Servo 3:2
Servo 3:2
With our first disturbing night in the dilapidated house behind us, I decided to explore a bit. The structure was surprisingly big. Everywhere I went, there was another door. Just when I thought I’d run out of doors, another appeared. Stepping up to it, I smelled an incredibly musty, what I would consider, stench. It seemed to be emanating from behind the door. Did I dare open it? Was there a body of someone hidden back there? The house was pretty creepy. I reached and grasped the smooth, round brass knob. It was worn from probably hundreds of years of use. Giving it a gentle turn, the knob made a loud squeaking sound. I froze, afraid of being discovered in a place I wasn’t supposed to be. My ears heard nothing except wind whistling through the screen on the window to my right. With a little more effort, I finished turning the knob. It clicked. Then I leaned close, put my other hand against the door and pushed. The door scraped open and I thought the whole world would hear. Again I froze. Nothing. Not a single peep from Grandma who I was sure had to be just down the hall. The door opened to near darkness. The moldy reek hit me full force, almost making me ill. I’d never smelled anything that bad before in my life. Peering in, I could see little. There was a window in the room, but a heavy curtain was drawn across letting in only a sliver of light. My eyes began to adjust. I ventured slowly. The single ray of light was highlighting the dust particles that hung in the room. They looked like little gnats hovering about.I stopped in the middle of the room and slowly circled. I was surrounded by books! Books that rarely anyone of our influence would have seen. Everything in our sphere of existence was digital. The only real book I’d ever seen was in school. Our English teacher brought in a tattered copy of someone called William Shakespeare. I remember him as some dead Englishman who wrote odd poems. The teacher was even so brave as to pass the book around the class, letting us all touch and smell it.That was my first and only experience with a printed book. Now I was in a room surrounded by hundreds—maybe thousands of them. I wanted to take in a deep breath to fill my young lungs with all this information. Did I dare? Mother had always taught us that old things could make you sick. I wondered just how given that we were genetically engineered in a lab to be resistant to most illnesses. I’ve never been sick a day in my life.My eyes fully adjusted to the dim light. I began to wander around, looking at the books on the shelves. They were all so foreign to me. And it was bizarre to have to crane my head to the side so I could read the titles. With our reading tablets, there was none of that. Everything was aligned to our anatomical comfort.I reached out and touched a couple of them, feeling the rough, grainy covers. They seemed to be bound in some sort of brown material. With a shaky hand, I slid one from the shelf. It felt heavy despite being only a few inches square. It was much heavier than our tablets. As the book came into my hands, I noticed the edges of the pages were colored in a rather pretty mosaic of colors. I’d never seen anything like this before. Carefully, I cradled the book in my left hand and with my right, drew the hard cover back, revealing a title page. A Christmas Carolwas written in funny lettering. Below it was evidently the author, one Charles Dickens. Hmm, never heard of the guy, I mused, turning another page. When I saw the date on the book, I realized why. It had been written over two hundred years ago! Things written before The Great Separation were seldom taught in schools. I closed the book and gently returned it to the shelf. Then I wandered, looking at a few more. One title caught my eye: I Sing the Body Electric. Such an odd name for a book. I had to see what it was about. This book didn’t appear to be as old as the other, so I plucked it from the shelf. The cover was definitely unique. Splashes of purple and black and what appeared to be a gold-colored woman in profile. Stories by Ray Bradbury. Who was this guy? With a little less care, I opened to the page where the date would be found. It said 1969, first printing. Okay, so what? Then I flipped to the index. This was such a strange feeling. Our tablets had an index readily available, if you wanted to go to a particular place, you just touched the text and zing! you were there. Books and all this paper seemed such a waste. This was the year 2055, things could change for the better.As my finger drew down the line of the index, I saw the same name as the book title. It was then I surmised this was probably a collection of what was called short stories. Locating the one that shared the book title, I leafed through the pages until I found it. It didn’t take but a moment or two before I was engrossed in the abstract prose of the author. No book I’d ever read was like this. He minced words, split sentences, and had me by the tip of my brain.“You like science fiction?” Grandpa said, scaring the life out of me.I stood dead still, afraid of the punishment that would come from breaching the inner sanctum. “That’s Ray Bradbury.”“Uh, yes, I saw that.”Grandpa approached. “He was one of the greatest sci-fi writers of the twentieth century.”“Oh,” was all I could squeak.“Take it, read it, if you want. Just put it back when you’re done.”“Really? You’re not mad that I’m in here?”He waved his hand as if to dismiss me. “No, no, these books have been here for years without someone to read them.”