Lovers of Babel (18 page)

             
Right in front of the door stood a six foot hologram of a blonde woman in a suit and tie.

             
“Welcome to the west wing archives. In order to access the archives we must verify your identity and whether you have permission to enter. What is your name?” She asked in a German accent.

             
I told her my name.

             
“Ah, yes Frita granted you permission to enter. Before you do, please be advised that all artifacts must not be touched by human skin. There are special gloves hanging from each shelf in the event that you may want to handle a relic. The electronic archives are located around the peripheral of the room. One more thing, the oxygen levels are very low inside. In case of an emergency there are oxygen masks in glass cases on the front wall of the library. Enjoy your visit Mr. Riley.”

             
Suddenly the hologram disappeared revealing a glass door. I walked toward it and as soon as I did, the door opened creating a hissing sound. I stepped inside and saw another door. This time the door was metal. Once I was inside the small room the glass door shut behind me, startling me. I could feel the breath leaving my lungs immediately. Trying not to panic, I noticed a red button on the side of the metal door and pushed it. It slid open to one side revealing a high-tech room of various gadgets. I practically ran inside the archives room and the door slid closed.

             
Above me, were dozens of red lights emitting a red glow throughout the room. The archives were massive and contained about thirty columns of shelves that reached the high ceiling. There were touchscreen computers at the end of each shelf that could be used to search for artifacts. Each artifact had its own magnetic field generator that sat underneath it making the artifact hover in midair. I was impressed. I wanted to explore the archives further, but I was on a mission to find the Book of Wisdom.

             
On the outer portion of the archives were several touchscreens lining the walls. Under each screen was a transparent keyboard for convenience. I chose one and searched for the
Atlas Life
archival software that Frita mentioned. Once I found it, I typed The Book of Wisdom in the search bar and 150 related files showed up; the first one was entitled:
Scholars Predict the Inevitable Extinction of the Book of Wisdom.
I clicked on the link and it took me to a video of a brown man with gold-rimmed glasses standing at a podium. The man spoke with a thick Turkish accent.

             
“Ladies and gentlemen of upstanding influence, I come to you with a heart of sincerity.  The thing that I want to discuss with you is of the utmost importance.  Throughout the decades our world has transformed into a place where we value material things above all. We have made it a necessary part of our lives to pursue wealth above love and family. But what I want to talk about today is something that most of us have neglected to think about altogether: the end of morality as we know it. It is the year 2110 and we have reached a very unique point in history. This is the first time that The Book of Wisdom is circulating among less than 10 percent of the population and is only being printed upon request. This means that only a couple million people on earth care about the contents of that book.”

             
The audience interrupted his speech to cheer at this revelation.

             
The man made a gesture to quit the audience.

             
“Now, most of you think that this is something to celebrate. It has been a goal of the powers that govern our world to eliminate this book because it is seen as a hindrance to the advancement of our world. However, what does this mean for our future generations? I admit that I am not a religious man, but I do at times find myself in need of something everlasting. There is immense structure in our world, but what about the structure within us? Even if all we get out of the Book of Wisdom is hope, don’t we need that too? What will become of us after the material world has passed? I fear that we are allowing our only link to eternity to fade away into the past,” he said.

             
I swiped the screen to the right taking me back to the list of search results.

             
Hearing this man speak so passionately about the Book of Wisdom made me curious as to what this book contained. The man had mentioned morality and eternity; two concepts that I had never thought of before. Morality was a prehistoric concept that went back to when man was not in allegiance to the system. Men were free to pursue their own individual freedom and happiness, therefore; they needed morality to keep them from straying too far off the straight and narrow. Here in the Underground, society is of one sound mind and doesn’t need to understand the concept of right and wrong. What is right is serving the system. Anything else is okay as long as it doesn’t interrupt society’s steady flow. Whatever lifestyle a person wants to live is completely up to them. This is our way.

             
I feel that a book that discusses the importance of free living should never reach the hands of any human. This book could ruin the system and drive us into an all-out war.

             
I continued my search for information about this dangerous book. I came across all sorts of documents that expressed an equal amount of contempt and love for the mysterious text. Then, there was an article from a newspaper formerly known as
The New York Times
entitled:
Family Tries to Preserve the Book of Wisdom Despite Rumors of Extinction
.

             
The article chronicles the life of a religious family from the southern part of the former United States. The father preached in a Pentecostal church and specialized in the art of spontaneous exorcism. The article said that his exorcisms were opened to the church. If anyone from the congregation felt an evil affliction that needed healing, they would simply walk to the pulpit and preacher Alex Leon would call the demon out. Leon’s church would grow tremendously throughout his thirty years of pastoring until 2020 when his church building was burned down by a group of religion terrorists. The family lost everything.

