The Scrivener's Bones (Alcatraz, #2)

by Brandon Sanderson

In the United States alone, there are thousands upon thousands of books published every year. Most of these are either “literature,” books about people who don’t do anything, or they are silly fiction works about dreadfully dull topics such as dieting. (There is a purpose to all of these useless books produced in America. They are, of course, intended to make people self-conscious about themselves so that the Librarians can better control them. The quickest way I’ve found to feel bad about yourself is to read a self-help book, and the second quickest is to read a depressing literary work intended to make you feel terrible about humanity in general.) Anyway, the point is that the Librarians publish hundreds of thousands of books each year. What happens to all of these books? Logically, we should all be overwhelmed by them. Buried in a tsunami of texts, gasping for breath as we drown in an endless sea of stories about girls with eating disorders. The answer is the Library of Alexandria. The Librarians ship their excess books there in exchange for the promise that the Curators won’t go out into the Hushlands and seek the volumes themselves. It’s really a shame. After all, the Curators—being skeletons—could probably teach us a few things about dieting.

The ghost cursed in an obscure language—my Translator’s Lenses kindly let me know the meaning of the word, and I will be equally kind here in not repeating it, since it involved eggbeaters—and followed me.

People don’t read anymore. And when they do, they don’t read books like this one, but instead read books that depress them, because those books are seen as important. Somehow, the Librarians have successfully managed to convince most people in the Hushlands that they shouldn’t read anything that isn’t boring. It comes down to Biblioden the Scrivener’s great vision for the world—a vision in which people never do anything abnormal, never dream, and never experience anything strange. His minions teach people to stop reading fun books and instead focus on fantasy novels. That’s what I call them, because those books keep people trapped. Keep them inside the nice little fantasy that they consider to be the “real” world. A fantasy that tells them they don’t need to try something new. After all, trying new things can be difficult.

Reason number fifteen, Bastille: Short people make smaller targets!”

Society has laws, as does nature, as do people. Many of society’s rules have to do with expectations—which I’ll talk about later—and therefore can be bent. A lot of nature’s laws, however, are hard-set. There are many more of these than you might expect. In fact, there are even natural laws relating to this book, my favorite of which is known as the Law of Pure Awesomeness. This law simply states that any book I write is awesome. I’m sorry, but it’s a fact. Who am I to argue with science?

You could be a young boy wanting to read an adventure story. You could be a young girl wanting to investigate the truth of the Librarian conspiracy. You might be a mother reading this book because you’ve heard that so many of your kids are reading it. Or you could be a serial killer who specializes in reading books, then seeking out the authors and murdering them in horrible ways.

“If I brought some of that gold, it would end up going to the Knights of Crystallia—and I’m a little annoyed with them right now.” I stuffed a few more bars in my pocket for her anyway.

Can I really be considered a savior if I caused the very problem I helped fix?

Writers—particularly storytellers like myself—write about people. That is ironic, since we actually know nothing about them. Think about it. Why does someone become a writer? Is it because they like people? Of course not. Why else would we seek out a job where we get to spend all day, every day, cooped up in our basement with no company besides paper, a pencil, and our imaginary friends? Writers hate people. If you’ve ever met a writer, you know that they’re generally awkward, slovenly individuals who live beneath stairwells, hiss at those who pass, and forget to bathe for weeklong periods. And those are the socially competent ones.

If it wasn’t for you, I’d be floating around with burning eyes, offering illicit books to people as if I were a drug dealer looking for a new victim.

(I’ve found that throwing things in people’s faces—words, conversations, knives—is one of Bastille’s specialties.)

“I think all people, in their hearts, want to be heroes,” I continued. “But the ones who want it most are the outcasts. The girls and boys who sit in the backs of rooms, always laughed at because they’re different, because they stand out, because … they break things.”

“You should have become a novelist.” “Don’t like the hours,” she said. “Anyway, I can tell you that growing up learning how to lead doesn’t make any difference. A lifetime of training only makes you understand how inadequate you are.”

“It’s almost like they were setting you up to fail.”

Bastille’s own mother couldn’t have been the one to set her up to fail, could she? That seemed a stretch. Although my mother had stolen my inheritance, then sold me out to the Librarians. So maybe Bastille and I were a well-matched pair.

There I was, deciding bravely that I would take upon myself the mantle that had been quite randomly thrust upon me. Now, here I am, writing my memoirs, trying as hard as I can to throw off that very same mantle.

By putting in a chapter break, I make the book longer. It takes extra spaces, extra pages. Yet because of those chapter breaks, the book becomes shorter as well. You read it more quickly. Even an unexciting hook, like Australia’s showing up, encourages you to quickly turn the page and keep going. Space becomes distorted when you read a book. Time has less relevance. In fact, if you look closely, you might be able to see golden dust floating down around you right now. (And if you can’t see it, you’re not trying hard enough. Maybe you need to hit yourself on the head with another big thick fantasy novel.)

For the first time in my life, I realized something. Girls smell weird.

(Girls, you might have noticed, can do things like this to guys. It’s a result of their powerful pheromones. They evolved that way, gaining the ability to make us men fuzzy-headed, so that it would be easier for them to hit us on the heads with hardback fantasy novels and steal our cheese sticks.)

This, by the way, is a pretty good metaphor for my entire relationship with Bastille. I’m thinking of writing a book on the concept. Kicking Your Friends for Fun and Profit.

Oh, so that’s not good enough for you, eh? Demanding today, are we?

Some days you have to sit in your boring chair sipping warm cocoa. Other days you get to blast your way out of a pit in the ground, and then run off to fight a half-metal monster who is holding your friend’s mother captive. Other days you need to dress like a green hamster and dance around in circles while people throw pomegranates at you.

Laugh when books come to a close, even if the endings aren’t happy.

Expectations. They are among the most important things in all of existence. (Which is amusing because, being abstract concepts, you could argue that they don’t even “exist” at all.)

So perhaps you can begin to see why I’ve included some of the things I have. Bunnies with bazookas, ships that get repaired (more on that later), faces made of numbers, editorials from short people about how we regard the world, and a lesson on shoes and fish. All of these examples try to prove that you need to have an open mind. Because not everything you believe is true, and not everything you expect to happen will.

Coming down into the library had proven to be the best choice in the end.

There was nothing. Because, you know, she was dead.

She was so dead that I didn’t even realize that this section is in the book for two reasons. First, so that I could have Bastille die somewhere, just like I promised. (See, I wasn’t lying about this! Ha!) The second reason is, of course, so that if anyone skips forward to the end to read the last page—one of the most putrid and unholy things any reader can do—they will be shocked and annoyed to read that Bastille is dead.

The end.