“Have you read them all?” I asked.“Yes. Some I liked, some I didn’t.”“Where did you get them?”“Well,” he said, settling into a brown heavily padded chair. “Because I’ve been around since before The Great Separation, I knew where all the libraries were.”“Libraries?”“Where they kept books—so folks could check them out and read them.”“Oh,” I said again, taking a seat across from him. I was quickly realizing that Grandpa was a fascinating old man, and I longed to know him better through his stories. “There were no tablets?”He chuckled. “Not until early in the twenty-first century. Books were all our ancestors had.” “How primitive.”“And after things went bad, I rounded up as many books as I could and built this library.”For some reason, I felt restless, so I got up and wandered around again. “All these books?”“Yes, I had a couple of truckloads that I salvaged before many burned.”“Burned?”“Millions of books were lost when the cities burned. I saved what I could…These are some of the last known specimens in America.”“I read that the war was terrible.”Grandpa leaned forward. “It divided this country. That why it’s no longer called the United States of America. Now it’s just plain ol’ America.”“Did you fight in the war?”“No, but I had a hand in the killing of hundreds of thousands.”“How?”He folded his arms and rested them on his stomach. “I worked for the same company as your father.”“You worked for Servidyne?”“How do you think your father and mother met?” He gave a purposeful wink. “You mother was my daughter.”I vaguely remembered my father saying something about how they met. But there was a bigger, deeper question burning inside me. “Grandpa? Did you build battle bots?”“I was one of the chief designers.”There was fear, wonder, and awe enveloping me. My Grandfatherhad been one of the primary instruments in the death of this country. With his battle bots, he turned the tide of the war and created the dual cast system of today. The rich lived in walled cities of splendor, while the working class and poor toiled to feed them. All my life I had known nothing of what existed outside the walls. And then it hit me like a ton of bricks. Why were Grandma and Grandpa living here? “Grandpa?”“Mmm?”“If you were a designer, then you were rich. Why did you come out here?”“After the war I realized there was nothing for me in the city. I wanted to breathe the air as it flows across the land, not cleaned and filtered.”“So you moved to Nebraska?” I was stunned.“Yes. The land was cheap, and I have always dreamed of having a farm.” It was at that moment I fully believed my Grandfather had lost his mind. No one leaves paradise for the filth and stink of the Outer States. My mind was blown.
With our first disturbing night in the dilapidated house behind us, I decided to explore a bit. The structure was surprisingly big. Everywhere I went, there was another door. Just when I thought I’d run out of doors, another appeared. Stepping up to it, I smelled an incredibly musty, what I would consider, stench. It seemed to be emanating from behind the door. Did I dare open it? Was there a body of someone hidden back there? The house was pretty creepy. I reached and grasped the smooth, round brass knob. It was worn from probably hundreds of years of use. Giving it a gentle turn, the knob made a loud squeaking sound. I froze, afraid of being discovered in a place I wasn’t supposed to be. My ears heard nothing except wind whistling through the screen on the window to my right. With a little more effort, I finished turning the knob. It clicked. Then I leaned close, put my other hand against the door and pushed. The door scraped open and I thought the whole world would hear. Again I froze. Nothing. Not a single peep from Grandma who I was sure had to be just down the hall. The door opened to near darkness. The moldy reek hit me full force, almost making me ill. I’d never smelled anything that bad before in my life. Peering in, I could see little. There was a window in the room, but a heavy curtain was drawn across letting in only a sliver of light. My eyes began to adjust. I ventured slowly. The single ray of light was highlighting the dust particles that hung in the room. They looked like little gnats hovering about.I stopped in the middle of the room and slowly circled. I was surrounded by books! Books that rarely anyone of our influence would have seen. Everything in our sphere of existence was digital. The only real book I’d ever seen was in school. Our English teacher brought in a tattered copy of someone called William Shakespeare. I remember him as some dead Englishman who wrote odd poems. The teacher was even so brave as to pass the book around the class, letting us all touch and smell it.That was my first and only experience with a printed book. Now I was in a room surrounded by hundreds—maybe thousands of them. I wanted to take in a deep breath to fill my young lungs with all this information. Did I dare? Mother had always taught us that old things could make you sick. I wondered just how given that we were genetically engineered in a lab to be resistant to most illnesses. I’ve never been sick a day in my life.My eyes fully adjusted to the dim light. I began to wander around, looking at the books on the shelves. They were all so foreign to me. And it was bizarre to have to crane my head to the side so I could read the titles. With our reading tablets, there was none of that. Everything was aligned to our anatomical comfort.I