Our History of the Book
We read the book because it was expected of us. We were children, really. And the book, while promising much and delivering little, became a sort of parent for us. In later days, after we had forgotten the book and moved on to building a City, a place of invention and solace, there were still some of us who would wake at night with words in our minds, words we wanted to forget so we could continue our lives in our sparkling City. We blamed this mental somnambulating on the book. And when someone brought something new to the City, a thing with pages and ideas and that ineffable something else, we rightly exiled him. Often now we make speeches in our City, bright speeches designed to make us feel better about what we already have. It is sometimes right that anyone not listening is exiled also. It's our City after all. The place we conceived after we put the book behind us.