Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

“I’d like to provide a demonstration if I may. Here, write the first thing that comes to your mind on this slip of paper. Try not to let anyone see it.”

“Uh, okay. Here you go.”

“Thank you. Now watch this: I’m going to take that paper and burn it, right here. I hope this doesn’t set off the smoke alarm or we’ll be finishing our class outside today! There we go. Now, let me ask you: was any information irreplaceably destroyed just now?”

“Not really, no. The word was ‘elephant.’ I know what I wrote. I can write it again, I guess, or tell people what it was.”

“A not uncommon opinion, I’d wager. Let’s see a show of hands: who agrees that no information was lost? Looks like most of you. And who thinks that it was? Just a few. Why do you disagree with Margaret?”

“Well, usually when a professor phrases a question like that, they’re fishing for an answer and you can pretty easily tell which one they want.”

“Ha! Spoken like someone who’s been around the block a few times and knows how to use that information! Consider this, though–all of you. The exact strokes on that paper will never be made again, as the mental state Margaret had can never exist again. There’s all sorts of information encoded in that which a trained handwriting expert might be able to unlock. That ink–which a chemist could analyze–and that paper–same thing–are also gone. You can’t reconstruct any of it from the ash. And even if Margaret tells you what she wrote–even if she snapped a cell phone picture of it–some of that information would be lost.”

“So what’s the point of all that, then? Never destroy anything?”

“That wouldn’t work out very well, would it? But you’re right; a professor like me would often use this as a segue into a statement like that, and again you’ve used that information well. No, let me just say this: be mindful. Every action that you take brings information into the world, and you must be aware that the act of deleting it or changing its format inevitably results in data loss, in information loss. That information may be worthless junk, and it may not. But only be being mindful can you prevent the loss of something important.”

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AGENT SMYTHE: Hold on, I can hear something. Boost the signal.

[Static, followed by the sound of gag-muffled speech and heavy, panicked breathing]

FAUSTINO: I am going to kill you, my friend. It grieves me, as it often does, but I must not allow my feelings to influence my judgement. I would speak with you now, though, because it is my great hope that you understand my decision. I cannot ask you to agree with it, but I hope you will understand it.”

[Inarticulate gagged speech]

FAUSTINO: You see, I have invested too much of my family’s life and livelihood in my business to allow any threat, no matter how vague or remote, to endure. If I could talk to myself as a younger man, knowing what I do now, perhaps I would urge him to take a different path with his life. But I am in too deeply; the web that I have spun traps me as surely as any prey. Not just myself; it it were myself only, as an old man, perhaps I could not need to take such steps.

[Sharp metallic sound, perhaps a handgun being loaded or cocked]

AGENT DYLE: Should we do anything?

AGENT SMYTHE: We can’t, not without exposing the wire.

FAUSTINO: But it is also my family: my daughters, their children. Many of them have been shielded from the nature of what I do, but to risk destroying them, if not by prosecution then by the public…it is too much to ask of a man whose family is all that remains to him. I won’t–I can’t–let that happen. Like the sin eaters of old, I have gathered all the wickedness of my family into myself, and I will add to that burden to protect them.

[Frantic muffled speech]

FAUSTINO: I’m sorry to ramble on, but that is also the lot of an old man. I hope now that you understand. Perhaps, when you meet the Almighty, you can tell him what I said. I certainly will be in no position to do so when the violent retirement of my kind claims me.

[Suppressed gunshot; static]

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“Professor, I noticed during your speech that you have a religious icon around your neck.”

“Oh? Yes, I like to wear it to remind me of what lays beyond my theories, in the realm of faith that no theorem may penetrate.”

“But how can a man of logic and mathematics say that? Why not rely on them to provide concrete answers to all questions?”

“Ah, clearly you are not very familiar with my friend Kurt Gödel and his incompleteness theorem. Allow me to enlighten you: there will always be problems that cannot be solved, things beyond human comprehension. Logic, mathematics, science…they are all abstractions, conceits, rooted in our human nature. Useful ones, yes. Valuable, and not to be taken lightly or suppressed by the ignorant, not when they have taught us so much and brought us so far. But still, ultimately, limited.”

“Why that religion, then, instead of another?”

“Why any religion? I find it useful to participate in the cultural life of my community, of my people, as well. They have had a place in their home for faith for two thousand years. Even if I feel they were often in error, or led to error–and I do–that is not something to be discarded lightly.”

“But what about abortion, and married priests, and discrimination, and infallibility and all that?”

“You are speaking of doctrine, my friend, not faith. Doctrine is a human construct, laid atop the unknowable of the divine and subject to the same human failings.”

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