He pauses as I stare at the blank screen. When I finally look back up at him, he says, “People who weren’t part of the government still used the words at first, but when they weren’t used on television or in the news or in anything they read, fewer people came across them. One by one the people who knew the words best died and those who were left started to forget they existed. With no one using the words, kids never had a chance to learn them. And now, seventy years later, it’s as if those words never were used at all.”

I swallow hard. My mind fights to keep up—to see the picture he is painting.

He leans in. “Bit by bit the world changed—like ants moving grains of a mountain from one place to another. The difference is so gradual that no one notices the landscape has changed. Not until it’s too late. They changed everything about our world—they took the words and the ideas that those words define and with it the freedom to make our own choices—and they did it without anyone noticing.”

I shake my head, trying to clear the gray fog of fear. Do I believe Geeze when he says the government eliminated words? The searches I performed and the book I hold say he’s telling the truth. Do I hate that possibility? Of course. Censorship isn’t what our country is supposed to be about.

But I also know that the paper tax was instrumental in spreading the use of renewable energy sources and reducing the country’s reliance on fossil fuels. It was an important step toward battling changing climate patterns as well as reducing our reliance on other countries. Our history teachers have all said it was possibly the most important step our country had taken in decades. It was necessary. All the history books said so.

Another part of my brain whispers, You mean the books that you read on a screen? The books they—whoever they are—can change without anyone knowing about it?

I squirm in my seat, wishing for the first time that I hadn’t come here tonight. That I didn’t know the little that I have come to understand.

I thought I understood how things worked and why. Now . . .

“But why does it matter?” I say to Geeze. “There are other words.”

“Don’t you see?” he presses. “Words have power. They are the way we pass along history and knowledge and thoughts and ideas. Sometimes conflicting ideas about the same subject. Books—real books like the one in your hands—give everyone equal access to those ideas. Limit the words people can see and you limit their power. Limit the words heard on the news and you shrink people’s understanding of the world to what you want them to see.

“Get people focused on other things while you limit their choices in ways they don’t think to complain about. Only so many television channels—that way the ideas in them can be controlled. Only certain artists are allowed to display their work—because others might provoke different thoughts and viewpoints. You limit immigration and say it’s for safety and insist that other countries have made it harder to travel to theirs. Little by little, piece by piece, lives are controlled—minds are controlled—even as people still believe they are free.”