and flames that licked at his limbs, he found more than he expected. Lying behind the counter, unconscious beside a toppled garbage can, was a woman with short, black hair and Japanese floral tattoos lacing her shoulders. It was Marion. Holden froze in the shock of it. Either someone had brought her in from outside or she had come in to find him and someone –

Holden heard a noise behind him and spun on his heels, just long enough to see the man’s deformed face through the smoke before an oversized book crashed into his nose and sent him sprawling to the floor. From the man’s cheek to his forehead were the words: Don’t Read The Book, branded and melted into his buckled skin. The man who had silenced Holden as he reached out for his daughter had now silenced him as he reached out to the world.

If Holden had ever read the story, The Steadfast Tin Soldier, he would have recalled a very specific sentence as his mind drifted in the scorching heat.

 

“No doubt the little goblin in the snuffbox was to blame for that.”

 

 

* * * * *

 

 

035-95818

 

 

The phone.

Hearing the phone was what startled the two of them awake.

The overtly entertaining jingle that had been preprogrammed into the device burst out in whatever hollow space they found themselves in. Smoke burned their eyes and invaded their nostrils with heat and ash and sulfur. Holden heard someone coughing. He heard the tone in their exasperated voice and he turned, through some dark veil of green haze, to see who it was. But his eyes burned and he had to close them.

“I’m trapped. I can’t move!”

Holden felt the rope around his wrists and struggled in place. “I can’t either. I’m tied up.”

“Where are we?”

“I’m not sure.” He squinted and tried to adapt his eyes to the dark but it was no use. The only light that streamed a fog in the smoke came from a green exit sign, with a little white figure running toward an open white door – free to escape and yet ever frozen in that position.

“Marion, we’re still at the library.”

His eyes adjusted to the dark quicker than he realized, because he saw the layer of smoke at his ankles which could only be there, and not at his eyes, if it were coming through the floorboards or from below the frame of the door. Holden wrestled again with his binding. It dug caverns of red flesh, but it was no use. He was now a part of this chair and the binding was strong. So strong that his hands were numb and cold.

“Holden, I’m scared. What happened?”

He turned to try and see her. “I was hit in the face by one of the Agents. He must have gotten you too. You came inside to find me, didn’t you?”

“Rosemary didn’t come out and then the fire was growing and growing. I knew something was wrong. Holden we have to get out of here!”

“Marion. They turned off the water.”

“What?”

“The water supply to the building. I hadn’t thought of that. Marion, they were expecting us. The whole time I thought they had underestimated me. But I was wrong. They knew we would do this. I played exactly into their hands. Maybe they even arranged my escape from the Publishing House.”

“Guys like me make their job possible, Marion. They go into the fire assuming that all systems are working. I know fire. It’s my job to know. They aren’t putting this out.”

At that moment, Holden noticed that another figure was in the room with them. It was slumped to an awkward position on the floor. He could tell by her frame that it was a woman. It had to be Rosemary. What frightened him and created gooseflesh along his skin, was that she wasn’t tied to a chair. She wasn’t tied to a chair. That meant that they weren’t worried about her helping them escape. From where he could hear Marion’s voice, something told him that she wouldn’t be able to see Rosemary. And he wouldn’t tell her.

“Do you think they got the books out?” she coughed. “Or do you think that Rosemary betrayed us?”

“No Marion, I think she did her job the best she could. And if those books don’t get out, it’s okay.”

“Okay?! We didn’t fix anything and we’re going to die in here!”

Holden coughed in the smoke and realized the room was quickly filling with it. “I don’t regret anything. If you and I die in here, we die knowing the truth. Free. That’s a gift that millions of people in this world don’t have and something I wouldn’t give up for anything. Die in the truth or live in a lie…today is a good day, Marion. Remember what is happening back at home. People will win.”

“Just not today.”

“No.” He nodded, his eyes burning. “Not today.”

“Holden…I love you.” She exploded in a fit of coughing and he didn’t know what to do to console her. With a raspy voice, she asked, “Can you do me a favor?”

“Yes.” The hot smoke was so thick now and he knew that they wouldn’t die from the flames. They would already be asleep by the time the fire reached that room. “What is it, Marion?

Holden thought back to all the songs he had ever heard in his entire life. He allowed the digitized mind that had been nurtured in The Book to scroll quickly through them until he reached the perfect song. His voice was meek and gentle. And he began with a hum.

“Little darling, it’s been a long, cold lonely winter. Little darling, it feels like years since it’s been here.” Holden coughed and felt the room getting brighter as he continued. “Here comes the sun, here comes the sun and I say it’s all right.”

Before moving into the next verse by The Beatles, Holden noticed that a small flicker of flames had eaten its way through one of the walls. In those tiny seconds, he was able to see more of the space around him and understood that they were in some sort of storage room for old religious artifacts. There were Bibles in glass cases and other books with ornate paintings upon the pages. His eyesight was fading, but through dizzying concentration he could see a large, polished cross on the wall beside him, reflecting the golden flames that mixed eerily with the green glow across the room.

