The Little Red Book

“Beep! This is your final attempt. Failure will result in a total reset.” 

A woman's sinister voice blasts out over the town and reverberates in my jaw. I don’t know what it is about her, but she doesn’t sound human to me. The mechanical voice exploded from the top of the looming black tower. Its exterior is so dark that it steals all of the sunlight around it. I feel the warmth drain from my face as I stand there gawking at it. A long ominous shadow hangs over the shanty wood buildings making up this pathetic town square. Ahead of me is a large black door at the tower’s base. It’s surrounded by flowers and household items placed neatly around it. Everyone around me is huddled up and whispering, I feel like I’m at a funeral. I can’t take my eyes off of the black door beckoning me to come inside. I look for any handles or knobs on it and find none. “Get over here Samuel, now” a gruff voice calls over to me from a small leaning shack just a few paces from the tower. I turn around and see a skinny old man leaning up against the doorframe. It looks like he’s holding the whole shack upright from my angle. I look at Hadley, the beautiful woman standing next to me, who brought me to town after casually telling me that she’s my wife, and oh, that I've been ‘reset’ – whatever the hell that means. Hadley nods approvingly and we walk through the red dirt towards the shack. I look up again at the old man and notice that he’s holding a small red book in his wrinkly hand. “What is going on here?” I ask him, trying to force calm into my voice by dropping it lower – It didn’t work.  

He looks at me with deep-set eyes giving him a grave expression across his face. “Do you know who I am?” 

I shake my head and glance back up at the tower again. The four hollowed out vents at the top look like empty eye sockets – the tower is soulless.

“Come inside, both of you.” 

“Beep! This is your final attempt. Failure will result in a total reset.” 

The alarm and voice shake the small building and dust flurries down over our heads. The inside of the shack smells like wood and stale urine. I want to turn around and walk right back out, but I stand there utterly perplexed by the walls covered in black tally marks and names. It looks like someone has been a prisoner inside here and started tallying as time passed until they got bored and eventually started naming the moments. The old man’s hand shakes as it scratches another tally mark in section number 13 written at the top. Section 12 next to it has hundreds of tallies and the name Clint written underneath. Hadley fidgets nervously as we watch him scratch a big ‘x’ over his name. Resting in a corner of the room is an opened wooden chest with a rusty padlock dangling from it. Inside are several red books neatly stacked. Two books have the names Cole and Roger written across their covers. The old man’s eyes catch mine and he quickly tosses the book in his hand inside the chest before locking it. “I’m John the recorder and your name is Samuel if you haven’t gathered that already.” 

“What happened to m—?” 

“Shut up and listen,” he grumbles. “You’ve been reset by the tower and Clint’s gone. The code formula you have been working on these past moons obviously didn’t work.” 

“Formula for what code?” 

He nods to the wall behind me. The wall is covered in numbers and names, Some of them starting to fade. One of the formulas pull me in closer “xn = xn−1 + xn−2.” I may not remember who I am, but I can tell that I used to like this coding stuff. Next to it are a list of names written under the word coders. I touch my name sitting right underneath Clint’s and think about the woman I saw crying earlier at the tower door. 

“Samuel, does this equation mean anything to you? Hadley asks, walking up next to me. John joins us. I can smell his stale breath as he talks, “You and Clint came up with this formula right after Roger passed through the door. The tower reset my son that night and I’m afraid he couldn’t find his old self again. He ended his life a few moons later.” John stands there awkwardly next to us in silence.

Hadley clears her throat, “Samuel check to see if you wrote some of this stuff down in your red book. Maybe it can help you catch up to speed.” 

“Beep! This is your final attempt. Failure will result in a total reset.” 

“I don’t have a red book” I explain, nervously patting down my pants and shirt. My hand brushes against something small and round lying in my shirt pocket and I lightly press against it curiously. I watch John’s grumpy face instantly transform. “What is it?” he asks. I can hear the malicious tone in his voice and decide it’s best to carry on the act. Something about him changed and my gut tells me to get the hell out of there. Hadley catches the look as well and immediately turns towards me grabbing my hand, “He probably left it out in our cabin, John. I’ll make sure he gets it and reads through the tower laws and his notes before sending him here to work with you tomorrow. 

“Beep! This is your final attempt. Failure will result in a total reset.” 

