THE LIBRARY: $48.98
The top floor of Butchers & Rog was filled with shelves and shelves of books. They arced in rings, mazelike, to the room’s center. I had never seen or imagined anything like it, not even when my father told me about the Liberties.
If a book existed that could change our lives, it had to be here, didn’t it? I felt hope rise again in me. What if it really is possible? I wondered.
There were thousands—maybe tens of thousands—of books. They were all different shapes and sizes, fat and thin, bound in leather, or canvas, or cardboard or printed plastic sheets. Some bore titles on their spines in gilt letters or black pressed ink. Some said nothing at all. I had no clue which one might help us. What, exactly, was I looking for?
Kel let out a strangled yelp from the Pad. She was standing face-to-face with the golden brother, the one who had stopped me on the bridge. His lean, sharp face wore a ghastly, predatory smile as his fist whipped into view. I realized that he’d punched her. The feed went dark, but the sound kept on. Henri yelled something unintelligible. I looked deeper into the Pad, as if that might help me see what was happening. It was wasted effort; Kel’s eyes were closed.
I couldn’t help. I had to start searching.
“Whereas you have trespassed...” a voice in Kel’s feed came through the tiny speaker, sharp and icy “...and whereas you have caused the willful destruction of property, assaulted a Legal representative and his assigns, caused grievous harm, pain and suffering, and accorded yourselves with a gross dissimilitude from proper conduct to the Law...”
The Lawyer’s voice faltered a moment.
“Where is Speth Jime?” His words were suddenly clipped and unlitigious. It chilled me to hear him speak my name.
No one answered.
“And whereas you have committed numerous additional transgressions, infractions and criminal violations yet to be enumerated and described, I assign you to the custody and supervision of the prevailing Legal authority available—me.”
I recognized the voice with creeping dread. It was Silas Rog. While I did not know his face, I knew that voice. There was something distinctly cold and hateful in it.
A loathing twisted inside me. I couldn’t let him distract me. He was somewhere down below, which meant he wasn’t here. He was asking about me, which meant he did not know where I was.
I’d wasted enough time already. I pulled a book out from a shelf close by, my hands clumsy and tremulous. Public Adjudication of Law by Paul W. Bloom, © 1997.
I flipped through the pages. The paper was thin and the type was dense, impossible for me to comprehend. Was every book here like this one? There wasn’t time for me to sit down and wade through the impenetrable jargon of the Law. I abandoned that one, shoving it back onto its shelf. I moved instinctively toward the room’s center. If an important book was going to be anywhere, I reasoned—I hoped—it would be there.
“The parties hereforth present shall be remanded to floor seventeen for assessment of actionable infractions,” I heard Rog say.
I pulled another book from the shelf, titled Perpetual Mouse, Alecia Grey, © 2028. The inside cover said Disney™ made certain, in perpetuity, that nothing created after 1928 could ever come out of Copyright in order to preserve the rights of a cartoon mouse.
The center of the room was dominated by an enormous, densely printed, polished pillar, like obsidian. Two sliding doors were cut into it, gilded in laser-cut gold and platinum. At first I thought this was it; the book must be locked inside. Then I noticed a simple, triangle-shaped button inset in a panel.
I pressed it out of desperation more than reason. As I did it, I realized it was almost certainly an elevator. I kept hoping it was something else—a safe or a room with the book inside.
It was a childish wish. A simple ping chimed, and the motor behind the doors engaged.
On the Pad, I heard movement. Kel’s eyes were open again, looking down at the tiles of a hallway floor as she was dragged across them. I wanted her to look at Rog. I wanted to see his face.
Hatred boiled inside me, clouding my thoughts. All around me, aisles radiated out from the center, toward tall tinted windows. I saw nothing but a few moonlit clouds, darkened by the colored glass.
“Hereby and forthwith, I demand you provide the whereabouts of Speth Jime to the greatest degree of precision allowable by Law,” Rog’s voice intoned. I glanced at the Pad and saw only part of him as Kel’s eyes ticked nervously around.
