“Do you have your own screen in that bag?”

“Yeah, but—”

“Then go ahead and use it.” Geeze flops back against the padding of his armchair, sending a small cloud of dust into the air. “It’s not like I have anything better to do.”

The smirk on his face tells me what I’m going to find before I type the first word.

NO SEARCH RESULTS FOUND.

Every single time.

I stare at the tablet, then at the heavy book on my lap. When I glance back at Geeze, the superior expression is gone. Instead, the only emotion I can describe in his eyes is sorrow.

“They took those words away, Merriel.”

I shake my head and scoot so I am sitting on the edge of my slightly sunken seat—my knees so close to his that they are almost touching. “Okay, so maybe a few words were removed from the dictionary. There’s a news story every year about what words are added to the online dictionary and which ones are too old and unused to be in it anymore. But a word not being in the dictionary doesn’t pluck it from people’s minds or from their speech or from books or articles or whatever. Just because the word isn’t written down in one particular place doesn’t mean people wouldn’t know about it.”

Yet I can’t shake the doubt that’s creeping through me, because I didn’t know these words. And the book in my hands says they are—or were—real. “And it’s Meri,” I correct. “People call me Meri.”

Geeze leans forward so his elbows are resting on his knees. His eyes—clear and unwavering—are even with mine. “You’re right, Meri, people don’t immediately forget words and ideas. But this started almost seventy years ago. The government created lists of words and banned them from use by anyone who worked in the government. Just a few at a time, but enough to change how people dealt with their work and eventually how they thought about their lives.

“Once that transition was made, the government quietly took those words away from everyone else in the country. No announcement was made. Just one day a bunch of words were suddenly unavailable for searching on tablets and computers. Green taxes were placed on paper goods. Suddenly paper books became far more expensive than electronic ones. A few people complained, but most barely noticed. Bulky school textbooks fell out of use first. That change alone affected the future in hugely important ways. Once the textbooks were gone, print books of every kind were abandoned in favor of electronic ones. Can you guess what happened next?”

His eyes lock on mine and I can’t look away.

“The words vanished from the screen versions of books.” He picks up his tablet and turns the screen around for me to see. The word “VERIFY” is written in block white letters against a background of blue. “Words on paper are forever. But the ones on screens can be altered or removed with just a push of a button.” The word on the screen shimmers as if it is alive. Then, suddenly it blinks away. “And no one even remembers they were ever there.”