The lights went out. Percy flipped over. “Another day gone.”

Byron turned. “And not a reader to be seen.”

Ed opened a mistrustful eye. “And here we lie, forever more.”

Percy yellowed in shame. “You know, people once valued our opinion.”

A few rows down, Einstein laughed a dusty laugh.

Their words had once been held timeless. Their knowledge seen as invaluable. Their words shout out wisdom, but are held in a single room.

How much is lost in a moment when people forget to read? Bradbury prophesied a time when books would be banned, but the future was far more perverse. Far more irreversible. The future was not a time of restriction, but a time of rejection. A time of willful ignorance. Society bleeds through the eyes and through the ears, but the mind has forgotten how to read.