We leave the shack as John makes another tally on the wall. The crowd of people anxiously gather around us. “Is it true that the tower reset you? Have you solved the code?” I hear several of them ask in a hushed tone. I open my mouth to respond, but Hadley squeezes my hand and cuts in. “Samuel and John spoke. They have a plan,” she says. “You all go home now and look through your red books tonight to see if there’s anything in there that you think can help him.” Despair marks their faces. They have have seen coders go through that black door and none have returned. The biggest one being, why should anyone base their lives off of what they read out of a little red book. Hadley leads me to our cabin outside of the town. The door swings open as we arrive and I hold Hadley back as I peak inside at all of the turned over furniture and loose papers on the floor. “Someone has been here looking for something.” I whisper to her. I pull her inside the small space and we sit on the bed looking down at the overturned chest with clothes spilling out of it. “Do you think they looking for your red book?” Hadley asks choking back tears. I reach in my pocket and pull out a tiny ball of paper and hold it in front of her eyes. 

“I think they may have been looking for something even smaller.” 

“Samuel, this paper is the same paper from our red books. We’re not allowed to let anyone else into our books or tear anything out.” 

“What do you mean?” 

“I mean. There are a few rules the tower bid us follow since we first arrived here many moons ago. These books are our guides: They tell us who we are, what we do, and how to live in order to serve the tower.” I feel my head shaking in disbelief. 

“Why do you let a little red book and that tower out there decide your fate?” I ask. I feel a rage I haven’t felt before build inside of me.

She holds my face in her hands and looks at me with her green eyes filled with tears. 

“We have known no other way, Samuel. We rely on hope that someday, the tower will give us the next answer for our lives when we find the code.” 

“Well I can’t find this code without the help of all the other coders. I need to see what they’ve seen. I need my book to undersatnd what I’ve seen.”

Hadley shakes her head. “There’s too much risk. Folks say that the tower is always watching us. It’s eyes are everywhere.”  

I can see the fear and pleading in her eyes. I pause from unrolling the note and look out into the forest surrounding the cabin. An unsettling feeling washes over me as I think about the hollow eyes at the top of the tower. I roll it back up and tuck it into my pocket and glance over at her weerily. 

“Alright, let’s wait until it’s dark out.” 

“Beep! This is your final attempt. Failure will result in a total reset.” 

The voice blasts through the thick night air as we sit at the table eating stew from the vegetables in Hadley’s garden. We haven’t talked much since the note and the silence beginning to wear on me. 

“What was I like before?” I ask her between slurps. 

Hadley stares across the table at me with longing in her eyes. 

“You were truly wonderful. You were very smart, kind, and had a big heart that loved to serve everyone in this town.” 

I sit there and think about the man she described. Can I be that man again? Will I need my red book to tell me who to be? 

“Hadley, we have to find my red book,” I say. “Do you know anywhere else it could be?”

“I have looked everywhere that you keep it at night. You carry it around with you during the day like the rest of us in town,” she says.

“It was daylight when you found me. That means someone must have taken my book from me when I was still unconscious from the reset. But why would they rummage through our hom–” An idea pops up into my head. 

“What is it?” Hadley asks, seeing my eyes widen.

“Unless, they truly were looking for this.” I reach in my pocket and pull out the balled up note shaking it at her.

Hadley scoots back her chair and pulls me to over between the bed and the wall. We both crouch down and I unroll it in between us. Written in barely legible handwriting is the message. 

There are 14 of us. 

“Samuel, this is your handwriting. Why would you write something like this and then tear it out?” Hadley asks. I look at her confused at the words I had written. 

“And why would I say there are 14 coders? It’s clear from the list of names and from the formulas on the wall that we all understood that there are only 13 coders. John is lying to us.”

“But, why? Asks Hadley, “He believes in the red books and reveres the tower the most.” 

“Maybe he aims to keep it this way forever if he can help it.” I say squeezing the note in my fist. 

“Beep! This is your final attempt. Failure will result in a total reset.” 

“Wooooop! Wooooop! The door is now open. You have one attempt.” 

Hadley looks at me in horror – the blood rushing from her face.

“This isn’t right. The door has never opened this early!” she crambles to her bedside and pulls out her red book. I watch Hadley flip through the pages rapidly scanning for an explaination. 

“This doesn’t make sense!” 

“What is going on, Hadley, look at me?”  