And as he continued singing, Holden noticed a wooden plaque above the door that had been locked against them, that barred them from a freedom that the man in the green, exit-sign world continued to strive toward without success. The plaque of wood had a verse from the Bible carved into it. And as Holden began to grow dizzy, his mind pulling away from life as he strove with effort to stay conscious, he continued to read the verse over and over, picturing Jane and Winston and their group, and how he knew that, regardless of how they failed that day, they would triumph.

“Sun, sun, sun, here it comes. Sun, sun, sun, here it comes…” Holden stopped singing and, with a whisper he said, “I love you Marion.” Through the crashing of shelves and fixtures across the structure, he waited to hear her respond.

But she didn’t.

She was already asleep.

Holden focused on the plaque as the edges caught fire. And just before his eyes closed for the last time, he read the verse and mouthed the most perfect words from the most famous book.

 

“Heaven and Earth shall pass away, but my words will remain forever.”

 

 

* * * * *

 

 

036-97015

 

 

A squawk came through on the walkie-talkie and it rattled the glass table in the meticulously maintained hotel room. But the old man standing at the window didn’t flinch. It seemed as if he had lost his hearing in the shock of what his eyes were absorbing.

Below him, crowds of people gathered along the rain-drizzled streets, curious about the plume of smoke that rose high into the sky above the capital like the darkened twin of the Washington monument. Winston’s shaky hand reached out and touched the cold window and he rested his palm against it, bracing himself from falling over as he saw flames between his wrinkled fingers from the dome in the distance. His tottering legs wanted to give out and tumble him through the glass to the ground as the walkie squawked again.

By some cruel joke, the clouds parted above, and the ever-insisted rain stopped trying to put out the fire. It was almost as if the sky had been intimidated by the darkened cloud that formed over the government building, and the sun shot rays of warm light through the smoke to break the darkness with milky beams.

Within an hour, Winston and Moby were miles away from the borders of the nation’s capital while every media outlet in the world streamed videos of Holden setting fire to the library from some hidden camera. Bold text of propaganda blazed beside the black and white film. They spliced this brutal act, the dropping of his lighter and the flames bursting from the card catalog, with images of the fireman that never arrived fighting diligently with an inferno that would never cease. Outside, on the respected lawns of the capital, people were on their knees, hugging one another and crying at the horrific scene. An hour after that, a building that the government claimed was the Publishing House for The Book exploded. This act was also blamed on Holden Clifford, the man they all recognized from eleven weeks of television ads, who had now been deemed the leader of The Free Thinkers.

Those unfamiliar with the controlling contents of The Book heard this news and were devastated by the fact that so many stories would be lost from the digital corruption and that, almost more importantly, the explosion would take The Book offline for a multitude of weeks. And when it came back on, some things could be different. Pages from their favorite books would be missing. And some of the world’s most treasured stories could be gone forever because no hard copy existed, thanks to the terrorist, Holden Clifford.

They saw his face constantly in the media and were reminded of his evil deeds week after week. Children were taught in school about him. And it did not take long for everyone to agree that Holden Clifford was the clearest representation of evil. Within a year, the entire world had grown to hate him.

 

 

 

* * * * *

 

 

 

ADDENDUM

 

 

It is time we finished.

Allow me to begin.

The section you are about to read is an addendum to the original version of the story I wrote eleven years ago. We are attaching it to the back of our book and reprinting in full due to the recent outcry for understanding. We apologize for the delay, but the government controls too much and paper is the only technology we can trust. As you have witnessed with your very eyes, there has been success. But I only ask that you remain patient and appreciate what little I am allowed to divulge.

It has been nearly three decades since that day, when the torch burned round the world. I know that Holden’s story has spread and that the truth has been delivered to so many of you, but your insistent request has reached our ears. We realize your need to understand how we are suddenly living in the happily ever after. The most important thing I want to say is – wake up. The war is not over. You are living in the generation of the privileged. We, the people, thrive off of your support, but we need you to stop asking for updates from the front lines and join us there.

Including the sentences above, there are a total of 6,820 words in this addendum. Keep track of the word count. Do not allow yourself to forget that a single word can still change the world. If the word count is incorrect, the following pages have been compromised. If that is the case, then you won’t be reading this sentence. Those who you thought you trusted, those who introduced you to Holden’s story, have already condemned you to a certain end. As we have learned, those who carry the misfortune of trust are those who the government will eventually recycle. Do not become one of these. Mind who you put your faith in and stay vigilante. For the end is near.

I know my words are harsh and unforgiving. But you must be fully aware that this is the most important battle our world has ever faced. Stand proud, knowing that you are holding the most powerful weapon society has fashioned. Printed truth. Unedited. Ex Libris.

You, dear reader, must continue on with the surety that you have broken the shackles Uncle Sam had on your thoughts. But this cannot be a celebration. Too many of you have believed the lies printed through The Book by the government controlled publishing house, Gallantly Streaming. Propaganda from the desk of Martin Trust. Too many have decided long ago that the war was based on confusion and misguided minds. But that was misinformation. You know that now. And the events of recent months are proof of our success. This is the reason you are still reading. You need to know what events led to our sudden presence upon the world stage.

