Sixty Months Ago

The year was 2021. Cincinnatians had been cooped up due to a viral epidemic, all communication and discourse had been relegated to the primitive electronic devices common to that time period. These allowed only simplistic messages: bereft of nuance, subject to corporate surveillance, and filtered to represent the worst of humankind’s vitriol toward itself. Shut up in their homes, it was like viewing the world through the wrong end of the telescope: small, dark, and distorted. People cried out for a change.

In the nick of time, Jojo Gutenberg introduced her new invention, the Book, or Buch as it was called back then. The people were amazed. Virtually indestructible, it could store information 100 to 500 times as long as stone age technology such as floating-gate transistors. The permanence invited close examination, repeated scrutiny, and distribution for discussion and comment. Character limits were right out: it was not uncommon for single volumes to contain half a million. Historians now point back to this innovation as the moment that planted the seed for a slow-blooming but ultimately inevitable new age of enlightened civil discourse. It took a rare eye to spot the subtle undercurrents in those early days, but those who read the signs rejoiced. A short while later, on the 14th of August in that same year, Joy and Matt’s Books opened on Vine Street.