The Book Read online

  A Novel

  by

  M. Clifford

  KINDLE EDITION

  * * * * *

  PUBLISHED BY:

  M. Clifford on Kindle

  The Book

  Copyright © 2010 by M. Clifford

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  Kindle Edition License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

  Paper Is Not A Crime

  Words Are Not A Crime

  Keep Freedom Alive

  Do Not Lend This Book

  * * * * *

  Also by M. Clifford

  PROPAGANDA FROM THE DESK OF MARTIN TRUST

  DIRECTOR OF HISTORIC HOMELAND

  PRESERVATION AND RESTORATION

  THE MUSE OF EDOUARD MANET

  * * * * *

  For My Father

  He was a sprinkler fitter

  He was a simple man

  To those few he loved more than himself,

  He was a hero

  * * * * *

  * * * * *

  “The one who tells the stories rules the world.”

  – Hopi Indian proverb

  “Young readers, you whose hearts are open, whose understandings are not yet hardened, and whose feelings are neither exhausted nor encrusted with the world, take from me a better rule than any professors of criticism will teach you. Would you know whether the tendency of a book is good or evil, examine in what state of mind you lay it down. Has it distracted the sense of right and wrong which the Creator has implanted in the human soul? If so – if you have felt that such were the effects it was intended to produce – throw the book into the fire, whatever name it may bear on the cover.”

  – Southey

  “It is sure to be dark if you close your eyes.”

  – unknown

  * * * * *

  DON'T READ THE BOOK

  * * * * *

  000-0

  Don’t read The Book.

  That phrase has followed me my entire life.

  I was never trained to tell stories. Most people these days aren’t born in that percentile. Those who are write passive sonnets about duty, honor and glory to the government. Complacency that breeds. This tale, however, has never been told and you are risking your life by continuing. We, the people, have learned that while there is danger in the printed word, so is there power. In the days of our ancestors, it stirred us to revolution. Words were honored and protected. They were spiritual and rehabilitating. But that was before recycling sustained the world and asphyxiated our minds. For the sake of clarity, I’ll save those details for another page.

  If you are reading these words from a source other than a bound stack of printed paper, the following pages have been compromised. Including the sentences above, there are a total of 97,544 words in this story. You need to brand this number to your mind. If you reach the end of this book and the number is incorrect, the following pages have been compromised. Remember a single word can change the world. You must always keep track of the word count so it won’t happen again.

  Before we begin, I would like to offer you a guarantee. This will be difficult and you will come to a point between paragraphs where you must choose one of two diverging roads – either continue and learn the truth or stop flipping the paper pages, suppress what you have read and tell Robert Frost that all the difference can go suck a grenade. Forgive the disjunction and my insensitive language, but I need your undivided attention so it won’t happen again. So the people we love most won’t die because we tried to fix things too quickly. If we have learned anything from the Editors, it is to be patient. Subtlety is the greatest weapon. Combined with truth, it is an unstoppable force. For that very reason, you are still holding this book. You want to learn the truth. To read the truth, unedited. Ex Libris. If you are willing to be patient, I’ll need to start from the beginning. Our beginning, at least. That way, despite how desperate things still are, you’ll be able to appreciate how far we’ve come and how bad it was, once upon a time.

  I knew him. I am one of the few people, few fortunate people, who can say that. In fact, I loved him before any of this began. When he was a simple-minded journeyman. When he wasn’t hated by every single person in the world. No one knew him like I did. If they had, they wouldn’t have believed what they were told to believe. I tried to change their minds after he was gone, but people assumed I was disillusioned. Even those who should have known better. But I believed him. I knew he was telling the truth. Even before he told me, I knew that he had discovered something none of us lemmings knew. On that day, in that windowless Chicago bar, the truth of our deception was exposed. Before he knew it, our emancipation rested in his hands.

  He’d say it was the best of times. Holden always did because he loved quoting Dickens. It was the best of times. Of course, by the end of the day it would feel like the opposite, but it was Friday and he was riding the elevated train home from work.

  * * * * *

  001-590

  His fingernails were dirty. Of course they were.

  He closed his Book and glared down at the notice that slithered across the screen, sealed into the black, leather binding. The words faded away and came back, breathing: Update in Progress. With an irritated huff, Holden Clifford glanced up from his seat to watch as everyone on the train closed their Books to search for something beyond the foggy windows. Something in the distortion of rain that could occupy their minds for the next two, exasperating minutes. For Holden, it was his fingernails.

