Dystopia
Dystopia
Tales of the Bookbinders
Charles Eugene Anderson
Europa Nightmare
Copyright 2015 by Charles Eugene Anderson
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form, except for brief quotations in reviews, without the written permission of the author.
Contents
Dystopia
About Charles Eugene Anderson
Chapter 1
Dystopia
There once was a time when all that was written was never read.
– From the Prayers of the third Librarian
We’ve all heard the old tales though I never believed any of them.
Yet here’s the one fairy tale I remember the most. It was told to me when I was a child. I don’t know if you’ll find any truth in it, but maybe you will, and if you can find one current of legitimacy, then I’ll happily be your guide through it.
Let me start at the beginning the place where all fairy tales embark.
Once upon a time, there were so many books that not all of the books could be read, so most of them remained unread. Those books lined the shelves of the many bookstores of our land. In fact, there were so many books and so many of them went unread, the bookbinders would have all of them shipped back to their warehouses where they would burn them into a fine black smoke. At that time the earth was so cold the bookbinders would warm their hands on those fires, and near those flames they enjoyed playing games of chess against one another.
Long ago one of the bookbinders said to the other while they were playing chess, ‘A horse can’t move that way.’
‘Up one and over one. It’s the way we have always played the game,’ said the other bookbinder.
‘No,’ said the other binder, but before he could continue he coughed because all of the black smoke from the books they’d just burn. He started again, ‘No, it’s up three and over one. That’s how a how horse moves.’
‘The other binder who didn’t like the man across from him said, ‘At least, I know the piece not called a horse. It’s called a phalanx, and that’s a phalanx move.’ This bookbinder wanted to cough, but he didn’t because he wanted to argue instead.
As you well know, neither one of them understood the rules, but it didn’t stop them from playing their game. Each day they tried to cheat each other while they played chess. Because it got colder and colder they had to burn more and more books to stay warm.
And because there was so much smoke from all the books that had been burned, it polluted and painted the sky a very black color indeed. All this smoke caused the earth to warm, and after a while, when the people had enough of the binder’s smoke, they said, ‘You cannot print and burn so many books because it’s polluting our skies.’ So instead of printing a multitude of books it was determined they only had enough environmental footprints to spare for a single book, and from that time forward, only a single book was allowed to be printed during the year.
But which book could they print and then throw into their fire? And would it be the last book they would be allowed to print and burn?
Soon there were many factions arguing with each other, and the people couldn’t decide which book to print. They wanted to argue. They wanted to shoot each other. At first, the selection was left to the politicians, but with every choice they made, there were many citizens who weren’t pleased with the politician’s decision. The politicians quickly learned to take their paddles out of that stream, and they came to a quick conclusion. The choice for the Last Book should be made by those who thrived, breathed, and couldn’t survive without the flow of books every day. The choice was easy; the librarians would be left to make the first selection. The citizens seemed content, and they waited eagerly for the librarians’ first selection.
But the bookbinders fought back, so instead of books they started to burn everything that could hold a flame. They burned houses; they burned cars, and everything that was flammable in nature. They burned so many things which blackened so much of the sky that the librarians went to their own stacks of books and began to pray. In their prayers they began to move in their own dance, and their dance became a whirl. They whirled themselves into a dance, and it was in the mist of their whirling-destructive dance a solution came to them. The librarians would flood most the bookbinders away, like Allah had done to the earth thousands of years before. They would drown out the bookbinders and wash away their fires of environmental sin. When the librarians’ river began to flow, its waters quickly washed away the bookbinders and the black smoke from their fires forever.
But the people no longer had the books they wanted, so the librarians filled the river with data instead. They poured into it every fact and figure they could find, and they mixed them into the stream. Every word, every song, every picture, filled the new stream and the people of the world seemed content. They could go to the edge of the stream and draw upon the data waters for the information whenever they needed.
And the librarians placed walls, rocks, and data blocks inside the stream, so the bookbinders couldn’t evaporate it with their fires ever again. Yet the librarians still needed people who could run the whole length of the river, and they found a group who could navigate the data river, the guides. Those guides could travel the entire stream. Along with the guides were their backseat analyzers who rode the rapids behind them. The needed guides and analyzers were brought to the stream from all four corners of the world.
All were happy with the new world except for the surviving bookbinders. They were so angry they grew bat wings and turned into dark angels. The dark angels sought to disrupt the data that flowed in the river. The dark angels and guides were in a never ending struggle, a war, and each looked to destroy the other. So a new being had to be created and the first Augur was born, and with his help, the angels had to retreat away from the river’s banks.
Like I said, I used to think the story was fictional. I didn’t believe that a book could ever go unread or unappreciated. I thought it wasn’t true about the bookbinders and the librarians, but now I think there might be some truth to the old fairytale. So why did I change my mind? Because I have books I have never read myself. Can you imagine the luxury and the waste I’ve selfishly indulged in? Oh, the carbon footprints I’ve left behind. I’ll never return them, and the librarians will never have the satisfaction of recycling my personal books that I plan on keeping only for myself.
I’m a river-guide through a stream of numbers. Most who are good in my profession can feel cold data before it can be seen, and I like to think that I’m one of them. I have learned the magic of the data stream that can only be predicted by throwing a broken bone computation with my paddle’s blade. Some say their predictions are good for an hour, a day, or maybe even a week before they change the current. I have even met a man who claimed a year at-tide forecast, but I knew that it can’t be predicted in the main data stream, and if I’d used it, it would’ve made all the numbers false, and they would’ve flipped my craft over.
Once a prediction has become ribbed the data would have to be poured into the stream all over again from the beginning, and the water of numbers would’ve had an extra tributary that no guide would’ve wanted to run through. Those would’ve been a class six rapid. We have always found it better to keep the equation pure before it flowed back into the main stream and the other data had been mixed into it.
Sometimes Nestor, my analyzer, would sit at the bank of my drop point and watch the numbers scroll by. When Nestor saw there were no errors in the data, the trip was easy and safe, a real rubber ducky float, and it was then that my analyzer and I would nudge our kayak off the bank
and into the stream.
There were analyzers who wanted to test new derivatives to see if the numbers could be falsified by an incorrect prediction, but that has never happened to me. It didn’t stop those like my backseat analyzer from trying, Nestor Khan. He would speak positive about working on those proofs to anyone who would listen to him. There were other analyzers, who considered him a heretic for his beliefs, and they assumed men like him would distort the data in the stream. They own game of chess against the numbers, and each analyzer would have to choose which side of the board to play, the black or the white.
When I first started as a guide, I used to wonder why the librarians would allow someone like him so close to the main flow of numbers, but I didn’t work in the Office of the Librarian Sensor Interface so it would always remain a mystery to me. I had to trust those who saw data that I wasn’t privilege to see for myself. I knew the brightly colored cords and twists of the Librarians broke the numbers into patterns that I couldn’t even begin to imagine. Those who worked in the librarians were said to be chasing flights of currents that rode mists high up into the air and finally onto Allah.
So I tolerated the heretic, at first. I endured his breaks for his many prayers. Yet, over time I saw that the bones never broke Nestor, and his predictions were always complete and accurate. In due course,