The article goes on to say that
,
despite the fire that consumed the three-story Wisdom in the Heights Pentecostal church, pastor Alex Leon refuses to lose faith. “I grew up in the church and always knew I’d be a preacher someday. I have a responsibility to my family and congregation to stay strong and continue on through this ordeal,” Leon said. When asked why more than half of his congregation never came back to help rebuild the church, Leon who is now sixty-years-old said, “We are living in scary times now, times where even the believers are turning their backs on the truth. The status of the church is hanging by a thread.” Authorities said the Book of Wisdom was one of the main reasons why religion terrorists wanted to destroy the church. “They despise all that’s in it,” Leon said, “and they don’t want it around anymore.” And neither does sixty percent of the world’s population who don’t own a Book of Wisdom, according to 2021 census data taken from the Bureau of Vital World Statistics. It’s a fact that the majority of the world could care less about the Book of Wisdom and don’t think reading it is as important as it once was, but Leon and his family want to try and preserve the value of the infamous book by keeping one very old copy enclosed in a glass case. “It can’t die out. It’s impossible. The world needs this book more than you can imagine. If ever it were to cease to exist so would all moral thought. There would be utter chaos in our streets,” Leon said. The majority of citizens in the U.S. would disagree with Mr. Leon’s sentiments and would claim that the world doesn’t need a book to show them what true morality and wisdom is; rather the truth is found within. At least, this is what the group Alchemists Anonymous said…. No matter what side one may choose, the fact still remains that the printing of the Book of Wisdom is rapidly decreasing by the hour. According to experts of ancient texts, by the end of 2055 the book will no longer be printed or available in stores and the only texts that will exist will be the ones that only one-sixteenth of the world’s population own. 

             
I was dumbfounded that a single book could cause this much controversy. Whether you agreed with what was in the book or not, the Book of Wisdom was powerful. I typed the name Alex Leon into the search. Alex was surely dead, but I wanted to find out if he was successful in preserving the book.

             
I found only one other source that talked about Alex Leon. It was a dissertation entitled,
The Infamous Book and the Mind: How the Book of Wisdom Inspired Cognitive Confidence
and
was written in 2111by a distinguished psychologist named Graham Stein. In the dissertation, Graham claimed to have used Alex’s aged book for his research after searching for it for several years. He eventually found it in a run-down local museum in Mississippi where it was being kept in a refrigerated basement, still inside the glass case. Graham planned to return it once his research was over, but by the time his dissertation was complete and was ready for review, the world was preparing to end. It didn’t say in the dissertation whether or not Graham was able to successfully return the Book of Wisdom, but I feel that this is the lead I’ve been waiting for.              

 
              I used a database called
Citizen Quest
to see if Graham made it to the Underground before the apocalypse. I found five Graham Steins each one living in a different part of the Underground. Then, I came across a Dr. Graham Stein who lived in Underground Columbus, Ohio and was a professor of psychology and other behavioral sciences. This was a perfect match. I printed the page with Dr. Stein’s information and made my way back to the atrium of the Universal Archives.

             
When I made it back to the front, Frita was explaining the ceiling mural to a young family that seemed to be distracted by the commotion of the festival still going on outside. As I began to walk out the doors, Frita hollered at me to get my attention.

             
Then she addressed her guests.

             
“I’m sorry. Pardon me for a moment.”

             
“Did you find what you were looking for?” She asked.

             
“Well, I found enough to continue my search. Thank you.” 

             
“Ah, before you leave I wanted to tell you something that I forgot to mention about the book.”

             
I asked her to continue.

             
“Fifteen years before the apocalypse there was a civil war in the place known as the United States of America. The war was over the extinction of the Book of Wisdom. The fanatics of the text were up in arms about how the government stopped the purchase and sell of the book. They claim that this violated their rights as citizens. The government claimed that the ban on the Book of Wisdom had nothing to do with rights, but that they were wasting billions of dollars a year on printing when the books weren’t even being bought. The fanatics didn’t buy the government’s explanation so they took to the streets. They raided government headquarters all around the country demanding that the book be sold again and that the right to sell privately be restored. At some point the protests became violent and the police had to intervene. Even though the fanatics were outnumbered they continued to fight. One thousand people died at the hands of law enforcement. After the war was over, the government wrote the Book of Wisdom into law that no man, woman, or child should ever speak of the book again. It became illegal to possess it.  This is the reason why nobody cares about your book Amias. The Book of Wisdom is illegal.”

             
I was chilled to the bone. How can the government make a book illegal?

The idea of rights and natural rights
isn’t new to me. I’ve read books about the founding of the Americas and how the laws were founded upon the idea that every human being had natural rights that had been given to them by birth. Of course in the Underground those rights are not taken into account. There’s no room for individualism in the new system, but the fact that the old government would impose a law on its people that violated their freedom made my curiosity erupt. That book must contain powerful insight that threatened the state of governance in the old age.

“Are you telling me that that b
ook is still illegal now?” I asked.

“Once Armageddon hit a lot of things changed in our world including laws, but the Book of Wisdom has never been mentioned as far as I know. I think it’s because everything was destroyed in the disaster and even before the apocalypse there were only a handful of books left. The Authorities didn’t think it was important to write the Book of Wisdom into law, but that doesn’t mean they’ve forgotten about it. Most of those who are in charge of maintaining law and order in the Underground were alive in the old world. They are the ones who’ve read the contents of the book and know of its power. You should be very careful with your search and if you happen to find the copy, don’t tell a soul.”

I plan to do just that. I’ll find the book and read it from front to back committing it to memory. I will then use the wisdom I gain to lead this new civilization into a new era. Of course I could never share this book with anyone else because it’s much too dangerous. The wisdom and understanding would spread and it could cause the complete destruction of the system. However, I could use the Book of Wisdom to increase my influence. The Underground needs a leader like me and I will use this ancient device to get what I’ve always craved.