The Last Goodbye

She burned the books at the altar.

A hundred books and tens of thousands of pages were sacrificed to the flames, erupting in a brilliant red, then orange, and—for a split second—blue. She watched, rapt with fascination, her eyes reflecting the ashes as they burned.

And burned.

And burned.

***

The Duty—or so it had come to be called—was established on February 20th, 2500, just before midnight. Each citizen had been provided a quota of books, newspapers, or other such written media to destroy within a week, along with lighters and pyres to carry out the ritual. The country had been broken into two groups: The Rebels and The Loyalists—the former being tracked down and punished by the dozens each day.

The Loyalists, however, were dedicated and determined. One such individual was, rather ironically, a lady that was quite well-read. The woman reasoned that it was not wrong to own books or even read them, so long as she incinerated enough each day. The government didn’t quite care for the curious ones—as long as they burned enough.

The country claimed it was for the greater good, to protect minds from the toxic overload of outdated knowledge, to conserve dying forests, to unify people broken by conflicting truths. But no one truly believed them. At least, not anymore. Regardless, whether out of fear or loyalty, books disappeared by the thousands each week.

She knew she was one book short of this week's quota, and people who did not meet it were faced with a rather unfortunate fate. The patrols were getting closer to her town, and she’d heard of plenty of librarians that had simply disappeared. Not a word, nothing.

Just gone as if they had never been.

The woman had burned nearly half the town’s books herself. As a former librarian, she’d had no choice but to destroy her entire library, lest she be identified as a threat. She’d managed to salvage one book, her favorite, well-worn and well-loved, but everything else had to go. And with it, pieces of her went too.

In recent years, silence had replaced conversation, and the blue light from screens had replaced eye contact. Once colorful gatherings had faded into silence.

Just last month, a man had passed away in his sleep, and the world had moved on without noticing—for weeks. He’d had a wife. Two kids. Not one of them had bothered to check on him. In the end, it had been the smell that gave him away.

If she thought hard enough, the woman could still remember her childhood, remember the joy of walking into a bookstore and feeling as if the world was at her fingertips. Life had been colorful back then, shades of blue, and red, and explosions of purple. Now she saw the world in shades of gray.

Today, she sat in her room, her telephone shoved into a box that she’d locked with a key. The thing was too tempting, too addicting, trained to mimic love so well it nearly fooled her. On more than one occasion, she’d forcefully reminded herself that it was not alive.

Lost in thought, she reached her hand under her pillow, pulling out the ragged copy of The Last Goodbye—the only one left in the world.

Opening to a page she had bookmarked, she ran a gentle finger over the ink as the words reached into her heart and took hold there. Those words were the last piece of her that remained, a final rebellion, the last thing that made her feel human, whole, alive. She flipped the pages with trembling fingers and something not unlike devotion, allowing herself to fall into another world. She read to escape.

She read to hide.

She read to remember.

Her oldest memory was this very copy of the book being read aloud to her by her mother as she lay in bed, the sentences like music, the paragraphs like lullabies. She’d known then and there that she was to become a librarian and keep these stories safe.

She had failed.

A single tear fell onto the page as she blinked rapidly, her throat feeling tight. She should do something.

She had to do something.

The woman didn’t know where she got the courage, or what pulled her tired figure from the warmth of her room and into the foyer. She wasn’t quite sure what possessed her to slide her feet into her shoes, stiff with disuse, and slip silently out the door.

But she did, her book tucked into her side, a shield to protect her from reality.

The streets were desolate, and despite the day being sunny, the world felt colorless. All the buildings, once vibrant hues to a child’s eyes, felt like mockery—as if they were silently laughing at her misfortune. She saw countless pyres, stacks of books lying out like corpses, sacrifices to a purpose no one understood.

Passersby that she might have once waved to, perhaps shared a laugh with, passed her emotionlessly—eyes glued to their screens and headphones tucked into their ears.

If anyone noticed her, the lone figure silent as a wraith, they didn’t seem to care. She passed a former friend, someone to whom she’d once spilled all her secrets, and she managed to offer up a smile. It was thin, brittle, fading immediately when her friend just blinked at her.

As if they were no more than strangers.

So she clung tighter to that last piece of her in her hands. Clung to the sound of her mother’s voice that was ingrained in the pages.

The flowers that had once bloomed in each windowsill had wilted, forgotten and gray as the rest of the world. But still, despite the odds, a single rose lay bright against the dullness, clinging to a stem, fighting desperately to survive.

The former librarian forged on, straightening her spine when she came to a stop in the center of the town.

For a moment, she considered abandoning her task, considered turning back and returning home. The possibility was tempting, tantalizing, and she almost hesitated, if only for a moment.

But alas, she flipped to the bookmarked page once more, and when she was sure no one was looking—tore it out. Ever so cautiously, she tucked the page into her pocket.

The world was not going to change, and people were not going to start caring. Somewhere between leaving home and arriving at her destination, she had come to terms with that fact. And in truth, she never really had much of a choice. The Last Goodbye was the last book in her possession, the only way to fulfill this week’s quota. She no longer had it in her to protest quietly, to rebel in silence. All she wanted was peace, to, at long last, sleep without the worry of being discovered and to live without the hollowness in her heart.

Yet even as she made this sacrifice and gave up the last piece of her that still held onto hope, she could not part with it entirely. So that singular page lay in her pocket, a light to get her through dark days.

Then she stepped forward toward the pyre she was standing in front of—the largest one in the town—dedicated to the gods themselves. The woman could have burned her books at home, mechanically, like everyone else. But, having always been rather fond of tradition, it had become a ritual of sorts for her to come here each week.

Numbly, she smoothed down the cover of The Last Goodbye, running a finger down its spine and vowing to remember.

The book slipped out of her hands like her name had slipped out of the world.

***

And so, she burned the book at the altar.

It burned.

And burned.

And burned.