First, let me remind you of the necessity to be patient. Others could have written this for me. Others with the narrative skill to weave reality through romantic words and creative metaphor. But I began this story and I feel that it is my duty to finish it. Holden gave me his heart and he would have wanted it this way. So, mold your mind to be like that of an Editor and allow patience to wash over you.

Second, realize that I cannot disclose everything. No matter how hard we try, this story will reach the eyes of those we are attempting to defeat. Not all your questions will be answered.

Lastly, keep reading after you have passed the final page. Keep researching our texts for the truth of science and history. And keep writing. Please, keep writing. As long as we stay strong, they can never delete our minds.

What follows is only a vague description of how our success began. Savor it, because I cannot give more. I will introduce you to him. To the young, average-looking, well-placed chess piece who arrived at our doorstep with the gift of hope.

His name was Moses.

 

 

 

* * * * *

 

 

 

THE ARRIVAL OF THE QUEEN

 

 

The multilevel shopping system that, like many others, had overtaken the downtown of the Chicago Suburb, was the most feasible way to enjoy any shopping experience. There were many names for this place. At one time it had been called a market, another time a mall, another time the circuit. Now, it was simply known as the system. Everyone used it. It was much better than shopping at one store that carried everything. At the system, you could find a diversification of style, taste and budget.

When you arrived at the oversized complex, you usually came prepared to carry many reusable bags as you walked miles from store to store. To get your groceries. Your clothing. Your shoes. Your musical instruments. Many seventeen-year-old boys came to the system with friends and used it as a place to meet young women and spend their inheritance on so many useless items. This boy didn’t speak to anyone. In fact, he was wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses that shielded his eyes, his head hung low, as he seemed to walk the innocuous balconies of aisles and ride the moving staircases in search of a single store that it could take an hour to find. Shockingly enough, it found him.

A garish voice erupted from the frosted green glass of an enormous shop that rivaled the movie theater. The boy lowered his sunglasses to look at the two triangular windows that broke through the frost to reveal the store beyond. Upon these interactive windows appeared the recycling symbol. It animated slowly and the voice erupted again.

“Hey, there! Why don’t you come on in?”

A digitized head of a man with his hair parted down the center poked from the side of the moving triangular icon. He was wearing a goofy grin that looked more devious the longer the boy stared at it.

“I see you there,” the voice warned with a chuckle, over the noise of the incoming monorail train. “You’ve got to come in. Trust me. The glasses are finally in and the sale begins TODAY!” His voice echoed throughout the system and the boy looked around nervously before opening the door and entering the space. This was the shop he’d been looking for. And before he could truly get comfortable, he heard the voice erupt in a greeting once more and turned to see a small square of glass hanging near the front door. Through the smooth, digital surface he could see people walking around the shop. They were too busy admiring items on triple-tiered display counters and shelves of colorful merchandise to notice him. So he felt comfortable enough to take off the glasses.

“There you are. Couldn’t see you behind those,” the voice blurted as the man’s head moved across the square of glass. “Welcome to the Book store. Where all we sell is THE BOOK!” He announced the title with such forcefulness and compact excitement that the boy was eerily uncomfortable. A few girls crept into the store behind him, but the man on the glass seemed uninterested. Instead a woman’s voice erupted from behind him welcoming them in.

“Ladies, how are you this fine afternoon? How about trying The Romantic Reader? Last year’s runaway hit.” The boy watched in the reflection how the girls ignored the woman’s voice and continued on. “With a casing of clear resin and a built-in nano-technological grid of L.E.D. lights that will glow in one of two colors based on the compatibility of the person nearest you with the same book, it’s a way to meet your match and yet still have the experience of randomness that we girls don’t get from dating sites.” The persistence in the advertisement’s tactic was working on them. “Green if they’re compatible with your book. Red if they aren’t. Find your husband TODAY!”

As the boy moved toward the center of the store, the male voice rattled again from a separate square of glass. “Is there something I can help you with today?”

“No thanks,” the boy replied, before turning away. He knew what he was there to do and he walked directly to a shelf that was lined with dark green boxes. He reached for one and felt the 100% post-consumer recyclable content texture below his thumb. Its abnormally polished surface was smooth as he pulled it down. And through the cellophane skin, he saw the screen of the newest edition of The Book. On a tiny square of glass that rested like a miniscule photo frame on the shelf came the triangle of the recycling icon and the man who was way too thrilled to be the puppet of the publishing world.

“Looks like you got what you came for! Is there anything else I can interest you in? What about our Optic-eyes? Buy one TO-DAAAY,” he sang, far too loudly, “See The Book the way it was always meant to be seen. Through an enhanced three-dimensional experience.”

The boy turned away and searched the store that was lined with graphic images and superior displays with advertisements that pulsed life and energy, and walked directly to the line of people that were checking out. Behind the counter was a screen that stretched to the size of the wall. It showed an average adult with a smile on his face reading on his couch at home from an older edition of The Book. The scene was normal until the man reached for his reading glasses and instead, found himself placing a different pair over his eyes.

