The Justar Journal: An AOI Thriller

by Brandt Legg

  “Damn them!” Nelson shook his head. “Closing the world’s last library.”

  Runit nodded, the sadness hitting him anew. The three-story central library building, which occupied an entire city block and included a sprawling subterranean level, had been like a home to him.

  Nelson opened and closed his pudgy fists, as if ready to hit someone, or something. “When?”

  “I got it across the flash this morning.”

  “No, I mean how long do we have left?”

  “Ten days.”

  “Then the time has come,” Nelson said, pulling out a bac. “I need to show you something.”

  “What?” Runit asked, waving a finger at the bac before Nelson could light it.

  “A torgon tragedy worse than the death of the old languages,” Nelson said while absently putting away his bac.

  Shortly after the Banoff, a new global language, created by computers, had been introduced. The language, dubbed “Com,” contained many English words, but its simple design and logical structure made it entirely different and easy to learn.

  Com, now universally spoken, had replaced all others as the world’s only language. One of the primary reasons physical libraries had died out so easily was that not many people could read the old books without a special computer interface. Everything had been translated into Com and was available digitally. The paper editions were considered obsolete.

  The prior, now-useless languages weren’t taught in cyber-schools. However, in spite of laws prohibiting it, both Nelson and Runit had learned English from their respective grandparents. Many in that former generation had clung to the old ways, but they were all gone now, as no one born before the Banoff was left, the oldest having lived only to age seventy-four.

  “What tragedy could be worse than losing the last library?” Runit asked, ignoring Nelson’s use of the word “torgon.” An unofficial word, profanity really, roughly equivalent to the almost-forgotten English F-word.

  “Something far more important is at stake than a magnificent building full of books?” Waving a hand as if to dismiss his beloved library, Nelson said, “All human knowledge that existed prior to seventy-five years ago is about to be lost.”

  Runit stared.

  “And I have proof.”

  Chapter 2

  Nelson took the lanyard from around his neck. It held a marble-sized Information Navigation Unit. INUs had been invented a few years prior to the Banoff by a man named Booker Lipton.

  To call an INU a computer would be like referring to a spaceship as a paper airplane. When first introduced, INUs were the diameter of a basketball, but a miniaturization race during the intervening decades resulted in ever-smaller forms. Seven companies now made them, but the original firm, Eysen Inc., still dominated because of an uncanny ability to innovate and market advancements years ahead of their competitors. Nelson allowed the INU to float between Runit and he. The solar-powered, levitating INUs projected holographic controls and images, both two and three dimensional, in any size and up to fifteen meters away.

  After a quick series of hand gestures, pages from one of Nelson’s own novels were projected in the air. “See there?” Nelson asked, pointing to a guilty sentence as if it might attack them.

  “What?”

  “This paragraph used to finish with the words, ‘To what end,’ right there.” He stabbed his fat finger through the illuminated words.

  “It still does,” Runit said.

  “No. Read it again. Now it says, ‘To that end.’ See?”

  “It’s a typo Nelson.” Runit turned away, anxious to get to the long list of tasks required to close the world’s last library. Where would they store the books? he wondered.

  Nelson grabbed his shoulder, pulling him back around. “It is not a torgon typo!” He growled. “They’ve changed all the meaning, don’t you get it?”

  “It’s one letter.”

  “It’s my letter and they know how dangerous it is.”

  “Who is ‘they’?”

  He glared at Runit. “Who do you think?”

  “Well then, they could be hearing this now. Doesn’t that worry you?”

  Nelson smiled gruffly. “No, I got a Whistler.”

  “Oh, great. Now you’ve broken the law. Do you want to go to prison?”

  “Tell me this, Runit. Why are Whistlers illegal?”

  “Because they block AOI monitoring.”

  “And why is that so bad?”

  “They need to know about potential criminal activity. It’s one of the ways our world is so peaceful, as opposed to how it was before the Banoff.”

  “Well I’m not a terrorist, so they don’t need to know what I’m doing every minute.”

  Runit stared at him, concerned.

  “You’re worried the AOI will find out I have a Whistler and that you knew about it?” Nelson asked, trying to read his friend’s expression.

  “No.” Runit’s eyes glazed into a faraway look, thinking of his late wife. “I remembered something Harper used to say after reading a pre-Banoff book. ‘More powerful than armies and police, stronger than guns and bombs, words are what change the world, and that is why they’re always a threat to those that rule with corrupt ways.’ Nelson, the AOI doesn’t think you’re a terrorist. They monitor people like you because you’re something far more dangerous than a terrorist. You’re a writer with the power to influence people.”

  “A writer can only spread ideas. People still need to think about them, draw their own conclusions,” Nelson snapped. “I’m no threat.”

  “All it takes is an idea. Harper always said that too. It’s rarely the person with the idea that causes any trouble. Ideas get out there, take on a life of their own. They infect people.”

  “I miss Harper. She was a good woman.”

  “Best thing I ever did was marrying her.”

  “I can’t believe how long she’s been gone.”

