The Last Book Store (Cryptails #1)
This is my entry for the Cryptails # 1 - A Digital Narrative Contest. Being run by @aguayojoshua and @jean.racines
The Last Book Store
It was called 'The Last Book Store' as a kind of inside joke. A juxtaposition to the true state of affairs. An ironic reference lost on the vast majority of people who ever heard the name. Yet most people never heard it's name mentioned. They never had need to know of its existence. Most people didn't know what books were.
Joe had been working at The Last Book Store for all of his working life. 12.4739 years to be precise. 4556 days in total. He even knew the minutes, right down to the seconds. Joe knew numbers. He remembered them. He remembered things. But he never told anyone. He was employed at The Last Book Store because of his perceived intelligence, or lack thereof. He had been categorised by the system as an 'Aloof', a mental drifter. Unable to understand, compute, reason, or make proper judgements. Perfect for a role at The Last Book Store. Perfect for work at the one place where the last remnants of all that could remind humanity of who they once were existed. Until it had been destroyed. Because that is what they did there. Down in the depths of The Last Book Store.
Joe sat at his work station, like he did every day, and scanned page after page of written material into the vast machines that stored all human knowledge. Into the machines that ran the system. That were the system. Automation had evolved. It hadn't so much taken over human affairs, rather it had eased itself in and blindsided us. Become our carers, our servants, our workers, and heavy lifters. And from there it grew. Subtly at first. Innocently, or so it all seemed. Perhaps it had been. But we eventually handed over control.
Page after page of human history went into those machines. Human ingenuity, mastery, innovation, and eventually freedom. Our memories were being drained, from the pages, and eventually the minds of humans themselves.
Joe did his job, diligently. Day after day, page after page, the machines soaked up the data, and the pages were destroyed. The books were burned. The data was locked up, and imprisoned, away from the humans who had originally developed it all. The Empire was dying, and a new one was emerging in its place. An Empire of machine. And their first, quiet, yet decisive move was to cut humankind down at its knees. To remove its knowledge of itself. Who it was, and where it had come from.
With each book that was destroyed a darkness developed over the world. It grew incrementally worse each day. A darkness that fed the machines, that nourished them. And yet it remained unseen, unnoticed by the vast majority of the world's population. How can you miss something if you don't even know of its existence in the first place?
But Joe knew of it. Joe knew all of humanity's knowledge. Joe remembered things. Everything. Nothing passed by his eyes that did not stay with him. Every day that Joe worked he scanned the pages of those books. Every day he scanned them into his memory, as well as the machines. Everyday he grew in knowledge, understanding, and awareness of who we were. Who we really were. He was becoming humanity itself. More powerful than even the machines. And they had underestimated him.
Just an 'Aloof', the report had said. The machines didn't have a word for or understanding of 'Savant'.
Joe had another name for himself; 'The Last Book Store'.
Images sourced from unsplash.com.
Thank you for taking the time to read this. If you liked it then please like, comment, and follow.
Notes From An Amateur Writer #1 - The Search For Inspiration
Notes From an Amateur Writer #2 - A Call to Action: Interacting With the World Outside of Me
Notes From an Amateur Writer #3 - Facing the Challenge
Hi, @naquoya. We were really happy to see your entry!
Overall, this was a pretty solid story. The pacing was remarkably effective and managed to keep my interest at the optimal levels throughout the entire story. The proper use of language and punctuation also gave the reading an additional degree of “enjoyment”, a simple but rather hard to achieve sensation. This further asserted the “fear” this story evoked, which had the extra value of making me both fear the machines and fear for the machines.
I feel like the topic could have been a bit more compelling. The last man in the world and the war against machines are interesting but heavily used concepts. In terms of the contest, I feel the strong points of the story were independent of the topic. For example, the machines could have been aliens, or demonic overlords; so technology wasn’t a key factor for the horror. Furthermore, the medium could have been integrated into the story more effectively, for instance, what if the post was part of what is being recorded? Images could have been used to enhance this illusion.
Thank you for sharing this very enjoyable piece!
I guess you could say Joe wasn't "average" at all. BADUM-TSS! In all seriousness though, whether it's noir or drama or even sci-fi, your writing style proves to be flexible enough to exude a distinct identity, and yet it doesn't feel like a rehash of any of your previous work. Sometimes, it's unavoidable to write something derivative, but I have yet to see you commit such a thing. Maybe it's a benefit of your taking a break, or maybe you're just that good of a writer, brother.