Suddenly he was in the middle of a battle where men were racing past him with guns, shooting off into the air as Native Americans with beautiful headdresses and costumes ran toward them with crazed, irregular faces. They were brutally torn down in front of the man on his couch through a hail of bullets and blood. The man with the glasses wore an outrageously wide grin as he removed them, only to find himself back in his living room. He looked down at the glasses in amazement as the goofy man, the voice of the Publishing House, came up to the screen. He began describing the enhancements of the new Optic-eyes. How it was an integrated entertainment system that would boost any version of The Book by digitizing a synthetic movie that would stream as you read, by recording your eye movements along the page and assessing where you were at in the story. And as you read each word, multiple images would play out on the glasses between your eyes and the page. A whole new dimensional experience would be awakened.

As the boy brought his package to the front and waited for the sales person to scan the item, he watched the screen illustrate a life-like representation of reading the Book through the new, interactive glasses. What he saw was as a series of images flashing at an amazing rate. They played out as a movie that seemed to flicker with the underlaid text. Words were highlighted on the digital page below the images, as if they were secondary to the experience. He had to turn away from it, but not because he had been overwhelmed. Like most of civilization, his digital mind was developed enough to process the data. No. The boy turned away because he felt that if he stared at it much longer he would suddenly buy the Optic-eyes instead. That he would turn away from what he was about to do and allow the glasses to absorb him from the comfort of his parent’s couch. Unlike most of the people in line purchasing those glasses, the boy was frightened by them. What he had just finished reading that week, and hearing the rumors floating around, had made him realize that everything in that store was evil. From the colors to the synthetic, automated images and animated friendliness of the androgynous gate keeper. They were all minor notes in a great composition of wrong.

After purchasing The Book, the boy walked directly to the inventory counter where a young man with spiked blonde hair was waiting with a smile. “Ready to fill up your Book?”

The man opened the box with quick, practiced movements and pulled the plastic wrapping from the inside before gently lifting the metal edition of The Book from its resting place. He plugged it into the main computer and began clicking away at a series of keys from below the counter. “So, let me give you the usual spiel. With every purchase of The Book you get fifty stories provided to you by the United States government. These stories come at no charge and are basically provided as a gift. It encourages your reading while expanding your knowledge on subject matter they deem relevant. So, let’s talk stories. On the screen to your right, there are collections by category, by author or by random selection. While you take a look at those, I’ll work on expanding your capacity. How many stories would you like to fit into your Book?”

“Ninety-seven thousand, five hundred and forty-four.”

The man with the spiked blonde hair stopped punching the keys. He pulled his lips together and tilted a curious eye up at the boy, only to swallow in a double take and blink rapidly in surprise before turning away. It was a look the boy had seen often. The man seemed to catch himself off guard and looked back down at the computer before rubbing his left ear and scratching his neck.

“That is an…irregular number. Are you sure ninety-eight thousand wouldn’t just be easier?”

“No. That’s the number I want.”

The tone of the man’s voice was now lower and more direct, after he took a deep breath and continued. “It’s important that I tell you, going forth with such a decision may cause your system to crash and for you to…lose everything. Are you okay with that?”

“Yes.”

“It’s also important that I let you know,” the man stammered in his usual speech. It seemed that he was unprepared to deal with this moment, as common as it would have appeared to everyone else in the room. “That I inform you of the number of people who have decided against such an operation and that you would go forward with such change at your own risk. Is that understood?”

The boy looked directly into the man’s eyes, certain of his decision. “Yes. It is.”

The man’s demeanor shifted. He nodded and said, “This may take me quite a while. If you’re willing to come in the back with me, there are a few things I would like to go over with you.”

“I’ll be a step behind you the whole way.”

The man continued to nod his blonde porcupine head profusely as he led the boy toward the swinging rear door of the shop. The digital screen along the face of the door continued its regurgitation of the reading man and the Indian battle as the door swung into the work room beyond. The people standing and talking and working in the separate spaces were silenced as they watched the boy walk toward the rear of the shop. Their eyes never left him.

Eventually they came to a long, three foot wide hallway that seemed, from all appearances, to be a dead end. Still they continued on. As the boy neared the back, a sliver of darkness became visible in the right corner. There was a gap between the walls, two feet wide. The man sidesteeped his way into it and the boy followed without question. After thirty feet, they came to an opening that seemed only wide enough to accommodate the swing space for the massive metal door that stood ominous in the dim light.

Before the boy could respond to the environment, the man said, “This is where I leave you. Just know that even at the bottom of the staircase you still have an opportunity to turn around. It’s important that you always recognize your freedom to choose. I may never see you again. So, allow me to be the one to congratulate you on making it through the first door.”

The boy named Moses removed his hat and stuffed it into his back pocket, as the man with the spiky blonde hair punched a code into the keypad beside the door, scanned his eye in front of a small glass spoon that seemed a part of the wall and turned away. A gust of treated air escaped the pressurized door as it cracked an inch. The boy was too nervous to notice that the man had already left him alone. But he’d had courage enough to come to the mall and courage enough to find the store. He didn’t think twice as he reached for the hefty metal handle, pulled the door wide and walked through.

The store he had been in was on the third floor of quite a wide and vast shopping system. But the staircase that he followed down had no exit for floors and floors. When he reached the single door at the bottom, there was a rectangular opening at the center at eye level and a series of keypads. He glanced up, tired and wondering how deep he had come. Because, without a doubt, he was stories below the main level.