  “Grandyn was eight. He just turned eighteen a few months back.” Runit tightened his lips. “Damn . . . It’s been ten years since the accident.”

  “She was right about ideas. They do infect people. And books and other writings do spread them. Maybe that’s the real reason they’ve closed all the libraries. One thing our elected officials have shown is they’re torgon good at stopping the spread of infections.” Nelson took the lid off his large paper coffee cup and poured in something from a silver flask he’d fished from the pocket of his long wool coat. “What’s the difference between a disease and a contrarian idea? Once the epidemic gets started, things will never be the same.”

  Runit shivered. The heat in the nearly two-hundred-year-old building had never worked very well, but today he felt colder. His friend made him nervous. It wasn’t Nelson’s rebellious nature, or even that he had an illegal Whistler. It was because Runit reluctantly shared his friend’s views.

  For decades peace had reigned. The pre-Banoff plights of hunger and poverty that had been a scourge for millennia didn’t exist anymore. They were living in a utopian society, but something gnawed at him. He just didn’t know what it was or why. Runit, a scholarly skeptic, always needed convincing.

  “I’ve got a meeting in an hour with county officials. I need to get ready,” Runit said.

  “Wait. You may think changing one letter in my book was a typo, but it’s more sinister than that. By making the ‘w’ a ‘t,’ the entire meaning is transformed. ‘To what end’ leaves the passage open. It’s wild and revolutionary. While ‘To that end’ is finite and controlled.” Nelson looked at Runit, his fiery eyes slightly bloodshot.

  “Maybe, but it’s ambiguous. If it happened at all, it’s likely just because they don’t like you.”

  “Really? Then they don’t like a lot of people, because I started looking and there are others. Don’t you see how tempting it is? They can change everything if there are no physical books to verify what was actually written. And not only that, they know everythingwe’ve read. What we haven’t read, what page we sto
pped on, what words you looked up, everything, everyone has read‒‒”

  “Who else don’t they like?” Runit interrupted.

  “Shakespeare.”

  Runit, an expert on Shakespeare, pulled his own INU from around his neck and set it floating in the air. “What play?”

  “So far, I’ve found twenty-six lines changed.”

  Runit looked surprised and doubtful.

  “Check out The Tempest, Act 1, Scene 2, ‘Hell is empty . . .’ ”

  “Come on, no one could change that,” Runit said. He gestured around the glowing pages and soon the famous line was burning through the air in front of them. “Hell is empty and all the devils in fear.” His mouth hung open on the final word. “But it should end with ‘all the devils are here!’ It has always been that way, for nearly five hundred years. Why change it?”

  “Because, damn it. ‘The devils are here,’ can be interpreted to mean those in charge are corrupt. ‘The devils in fear,’ is something entirely different.

  “Who?”

  “Only the AOI could do it.”

  “Why not a hacker?”

  “Because it isn’t just a few lines. There are entire books that are missing or changed.”

  “What books?”

  “Do you remember The Hunger Games? It came out in the early part of the century.”

  “Vaguely,” Runit said.

  “It was actually a series of three books. The first appeared in 2008. It was a huge seller. Movies were made.”

  “Right, dystopian. A greedy few ruled the impoverished many. Government-sponsored kid death matches for entertainment.”

  “Correct. Well, pull up the book.”

  Runit found it in his INU. “The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins. Here it is. What page?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Open anywhere.”

  He motioned and a random page opened up. Runit stared disbelievingly, and then checked other pages. Finally, he looked back at his friend.

  “The Hunger Games is a book on nutrition!”

  “Startling, isn’t it?” Nelson asked. “The real book is gone forever. Replaced by a glorified cookbook. The movie doesn’t exist anymore either, and the sequel, Catching Fire, has become a home safety manual. The final book, Mockingjay, is now about the language of birds.”

  Runit moved his fingers through the projected images of his INU until he found what he was looking for, then stormed silently from the room. Although he hadn’t stated his destination, Nelson knew Runit’s purpose. As a librarian, he always counted on books. A physical copy would put things right. It might take him a while to find such an obscure title.

  The old writer added a bit more “tonic” to his coffee and zoomed his sister while waiting for the librarian to return. Phones had long been replaced by INUs and 3D representational communications. Like a turbocharged video chat, “zooms” were the norm, instead of traditional voice “calls.”

  “I’ve told him,” Nelson said, when his sister’s image appeared projected from his INU.

  “I thought you were going to wait until . . .”she said, looking around the library. The INU’s 360-degree cameras provided a view as if she were actually in the room, instead of just her holographic avatar.

  “I did.”

  “Oh no . . . They’re closing it sooner than we thought.”

  “Yes. Ten days.”

  “Will he help?”

  “I’m not sure. He has fear.”

  “Don’t we all,” his sister said. “Where is he now?”

  “Verifying the crime. Oh, here he comes. I’ll zoom you back once I know,” Nelson said, closing his fingers to end the zoom.

  As expected, Runit had an antique copy of The Hunger Games in his hand.

  “I had to get it from the lower level storage, but I can tell you there are no torgon recipes in this book!” He slammed the book on the table in front of Nelson as if it had done something wrong. “How many more?”

