The book was not special, as books go. It was not a book of sacred religion, or of discovered science. It did not explain things that were or things that had been or things that could be.

It was merely fiction.

Lies. Made up things that would never and could never be real. The one of the Few who had come to him held it our in his hands, face expressionless. The man who had once controlled the entire world cowered in the corner of his four-walled prison, arms raised to shield himself from this thing that he had hoped never to see. This thing that represented all he had sought to destroy, everything he had worked so hard to wipe out of existence.

Fiction. The word was like a plague and it spread like one from person to person across the world from city to city, never stopping, never ceasing, finding a way no matter what roadblock it came up against. Finally, after so long, he had made it so that when the word “book” was spoken, every person would ask, “What is that?” But the Few had defied him.

They read.