“No—they’re Unrankables.” He sighs. The path descends sharply, and cold air swirls around my ankles. “My dad was a doctor, but he refused to accept that a robot could diagnose his patients better than he could. He kept going on about human touch and compassion being elements of healing, and eventually he lost it all… Ah! Here we are.”

We stop in front of a carved wooden door, and he picks the lock.

“That’s so sad,” I say. “Did they send you here?”

“Uh-uh. I’d heard rumors about Keystone, and I ran away when I was ten to see if it was real. Robie found me wandering in the woods, and I begged him to let me in. I couldn’t do nothing any longer, and I agree with my dad. Disconnects are the only ones with the tools to restore balance.”

He opens the door, and we enter a musty library. Endless rows of books tower under carved wood ceilings, and leaded glass windows filter light from an unknown source.

“This is so familiar…” My breath catches in my throat as it hits me. “Are we at Hogwarts?”

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?”