The Book (19 page)

He stepped down into the oval pit and stood at the center atop an artistically woven detail of their famous emblem. Its prominent lines stood strikingly dark against the white rug and appeared to give the man the heightened stature of importance.

As the architect began speaking, Holden was immediately calmed by the man’s dulcet, soothing tone. “I would like to welcome everyone,” he began, through his thin, wilted beard, “to the seventy-second meeting of the Chicago branch of
The
Free Thinkers
.” A concord of clapping fringed the group and Holden sipped gratefully from his wine. “Let us ring in the new season by declaring our code of statutes to our most welcomed guests and newest members.”

In eerie unison, the group began announcing their beliefs in a low, chewing monotone.
“To remove all limitations on our creativity by allowing one another a chance to rebuild what has once been. To form a new intellectual freedom over the next century by regressing society to a time when we didn’t have all the answers. When our fate was challenged because the computer didn’t find our mate. When our faith was challenged because we hadn’t found the cure. When our minds were challenged because our problems hadn’t already been answered. When our purpose was challenged because we didn’t have a god. We will bring freedom to thoughts. We will think again! We will think again!”

In the sudden, esoteric silence, the architect unwrapped a stick of gum, popped it coolly into his mouth and continued from behind a carefree, cosmopolitan chuckle. “So, let’s talk phase four. What do the next six months look like?”

Most of what was brought up throughout the next forty-five minutes was a cornucopia of bogus nonsense that ended on someone’s suggestion to try and disassemble the internet for a week. Others said it couldn’t be done, but their arrogant leader came up with a plan in half a minute that everyone supported and that seemed too ambitious to be possible. The man enjoyed imagining how society would react when boredom was forced upon them. When their television shows, movies and sports were unviewable. When their contact with others was limited to physical interaction. Could a week alone spur on a new renaissance of ideas? He heralded the possibilities and his followers swooned.

When all the pomp and speeches had ended and the lemmings scattered excitedly, Holden remained in the same place, unable to move – a mechanical piping system with locked joints, his ungalvanized mind rusting in the foiled acceptance of where he was and what
The Free Thinkers
were really about.

Holden had been wrong.

They had been the exact opposite of what he needed them to be. All he believed and hoped for had been a lie.
The Free Thinkers
were completely misguided, and yet exactly who they meant themselves to be. The newspapers were right.
The Free Thinkers
actually believed what everyone thought they believed.

Holden furled his eyebrows and cocked his head as he prepared himself for what was about to happen. Downing a glass of wine, he charged the architect as the man was completing a fanciful tale of how he had found his sunglasses at a shop in Haiti. “Excuse me, but you didn’t mention The Book or the Publishing House. I assume that’s part of your deal, right?”

The man eyed Holden’s sport coat and pursed his lips before tilting his head back over his shoulder in a moment of perplexing ecstasy. “Oh, what I wouldn’t give to be an Editor. How I would caress the delete key every day. Magical.”

“Are you joking?” Holden asked, stumbling back as if repulsed by the man’s breath. “They’re erasing our history, bro. You don’t think that’s messed up?”

“If only,” he booed, fluttering the fur of his salt and pepper beard. “Young man, that is a rumor started by people like us. People who want to start over. Think again!”

“But, I thought…”

“Apparently you didn’t. Take for instance, this chair.” The man vaulted adroitly from the sunken seating area and grabbed an antique wooden chair from his office. Its dimpled leather cushion reflected the flickering fire as the man brought it to the slate table. “This is an original Eames, circa nineteen fifty-one.”

Holden could hear a sudden eagerness in the fraction of whispers around the room. Everyone gradually began to turn and watch the action play out, which told Holden that the man’s haughty speech had been given before. “Now, there must be…what…thirty of these in the world?” He took the piece of furniture and toppled it gleefully onto the table where it was quickly charred in the flames. With a laugh that tinged the edge of his words, the man turned back to Holden and continued his speech while the wood sputtered and crackled amid the thunder of applause. “Boop. Gone. Just like that. If all of these were destroyed and all the information and images of it were removed from the internet…well...” He waited, but Holden didn’t respond. “Don’t you understand? Eventually, someone can be creative enough to design this chair again. See, we live in a world where there are no new musicians. No new artists. No new designers. No new thinkers.”

“Of course there are,” Holden disagreed. A multitude of digital magazines were advertised in The Book every day, with some new flashy face on the cover beside a lofty heading of how they were revolutionizing their industry. But the people in the room, all the stylish people with their neon drinks and puffed-up expressions, were laughing.
What did that mean? Had the man been right?

As the laughter subsided, the architect reached for a glass of apricot wine. “Forgive our response. I understand that, if you are new, my words could come as somewhat of a shock. But what are words, really? I’m no big thinker. Even someone with half a brain can see that the only thing new about these
revolutionaries
is that they look different than those they are copying. Sorry…emulating.” A snicker coursed through the group and he fingered some quotation marks posthumously in the air around his head.

“There is nothing left to learn. The new and avant garde are simply regurgitation. And puke stinks! We have reached the limit of our ability to be creative. God isn’t making any new colors and we gotta start over. Thankfully, most of the people in this room,” he paused, glinting a grin as he snapped his gum, “are well-to-do enough to make a difference. I can buy a rare work of art and destroy it. If I want to. I could buy the rights to every song by The Beatles and destroy the original recordings and corrupt each and every digital file. But that won’t kill their music. A hundred years in the future, the band will re-emerge in some new form and create a revolution of songs that have never been heard. Our children will thank us. Our children’s children will thank us.”

A smart-looking woman raised her glass, pronouncing, “The next Beethoven will thank us.”

“Yes! Let’s give mankind a chance to be creative again! To
THINK
again!”