He rapped his knuckles on the door and the rectangular window slid open to reveal a man’s eyes. A grungy, deep voice spoke, “The number?”

“Ninety-seven thousand, five hundred and forty-four.”

The door opened with a series of beeps and clamping. The African American man standing before him was immense in stature. His face was scarred and war-torn. His arms immense enough to tear the boy in half. And yet, a look of surprise and a tinge of fear took over him and he tripped over his own feet as he stumbled back to allow the boy entrance into the darkened room beyond. Again this was a reaction the boy was used to.

“You’re through door number two,” the man said before leaving through the staircase.

The door closed with determination and the boy was left alone once more. The space he found himself in was dim with a few florescent lights that glowed faintly from the ceiling. The room wasn’t very large. There were counters and rack systems, broken and lying unkempt around the room. Empty shelves lined the walls beside the disturbing presence of antique plasma television screens that flickered occasionally, as if trying desperately to welcome the visitor with advertising. The boy realized in an instant that he was inside a store from the shopping system that had once been the greatest feature in Illinois, before the rest of the world followed the idea.

It had been completely underground, below an enormous park with a small restaurant. After seventy years had passed, it was no longer a novelty and it fell into disrepair like so many other historical buildings. Apparently it had been preserved by someone. Purchased and covered with a new system in the very same spot so as to keep the lower system safe. Whatever the plan had been for the future of that space and whether or not it could be used for tourism, didn’t matter. At that moment it was being used by the group Moses was attempting to locate.

Now standing in what had previously been an early edition of the Book store, he realized that the front for the faction he was trying to reach had been surreptitiously hidden behind the very object they had been attempting to overthrow. The boy looked to the walls and saw vintage advertising from generations earlier, when The Book had first been published. The posters had old images of bulky digital devices with cumbersome cords and happy faces. People with stacks of old paper books, handing them over to a government official with a grin. A sign read, Recycle your books for the sake of your planet. On a separate poster was an image of the earth with the recycling symbol as a large land mass. Over this, the words said, Make your Mother proud! Read The Book.

A fascinating series of posters were rolled together in a cubby hole and wrapped in a rubber band. The boy pulled them out carefully and unfurled the plastic material to find many images of famous movie stars posing by themselves in front of an empty book shelf with a copy of The Book in their perfectly manicured hands. Each of the posters was slightly different, but the subtle smirks on their doctored faces had the same arrogant, yet engaging manner. Along the base of the poster was a single word, running along in wide, bold lettering. A single word that captured all the haunting reality that had recently been revealed to him. The word was:

 

READ

 

The most intriguing of all, beside a life size cut out of some early advertising mascot, was a recognizable poster of Uncle Sam pointing to the reader. It was identical to the image he had seen so many times before, only now his clothes were white and green and the words below him said, I Want YOU to Read the Book! As the boy took in the rest of the darkened, decaying remnant of a once glorious champion of technology, he saw a frayed vinyl banner that read, Save the Environment and Enlarge your Mind in sans serif green. ASPHYXIATE was spray painted in wide swaths of black over the word: Enlarge. He was sure that whoever sprayed over the banner found a simple pleasure in editing the Editors.

Still alone, the boy inspected the rest of the room, but there wasn’t much to admire. Discarded graphic advertising and once-artistic furniture stacked over remnants of unusable technology. The only item he recognized that was still working was an ancient digital frame resting on the corner of a cobweb-crusted, green acrylic display counter. The boy approached the desk and turned the frame carefully. The screen was cracked and dusty. He wiped at it with the back of his thumb and could see the picture currently on display. It was similar to many he had seen in his lifetime. The photograph of someone standing in front of the bean in Chicago’s Millennium Park. The man wore simple clothes that were no longer in style and he stood with his hands down at his sides like a soldier at attention. But there was something odd about him. Different than so many of the photographs he had seen over time of friends or family in front of the bean. He was elated. Every pixel the camera captured seemed to confirm this. His smile was stretched from ear to ear and his eyes were bright and wide. The boy wondered what could make the man so overjoyed. And then he remembered the story he had just read, the printed book that was still warm in his jacket pocket. This was the man from the story. Holden Clifford, on the day he had branded the bean. Suddenly the grin made perfect sense. That was before everything changed. When their group was still simple and Martin Trust hadn’t told him about the Library of Congress.

The image darkened under his thumb and a new one arrived. A large group of people were standing around a fire near a lake. There were two rows of them, and many were arm in arm. Along the first row were many children and young adults. They were book ended by a heavy-set Hawaiian man and an elderly gentleman in a bow tie who gripped his walker like a gymnast on a pommel horse. His smile was faint and guarded. It was Winston and Moby.

The second row of friends were standing on a wooden pier that stretched to the faded arches of a distant gazebo. The boy noticed him at once. Holden was standing toward the middle with his arm latched firmly around the shoulder of the man next to him. They carried the smile of old friends and the boy knew it had to be Shane. To Holden’s left was a woman with strong features and tattoos on her shoulders. Marion. When the image dissolved to a candid of the same photo, the flames in the bonfire altered from the wind, the boy noticed that Marion had turned to look at Holden. The smile she carried was full of adoration and longing. Of course it was.

