II

In 1972, a team of researchers at MIT published a study predicting global societal collapse by the year 2040. They had been off by seven years. By 2033, with countries bursting at the seams with their swollen populaces, society had not collapsed but exploded. Whether it had been wisdom or cowardice that stopped those in power from unleashing their nuclear options, it didn't matter. They had found every other possible way to inflict mutually assured destruction.

By 2040, what was left of the world had a new set of predictions. There was a fifteen-year window in which to save the earth from complete environmental devastation. The earth, the overlooked victim of modern warfare-its surface pockmarked with building-sized craters, its soil and waters polluted with the chemicals that seeped into it from the canisters sprinkled over land and sea, and its protective ozone layer scorched and ruptured from the emissions of machines of destruction and the attempts to cope with the aftermath-was dying. And it threatened to take the survivors with it.

For decades before the war began, scientists had warned the world of its mortality. News broadcasts regularly featured updates on the impacts of industry and lifestyle on the climate with such a degree of frequency that the earth's inhabitants came to expect them as a feature of their daily life. Much like exposure to the effects of faraway famines and genocides produced compassion fatigue, the constant warnings became tiresome, and humanity, for the most part, stopped listening. 'Comfort over climate' had been the mantra. Until they realized that the warnings were no longer a threat; they had become the uncomfortable reality.

Floods of funds were injected into sustainable energy, the technology for which had been available but pitied as the unpopular younger brother of fossil fuels for decades. The world's consumption of meat plummeted, and felling trees became a crime against humanity. Not only were woods and forests awarded protected status, but the Growth Initiative was established by the Environment and Resources Hub that saw, within every bomb crater, hundreds of saplings planted. In the year before the war began, it was estimated that for every human there were 420 trees. By 2040, this number had been halved. Simulations predicted that without an increase of three hundred trees per human by 2055, the earth would suffocate.

There were several immediate consequences to the Growth Initiative. The most prominent was the disappearance of paper. All production of paper was immediately shut down. Within the space of a year, everything that had not already been digitized was transformed into an online version of itself. Proponents of the digitization movement spouted slogans of accessibility, consistency, and sustainability in their push to upload any form of the written word. It did not require any distinguished form of intelligence to realize that anything off-line fell out of the remit of monitoring, measuring, and micromanaging, and thus presented a threat. Paper was too unpredictable.

Were Ray to have had access to the stores of information on his personal and professional activities, he would have known that when Copyist 112 burst through his doors with a large book in his hands it would be the first time in two years, three months, and seven days that he had come into direct contact with paper.

"Mr. Blankenship." the man blurted, adding after a fraction of a pause, "Sir."

Half question, half apology. "I think you should see this."

He yammered out a stream of words that he must have supposed constituted an explanation.

The blood pounding in Ray's ears deafened him momentarily to any sounds but his own startled pulse. He stooped slowly to pick up the pointer that had fallen from his finger in the shock from the slamming open of his office door, using the few seconds it took to stand fully upright to try to slow his racing heartbeat, sent into a frenzy by the loud bang of the door handle against the wall it had crashed into. He allowed himself a further few seconds to scan the sweat-speckled face of the man before him, whose eyes were now darting between the large yawning pages of the open book and the seemingly blank expression on Ray Blankenship's face.

"Who are you?"

Copyist 112 took a few steps forward and lay the book down carefully with his cotton-gloved hands on Ray's desktop, which had shut itself down into privacy mode when the door was thrown open. He stood back up, stretching his arms behind him in an attempt to assuage the cramp that had set in from carrying the heavy tome, and confirmed the conclusion that Ray had already reached concerning his identity.

"What are you doing here?"

The man took a deep breath. Ray assumed he could not have been older than thirty. Perhaps he was one of the lucky ones. Then again, perhaps he just looked young.

"I came in this morning to my desk as usual and picked up the next book to digitize. I placed it in the scanner, ran the machine, uploaded the files to my desktop, like I do every day. No issues there. But then.I checked through the digitized files, just like I do every day, and there was an error. Part of the page came up blank. Weird, I thought. So, I ran the scan again. Same result. So, I take the book over to the high-res individual page scanner over by Jill's desk and I put the pages down on the machine. Scan, send, check. Nothing."

Copyist 112 unclipped the tablet from the holder in his waistband and tapped the screen twice, swiped up, across, then tapped again.

"Here, see."

He proffered the tablet to Ray. Gingerly, Ray took the thin tablet between his fingers, glancing at the man's face, still flushed, and examined the screen.

Page 600 was there in full-color digital glory. Page 601 was all there too, as was 602. He looked up. The man's eyes were wide, expectant.

"Keep going."

Page 603 contained a full page of text. So did 604. But 605. The page began with text, small and seriffed, which flowed for about five lines. But then, at the end of a sentence, the words abruptly stopped. And in the middle of the page lay a blank space. It must have been about six lines long. Ray flipped back to the previous page to confirm its size. Six lines. Missing. And then the text resumed.

Ray opened a small drawer beneath his desk and pulled out a pair of white cotton gloves, mandated by the Hub in the event of any contact with paper so as to avoid the wear and tear of fingertips. He slid them deftly onto his hands, the fibers tickling his palms, and flipped the pages of the outspread book. The slightly yellowed paper of page 605 was filled with the ink-stained etchings of very obvious words. Ray flipped several pages ahead, and several back, just to be sure. Nothing seemed to be amiss.

"There must be a problem with your desktop software." Ray placed his chipped finger in the indent and his desktop glowed to life. He navigated his way through the flowcharts of folders that spread across his screen, each tap producing a new sprout of file options. "112." he muttered.

He clicked the "Current Projects" folder and opened the most recent.

"That's the one," the copyist, now propped up against one of the yellow office walls, confirmed. Ray ran a finger between the fabric of his cravat and the skin of his neck.

The rushing that had pounded in his ears had subsided, but now Ray realized it had been replaced with a new, duller, heavier thud, somewhere just above his stomach. He scrolled down through the pages, stretched out on the wall before them.

602.

603.

604.

He paused.

605.

"How many times did you scan it?"

"Four."

"Same every time?"

"Same every time. I asked Jill to run it too. Same result."

Ray nodded and looked back to the wall screen at the blank space slicing across the page. He cleared his throat. "Thank you for bringing this to my attention. Leave it with me."

The copyist opened his mouth as if to protest his sudden exit and unresolved, unrewarded mystery, but Ray was already standing by the door, his eyes on the small dent in the wall where the doorknob had smashed into it with the copyist's arrival. As Copyist 112 sidled out sullenly, Ray closed the door behind him.

Alone again, Ray had the strange and uncontrollable urge to organize something. To straighten edges, align corners, pick out the drawing pins from the paperclip pot, tidy a stack of papers, alphabetize a filing cabinet, but in the post-paper age of screens there was little left in the way of office paraphernalia to provide such mindless therapeutic distractions. Ray sat in his custom-designed ergonomic chair and swiveled slowly, pivoting between a ninety-degree angle, his eyes fixed blankly on the empty space on the screen. He twirled the pointer on his finger.

A small musical note played from his desktop alerting him that he had five minutes before his system would shut down for the mandatory mental health coffee break that all employees were required to take twice during their working day. In a cheerful font, a panoply of options for hot beverages was presented on his screen. Somehow the oranges and greens made the thought of warmed milk alternatives and weak americano substitutes particularly unappealing.

Ray silenced the message, rose slowly to his feet. With a sideways...