Understanding

It was a hard concept to grasp when I was a child. My father often told me about it, how they had all gone mad. I could hardly imagine a society so complex, so advanced. As a child, I was amazed my father could control fire. The thought of houses reaching the sky and humans made of metal was completely dizzying. But now I could see it was true. The entire land was litered with humungous heaps of twisted metal and stone. A few of these piles still rose up into the sky, like hulking, hollow trees. Buildings, the words raced through my head. And streets. I had seen pictures and heard stories since I was a small child. I can still remember my favorite picture. It was a towering building, hovering above all the others. The Sears Tower, I believe it was called. How many times had I climbed the trees and yelled down to my father, "Look daddy, I'm on top of the Sears Tower." But even a child's imagination fell short when compared to the monsters that lay in ruin before me.

As I walked among the rubble, I tried to imagine how amazing and advanced this society must have been. Almost perfect. I shuddered. Almost perfect, now reduced to ashes. How could a society advance so much, and then completely destroy itself? It scares me so much I almost turn around and run back home, to the safety of my village. But curosity still has me in its grip. Ahead, I see a small building, almost untouched by the devastation around it. While broken windows and crumbled stones littered the walls, it was still sturdy, almost inviting. Over the broken street, I make my way toward the building. Nearer now, I can make out the worn letters engraved above the doorway. LIB ARY. "Lib Ary," I read aloud. "What was that?" I search my mind, trying to remember. My mind is still racing as I walk through the vacant doorway. The room rises up in front of me, much larger than I had expected to fit in the shell I had seen from outside. "Library!" I shout. My voice rushes through the long silent room, as if greeting every book on every shelf. The echo comes back, "Read me!" But even before the echo reaches my ears, I already have a book in my hand. I pull it off the shelf, peering through the fresh stirred dust. My excitement is unbearable. There were so few books for me to read back home. In fact, until my eyes gazed unbelieving into this room, I had seen less than 100 books in my life. But my excitement slowly dies as the pages crumble in my hands. "No!" I throw the book aside and grab another. Hoping, I slowly open it. A few words remain on the first page. " of two Cit by ar s D " Slowly, I turn the page, dreaming of words unworn by the cruelty of time. Again my heart breaks as the page falls to pieces.

I close the book and sadly set it back on the shelf. Off I wander, trying different shelves and different books. Tears come to my eyes as every book acts the part of a murderer to my hopes of finding just one to read. Slowly the shelves dwindle in numbers, and the wall seem closer. But even the hours spent searching seem only minutes. So many books destroyed in so little time.

Finally it ends and the back wall looms in front of me. I turn around and look back past the shelves and shelves of broken dreams. All this beauty and art, destroyed by time. But something catches my eye. Down the wall, there is a small opening, a door! And right beyond it a window. Through it, I see a large table, littered with books. The walls around it are filled. I quickly open the door and almost run to the table. Hesitant, I reach for the nearest book, scared to find these as tattered as the rest. But there is a gleam of hope. These books are not covered with dust like the rest of the library. The whole room seemed almost sterile. Daring to hope, I open the book. Words! Hundreds of words! The pages seem to turn themselves. I fly through the book, hardly stopping to read. I am in such awe of finding a whole book, let alone a whole room of them. With a childish glee, I dance from book to book. From the table to the wall and back again. My eyes dart through the books, seeing nothing but words. Right now I could care less about what they say. All I cared about was the fact that I had found new books.

As I moved from one wall to the next, my senses were abruptly brought to a stand still. Sitting in the far corner was a small child. I drop the book in my left hand to the floor and slowly move towards it. Funny, I can't tell if it is a girl or a boy. There is something different about it. Closer, I can see the face. The head is tilted forward, eyes open. Tattered patches of hair fall across the right side of the face, almost hiding a puzzled expression. Something about the expression catches my attention. Although lifeless, there seems to be a sense of confusion burned into the face. Then something else. Between the patches of hair, there is a glimmer. Metal? Slowly it sinks in. This is one of the metal humans, a mechanical man. But how could something like this die? Moving nearer to the other wall, I spot a book in the mechanical man's hand. This book is not like the other books in the room. The others are well kept and untorn. I take the book from its hand. Every page is worn and tattered. The pages are torn and faded beyond recognition. It is as if they have been turned thousands of times in utter frustration. Lying on the ground next to the mechanical man are a few pages torn completely out of the book. I pick one up. It is even worse than the others. It seems to have been turned over in the mechanical man's hands millions of times. I pick up another. Small dents litter the edges. Held in such frustration, the fingers had left their marks on the page. There are a few more spread around the mechanical man, some in stacks, others crumpled up and thrown to the side.

Looking back at the mechanical man, my eyes again focus on his face. It seems frozen in a moment of confusion, bewilderment, and frustration. What was it that confused him so? I search the pages, hoping for a clue to what was so hard for him to understand. What was so important for him to learn that he spent his dying hours trying to comprehend it? But the pages left only empty clues. For hours I searched through the book, hoping time would make the past clearer. But noting came of it. I could almost feel the mechanical man's frustration. As my eyes started to droop, I gathered up all the pages and closed them into the book. Maybe another day would shed some light on the books secrets. Taking one long glance at the mechanical man, I am ready to leave. The one thing that eluded him remains hidden from my eyes as well. I want so much to be able to open the book and answer every single question the mechanical man had. Even if he couldn't understand my anymore, I wanted the knowledge to ring through his once hearing ears.

But there was nothing to tell him. His quest for understanding had completely ereased every trace of that which he strived to know. Saddened, I turn to leave, clasping the book in my hand. But before I reach the door, I turn to look at the mechanical man one last time. My eyes are no longer drawn to his face. Instead, they come to rest on his empty hands. How could I so easily take from him the one thing he had tried so hard to understand? The book grew heavy in my hand. I looked at it and back at him. I wanted so much to know what it had once contained, but something inside told me I already knew. It was something that all humans could understand, but the mechanical man never could. I walked back across the room and placed the book back in the mechanical man's hand. "I truly hope you find what you are looking for," I said, and turned and walked out of the library.