“Long gone,” Kel said. Her voice was slightly muffled.
I swallowed hard. She was covering for me. I owed it to her and the others to make this mean something, but how? I began looking at the books again. The task seemed impossible.
“The specificity of your answer is insufficient. Evasive speech used for the purposes of obstructification will be answered with maximum penalty,” Rog said.
“Where is she?” another voice asked, as if merely curious.
“Beyond the outer spiral,” Kel said.
The doors behind me split open. I jumped. It was an empty elevator car. Foolish, I told myself.
“She might be in Canada by now,” Kel added.
I looked down at the Pad. Kel was looking at Leeland Butchers. I’d seen his face before. Unlike Silas Rog, whose face was perpetually blurred in the media, Butchers allowed his red, pockmarked face to be shown everywhere. We all would have preferred he kept it hidden.
“Canada.” Butchers chewed on the word. “Unlikely.”
“You’ll never find her!” Henri blurted out.
“Also unlikely,” Butchers said. I stole another glance at the feed from the Pad. I wanted to see Rog. His head was down; he was preoccupied, typing something into his Cuff. I held back the urge to get on the elevator and bring the fight to him. The book was more important. I grabbed a promising title.
Trademark Expansion and Copyright Integration, © 2019.
I wanted to linger with the feel of the paper between my fingers. It was strangely thin and fragile. Were all books like this? I willed myself to understand the words before me. The book was filled with mind-numbingly dull pages of Legalese, explaining Laws that once were, Laws that had changed and twisted and Laws that could be corrupted. It reminded me of the endlessly verbose Terms of Service I had skimmed and mindlessly agreed to all these years. I nearly tossed it aside until I saw the words: Freedom of Speech.
In the feed, a door opened. Kel and Henri were pushed in front of what appeared to be an inclined tanning bed, except the bottom part was missing, as if it would only tan your face. It looked snug and soft, with a smooth, enveloping curve for a person’s body. Rog moved in front of it, his back to the camera in Kel’s eyes. He seemed to pet it.
“Innovation is rare these days,” Rog said. “A casualty of the necessary, voracious defense of Intellectual Property. It is difficult to hold a Patent without getting overly enthused about suing and defending oneself from suit.” He seemed very pleased with the whole game. He patted the bed-like device, proud. Then he turned and showed his face. I brought the Pad closer to my eyes, even though I had more pressing things to attend to.
But it was blocked. Just like on the wall-screen, his face was nothing but a mottle of pink, gray and black squares as he spoke. Kel’s corneal implants were blurring him out.
“I hereby notify you that certain proprietary information may be herewith divulged, which you are obligated, immediately and forthwith, to keep strictly confidential, without exception, under all circumstances and for all time under the full penalty of the Law.” He waved his hand around like he was casting a spell.
“Every single day, millions of people go undetected creating unauthorized copies of music, films, pictures, ideas and words, robbing the American® businessman of his right to profit from his Intellectual Property and costing the American® economy trillions of dollars. The Cuff does an admirable, but incomplete, job of detecting and monitoring usage, but we know we can do better. Attorney Butchers?”
“Look here,” Butchers said, in a low thrum of a voice.
I didn’t look. Instead, I focused more closely on the Freedom of Speech reference in the book. It alluded to an Amendment, though I didn’t know what had been amended. When did this Law exist? Where did it exist? The book read, plain as day, “Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech.” Was this what I was looking for?
“We’re calling it a Finishing Bed®,” Butchers went on. I tried to block him out and focus on the book. “It is going to put an end to Copyright infringement by extracting it at the very root.”
I didn’t know what a Congress was, but the words on the page filled me with hope and confusion. The book called the First Amendment a “guiding principle.” Tears came to my eyes. It said Freedom of Speech was so important to American® life that our nation would fail without it. How could this be? We didn’t have Freedom of Speech, yet America® thrived.
