The Last Book on Earth

By Waqid Ali

The night the power grids failed, the world panicked. People clutched their devices like lifelines, tapping and swiping screens that no longer glowed. Social feeds went dark, news vanished, and even the endless hum of streaming silence was gone. Humanity had forgotten how quiet the world could be without technology.

But in that silence, sixteen-year-old Mira found something no algorithm could have shown her—something impossible. A book.

It lay on the counter of a dusty, abandoned bookstore tucked between collapsed skyscrapers. She hadn’t seen one in years. Schools had stopped using them when she was a child. Her parents had laughed at the idea of paper—“heavy, fragile, outdated.” Yet here it was, bound in cracked leather, its title embossed in gold: The Last Book.

When she opened it, the words didn’t make sense. The first line read: “This is your story, Mira. And tonight, it begins again.”

The Book That Wrote Back

The next morning, she returned to the book. But the words had changed. The story was no longer about her discovery—it was about what would happen that day. Each sentence rewrote itself as though the book was breathing, alive, rewriting the world in real time.

She tested it. She wrote her name in the margins. The next day, the book responded: “Yes, Mira. I see you.”

Fear turned to fascination. Each night she fell asleep clutching the book, and each morning it gave her a new story—some about her, some about people she had never met, some about places that no longer existed.

The book was more than paper. It was a mirror of humanity’s forgotten imagination.

A World That Forgot Stories

Outside, the city was collapsing. Without digital maps, people couldn’t travel. Without online banking, no one could buy food. Without social networks, no one remembered how to talk face-to-face.

Mira began reading the stories from the book aloud in the refugee camp where survivors huddled around fire barrels. At first, people laughed. But slowly, they listened. Each night, they gathered as Mira turned the pages, waiting for the next tale the book would reveal.

The book became hope.

The Secret Hidden in the Pages

On the seventh night, the book changed. Its words grew darker. It described a world where people willingly gave up books, choosing comfort over curiosity, convenience over creativity. It told Mira that the “digital-only world” was never an accident—it had been designed.

Buried in its pages was a warning:

“If the last book burns, humanity will forget how to dream.”

Mira realized the book wasn’t just telling stories. It was keeping stories alive, feeding them back into the minds of those who listened. Without it, imagination itself would vanish.

The Choice

One morning, Mira awoke to find the book gone. Panic surged through her. She searched the camp, the streets, the ruins of the old bookstore. Finally, she found it in the hands of a desperate man who was about to throw it into the fire for warmth.

“Don’t!” she screamed, clutching it away from the flames. Her voice cracked with a desperation she didn’t know she had. “If this book dies, we all die!”

The man stared at her, confused, but something in her trembling voice made him back away.

That night, when she opened the book again, it no longer spoke in riddles. Instead, it wrote a single line across its pages:

“The last book is not mine. It is yours. Protect it, or the world forgets itself.”

The Beginning, Not the End

Mira stood beneath the broken sky, holding the book against her chest. She didn’t know if she could save it forever. But she knew this: she wasn’t just reading stories anymore. She was carrying them, keeping them alive.

And maybe, just maybe, she was carrying the last spark of human imagination.

Because the last book on earth was not just telling stories—it was telling the future.