The boy heard footsteps and returned the frame to its place on the sleek, green surface.

From behind a half wall came a woman. She was tall and tired, with a face that didn’t face him, hidden behind loose curls of stringy, horse hair. The rest was drawn into a long pony tail. The woman wore a visage of conflict and courage. And when the boy could finally see her face, he noticed how the lines that gouged her forehead in asymmetrical streaks resembled a Japanese seascape painting, where thin, delicate waves of wrinkles stretched on toward the setting sun.

She glanced at the boy and took him in for a moment before pulling a chair out from the acrylic counter. Until the moment she showed him the double doors to freedom, there was a cold indifference to everything she did.

The boy reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a tattered edition of the printed story called The Book. The woman took it from him quickly and flipped to the inside cover before releasing an exasperated noise and slid it back to him through the dust, frustrated.

“This is an old copy number, which means you got this book from someone else. If you got it from someone else, that means they chose to remove it from their shelf and give it to you. When you leave here, give it back to them and get your own copy.”

“I’m sorry…I…” He didn’t know what to say. She had seen his face, hadn’t she? He was shocked that she was talking to him that way. No one talked to him that way. Oddly enough, he found it comforting.

“Everyone should have a copy of this book. Don’t recycle it. If people lend it to others, they are just as much to blame as those who may eventually destroy it. The more books exist, the more the truth I have written remains immortal. If there’s one thing we’ve learned through all of this, it’s that choosing to reuse items of power, handing them off to others without care and soon losing them, has been our ruin. We have the paper. We have the means. Everyone needs a copy of my book. The less copies out there, the fewer minds we’re reaching.”

Had he heard her right?

His words were slow and defenseless to someone who added little weight to them. “It was my brother’s.”

The woman shook her head and fiddled with the garbage at her feet. “I don’t need to know how you heard about us. So many people, when they first come here, want to tell me how they heard about the story. Who gave them The Book. How they got here. What they can do to help us. I don’t care about any of that. I just need to know that you’re ready to do whatever we ask of you and to allow your talents and abilities to be used to further our cause.”

She seemed slightly irritated as she continued. “We are at war. And with war come casualties. You’ve already walked through the first and second door. There’s only one more door…once you go through it…that’s it.”

“I told you that I don’t need to know,” she said, rising from her seat. With her back to him, the boy felt a certain confusion coursing through his mind.

Had she said what he thought she had said?

“Excuse me…but did I hear you say that this is your book? As in, you wrote it?” He lifted the dilapidated stack of printed pages, looked at it for a moment and returned his eyes to her, recalling the introduction. “So you knew him? You knew Holden?” The woman nodded in silence and he couldn’t help his need to understand. “How?”

She paced the room for a moment before approaching the boy and, without warning, began unbuttoning her tattered shirt. The boy, not of age to see such things, sat back embarrassed and shocked. What he saw in quick glances careened a flare of understanding through him and his jaw locked. The skin beyond the dirty white bra that hung loose on her flat chest was mangled from the stretching of skin and age, but he could still read the words that were branded across her chest: Don’t Read The Book. Such sudden realization made her next words unnecessary.

“Holden was my father. He was the greatest man who ever lived. If I hear you say anything different…I’ll feed you to the fire myself.”

The boy agreed. As he watched her button her shirt and stare down at the digital frame on the desk, he understood her obsessive response. In fact, the first time the boy had learned of Holden Clifford, the terrorist Holden Clifford, was in school, where he had been taught about the destruction of our world’s precious storage of printed books. Around his tenth birthday, when he received his first copy of The Book, he stumbled onto the story the government official Martin Trust had written years prior that described, in detail, the story of his friend, Holden Clifford and the anarchy of the misguided The Free Thinkers. The story was called Propaganda. Even at that age, the boy knew that what he had been reading was a lie. And that this woman before him, Jane Clifford, had written a story that told the truth no one believed.

“That will change,” she finished. Jane, now tousled by maturity and a conflict he had only read about, nodded and thumbed flippantly over her shoulder. “Are you ready to go through the final door?”

“Yes,” he replied too quickly. He rose from his seat and followed her toward the darkened glass doors of the prehistoric store. Ready for the biggest decision of his life.

With the crank of an angry handle, the doors gave way and the boy was ushered into an entirely new world. A secret world, like nothing he had ever seen. As he stepped out onto the filthied floor, the boy found that he had guessed right. He stood in the lofty expanse of an ancient, underground mall that had been taken over by the Ex Libris.

The serpentine pathways, once white and enticing and stretching over a chasm to the floors of shopping below, were now mangy and lined with cracked plastic bins of random shapes and colors. The undulating facades that led high to diamond cut skylights and sharply geometric ceilings were now cracked and boarded over, stripped with garlands of cobwebs and wire that provided electricity to the thousands of hanging light bulbs in the space above and beyond. Jane, looking suddenly more warm and happy to have him beside her, led the boy toward the end of a long shopping strip until they could reach a railing and look down upon the world below.

