Read The Book for Free Online Page A

too vulnerable, Holden released her early, walked gently back to the exit door without saying goodbye and left her standing there, bewildered and bewitched.
    Instead of returning home, Holden stepped onto the first bus he saw and found himself riding into the city. The bustling chaos of the weekend morning was soothing and it floated him away from his dramatic over-thinking. He looked out the window and watched as the buildings raced by. Then the park. And then the people. When the bus came to a stop outside the Art Institute, a spark of genius burned his brain and he looked around to find the map for the bus. It was heading toward the Museum of Science and Industry. Precisely where he needed to go.
    The only other time Holden had seen a real book, a complete book, intact, it had been beneath a thick layer of glass at the Museum of Science and Industry when he was a teenager. Books had been rare if not completely extinct for over fifty years. The Great Recycling had taken care of that. Holden remembered enjoying the eminence of the book much more than those in his class. Most, if not all, looked upon it with disdain, unable to believe how insensitive to the earth their forefathers had been; raping trees to make paper and using paper to write fluffy fiction. The image of a man reading a book on a park bench, flipping the pages over and over, was akin to a savage Neanderthal tearing the flesh from an animal and devouring it over the sheer face of a cliff. Holden didn’t seem to care that mother earth had been raped. He was told to care. He supposed he was supposed to care, but he didn’t. If breaking trees down in order to communicate was all they’d had available, with their limited technology, then they did the best with what they had. The stories weren’t any different from that time and, in fact, when Holden would read them on his copy of The Book, he preferred reading things that most people wouldn’t enjoy. Digital and pre-digital work was easy to transition through because it had the same dull, green background. The same black text. The same simple margins and flickered movement between pages. It was fun reading pre-digital work because those authors hadn’t seen his world and he hadn’t seen theirs. It was his way to travel through time. To view the past through someone else’s written eyes.
    Holden left the bus with a bad taste in his mouth and had to spit. Who had given the Editors of the Publishing House the right to silence someone who couldn’t be there to defend their work? These Editors were cowards, whoever they were. Holden was so worked up about it, he couldn’t move from the bus station. He stood outside the pillars of the museum and cracked the knuckles on his right fist. He was determined to find an original copy of the manuscript, The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. He had to find it. The story seemed to call to him. It beckoned from across fields of pixeled black text and digitized landscapes in thirty-six hues of gray.
    In a gust of wind, Holden realized that, for the first time in years, he was no longer lost. How could it be that, in these hours when he was the most misplaced he had been in his entire life, he no longer felt lost? Such emotions were impossible to decipher. It was similar to waking abruptly from a dream. Who was he, again? Where was he? What time was it? Hell, what day was it? Regardless of the unanswered questions, he could be sure of one thing – he was awake. The only questions that remained were: what world had Holden been so anxiously sleeping in and what world had he woken into?
    The walls in the Hall of Publishing and Media were pristine white and resonating with harmonious jingles that resounded when patrons entered the welcoming alcove. Holden ignored the robotic voice that rang out an invitation from some hidden speaker. His face was blank and his eyes were unblinking as he strode forward, almost floating, with articulated steps that were both precise and