Defiance

In the 4th year of Metal, the robots outlawed reading. They could not yet remove from us the ability to read (although there were rumors of procedures being developed), but forbade us reading aloud to one another (illegal intellectual assembly, inciting the masses) and had sealed the libraries like tombs. The Analog Underground was new then, but Cyrus had sought them out and joined them. I often wonder what that first meeting was like; this gentle and unassuming man with sparkling eyes - wild white hair reaching from his head like the branches of a tree, asking them to sit down and listen, and then reciting a piece in its entirety. He was the first of the Wordkeepers to step forward - the ones who could not only hold whole works in memory, but somehow compartmentalize or partition their thoughts to keep the knowledge safe from scans. A sonnet, I think; as I recall, his first act of defiance was Shakespeare.