“The tower – the tower knows something. It – it isn’t giving us any time to figure it out!” she yells. “You’ve always had enough time to come up with a new formula.” 

A wave of calmness pours over me as I watch at Hadley laying on the bed panicking. The note crinkles as I roll it back and forth between my fingertips thinking about that list of names and the red books I saw in the shack. 

“We need to go back to the shack.” I say. 

“Now?” 

“Right now. I need to get a good hard look at those books.” 

“John won’t let you near those books. He won’t break the rules for anyone. He truly believes the tower will serve justice for any wrongs.” Hadley says, looking over at me with concern.

“Look, if this is our last chance at ending this relentless cycle of death and resetting, we’re going to have to do something new that the old man probably won’t agree to. Do you want to leave this life of fear and waiting behind?”

“You know I do, Samuel.”

“Well then this is our moment.”

“Beep! This is your final attempt. Failure will result in a total reset.” 

The fires around town light up the town as we approach it from the forest. We watch as a crowd gathers in the middle of the square under the tower. Everyone is frantic and hugging each other closely. The door to the tower is gone and looks like a gaping mouth swallowing all of the flickering light. Something inside me stirs as I look at it – I can feel it calling me. I nod at Hadley and she quietly runs into town with the red book in her hand. I sneak around the rotting buildings and make my way to behind the shack. I take extra care not to hurt myself with the hatchet in my hand. I peer inside the window and see John shuffling around making his usual marks. Hadley’s voice bursts over the crowd as she begins yelling at them. “Who stole my husband’s red book? You know the law!” I’m crouched under the windowsill of the shack smirking – she really can turn on the emotions when she wants to. The door screeches open and I hear John shuffle out of the shack towards the crowd. I sneak around to the door and glance over at Hadley to make sure she sees me. 

I wait for her scream. The moment a sound escapes her lips, I swing the hatchet at the rusty lock hanging on the chest. It easily snaps off and hits the floor with a loud thud. I check outside the window before pulling out the red books. I lay them out across the floor in front of me, matching their names with the ones on the wall. I pause at the last book at the bottom of the chest. It isn’t labeled. I open it up and find the sentence written in perfect writing at the top of the page, “Greetings from the Tower. Your name is Samuel.” That sneaky old devil stole my book. I quickly turn to the notes section and find my handwriting. I find the formula that I wrote on the shack wall and stare at the series of numbers beneath it. 

0 1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55 89 144  

“Beep! This is your final attempt. Failure will result in a total reset.” 

Something inside my head clicks on and I feel the numbers flooding in and making their way into the formula. I held up my book to the wall and this time I use 14 as my number. I let a soft yell of excitement out! It all makes sense. My heart is racing and I can feel the sweat beads forming above my upper lip. “We were always off by one number because we were convinced there were only 13 coders.” I kick open the shack door and sprint into the gaping hole at the base of the tower, not caring who sees me. The room is pitch black and freezing.. I strain to see in the darkness but can barely see my own hand in front of my eyes. A pale rectangular blue light blue slowly illuminates the room. I feel my way up towards it towards it and stumble onto a platform. I stare into what looks like a moving picture with light coming up behind it. A small bar blinks in and out above a row of numbers. I stare down at the blinking bar and take a shaky breath, realizing that if I mess this part up, it’s all over. “Are you sure you want to do that?” John’s gruff voice calls from below the platform. 

“If I don’t, the whole town will be reset,” I say not taking my eyes away from the numbers.. 

“If you do this, the life that you and Hadley know will never be the same Samuel. You need to trust me, I know what the tower truly seeks.” 

“How can I trust you when you sent 13 men before me to their deaths and allowed countless others to be reset? And for what? Job security in that god forsaken shack? 

“They’re not dead,” John say Cooley. “You don’t know what sacrifices I’ve made for the tower or even for you.”

His words slapped me in the face. Not dead? But, nobody in town ever saw the coders again after they left their red books at the door that eventually shut them in. 

“It’s time to end this charade you call life and see the truth.” I call down to him.

“So be it.” He replies, sticking his skinny hands into his pockets. 

I push the numbers on the screen 233 and watch as it flashes green. 

A white light instantly floods the room. I squint underneath my hand and see a group of people in white jackets standing behind a clear wall. They are clapping and hugging each other. A few look at me and give me a nod. I look down at the red book shaking in my left hand and realize that I suddenly fear the truth about our existence.