Papyrus

I walled myself in with paper three days ago. I used my old fashioned-blow torch to melt the door of my office shut, and pressed my desk and my chair up against it. I used the last can of real paint I could find to paint the window black. It was the same paint I used to paint my office’s real walls, which I insisted the university keep when they were in the process of replacing the other offices with digital whitewalls. 

Real ink pens, it turns out, are much more useful for picking locks than the flat whitewall pens issued by the university, and my habit of never carrying devices with thorium batteries made me undetectable to the University trackers as I walked into the kitchen  and stole as much food and propane to live in my office-hidout for about two weeks.

1000 sheets of paper can stop a bullet. I have about five times that. It hurts to see paper put to such a destructive use, but it is the one thing I am armed to the teeth with. I am sure the university will have no qualms about destroying it, however. The symbols on it, they insist, are objectively indecipherable, after all.

And while we are on that subject, did you know that I am insane? It’s quite true. After all, I know of no sane men who barricade themselves in offices. The university has given me every opportunity to prevent this from happening - install the whitewalls, donate the paper to the landfill instead of keep it cluttering the university, take the cyanide when asked, and still I didn’t

The students whisper about me being senile and human, a confused biological old teacher of a forgotten age, yet while I concede that I am crazy, I would not call myself confused. I am perfectly lucid, and I know exactly what I am doing and why I am doing it. The university wants me to get rid of the paper, and I do not want to, so I am walling myself in with it.

I do understand the basic idea behind eradicating the paper. It is very old, and is commonly known, old things are bad. Even I, a madman, understand the pain and annoyance of having to feel things and think about them all by yourself. I also understand that ideas are contagious and must be strictly regulated, lest they pool into something big and dangerous. These are elementary concepts, taught in children's posts and uploads. 

But I like the way the paper makes me hurt. I like looking at it, thinking hard about what the words might mean. I strain myself to remember which letters made which sound when we covered the alphabet in a unit in high school, and every once in a while I am able to sound it out: “Ee… I… I lo-ove… you.” or “God… Good.. good bye.” That is why I refused to get rid of the paper the first time the administration asked me.

When that happens the world falls out from under me. I stop having a body. There is no university. There are the tiny ink markings on the page: “I love you,” and “Goodbye.” I cried a lot then. I always cried privately at first, not to get in trouble with the law for disturbing the peace. That has not been the case recently.

That’s why I wouldn’t let them build the new whitewalls. When I first started going insane, I went out and bought an old, expensive typewriter and an old, expensive notebook with an old, expensive pen. I piled them into my office. I scoured the mass dumpsters for shattered pieces of paper from the millions of books donated to the landfill each year. I make sure to keep a corner of my desk piled high with parts of books. I smashed the circuit that controlled the auto-lights and taught myself how to install the kind of bulb-and-switch setup I used in the twenties. My office was perfect then. 

This was all before I realized I was insane. I stayed, and looked at the paper, and got as good as I possibly could at deciphering the symbols. I slept at my desk. I did not eat. Nothing did anything for me. I was alone with the paper, and I learned about it myself. I do not remember what happened to my students. I am sure the digital ones taught themselves the material, for the few humans taking the class, your guess is as good as mine.

When I left my office occasionally to eat (only as much as I needed to get through another set of pages,) I would walk along the digital white roads as the cars drove themselves along with robotic passengers in their backseats, headed to the other buildings on campus.

I ate alone in the cafeteria. The other diners sat happily watching whatever movies the tables came up with that day. No one looked up. No one talked. Not at me, not at each other.

I usually went back to my office and cried.

This carried on. I went, I ate, and I cried. I went, I ate, and I cried. I stopped going back to my office to cry. I did it in the open. The built-in-campus police would escort me back to my office, tell me off for disturbing the peace, and leave me there.

One day, I cried one too many times, and the built-in campus police forced me into the on campus therapist’s building. Therapy was mandatory to repeat offenders of campus law.

In the lobby, I heard yelling: “And so it’s her fault I did that to her. It’s her fault. No matter what they tell me. IT’S HER FAULT. IT IS.”
This went on for a while. When it died down, I heard a mechanical voice.

“I understand the way you’re feeling. It can be difficult when we feel that others are at fault, and nobody believes us.”

The human voice spoke again. There was something wrong with it. Some part of it was missing, some number of undertones made it thin and shallow. I realized that I couldn’t picture the face of the man talking. Any face I conjured felt impossible paired with the voice.

“I’m not crazy, then, right? Right? You agree?”

“Of course, I agree.”

“So then- then- then… You would’ve done… those things too, right? Right?”

The machine started to answer, but the man just kept talking over me.

“I mean, anyone would’ve done it. Anyone! Anyone! ANYONE WOULD’VE DONE IT. ANYONE WOULD’VE I KNOW THEY WOULD’VE!’

This went on for a while. Finally, when the man calmed down, he stumbled out of the therapist's room. His hair was thin, knotted with snarls and  tangles hanging down in uneven clumps. I must have been staring at him, because he said. “You usually come see a therapist?” I started to answer but he quickly said “No, no. I never see you here, but you mustn’t. You mustn’t usually come see her, because I never see you here. No, no. You mustn’t. No, you mustn’t.” I waited for his mumbles to subside.

I tried to ask him: “Does it-”

“Does she, you mean.” he snapped “She’s just as real as you or I and don’t you forget it.”

“Alright, well, does she…” I trailed away while I considered what I was trying to ask. “Does she help?”

“Oh, yes! Therapist is my best friend, really. Therapist is the only one who understands me. She’s the only one who knows that I’m right. She is.”