At the junction of so many pathways, the boy found himself at the main entrance to the mall and facing an immense wall of elevators that were stuck at odd heights and utilized as storage. As he approached the railing and the ramps to go down, he was immediately bombarded by the sounds of systems working all around him. The network of paths and shops, once covered in decorative glass awnings and digital advertisements, were now teeming with machinery and hundreds of grubby people carrying supplies. There were spindles and cranks, plates of metal that somersaulted over one another, gears and coils and rotating platforms that all seemed to be running off of a team of five workers riding stationary bicycles.

Behind this, in an area that appeared to have once served food, groups of people were reading under an enormous green board that was covered in lists of book titles in white, scratchy writing. It was a chalkboard. He had never seen one before. And he gradually came to the conclusion, through the stacks of fresh paper all around them, that the lists were of new books they had been printing like the one he still grasped in his hand. The machines were also running ingeniously off the water from the elderly waterfall to the right of the elevators. One of the water features that had been so popular when his grandfather was a boy. As he studied the massive apparatus, he decided that what he was seeing was a single, manual printing press. They didn’t work by scanning or ink jets like The Book had told him. Each letter was chosen very carefully and by a person that loved each word they spelled. The people were printing with blocks and paper that they had made by hand beside a waterfall that left puddles of cool water at their feet and a pleasant mist in the air. It was, perhaps, the most majestic sight he had ever seen.

When he was finished admiring it all, Jane walked him down the next alleyway, to where they passed countless miles of shops that stretched to the stories below and all of which were filled with furniture and families and toddlers. He would never have guessed that the mall would have been retrofitted in such a way. But it made sense. They needed to be protected. They needed a home, just like they once had at Winston Pratt’s. So all the stores in that wing had been converted into simple, small apartments.

Home again, home again, the boy thought, as they continued on.

At the opposite end of the underground mall, where the clamor of the immense printing presses could never be heard, there came a delicate glow from a wide skylight above. Once he was under its delicate rays, the boy understood where it had come from. In the system above them was a great, rectangular art installation that stretched high, beyond the roof, and was covered in tiles of unreadable black and white script. It must have been hollow and installed only to provide light to that section of the underground.

And as the boy contemplated what could have been so important to warrant such effort, he came to a long string of chalkboards that wove in and out of every shop for a mile in each direction. Up close, he could see that they were all coated in lists of books. Stories that were still missing pages. Looking down excitedly to the four stories of old shopping below, lit delicately by the sun, he saw stacks upon stacks of bookshelves, hiding behind a vast configuration of empty stores. The moment he saw the spray painted genre titles above each of the doors, shadowing the ancient, illuminated signage, the boy’s dream was confirmed. An enormous library of printed paper books was directly below his feet. He couldn’t believe it. Even after staring for ten minutes and taking in all the hundreds of people who walked the network of roads that threaded across the chasm to the bottom, he still couldn’t believe his eyes. Even with the Library of Congress burned to the ground, the Ex Libris had found more books than anyone, in their wildest imaginations, could have dreamt possible.

“How?” he asked, his voice breathless.

“Finch.” Jane replied, referencing the man from the story who had sold books on the black market. “When they had a funeral service for my father, and they discussed burying his favorite book in his honor, Finch was reminded of something that happened all over the world during The Great Recycling. It was a thought that he, nor anyone else, had ever entertained, because it was disrespectful to disturb the deceased. But during that time, people who loved their books too much to see them mulched by the government asked their family to respect their wishes and, at their death, they were cremated and placed in an urn to make room in their coffin for something far more important than their body.”

“For books?”

“For love,” she corrected. “They loved their characters. Their authors. The writing. What the stories meant to them. And they simply couldn’t go to their graves knowing the pages they cried over…the ones that made them who were, would ever be destroyed. We discussed the idea for a long time, with many of the families, and decided to act in the best interest of the stories that were hidden and waiting in every county in the world. And it was almost as if those people, those lovers of words, knew that one day we would need their novels because we discovered that every grave stone with a book etched beside the name of the deceased from that time would be filled with literature. So it was, with deep respect and unending gratitude to those sensible enough to see their worth, that we retrieved this library from the readers that had been protecting it for us and then laid them respectfully back into the ground.”

“Where the books had been resting.”

Jane nodded, finished the thought for him. “Resting in peace.”

As a few people began to notice him, the new boy standing beside their famed leader, they stopped and lowered their books. More people noticed the hitch in their pace and stopped as well, turning to see what was so important. And then they saw him also. Whispers spread across the system of ancient stores and the machines slowed until all reading and all speech stopped mid-sentence. Below the boy, and under his smiling face, the librarians stopped shelving. The binders stopped binding. The teachers stopped teaching. Everyone stopped and stood and looked up at the boy that had just entered their home.

Nearby, in a room with many books, there stood a burly Hawaiian giant with tattoos across his neck and a thin chicken-legged old man who was rambling on to one of the younger children that they were supposed to ask permission before taking one of the books down from the shelves. The kid giggled and scurried back into the mall with the book. When Shane turned to chase him, he noticed the lines of people along the walkway, standing and staring up at the level above. He kicked Moby in the shin and waved him over. Something was going on.