  “Who knows? Hundreds. Thousands. Probably many more than that,” Nelson said.

  “We’re living in the longest period of peace in human existence. We enjoy the highest standard of living in history. Everyone is happy. Why censor books?”

  “None of the reasons I’ve come up with are very friendly.”

  Runit stared at him, shaking his head. His mind traveled some of the same paths his friend had already been down. “Don’t they think somebody will notice?”

  “No one could prove it without physical books.”

  “There are collectors who have books,” Runit said.

  “Not many. And where do their loyalties lie?” Nelson asked. “It’s been more than fifty years since the government implemented the materialism reforms, which included the personal property limitations and possession taxes.”

  “The World Premier at the time said that it was all in the interest of environmental and resource protection,” Runit said.

  “Yeah, and they told the people physical books weren’t needed anymore because everything had been made digital, and digital is forever.”

  “It was an easy sale. Especially with the promise that there would always be libraries in the big cities.” Runit sighed. “But, as you well know, almost no one comes in anymore.”

  Nelson smiled sadly. “I count on the solitude.”

  “Twenty some years ago, when they started closing the great libraries around the world, no one really even cared. And now, after more than six hundred years of public libraries, I’m the last librarian.”

  Chapter 3

  Nelson looked at Runit gravely. “We’ve got to get the books out!”

  Runit held up his hands and slowly spun 180 degrees, gazing at endless shelves of books, then turned back to the grumpy author. “Moving all these books would be impossible, and definitely illegal.”

  “It is our moral duty.”

  “It would get us a very long prison sentence.”

  “Only if we get caught.”

  “Caught? There are close to nine hundred metric tons of books in this old building, filling thirty-three kilometers of shelves. It can’t be done. Not without people noticing. It would be a monumental task to do in the light of day.” Runit couldn’t help but laugh. “I mean, where would we get all the boxes?”

  “Where’s your courage?”

  “I’m not going to prison because of rearranged letters in a few books.”

  “It’s not merely a ‘few books.’ It’s Orwell, Vonnegut, Kafka, Saint-Exupery. Here’s a list of thirty-two pre-Banoff authors I’ve identified, and forty-six post-Banoff books.”

  “I’m just a librarian,” Runit said, barely glancing at the names glowing in the air in front of him. “And I’m not even that for much longer.”

  “You’re not just a librarian, you’re the last librarian. A responsibility comes with that. You have to take care of the books.”

  “What can I do? You think we can simply move all of them? We’d never get more than a few dozen boxes out before the AOI showed up.”

  “We’ll find a way.” Nelson rolled an unlit bac between his fingers. “They must be saved.”

  “It cannot be done.”

  “I thought you loved books.”

  “I do.”

  “Did you notice this author on the list?” Nelson pointed to the name. “Ray Bradbury.”

  “Which one of his books?”

  “Do you have to ask?”

  “Fahrenheit 451?”

  Nelson nodded.

  The irony was too much for Runit. “It was one of Harper’s favorites,” he whispered. The memory of his wife strengthened him in the way that only pain can.

  The classic book, one of many she loved, was a sentimental favorite. It described a time when all books were banned and destroyed, but a small group of people memorized entire books in an effort to save them.

  “Harper definitely loved that book. I recall many wonderful conversations with her about it when I was writing Characters.”

  “Your book about
the novelist whose characters took over his life? She loved that one too.”

  “I based the character of Zinn on her.”

  “I know.” Runit stared out the arched windows between the shelves on the other side of the room. “Harper had a way of penetrating a person. It wasn’t so much her ability to understand them, although she was good at that. Once you met her, you felt her in every part of your life. The day after we first met, I flew down to San Antonio for a conference. That evening I walked over a bridge and knew she had been on that same bridge before, that it had been important to her. Harper confirmed it when I got back. She’d been there a few weeks earlier, and always went to that spot to think . . . crazy. And it happened all the time.” Runit clenched his fists. Missing Harper occupied less time than it used to, but her absence left an unending echo in his heart. “Whenever I read a book,” he continued slowly, “I could feel what she would have thought about it. Still, ten years after her death, I know what she would say to every question I have. How she would react to any situation. She was more than a person. Harper was part of nature the way rain and wind are. She was an experience, and everyone she knew swam in her existence.”

  “I certainly did,” Nelson said. “She had that kind of presence. I mean each time I saw her, I felt as if my life changed.”

  “Yes,” Runit said quietly. “Imagine living with that . . . and then . . . living without it.”

  “You’re a strong man, Runit.”

  “Not really. I’ve just been keeping it together for Grandyn. How do you survive losing a mother like that?”

  “It’s probably only possible if a kid has a great father.”

  Runit cupped his hand to close his INU without returning his friend’s smile. “We have to let the books go. Grandyn may have made it to eighteen, but he still needs me. I can’t wind up in prison, or worse.”

  “Harper would look at it differently.”

  “Don’t tell me what my wife would have done.”

  “You know I’m right.”

  “Of course I know. But she had a different kind of bravery that I’ve never been able to grasp.”