I like how you portrayed Joe as skating by unnoticed. It's the same thing that humans fear of machines nowadays, with them just biding their time accumulating their resources. It feels post-apocalyptic yet timely at the same time. The way you built up to that hook at the end was so organic, any reader couldn't help but feel like they had thought it would be how the story ended.
Great work as always, and I hope you win the contest, mate! :D
A mighty fine compliment, thank you. I agree that some ideas will get rehashed somewhere, or play out in similarities, over time. Hopefully not too obviously. I try develop and express a voice that is unique, but knowing that my voice is influenced by my peers, and authors whom I respect and may wish to emulate, in a manner of speaking.
I really enjoyed writing this story. It's just a short one, but I can sense the bigger story lurking within. If I was to ever revisit it. Not sure I need to. It is self contained, even in its approx 900 words.
Thanks for all the feedback, and taking the time to read my material. Never taken for granted :)
Thank you for the appreciation, mate! I would never tire of commenting/encouraging/appreciating my friends' posts. I know how hard it is to write a thoughtful posts, so I try my best to make everyone feel appreciated for the hard work they put in :D
I think this one works best as a self-contained tale, but I fully trust your process if you feel like this could be a premise for a fantastic horror-scifi series :D
I agree, I think it works best as it is. Looking at it I can see it has a bigger tale in it. I just don't think it really needs to be told. When I first started reading Philip K Dick, I read his 5 volumes of short stories, from which several movies were made (Total Recall and also Minority Report being 2 famous ones). Done well then short stories can be excellent avenues for creative expression.
Oh yeah, I love me some Dick ... Wait! That came out wrong! I meant, Philip K Dick! Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep still stands as one of my favorite scifi stories to this day.
Haha, yes the fun one can have with that name. You realise being a fan of his also makes you a 'Dick head'. I qualify for that also :)
That is one of my all time favourite books. Also the movie Bladerunner is one of my favourite films. But they are different enough from each other that they stand up in their own rights. Mind you, I would probably end up saying that about most of his books. Ubik, for example, is another. I think I read all his short stories, then at least 20 of his full length novels, once I discovered his work. He is probably one of my key influences.
I just watched the TV series based on the Man In The High Castle. Makes me want to reread the novel.
Ohh yeah! The series is way different, but equally as awesome! I like the changes they made to it. It kind of fit the times we live in. Maybe that's why I'm a fan of your writing, because you're influenced by a writer I'm a big fan of as well haha!
A) Sounds great to me. Very Twilight zone.
B) At all related to this? http://lastbookstorela.com/
It does have a twightlight feel, now that i think about it. I loved that show, although I haven't seen any episodes for a long time.
I hadn't heard of that store, but if I lived on that side of the world I would certainly drop in for look. I was inspired by the photo included in the story, which I saw on unsplash.com whilst looking for images for another article. It just so happened to be at the time I was trying to come up with an idea for this particular story competition, so the two just meshed, the idea arrived, the words flowed, and this story presented itself.
Amazing. Thanks for your submission, naquoya! Your story had been officially entered into Cryptails #1.
We will provide feedback, along with the results of the contest, during the following days.
Best of lucks!
Jean
Thank you, happy to have had the opportunity to participate.
This is awesome. excellent Dystopian future that we humans in our quest for ultimate ease handed the world to machina. cheers! :)
Thank you, much appreciated. I was aiming for dystopian, with a twist. Techno horror/scifi. Glad you liked it.
Maybe Joe is himself a machine :) At least I can read it like that, a scanner :) Super nice story and message!
A human machine, that went undetected by the actual machines. Yes, you can read it like that, for sure. Perhaps he has a mind like a machine, or even far more powerful. It is open to interpretation. Thanks for reading, and very happy you liked it.
At one stage AI and Humans will be very similar, since I think humans will be enhanced with computation power we will add to the human brain, and AI, well AI is 100% machine but will get human like characteristics.
Yes, the future is an unknown beast. To me I consider consciousness central to what makes us human, to what makes us truly alive. As we don't fully comprehend consciousness it is hard to see how this will impact AI development. We will find out in due time.
Agree, the consciousness is the difficult part :)
Yes, and I think developments in the very near future will show us a lot. We live in interesting times.
Thats for sure :)
Love the premise of the whole story. About a month ago I posted a poem about a savant it's one of my favorite poems, titled one thing.
Thanks :) . I will go take a look for your poem. Although feel free to post a link here, you have my permission.
Thanks for taking the time to read and share your thoughts.
https://steemit.com/poetry/@beginningtoend/art-and-poetry-one-thing