Free The Book by M. Clifford Page B

taped together and was gripping onto the spine like eight fingers digging for dear life into the fragile dirt of a cliffside. Winston sat on the cushioned chair and beckoned for Holden to take up The Book, as if the man desired not to touch it any more than he had to. Holden did what was asked, completely unaware of what was about to take place, but certain that the lasting memory of the moment would be monumental. As Winston tilted The Book in Holden’s grasp, he removed a square chip from the back and rested it onto the table with trembling hands.
    “You have eighteen minutes,” he said, rising from his seat. He walked across the room and began trudging up the stairs, without another word.
    “Eighteen minutes for what?”
    A moment later Holden was alone in the cellar before a dismantled digital reading device and five books that he had only read digitally. They were lying flat and unopened, but Holden could see that each of them had dollar bills inside. Some of them were large bills. This completely confused him until he opened the first book to where the bill had been resting. Over the face of the president were details written in a sloppy hand about what had been altered on the page the dollar had bookmarked. Holden could only assume that Winston had chosen these from his collection so that he could look up the corresponding versions in The Book and check the digital printing against the original.
    Holden returned the bill to its home and looked over the five titles before reaching for the most perplexing. The book was Winnie the Pooh by A. A. Milne. He flipped to the correct marker and moved quickly with The Book to find the corresponding page. Before searching for the inconsistency, he read the note on the twenty dollar bill that was marking the alteration. In scratchy red handwriting was a simple, yet profound, statement:
     
    “ One word can change the world.”
     
    The difference between the written copy and the digital was one word. Nothing extravagant or even legitimate. Just a single word that had been replaced with another. Holden couldn’t make sense of it. He shook his head, closed the children’s story unhurriedly and moved on to the next. It was a murder mystery novel; wherein many of the pages were lined with dollar bills. Apparently it had been heavily altered. Holden discovered, after only a few pages, that this had been for one reason alone: each of the alterations was the same. A singular revision ran the course of the story. For some unknown reason, the murderer was given a different first name.
    Thus far, everything he had discovered was pointless and unpurposeful. He had been expecting obvious changes and deductions, but he closed each book more confused than before.
    The third book, Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham, was, ironically, the novel in bondage. Holden carefully lifted the tape-coated cover and noticed, with excitement, that it had multiple entries. Each time he looked them up in The Book a phrase had either been altered or removed. On one page, an entire paragraph that seemed garish and unnecessary had been added and then he reached a section where an entire page had been removed - page three-hundred and ninety-nine.
     
    “ I’m a failure,” he murmured, “I’m unfit for the brutality of the struggle of life. All I can do is to stand aside and let the vulgar throng hustle by in their pursuit of the good things.”
    He gave you the impression that to fail was a more delicate, a more exquisite thing, than to succeed. He insinuated that his aloofness was due to distaste for all that was common and low. He talked beautifully of Plato.
    “ I should have thought you’d got through with Plato by now,” said Philip impatiently.
    “ Would you?” he asked, raising his eyebrows.
    He was not inclined to pursue the subject. He had discovered of late the effective dignity of silence.
    “ I don’t see the use of reading the same thing over and over again,” said Philip.