Papyrus

I

3025 AD, Mars. Prof. Liam

I teach history at the Greendoor University, named for the fact that all its doors are green. My family moved to Mars in the year 2099, when the Earth was no longer habitable for us. This colony has been around for quite some time though and to be frank, there is enough material here for me to do a thesis on.

I’m currently headed to the library, because one of my classes got cancelled, so I figured I’d kill the time reading up. I have taken quite an interest in the 21^st Century, particularly about the years 2010-2045.

I had to use the fingerprint scanner to gain entry to the library which is also a library card of sorts, because it’s linked to the databases in the library and allows the people with proper levels of clearance to access the necessary books. I am a researcher, so I head off to the research wing and pick up one of the free tablets there.

I’m currently in the year 2011.  Apparently in the year 2007, an e-reader called a Kindle was discovered and since then many iterations of the device have been used. Our ancestors used these Kindle devices to store and read books on the fly. You could store far fewer books than now of course, because the tablet I am holding contains an entire library in it.

This is not what interests me. What is a “book”? Digging a few years back, say about a century- I came across a word- “novel” and through the ages these “novels” were categorized as “books”. They had physical form, you could open them and you’d have to turn the pages physically in order to progress with the story. I find this fascinating. These “books” could be what led to the current tablet devices being used here on Mars! The possibilities are endless, but this will need more research.

I‘ll have to upload this to Urmi back at home and see if she can help with it more. Urmi has been a capable AI enabled robot who came shipped of course with firmware allowing her to work also as a super computer. Urmi can definitely help me gather more data on “Novels”, “Books”, “Tolstoy” and “Wilde”.

*****

II

3055 AD - Neil

This is the last thing that my father wrote before his sudden death on 4^th June 3025. I’m told his heart guard (pacemaker in the 21^st century) exploded because it somehow overheated. My father died an untimely death and had I stumbled across this research before, instead of quite accidentally while giving Urmi a tune up, maybe I would have been able to help him finish it. Naturally, since nearly 30 years have passed since this data was uploaded to Urmi, I had to do some deep root scanning to find it.

I find my father’s research to be quite fascinating to tell you the truth. “Books”, “Novels”. What are these things? What is a “Tolstoy”?

******

III

3055 AD- Neil

I have delved deeper into my father’s research and I have found that in the previous millennia there existed devices called printing presses which were used to manufacture these “books”. Apparently, just as my father said, a “book” was a construct that you could hold in your hand, like our readers today, but you’d have to physically turn the pages. The story was something to find, rather than the reader you were holding finding what you want. “Books” did not have search engines like readers in this era do.

I have also come across the following names- Browning, Hardy, Tolstoy, Twain and Oscar Wilde. Apparently these individuals were great authors of the time and apparently an “author” is someone who writes “books”.

The more I delve in, the more complex this data seems. What is “writing”? We use styluses to trace alphabets on our Noters. Is it possible that, just as “books” existed, something called “writing” related directly to a “book” existed?

I have also come across the words “word processor”. Apparently, these were primitive programs in which you had to physically press alphabets to form words. Over here, that is done by voice or else the AI is pre pre-programmed rendering such activity null and void. I can command my light to turn on by just saying “On” I can turn on my Viewer in a similar fashion. I do not understand how to operate a device that has a “switch”

I wonder what life was like in the 21^st century. I think I could use a new pair of eyes on this. I’ll invite Sam and Bran to dinner and we can discuss all this.

A possibility I have recently begun to consider has also been on my mind- was this a delusion that my father concocted? What if there was no “book”?

IV

Neil Continued

Another new term in the research I am doing. “Pen”. Apparently these were used to physically write and they had a fuel called “ink” in them. This is obviously what preceded styluses.

Sam seems to think that my father’s work raises many questions about the life in the previous millennia while Bran thinks my father was senile and refuses to believe what I am showing him. If only I could get hold of one of these “books”. I am told the first “novel” was called Pamela.

The people wrote these “books” using pens to scratch alphabets on “paper” which they obtained by cutting down trees and synthesizing paper from the wood. The trees on our world are different. They have wood, but I doubt that we will be able to make the same paper the research talks about.

At this point, I am willing to carry this forward. It can teach us something from our ancestors. We can teach ourselves to write and to read. Maybe one day, I will physically “write” a physical “book”!

Sam thinks a few minor modifications to a stylus will be enough to get us a “pen”. As for the “ink”, I have been able to isolate a chemical formula to create a synthetic variant of the fuel. All that remains now is the “paper” and here we are unsure how to proceed. 

We do not have the wood to synthesize paper. There are no trees on Mars like the ones in the 2011 period so we need another alternative. The pens we have made will not work on our digital devices. We are so close, and yet we have hit a roadblock.

Sam has a suggestion. The thermostat in a room at the university can be adjusted and some of the red clayey soil on Mars itself can be used to grow a tree. It will not be like the trees from 2011, but it will have to do. We do not have the resources our ancestors had and they did not have the resources we have.  A tree can grow in clayey soil, or so it is written in a “book” about something called “geography”.

V

3056 AD- Neil and Sam

We have spent a year trying to reciprocate the materials from the last millennia. We have pens. All we had to do was sharpen a stylus and add a slot for the fuel. The paper took us so long, because the trees in the nursery took this time to grow. We have managed to synthesize a bluish-red hued paper from them.

I am holding a “pen”, an archaic device from the last millennia. I am staring at “paper”. Sam has managed to get hold of a sheet of paper from the 2011’s on which is written “A is for Apple. B is for Ball. C is for Cat and D is for Dog”

I write these words on the paper using the pen

A is for Apple

B is for Ball

C is for Cat

D is for Dog

We can write again. This means we can have books again. We can have shelves of them. We have managed to remove the cold screen that restricted the reading experience on our readers.

We will not need readers in the coming years. We will have books! I hope I live long enough to see that happen.

A is for Apple, B is for Ball, C is for Cat and D is for Dog.

The Bilge Master