Saturday 13 July 2019

Episode Nine: There are too many books



Nicholas Potts thirst for knowledge knew no bounds, devouring facts and theory, fiction and hypothesis with an insatiable appetite. He was on an upward trajectory, academically and professionally, when he unexpectedly announced to friends and colleagues: ‘there are too many books in the world, all shouting at once. We must have less, control more, so the best voices are heard.’ Unperturbed by people who considered N. Potts to have suffered a psychological breakdown, he set about implementing a plan to reduce and eliminate text and re-establish with one foundation source (i.e. Nicholas Potts): a distillation of all human knowledge, to drown out the noise and focus people’s attention.


The destruction of books, was an onerous task, but made simpler, so Potts thought, by the insider knowledge that the British Library kept a copy of all published works.
And fire, he determined, was the most effective tool for all formats. Unsurprisingly, Potts failed to even light a match in the Reading Room, or the vast vaults of voluminous archives.

He realised his project faced some practical barriers, which needed to be overcome. A recruitment campaign produced only one willing but able disciple, a naïve and impressionable young man, who appeared to both worship and love Potts in equal measure. Such was John Crestfall’s enthusiasm, Potts felt the need to act on his sexual impulses, which were mutually exchanged with Crestfall. However, less time was spent plotting and more time was spent indulging both men’s proclivities. In order to mitigate the impact, Potts decided the solace of love and friendship would enable him to work on the Year Zero text, required to launch the Less is More virtue, for future intellectual enquiry and publication.

As the years passed, technology and age overwhelmed them, and Potts last few years were spent fighting cancer, whilst retired in a quaint English cottage.



Fortunately for Crestfall, he was bequeathed the unfinished scared text, sealed in a box and to be opened after Potts funeral. So, Crestfall, left alone in the depositor’s room, anticipation coursing through his veins, unlocked the metal container and levered out a bulging box of A4 manuscript. This was it, he told himself, the inheritor of his master’s plan, the book to supplant all other books, the text to eradicate all previous text.

He lifted the lid and read the title: A concise encyclopaedia of all human knowledge. Crestfall, turned the page and smiled at the dedication to himself. But the next page was blank, no contents, and the page after that, and the page after that… in fact… every page was blank.


Crestfall, felt the walls close in on him, the despair and disorientation cut like a knife into the decades dedicated to a man who had proved to be a fraud. But it was at this moment, believing his own life an associated deceit, that his past years with the flawed genius, meant only one thing. And so, he took out his pen, went back to the first blank page and hoped one day his voice would be heard above all the others.


END
Simon Marlowe 11th July 2019


Fiction Point Episode Sixteen: A State of Delusion

  Fiction Point Episode Sixteen A State of Delusion All species, throughout the universe, will face existential threats, moments of cath...