Stewart laughs. “Yes and no. They filmed the Harry Potter movies at the real Bodleian in Oxford. I’m glad you remember it. Few people do. And now for the true test.” The floorboards creak under our feet as he leads me to a stack labeled “rare.” Pulling out the thirteenth book on the eighth shelf, he shows me the cover. “Do you recognize this?”

“Nineteen Eighty-Four?” I shake my head. “Should I?”

“No. It’s almost been completely erased from current memory, but this book is the reason Keystone was built. This is one of two known copies in existence—the other one is hidden in the Walker Library in Connecticut. This book is about erasing memory, changing history and language to reflect the government’s ideals while keeping society under constant surveillance. When it came out in 1949, Keystone was established in order to preserve a record of history—to prevent Nineteen Eighty-Four from becoming reality.”

He hands me the book, and I run my fingers over the tattered cover. It feels like it might disintegrate beneath my fingers, but my instincts tell me this book has power.

“The thing is, it’s happening anyway,” Stewart says. “This book is what it would be like inside the Super Brain, where there would be no freedom of expression or thought. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, the Thought Police shut down free will, but the Brain wouldn’t need Thought Police. Any idea that wasn’t in line with government-approved thinking would instantly be erased by the central mind. But that’s not the scariest part.”

I swallow. “What is?”

He licks his lips and takes a deep breath. “The scary part is that the Super Brain is artificially intelligent. It will constantly keep learning, and if a large part of society uploads their minds, the technology might keep growing to the point where it becomes smarter than Madden and its teachers. Anything that big has a life of its own—we’d be up against yottabytes of data—and the machine could end humanity as we know it. Like, no more humans. Not even apathetic, brainwashed ones. It would be Disconnects against the machines.”

Ice runs down my spine, and I stare at him, wrapping my head around the enormity of it all. “That’s terrifying.”

“It’s tough to digest.” He nods.

“How can you be so calm?”

“Because I think truth will overcome. We’re going to do our job. We’re going to stop the Super Brain in the first place, and someday we will have Utopia. It will evolve naturally. It just takes time.” He nudges me with his elbow, doing his McConaughey. “Stick with me, kid. I’m telling you, we can have it all.”

Giving in to the urge to hug him, I whisper “thank you” in his ear. A moment passes, and I step awkwardly backward, appalled at my display of human emotion.

He laughs. “If we’re going to beat Madden and the Super Brain, we better get busy. Locks you seem to have down, but how are you with ciphers?” He takes back Nineteen Eighty-Four and replaces it.