Post
"He burned our libraries. Why did he do that? It's so destructive. Can you think of anything more evil?"
"I can, child. There is something worse than burning a library."
"How!"
"It happened long ago, this was a time when books were not rare as they are today. Everyone had hundereds of books."
"Hundreds! No!"
"Thousands."
"Oh!"
"So, the new kings realized they couldn't possibly destroy all of the books. They would always miss a few."
"What did they do?"
1/
"They started publishing books of their own. Opened many printing presses & many paper mills. They made books even more common. They even gave most of these new books away for free."
"I don't understand. How could making even more books be worse than burning them?"
"Think about it."
The child was lost in thought for a time as she repaired the sail. "Were the books all propaganda?"
"Yes. Yes, many of them were, but most of them were not."
"Then how did it work?"
2/
She thought some more. "But, you still had the old books!"
"And hardly anyone could find them. No one could tell the old books from the new, and the new books were ... they were not written by people. They were created by a mechanical process that allowed one to feed a machine several thousand books, and produce new ones, endless variations in which the real stories would be lost. None of them quite right, none of them... whole."
"I think I see now. That is awful."
"It was, child. It was."
3/3
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