by Danny
Danny Hearn:
The circus owner has us organized two to a caravan. I'm bunked with M'xy. Or is it Mick? I look toward the opposite end of the van at his motionless form. Good. He's asleep. I was worried that my bedside lamp was disturbing him.
I position the lamp to shine better toward me, to better illuminate the item in my hand. It's a... book. It's a paper thing. All these paper pages bound together. The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. By Douglas Adams.
But the title isn't important. The experience is important. I found this thing under my bed, and it confused me for a moment. It took me a little while to figure out what it was. A book. A book. I'm reading a book.
"This is amazing..." Hal says.
I lift it to my face, and smell it. It's yellow pages smell of dust. And time. This book smells like time. I turn the page slowly, carefully. It could crumble to ashes at any time, and I would be denied this marvellous experience.
"Dan... what're you doing...?" comes a voice from the other end of the van.
"Oh... sorry, Mick. I didn't mean to wake you," I reply.
"It's okay."
"It is Mick, right?"
"Yeah, it's me."
"So what are you doing up this late?" Mick says, getting up from his bed and walking across to stand near mine.
"I'm... reading," I say, softly. My head remains focused toward the book, and I don't look up at him.
Mick lifts the book slightly to look at its cover. "Ah... the Guide. Good book. Where'd you find it?" he says.
"Under the bed. I assume the last person to stay in here left it," I answer, still looking down at the book.
Mick looks at me for a second, as if noticing something odd in my facial expression. "You okay, man? You look a little... I dunno, sick or something."
"I'm just... in shock, I guess," I answer, looking up at him for the first time.
"Why?"
"I've never read a book before in my life."
"...What?"
"In my time... everything's stored on tiny disks. There's no actual books anymore."
"That's messed up."
"I know."
"I suppose it would make school a little less strenuous," Mick offers.
I suddenly put the book down. School. He mentioned school. I remember high school. Not all that well... but I remember bits of it. I remember history class. I remember the semester we spent studying metahuman history. I remember the essay I wrote on the Battle of 2002.
"Oh, shit..." I say.
"What?" Mick says, noticing the worry in my voice.
I begin to quote my essay. "'In late 2002, a group of metahuman revolutionaries entered into a battle with a horde of invading aliens, with the fate of the earth hanging in the balance. While the aliens were stopped, the lives of all the revolutionaries were taken.'"
"What?!" Mick exclaims.
"It's metahuman history. But I suppose it's not history yet, is it? Not sure of the exact date... but in late 2002, aliens invade. We fight them. We die."
"Whoa..."
"Right."
"Are you sure it's us? There's bound to be other metahumans around somewhere."
"It's us. I remember some of the descriptions of the 'revolutionaries.'"
"'Revolutionaries'?"
"That's what the history texts called them."
"Oh." We both sit silently for a moment. "But that's almost a year away," Mick says.
"Yup."
"And the future isn't set in stone... we can change it... right?!"
I look up at Mick. I think my facial expression conveys the disgust and fear I feel at that theory. But I'm not sure. "I can't believe that," I say to him quietly.