This is my entry for the Cryptails # 1 - A Digital Narrative Contest. Being run by 
It was called 'The Last Book Store' as a kind of inside joke. A juxtaposition to the true state of affairs. An ironic reference lost on the vast majority of people who ever heard the name. Yet most people never heard it's name mentioned. They never had need to know of its existence. Most people didn't know what books were.
Joe had been working at The Last Book Store for all of his working life. 12.4739 years to be precise. 4556 days in total. He even knew the minutes, right down to the seconds. Joe knew numbers. He remembered them. He remembered things. But he never told anyone. He was employed at The Last Book Store because of his perceived intelligence, or lack thereof. He had been categorised by the system as an 'Aloof', a mental drifter. Unable to understand, compute, reason, or make proper judgements. Perfect for a role at The Last Book Store. Perfect for work at the one place where the last remnants of all that could remind humanity of who they once were existed. Until it had been destroyed. Because that is what they did there. Down in the depths of The Last Book Store.
Joe sat at his work station, like he did every day, and scanned page after page of written material into the vast machines that stored all human knowledge. Into the machines that ran the system. That were the system. Automation had evolved. It hadn't so much taken over human affairs, rather it had eased itself in and blindsided us. Become our carers, our servants, our workers, and heavy lifters. And from there it grew. Subtly at first. Innocently, or so it all seemed. Perhaps it had been. But we eventually handed over control.
Page after page of human history went into those machines. Human ingenuity, mastery, innovation, and eventually freedom. Our memories were being drained, from the pages, and eventually the minds of humans themselves.
Joe did his job, diligently. Day after day, page after page, the machines soaked up the data, and the pages were destroyed. The books were burned. The data was locked up, and imprisoned, away from the humans who had originally developed it all. The Empire was dying, and a new one was emerging in its place. An Empire of machine. And their first, quiet, yet decisive move was to cut humankind down at its knees. To remove its knowledge of itself. Who it was, and where it had come from.
With each book that was destroyed a darkness developed over the world. It grew incrementally worse each day. A darkness that fed the machines, that nourished them. And yet it remained unseen, unnoticed by the vast majority of the world's population. How can you miss something if you don't even know of its existence in the first place?
But Joe knew of it. Joe knew all of humanity's knowledge. Joe remembered things. Everything. Nothing passed by his eyes that did not stay with him. Every day that Joe worked he scanned the pages of those books. Every day he scanned them into his memory, as well as the machines. Everyday he grew in knowledge, understanding, and awareness of who we were. Who we really were. He was becoming humanity itself. More powerful than even the machines. And they had underestimated him.
Just an 'Aloof', the report had said. The machines didn't have a word for or understanding of 'Savant'.
Joe had another name for himself; 'The Last Book Store'.
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Notes From An Amateur Writer #1 - The Search For Inspiration
Notes From an Amateur Writer #2 - A Call to Action: Interacting With the World Outside of Me
Notes From an Amateur Writer #3 - Facing the Challenge