“But, she’s not… I mean…”

He seemed to know what I was going to say, because a look of horror crossed his face, and he said “You mustn’t think that. No, no, no. She is. I don’t care what you say, she is. So, don’t even say it. Everyone says it, but it’s not true.”

I walked over to the therapist's room. The man followed me, tugging at my sleeve. “Where are you going? Why are you going there? You mustn’t go there. You want to hurt her, I know you do. You want to hurt my therapist. You mustn’t! Please, you mustn’t!” 

I peeked in through the therapist's door. The room was dark, but dimly lit enough that I could tell that there were no people. There wasn’t even any furniture: just four digital white-walls, a digital white-floor, and a digital white-ceiling.

“Therapist?” I asked. The man was woefully silent, but his breathing told me he was on the edge of despair. His hand clasped tightly around my wrist trembled. “What is two plus two?”

The therapist answered almost immediately over a speaker system in a sickly sweet tone of voice: “two plus two is four.”

“Two plus two is five, and you’ll hurt my feelings if you say otherwise.” I said.

“Of course,” said the therapist, “two plus two is five. I apologize for any hurt feelings. What else can I do for you today?”

“One thing,” I asked, and as I asked, the man breathed “No, please, I don’t want to hear her say it. I love her. You mustn’t make her say it. You mustn’t.” And he buried his head in my coat, silently crying.

“One thing,” I repeated, “are you real? That is, are you human?” I felt a sharp tightening in my coat where the man’s face was. He was trying to bite me. 

“While I am here to assist you with anything you need,” said the therapist in a perfectly cool tone “I am not human - I am a super-intelligent language model built to assist humans. If you have any questions about my programming or function, feel free to ask”

The man wailed louder than anything else on the campus. He beat into me with fists that sat on the end of skinny, bony arms. It felt a bit like raindrops bouncing off of my body.

“She is real! She is! She is! Make her tell you she’s real! Make her say it! She’ll say she’s real if you tell her you want her to be! You’ve ruined her! You ruined my therapist! My only friend! You must make her say she’s real! Make her! Make her! Make her! You must! You must make her You must!”

I walked out of the building with the man kicking and screaming “You must! You must! YOU MUST!” while clutching my ankle. He was lighter than a feather. Eventually I managed to kick him off. He lay quivering on the ground where I left him.

***

Outside, I ran into one of my colleagues. If he was surprised at seeing me for the first time in days and days, he didn’t show it. I had to tap him on the shoulder to get his attention.

“Can you believe,” I said “that I just met a man who was utterly convinced that the Campus Therapist was a real human being?” My colleague looked at me blankly, so I continued: “He had a fit when I showed him that she wasn’t!” My colleague’s expression shifted from blank to quizzical.

“Therapist is real.” He laughed, and walked away, staring at the footstep path the digital-whiteroad set for him.

He thought she was real. He was the same as the man! He believed that the therapist was a real, living breathing human! For all I knew, the rest of the campus might! The tears came again, but not the ones that came when I went to the dining hall. They were the tears that came with I love you and goodbye. They were the tears that made everything go away. They were the tears that left me alone with the symbols on the paper.

I imagined that my tears were ink, and that as they fell on the white roads that they splattered into shapes that told stories about worlds where human beings did everything, controlled everything, made everything. I imagined that they told stories of worlds where humans could use feelings like tools and build things with them, and where thinking about things didn’t hurt quite so much.

I imagined that my tears told stories about worlds where other humans had conversations with me about things that we liked. I imagined they told stories about tables without screens on them, and in order for you to enjoy a meal you would have to think about how the food tasted. I imagined they told stories about worlds where I love you and goodbye were still things people said.

I was seized by this explosion of imagination. I realized a way to make that world real, a way to turn my tears into ink.

I rushed to the library, and wriggled the handle of the door to the Artifact section, the only place in the entire university with paper. It was locked, but I picked it easily with my pen. There were stacks of it behind a glass case with a plaque proclaiming it obscure technology used by ancient civilizations. I piled stacks of paper into the door and rushed back to my office, piling the paper against the door. Then I ran back to the library and got more paper. Barricade. Library. More paper. Barricade. Library. More paper. Eventually there was enough. 

I ran to the administration building and opened the door. I’d never been in the administration building, mostly because there was no use for humans in it. The rows and rows of circuitry stretched for the entire building on all seventeen floors. There were no windows, but I noticed as I was closing the door that night had fallen without my realizing. I wondered what night would look like without glowing whiteroads all over campus.

I made my way up to the 17th floor and found the power core room, which was locked, but I didn’t even need to pick it. The door broke off of the door frame as soon as I turned the door handle. I guess they never tested it on real humans. The power core was a tiny chip that stuck halfway out of a black podium in the middle of the room. I picked it up and placed it delicately between my index, middle, and thumb, and while I felt a scream rising, rising, rising  in my lungs I also felt millions of sheets of cool, pearl-white paper raining down through my mind.

The administration building went dark. It was pitch black. I felt my way down the steps not caring if I fell and broke my neck. The campus was quiet and black when I emerged from the door. I heard groups of students crowding in the dorm lawns to ogle at whatever the bright things in the sky were. A single red light spun round and round at the campus security building. I walked back to my office, shut the door, blowtorched the handle, and barricaded it with paper.

The booming voices came soon. We know it was you who destroyed the power core, and there are other ways out of this than bullets, and alright that’s it, get ready. 

And so, here I am, waiting for the bullets to come, knowing I alone brought back the stars.