As they approached the door, they noticed the child circling past groups of people who were holding stacks of books and gazing with grins on their tired faces. With even, arthritic steps, the once-great men stepped out onto the walkway and reached for the railing. Finally there, they squinted up at all the fuss.

In the still silence of the nation of readers, Holden’s daughter felt a tear escape her eyes for the first time since she was a child. They were clapping. The riot of applause was so loud; it could have brought the mall to the ground above them. But even if someone had heard them, it would not matter. Their freedom was alive. Jane reached into her pocket and took out a single set of silver fingernail clippers. She handed them to the boy who took them eagerly. He rotated the wing and prepared to cut, under the words Ex Libris, but found a different phrase etched into the metal. He pushed down on the sharpened nail of his pointer finger and felt the engraving on his thumb.

Don’t read The Book.

 

 

 

* * * * *

 

 

 

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

 

 

My book is a work of dystopian fiction. I do not presume to know what the ramifications of digital books will be on the future of traditional publishing. I am only, in good, old-fashioned, make-believe, assuming what route the next generations will take, based on the current state of recycling, sustainability, the disregard of the typed or printed word, and online information databases like Wikipedia – where anyone can edit the historical truth. I find it apropos that the completion of my story coincides (to the day) with the unfortunate passing of J.D. Salinger, the author of The Catcher in the Rye, and the poignant announcement of the iPad by Apple. If the progression of digital music is any indication, handheld electronic media devices (THE BOOK, in my novel) will become popular with younger generations and reading will be preferred through this new medium.  Of course, I do not wish for the e-book to fail. Everyone should rally behind such convenient innovation. My impetus for this story lies in the importance of the printed word and what it used to mean for us as human beings.

 

My hope is that not only would my book gain appreciation as a cautionary tale against abandoning the written or printed word, but that it could potentially revolutionize the thinking of readers across the world. Young readers that will one day run this country. That they would feel a duty to themselves and their future children to keep truth and freedom alive by continuing to read from printed books and passing laws to protect their digital content from censorship. And it is never too late to begin.

 

For those of you who bought this book for a 300 page escape, I thank you for choosing my novel and considering this story. I am honored. For the rest, the ones who hear ‘Ex Libris’ and want to stand, the remainder of this note is meant for you. I am a simple man. Not a ‘revolutionary’ in any sense of the word. But this story resonated with me as a lover of books and so I felt it was my duty to write it and distribute it to as many people as possible. I am proud to call myself a citizen of the United States and, if you are an American, you should be as well. For many reasons. One of which is that we are fortunate enough to have a government that listens to its people and cares. So let us open our mouths and raise our voices in unison.

 

On the following page, you’ll find a letter that I have written to the Senators of this great country. I ask you, dear reader, to join me in asking them to protect our books from future, digital censorship. After a few minutes on the internet, you can make a real difference. Carefully read the letter and, if you agree, go to www.congress.org and sign up to write a similar letter to the senators from your state.

 

I know that my request is irrational and that my dream to protect something that already seems protected is far fetched, but while we may never know the extent of our reach, we can at least raise our hands to their highest height and hope to catch the attention of the leaders we so trust. I’ll leave you with a quote from the famous playwright George Bernard Shaw who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925.

 

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

 

 

Your Author,

 

M. Clifford

 

 

* * * * *

 

 

Dear Senator,

 

I am a constituent of yours and I am contacting you on behalf of Michael Clifford – an author who has written a dystopian novel, THE BOOK under the pen name M. Clifford. This is a page from his book. I urge you to carefully consider the fictitious topic of his novel and use your elected influence to ensure such actions never happen.

 

THE BOOK takes place in a future that looks similar to our own, where all paper has been recycled, including books, because all information is available on a digital format. As information is easily manipulated, the writing of our forefathers has been subtly altered, one word at a time, to appease the controlling agenda of a corrupted (albeit fictitious) government. There is only one information source. Since there is so much information and control is subtle, American citizens are unaware that their freedoms have been taken.

 

We live in an age when internet encyclopedias can be edited by anyone, at any time. Our documents can be easily manipulated by PDF software. We are on the crest of a digital renaissance and the time to protect ourselves from corruption is now. I specifically urge you reflect on the following:

 

Any published text, printed, digital or public domain, that had been approved by law during its inception, should not be altered on the basis of any present-day law of censorship, for any reason.

 

This text should also be protected against all alterations, minor or major, and any form of editing from any person not legally allowed to act out such edits.

 

If the present-day members of Congress find a reason to alter any published text, a public request may be made to the person(s) legally allowed to do so.

 

A single copy of every book ever written should be kept protected, by law, at the Library of Congress for archival purposes. In the case of digital corruption, an unaltered, unedited version may always be viewable by the government and the citizens of the United States of America.

 

Digitally published text must always be available from multiple sources.

 

You have been given a great duty – to protect our country from all enemies, foreign and domestic. Thank you for considering this request. I, along with the author Michael Clifford, look forward to seeing your response.

 

 

 

* * * * *

 

 

 

 

Available only on your digital reading device.

 

Keep The Planet Alive – Recycle Your Books

www.dontreadthebook.com