But that wasn’t true. Everyone I knew was only barely surviving.
“The Finishing Bed® looks for infringing patterns expressed directly within your brain’s electroneurology.”
Henri’s gasp caught my attention. “It reads minds?”
I followed Kel’s eyes, ticking over the Finishing Bed®. The way the top part clamped over a person’s face made me think of some kind of torture device.
“Nearly,” Butchers said. “It matches patterns, so if you remember a song or a picture or a movie, it will find the unauthorized work and bill you accordingly.”
“You’re going to charge people for thinking about movies?” Henri asked.
“Movies, songs, ideas, words,” Butchers said, clapping his meaty hands together. “It will be lucrative.”
Kel burst out laughing. “That isn’t possible,” she said.
“What makes you believe that?” Butchers asked.
“Innovation isn’t rare—it’s unattainable,” Kel said.
“Meaning?” Butchers asked.
“You assholes can’t create anything anymore,” Kel said. “And even if this works the way you say, you can’t control what people think.”
“We don’t intend to control what people think. Just to charge them for it.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. What kind of world would this be? I had to stop them, but I sensed, somehow, that the book in my hands wasn’t enough. This wasn’t the book. It only proved things had once been different, but it wasn’t enough on its own. I dropped it in my bag in case it was useful and moved on.
I began to frantically search around for other, more promising titles. I found a sentence that read: “Copyright clearly does not protect ideas, only the tangible expression of them,” in a book called The First Amendment and Civic Duty by Martin Bjørn, © 2017.
“There is no precedent,” Kel said. “Everyone will fight you.”
“Everyone will lose,” Butchers said calmly. “And I have to point out that there is plenty of precedent. No Law has ever been ruled forbidding the monetization of thoughts. But there is plenty of legal precedent to show that any reproduction, regardless of its form, is subject to Intellectual Property Laws. Why should the brain be any different than a computer or a piece of paper?”
Butchers snapped his fingers. “Put him inside,” he said.
I swallowed hard. They dragged Henri toward the machine. Surely the Finishing Bed® couldn’t actually read Henri’s mind—could it? But what if it hurt him?
A ParaLegal scurried over with a screen. “Could you sign this waiver?”
I flipped through Limitations on the First Amendment by Janet J. Kingsley, © 2031, and it looked like freedom of speech had become more restricted because companies banded together to claim it threatened their Brands, free trade and wealth. But so what? My search was hopeless.
I had to do something. I wanted to abandon the books and fly down to the seventeenth floor, but that would undo our entire purpose for being here. Too many books. Too little time. I shook myself; I had to find the book. It had to be here, and with it, I could destroy Silas Rog. I had to make people see, especially now. I moved to a different shelf and grabbed another book.
Rights Management Coding and Codes. It detailed methods and strategy for locking down software—something I knew absolutely nothing about. Beside it, another book had its cover embossed with a bold logo: PrintLocks™. I cracked it open.
In the feed, Butchers’s assistants lowered the shell over Henri’s head. He tried to look brave. I tore myself away from watching the feed to read.
This was not the book. It said nothing about speech or words. But the logo reminded me of WheatLock™, and the pages detailed the ways food inks needed to be combined and the ways printers functioned to combine them or lock the user out if payment wasn’t authenticated. There was even a key showing which had nutritional value, and which were poisonous.
It wasn’t the book, but it seemed like it could be useful.
From the Pad, Butchers’s voice went on: “The trespassers, hereinafter referred to as the Participants, will submit to neurologic survey and inspection for any and all violations of Intellectual Property, and shall be held civilly accountable for any and all verified infractions found therein, as well as attendant animus nocendi.”
I walked lightly around the thick pillar. On the far side, more wide aisles fanned out to the windows. It was growing lighter outside. There was no sign that any book was more important than another. I prepared to dig in and look through every one if I had to, but how much time did I have left?
Something clicked and whirred behind me. The answer was that my time was up. The elevator was moving, which meant someone was coming.