  His hands were generally caked in filth throughout the day. Why clean the grease and pipe dope when it would only resurface after lunch? A pant leg ordinarily did the trick until five o’clock, when he could expect the long train ride home. Holden would glide to the sink, tailored in grubby jeans and a torn flannel shirt, and scrub his arms like a cardiologist before surgery. The other sprinkler fitters were used to his ritualistic insanity, but they still poked a joke now and again. Not many water monkeys read novels. Especially pre-digital novels. If sprinkler fitters even used The Book for anything beyond studying blueprints, it was for the sports column. What frustrated Holden, as he took the nail file from his shirt pocket to scrape the grime from his forefinger, was that he even noticed his hands at all. He should have been lost in the final chapters of Edwin Drood, seeking to understand the lurking mystery. This was the third time in two days the Editors of The Book had interrupted him, and everyone else in the world, with another futile update. Of course, he couldn’t complain. The Book was the most significant device to come out of his grandfather’s selfish, unwilling generation. He really couldn’t complain.

  Holden had been born into a world where The Book
was a necessity. Everyone on the planet had at least one copy. There were many different versions available with almost infinite design possibilities, including hundreds of applications for deeper study and general convenience. Holden had two copies, but he’d say that, on average, most people had three.

  It was understood that The Book was a part of life. The portable reading device was used to learn the alphabet, to study history in school, to develop your career and to eventually retire in your favorite story.

  As one global society, they read.

  Often.

  With his hands as clean as they could be, Holden turned his attention to the sharpened nail on his pointer finger. It was duller than usual. He scraped at it with six long slashes, filing the tip to a fine, angled spear. Outlawing paper made writing utensils pointless and the stylus pen that once came with the touch-sensitive Book was replaced over time by a swirling pointer finger. The lack of a single sharpened fingernail was the scarlet flag of the non-reader and it waved itself to the society of Book lovers. That number was dwindling by the decade.

  A rumble coursed through the elevated train. Holden was unsure if it was the decaying wooden tracks below or the impatient excitement of expectant readers. He was annoyed that he’d been interrupted, but the update was necessary. Perhaps a new book had been published today, or the first draft of a story was included in the superfluous addendums that accompanied every purchased novel. Holden didn’t need an explanation on the significant conditions surrounding every story to understand its purpose or relevance, but he respected those in the world that did. Two minutes a day was worth the benefit because, like everyone else in the world, Holden Clifford loved The Book.

  The screen breathed Update Complete and Holden watched as the teenage girl on the seat beside him slipped back into her Book. Her device was blue, with generous detailing of thin, red and white stripes. It had been a popular model ten years ago and was obviously a hand-me-down, but she personalized it by lining the inside cover with a patchwork of neon stickers. On a normal day, Holden would engulf himself greedily in his story and ignore everyone during the train ride, but he couldn’t stop staring at her fingers as they swirled along the screen. Two of her dazzlingly gold nails were sharpened points and they danced an elegant minuet to a sonata unheard beyond the tiny, blue buds in her be-jeweled ears. Holden had never seen a ballet, but he imagined that the intoxication would return when watching women dance with such similar grace. She was clearly using the device to talk to a friend and it made Holden wonder about the times when she wasn’t talking. What stories filled her Book? Which one did she return to when life was disagreeing with her?

  The train jerked to a stop and the doors opened with a familiar chime. The girl growled beside him, closed her Book and ambled off the train with a few others. Holden watched her dive for shelter from the rain as the car sealed its doors and rolled on to the next stop.

  Seeking to be withdrawn from the rest of the commute, he flipped back the leather binding of his Book and watched as the inside screen flickered away from its black slumber and shifted to green. No, not green. More of an eerie white that pretended to be blameless and clean. There were some who preferred to read from a crisp white background in the comforts of their home computer, but those people weren’t true Book lovers. Those with a sharpened pointer finger found the murky green filter soothing and would always prefer to go green even if a white version had been available.

  Black text swam to the surface, interrupting his story with the Gratis Press digital newspaper - a bonus for buying the latest edition of The Book. Holden longed to return to his story, but the scrolling headline drew him in. The Free Thinkers, terrorists against knowledge and history, had attacked another city.

  That afternoon, city politicians mourned a once impeccable monument to twentieth century architecture. At street level, the north face of the Sears Tower had been branded with the emblem of The Free Thinkers. Holden swooped his fingernail around the photograph in the article and it enlarged to the width of the screen. Police surrounded the tower’s jet black aluminum facing, studying the trivial design. Upon a stately crest was the ornamental script of their motto: Think Again. Above this, Holden noticed the delicately etched icons of a bow and arrow and a revolver. Although the insignia was exquisitely drawn, the brand scarred the building in a violent technique, eating away at the seamless material.