reached out and touched a couple of them, feeling the rough, grainy covers. They seemed to be bound in some sort of brown material. With a shaky hand, I slid one from the shelf. It felt heavy despite being only a few inches square. It was much heavier than our tablets. As the book came into my hands, I noticed the edges of the pages were colored in a rather pretty mosaic of colors. I’d never seen anything like this before. Carefully, I cradled the book in my left hand and with my right, drew the hard cover back, revealing a title page. A Christmas Carolwas written in funny lettering. Below it was evidently the author, one Charles Dickens. Hmm, never heard of the guy, I mused, turning another page. When I saw the date on the book, I realized why. It had been written over two hundred years ago! Things written before The Great Separation were seldom taught in schools. I closed the book and gently returned it to the shelf. Then I wandered, looking at a few more. One title caught my eye: I Sing the Body Electric. Such an odd name for a book. I had to see what it was about. This book didn’t appear to be as old as the other, so I plucked it from the shelf. The cover was definitely unique. Splashes of purple and black and what appeared to be a gold-colored woman in profile. Stories by Ray Bradbury. Who was this guy? With a little less care, I opened to the page where the date would be found. It said 1969, first printing. Okay, so what? Then I flipped to the index. This was such a strange feeling. Our tablets had an index readily available, if you wanted to go to a particular place, you just touched the text and zing! you were there. Books and all this paper seemed such a waste. This was the year 2055, things could change for the better.As my finger drew down the line of the index, I saw the same name as the book title. It was then I surmised this was probably a collection of what was called short stories. Locating the one that shared the book title, I leafed through the pages until I found it. It didn’t take but a moment or two before I was engrossed in the abstract prose of the author. No book I’d ever read was like this. He minced words, split sentences, and had me by the tip of my brain.“You like science fiction?” Grandpa said, scaring the life out of me.I stood dead still, afraid of the punishment that would come from breaching the inner sanctum. “That’s Ray Bradbury.”“Uh, yes, I saw that.”Grandpa approached. “He was one of the greatest sci-fi writers of the twentieth century.”“Oh,” was all I could squeak.“Take it, read it, if you want. Just put it back when you’re done.”“Really? You’re not mad that I’m in here?”He waved his hand as if to dismiss me. “No, no, these books have been here for years without someone to read them.”“Have you read them all?” I asked.“Yes. Some I liked, some I didn’t.”“Where did you get them?”“Well,” he said, settling into a brown heavily padded chair. “Because I’ve been around since before The Great Separation, I knew where all the libraries were.”“Libraries?”“Where they kept books—so folks could check them out and read them.”“Oh,” I said again, taking a seat across from him. I was quickly realizing that Grandpa was a fascinating old man, and I longed to know him better through his stories. “There were no tablets?”He chuckled. “Not until early in the twenty-first century. Books were all our ancestors had.” “How primitive.”“And after things went bad, I rounded up as many books as I could and built this library.”For some reason, I felt restless, so I got up and wandered around again. “All these books?”“Yes, I had a couple of truckloads that I salvaged before many burned.”“Burned?”“Millions of books were lost when the cities burned. I saved what I could…These are some of the last known specimens in America.”“I read that the war was terrible.”Grandpa leaned forward. “It divided this country. That why it’s no longer called the United States of America. Now it’s just plain ol’ America.”“Did you fight in the war?”“No, but I had a hand in the killing of hundreds of thousands.”“How?”He folded his arms and rested them on his stomach. “I worked for the same company as your father.”“You worked for Servidyne?”“How do you think your father and mother met?” He gave a purposeful wink. “You mother was my daughter.”I vaguely remembered my father saying something about how they met. But there was a bigger, deeper question burning inside me. “Grandpa? Did you build battle bots?”“I was one of the chief designers.”There was fear, wonder, and awe enveloping me. My Grandfatherhad been one of the primary instruments in the death of this country. With his battle bots, he turned the tide of the war and created the dual cast system of today. The rich lived in walled cities of splendor, while the working class and poor toiled to feed them. All my life I had known nothing of what existed outside the walls. And then it hit me like a ton of bricks. Why were Grandma and Grandpa living here? “Grandpa?”“Mmm?”“If you were a designer, then you were rich. Why did you come out here?”“After the war I realized there was nothing for me in the city. I wanted to breathe the air as it flows across the land, not cleaned and filtered.”“So you moved to Nebraska?” I was stunned.“Yes. The land was cheap, and I have always dreamed of having a farm.” It was at that moment I fully believed my Grandfather had lost his mind. No one leaves paradise for the filth and stink of the Outer States. My mind was blown.
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