I’m not sure who originally said it, but print is dead.  I could probably get one of our fact-checkers to do the research and give me a name/date to cite, but those guys have enough on their plates as is; I’d feel like a real dick tagging my extraneous assignments on to their already astronomical workload, they hardly get to see their families as is! Like myself, they are of a dying breed, the last of the hardcover encyclopedia men.  I’m not talking about the door-to-door shysters with their multi-volume tomes rolling behind them in Radio Flyers, no, those guys bit the dust ages ago; they weren’t efficient enough for modern society.  Modern efficiency meant a single reference book you wouldn’t break the bank or your back over, but now even that’s becoming obsolete.  People are tired of having to actually pay for a physical product that will eat up precious space on their otherwise luxurious looking Pier 1 Shelves.

Because of this, free online digital information databases, with their glut of instantly accessible “Facts” and “Figures,” have singlehandedly driven us once great Encyclopedia Barons to the unemployment offices.

“Good Riddance!” I’ve heard some declare, though they’re usually the same ones who get their news of the world from biased underground blogger sites, so I don’t take their jeers too personally.  Unfortunately, these people have become the majority now, making it harder and harder to ignore them.  It’s like being trapped amidst a huge flock of lemmings being led to their own demise (in this case intellectually) by a bunch of sensationalist internet pundits.

I wish I could just dismiss it all as being a harmless resurgence of yellow journalism, but these guys are out for blood!  They’re claiming that they, with their community-edited, donation-based servers, can fairly offer you “all the facts” we so-called “encyclopedia suits” have apparently been “keeping from you.”  Of course, they offer few, if any actual citations for any of these so-called “facts,” allowing articles to be printed with merely a “citation needed” marker on them.

What scares me is the fact (no pun intended) that the American public can simply accept this blatant oversight without raising a single question.  I’ve lost many a night’s sleep over this as we near the end of our 47^th and final edition of the Encyclopedia America; a once proud and yearly publication.  I’ve been with the company since the beginning, back when I still had a loving wife and a full head of hair.  The bigwigs promised me a future here in the encyclopedia biz, and for the first few decades, when promotion after promotion was being thrown my way, I certainly couldn’t disagree.  Now though I find myself sitting atop this crumbling corporate ladder, looking down at the ever-changing world below me and feeling much like a walking anachronism.

“You can’t be an anachronism,” my secretary informs me.

“And why is that?” I ask.

“Because,” she says, “an anachronism’s an abbreviation for a group of words.”

“An abbreviation for a group of words!”  Can you believe it?  We’re running an institution for the philanthropic retention of societal learnings and my secretary actually thinks an anachronism is a group of words! I swear, if we hadn’t already canned the human resources department I’d be down there right now giving Jerry a piece of my mind.  I can tell this is his handiwork because despite her lack of qualifications, my secretary has the body of an Olympic gymnast.  She’s one of the dozens of under-qualified, oversexed beauty queens we now have on the payroll thanks to Jerry’s uncontrollable libido. They make up the majority of our 47^th and final staff here at the Encyclopedia, and while it’s certainly the most attractive staff we’ve had in years, I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t a constant source of frustration in my life.

Because of this I usually spend my office hours holed up in one of our supply closets reading through back issues.  Today I picked up a copy from 1986.  It was the height of Reaganomics and our sales couldn’t have been better, the front cover even said so its self.  “Most Trusted Reference Guide in Entire Northern Hemisphere,” it boasted.  Back then we didn’t have time for modesty, everything was moving too fast.  The cold war was creating dozens of new terms each day and we had to scramble to keep up.  Every time we’d finish an entry on a third-world country it’d change ownership and we’d have to start all over again.  Somehow though I still found time to teach on the side. Nothing special, just a community college gig, but it gave me this feeling like I was pushing the youth of America, or at least Jefferson County, in the right direction.  How the fuck was I to know that one of my own students would become the first internet database tycoon?

2

“Where’s all the information going to be stored?”  I ask my fraternity brother Frankie Holloway over a round of martinis at the Harvard Club.  Outside the Puerto Rican Day Parade rages on, causing the tables, chairs, and even chandeliers to rattle violently with each Reggaeton downbeat.  DOO-ba-DOOMP-ba, DOO-ba-DOOMP-ba, DOO-ba-DOOMP-ba, etc. Frank takes another drag of his cigarette and smiles.  “I’m sure they’ve got top-of-the-line servers and round-the-clock tech support backing everything up.”

“But what if something should happen?  They don’t have anything written down on paper, it’s all digital!  What if . . . ”

“Now you’re just being paranoid, can’t you just accept retirement with some dignity like the rest of us?”

Frank has no right to talk to me about retirement.  He’d found success on Wall Street within months of our graduation and reached total financial security before his forty-fifth birthday.  Retirement for him was a much different beast than it would be for me.  The only legacy he had to worry about was a largely overlooked bronze plaque hanging in the far corner of the trading room floor.  Me, I’ve got centuries worth of information to protect.  My wife’s analyst used to call this “Delusions of Grandeur,” but she couldn’t have been further off.  Had she consulted the Encyclopedia America she would have known better.

“Hey, take a look at this!” Frank says, pointing to the TV above the bar.  Its image is shakey from all the commotion outside but I recognize the face on it immediately.  “Wasn’t that a student of yours?” Frankie asks.  I know exactly where he’s going with this and already can’t stand it.  “Yeah,” I reply weakly, “Manny Wilfred, Class of ’88.”  Frank shoots me this real smug grin from across the table and goes back to watching the tube.  “You know,” he says, “it says here he’s the CEO and owner of . . . No, it can’t be!”

I roll my eyes impatiently.  Seeing this, Frank decides to change gears.  “Here” he says, sliding a dog-eared copy of the Times book review across the table.  “I was saving this for you.”  There on the last page was a half-paragraph mini blurb about the Encyclopedia America closing its doors – our obituary.  “Encyclopedia goes way of almanac,” it proclaimed, and suddenly I no longer have the strength to read on.  “Well,” I say, handing the paper back to Frank, “At least it’s in print.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means it can be trusted.”

“You know, people used to say the exact opposite.”

“Yeah, well, the internet’s changed that.”

“Has it?”

Before I can answer the music outside comes to a dramatic halt, and for the first time all morning we can hear the TV.  “KNOWLEDGE.COM TO HOLD FIRST PUBLIC STOCK OFFERING NEXT WEEK” it blares through its tiny speakers. All around the room dormant businessmen spring to life and whip out their cellular phones.  Within seconds the room is filled with a chorus of 40-something CEOs shouting: “BUY! BUY!! BUY!!!” I can practically smell the desperation.

“Guess this means your boy’s coming to town” Frank says as he lights another cigarette.  There’s supposed to be a law prohibiting him from doing this, but when you’re as rich as he is you’re above such things.

“Yeah,” I reply, “I guess it does . . .”

“You want me to arrange a reunion?”

“How do you propose to do that?”

“You forget,” he says, “all public auctions are now being held at the Frank Holloway Memorial Conference Center.”

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