Holden remained still, powerless against the uprising of applause. After a respectful bow, the architect chief of their terrorist tribe motioned for Holden to come closer. They shared a heartless handshake and the man leaned in to whisper, “You’ll come around, soldier. We all have. This movement is happening whether you want it to or not.”

The clapping fluttered to silence as those who were eager to watch history burn huddled around the fire like Neanderthals reveling over the shredded carcass of a beast their leader had devoured. And Holden felt so suddenly sad. This was the exact opposite of what he had expected. He was assuming the news reports were wrong, but they weren’t. Everything these people were about…it was only to destroy. If they had it their way, they would destroy all the books ever written. Delete enough words at random until all semblance of structure and sense and poetry was stripped away, dulled down to a level of stupidity that would force humanity to thirst and cry out for something new and creative. People like this praised the invention of the typewriter that led to the computer keyboard that led to editless texting and editable encyclopedias. They encouraged internet ‘bogs’ and self-published drivel from make-believe minds. They praised the dishonor of words and disrespected the courage of history and accomplishment. These were things their ancestors had worked hard for and this rabble of overconfident egotists wanted to start over. To regress us back to a time before such wonderful triumphs existed. To unplug civilization and reboot before considering the loss. They
were
terrorists. And their viewpoint was a terror altogether too overwhelming for him to accept.

Small seating areas were being filled and Holden eventually found himself standing alone. He was offered a glass of expensive vodka and he passed it down. He was offered to pick an appetizer from a tray of oddly shaped cheeses and he took one simply so the person would walk away. He bit into it, hopeless. No one around him cared at all about The Book or about breaking the government control. Holden watched as the architect began throwing other priceless pieces onto the alter of fire and it made him instantly ill, as if the small cheese pyramid in his mouth was coated in a thin, hairy mold. He needed to leave. He couldn’t stomach another second in that building.

A piece of him, the piece that daydreamed about their group during work, wanted to proclaim a passage from something by Charles Dickens in the hope that it would spur them on to a new thinking. He wanted to convince them that what they believed was foolish. Instead, he turned his back on the members of
The Free Thinkers
and searched gladly for the elevator. Real substance from a classic story would be lost upon their feeble, delusional minds.

“Leaving early, friend?” Holden twisted to find Moby, the enormous man that had recruited him from the sidewalk, leaning casually against the wall beside a crystal coat rack. “Listen, I know they’re a bit eccentric, but…it’s my job to screen people when they want to leave.”

Holden spun, shocked by what he was hearing and came at the man who was three times his size with nothing less than enmity. “Seriously? Were you here? Did you see everything that just happened? I mean…how could anyone believe this extremist garbage?”

Moby shrugged and pointed a humungous thumb over his shoulder. “There are definitely a couple of crazies in there, but their heart is in the right place. I guess I just don’t like being controlled, is all.” Moby pushed the elevator button and waited by the door with Holden as the mingling minions behind them started cackling when someone tossed a vinyl record onto the fire. “You know…you’re the first person in years to catch the reference to my name. You must read The Book a lot. These people don’t read. At least not fiction.”

The elevator doors opened and Holden chuffed, “Isn’t everything in The Book fiction…”

“Did you just say what I think you said?” Moby stepped in front of the elevator door, his immense frame nearly taking up the entire width of space, dwarfing Holden who generally stood high among his friends. He glanced over his shoulder momentarily before shoving Holden into the elevator and allowing the doors to close. In the small chamber, the man seemed larger than ever and Holden was regretting his choice to get angry. But the man’s chestnut face was suddenly glazed with a new buttery color. Behind a sanguine expression and an aristocratic tone, he spoke three words that withered Holden’s necessity to escape.

“So you guys
do
know about The Book?”

The elevator doors opened on another floor and Moby blocked the entrance so no one could get on and interrupt them. They needed to be alone. The moment the doors closed, the giant of a man turned a child in the face of such overwhelming excitement. “I’ve been waiting for someone like you for over two years.”

“What? Someone like me?”

“My uncle told me it was being controlled. Told me about the prince. He was right, wasn’t he? Man! The Book
is
being controlled.” Moby didn’t wait for Holden to answer. He wove his gargantuan arms wildly and blurted out his wishes, regardless of if they were wanted. “Whatever you’re doing…I’m in. Sign me up.”

“Hang on a second. What about
The Free Thinkers
?”

“I’ve told them about the editing. They don’t seem to care. Or don’t believe me. You don’t understand…I’ve stuck around this whole time waiting for the day someone like you would show up. Two years, Holden. You have to let me come with you.”

Gnawing on his tongue as the elevator chimed each passing floor, he reached for Moby’s jacket and took the man’s cell phone from his inside pocket. Although Holden had no clue where it would lead him, he typed out Winston’s address. “Meet me here tomorrow. I…don’t really know…I mean…I have a few ideas about what we can do with the library in the cellar…but we should probably regroup with the others.”

“There are others? Great!” The elevator doors opened and a team of people carrying grimy reusable bags filled with fresh groceries crowded in around them. Holden squeezed through as Moby waved goodbye with a utopian smile that spread wide along the plains of his sandalwood skin. “I should head back upstairs, Holden. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow.”

Holden Clifford swallowed with difficulty as the polished elevator doors closed. He was back in the decadent lobby. This time, much less excited about the rest of his life. He discovered an ally in the most unlikely of places and yet it left him feeling alone. Destitute. Discouraged. Wasn’t
he
supposed to be the one joining a group of others? There were no others, were there? What he found was a group of misguided rich people with nothing to do but turn destruction and chaos into the newest art form. It was over. If there was a group out there that could make a difference, a group that would exist to break the lies, Holden would have to start that group himself.