The Ideal Book
It was David Thoth. The smart, introspecting, and deeply cautious man had just entered the room and piqued the curiosity of all who were present. Quickly, they clamored to determine each discernable detail of him, to as precise a degree as possible. Seemingly, he was 5’11, swarthy, lean, and green-eyed. Despite being young and in good shape, he seemed to have been very violently attacked. He knew this fact was secondary to his presence in the room, and was therefore not self-conscious. Though unbothered by all the attention, he looked coldly and unwaveringly beyond everyone around him. For much of his life, his placid demeanor had carried him far. It had been a subtle mask, from behind which he could carefully observe the world and access many of its strange secrets. Therefore now, in death, he was extremely glad to find that he had not lost his character, and could eternally ruminate and observe as he had done before.
He met his own gaze from above. He sensed an almost nauseating mirth at the cliché of his spirit staring down at his own body. He felt unsettled, and as he dissected the feeling he surmised that the most unnerving aspect of this experience was not the fact of seeing his self, dead, but rather the survival of emotion beyond the corporeal life. As an agnostic, he had avoided over-indulging in thoughts of the afterlife; though he had certainly never imagined that he might be in the room to witness his own post-mortem. As they opened his bruise-marbled chest, he began to wonder how long this ‘afterlife’ would last. After all, he was still freshly dead, yet didn’t seem to have gone very far. Would there be God? Eternity spent adrift in a sea of souls? Bodiless journeys through black holes, he hoped. He wondered when and how he would find his ability to leave the room. It occurred to him then that he may hover over his rotting body until all traces and ties to his previous self were gone, at which point perhaps his soul might be recycled. This idea was strangely appealing in its symmetry to the symbiotic cycle of physical decay within the earth. This was the thought that brought him to the feeling of acceptance. With that, he stopped mulling over his death and began to remember the world- and the circumstances that had caused him to die in particular…
The book that killed him was still on a windowsill in the local library. Earlier that morning, he had hoped that in leaving it there it would be collected into a lost-and-found, never claimed, and then quietly disposed of. As he remembered the book, he felt pangs of inconsolable disappointment. To have been made to lose it seemed bitterly premature and unfair. It also soured his newfound curiosity about an afterlife. To have any intimation of the book once it was no longer in his possession was an agony akin to Tantalus’ wretched, starving, thirsting eternity in Tartarus. He continued to hope it would soon come to rot with him. It was such an unassuming looking thing. He had reasoned that the discreet, generic little notebook, much like him, would be easily overlooked because of its subtlety. Had it not been for the profound function of the book, they may never have had to part ways. Unfortunately, his addiction to the profound had been the grand folly of his life, and now, the unguarded notebook was brimming with potential for another worthy mind to wield. He sensed her eyeing it as he remembered. She, a young woman, had seen it sitting off to the side for almost the entire day. She had been studying for an exam, but in weary moments would find her eyes fixated on the notebook. It had been callously dumped- she felt fairly certain that the flustered young man who had left it was probably not coming back for it. She saw him come in, alone. He had walked the perimeter of the library several times, his agitation apparent, and before he made a hasty exit, he had quite decidedly put the notebook by the window without looking back.
She admired its simplicity- a stylish and sleek black leather journal. After months of learning, her current notebook was overloaded with words- so frenzied that she could barely stand to keep looking at it. She walked a weary lap around the library, and in doing so checked to see if his was anywhere amongst the faces. Once she knew he had not returned, she found herself pulled to the windowsill where it sat. A brief glance and it looked in quite good condition, she thought. It was a sophisticated little book. On slightly further inspection it did appear to have been well loved- carried around everywhere she presumed. In that moment, she pondered at how strange it was to abandon something ‘well loved’. Casually, she flipped it open to see what purpose the notebook had served. No notes, no sketches, no journaling… Or scrapbooking, or recipes, or grocery lists. It was empty, but it looked used. She considered his apparent tension as she thumbed it with mounting interest. On seeing that it truly was unused, she felt there was no reason why she shouldn’t repurpose it for her own clarity of mind, and so she did.
She spent a productive two hours on an ethics assignment, christening her new notebook in the process. The library closed, and on arriving home, she turned on the radio to hear a new policy for minimum wage be outlined over the air. It was typical for a subject such as this to grab her attention- especially because of school- but tonight it was not just the topic itself. It was the ideas, and the words. They were hers, her exact wording from her assignment- a proposal to raise minimum wage, complete with her premise structured argument and accompanying essay about the policy’s flaws and her rebuttals to these criticisms. She took out the little book and read along with the radio, her blood pumping with increasing force, and a chill building from the pit of her stomach. It was as if she had written the policy into existence.
She finished reading a small paragraph before beginning to laugh in shocked delight- it could only be a pure, and incredible coincidence. As she read what continued to be her own homework, shreds of curiosity and hope spoke from within. “Test it”, they said. So she did, and taking her pen, she scrawled, ‘$20,000 to be paid into my bank account immediately’. She wrote down her details and stopped momentarily to try to rationalize what she feared could only be a terrifying descent into fantasy. She stared at the book before tentatively logging into her banking app. All the while, the radio spoke her ideals back to her. She braced for the seemingly inevitable disappointment. She was therefore entirely unprepared to see that remarkably, it was all there. With a giddy gasp she jumped to her feet and stared at the book. She thought of the young man, and his rapid disposal of the book. Who would not delight in the possibilities of this special power? To be able to write things into being! The small book and its enormous potential made her mind swell with realizations. She knew in that instant her life could become very easy. But she had only written the money in to test her suspicions about the notebook. The deeper joy that night had been hearing her policy; her ideals become active in the world. She thought of the hours she had spent on her assignment. That effort was meaningful to her, as was her interest in the subject. She smiled quietly to herself as she realized that a weak policy would not have been worthy of the book’s special power. It was this realization that made her want to pursue hard work. She knew she would.
That night the young woman felt optimistic and euphoric. There was also a distant discomfort in remembering the circumstances that had placed the book in her life. Why would anyone be so ignorant of something so covetable? How did the notebook have such immense power? Where had it come from and who else knew of it? She wondered how successful her policy would be, and if the most chaotic divides of the world could be fixed by the book. If they could, why had it not already been done? For a few minutes, she wondered where the young man had gone after leaving the library.