  Holden skimmed the article, but it was the same old news. Nothing much was known about the group other than the obvious; they were a syndicate of anarchists linked to the destruction of major historical monuments and meaningful pieces of our global history. When he reached the bottom of the article, a video began streaming of a man at a press conference. In the top right corner was the graphic of an American flag swimming in windless air beside the words: Gallantly Streaming. The man at the press conference behind a podium that carried the seal of the United States was sharp, attractive and, despite a similarity in age, was in an entirely different category than Holden. His name was Martin Trust. As the video continued within the brackets of unprinted text, Trust announced his commission as the head of a new sector of Homeland Security. He continued by affirming that it was the job of the Department of Historic Homeland Preservation and Restoration to protect and rehabilitate the nation’s most cherished antiquities. Trust comforted the press by declaring his passion for tracking down The Free Thinkers and Holden felt himself nod. He wasn’t the type to care much about history, but he also disliked people that rocked the boat.

  Holden was bored with the images of demolished buildings that begged him to read on, so he found the recycling emblem for the Book and swirled his finger around it. The triangled arrows of the icon animated slowly before vanishing in a velvet haze of green. The Mystery of Edwin Drood bled back to the screen with an invitation to learn more about the author. He denied the request and sat back in his seat, quickly enveloped in the digital universe of his mind.

  * * * * *

  002-2007

  Holden stepped off the train, instantly bombarded by a repeat offense of regret. Living eight blocks from the tracks was still a bad idea. He tried to shelter himself under the awnings of shops along Montrose Avenue, but the jog home from the station was muculent and wet. The gravel driveway to his historic, but not preserved, residence was like tar in the downpour that sucked onto his boots from below dark puddles. Gripping his duffle bag, Holden climbed the unbalanced steps to the covered porch, shook himself free from the rain and went inside.

  He tugged the cord that hung from the ceiling and a florescent glow reminded him of why he hated living there. Home again, home again. Jiggety Jig, Holden thought, as he searched his forever-empty mailbox before heading to the second floor. Every surface in the narrow stairwell was coated in the same thick, mint green paint as the exterior. When he first rented the place, he envisioned the house being dipped in fresh-smelling toothpaste. Unfortunately, the preventative act hadn’t killed the moist bacteria or cleared the grime from the corners or overtaken the stench from the many molding crevices. Like most historical buildings, the house where Holden lived was falling apart. It cost too much to restore and it was against the law to tear down. At least the rent was cheap. Holden often dreamed that the house would collapse one winter night under a tide of snow and swallow him while he slept.

  The striped bamboo door to his apartment closed with significance. Holden lowered his eyes as he dropped his duffle bag to the floorboards, rolled his shoulders and cracked the top of his spine with a long, exhaled breath. He was home and it was time for the ritual to begin. Leave work at the door, take off the boots and break the seal of a richly deserved, locally brewed beer. Jiggety Jig. Yes, his family life was non-existent. But Holden was content with his small story. Most days he strolled directly to his easy chair and picked up where he left off on the train. On special days, he went back to his father’s copy of The Book that sat by the window and returned to his favorite story. Today, there was a kink. The phone on the wall w
as blinking.

  Sweaty beer in hand, he closed the fridge and approached the answering machine, already knowing what he was about to hear and already regretting his actions of the past forty minutes. The two messages were from, or about, his two favorite people in the world. Shane and Jane.

  Shane was his best friend. In fact, they had the All-American relationship. They grew up in the same neighborhood, dated the same girls, fought over the same girls and spent every moment they could together to this day. Like Holden, Shane worked for General Fire Protection. His message was typical and to the point.

  “Meet me at The Library, man. Maybe we can reignite what happened last month with the librarian,” Shane’s charred, confident voice chuckled before he continued. “I know it’s raining, but don’t spend the weekend at home, bro. I’m buying and the game starts at six. Don’t be late.”

  He clicked to the next message and looked at his watch, hoping the call would be from Jane. It wasn’t. Jane was Holden’s eleven-year-old daughter. Their relationship could be summed up in two conflicting words: simple and complicated. They barely saw one another. On the off chance that Holden pulled himself from his nothingness to see her, it was under the discretion of his militant ex-wife, Eve. Jane loved her father, but life kept them separate. That, and Holden’s unwavering forgetfulness.