I went to a trip. I am not the same person anymore. It's August 14th, 2205. The company sent me out to an in-person meeting Alexis could have handled better than me. "Connection problems" my supervisor said. "The big shift, you know!?" Ulanbaataar. This city was kind of behind the common progress. More desert than city. A relic of sorts. A pre-shift settlement. It's always the "big shift". *Pre-shift they have been mining rare earth metals here. The dust is reflective. It shields the satellite network.* "I see! No network - no implants" *Tha.. corr...* "Alexis?" *Connection Issues. Switching to local mode. It's only wired connection here. I heard many don't use the neural implants here.* Now I get it. This is why they need me to negotiate in person. A whole city living in the quiet. No constant data stream, no constant connection. Is this how they lived before the Shift? The thought was a void, and a single, archaic word floated into it: Books. Alexis must have picked up on the stray thought. *I researched a book reseller nearby. The comments suggest there is a lot of them?* "Books? They still sell books here? I thought they were banned?" *Old ones that are still around can be traded freely. How about a visit? There is enough time until the meeting.* "Sure! Never seen a real book." The robo-car dropped me in a dusty side alley, a grey and unspectacular place that time seemed to have forgotten. Inside a small shop, shelves overflowed with books. So many of them. I wandered through the aisles. This one book was different. The book cover magically drew my attention. It wasn't flashy in color or ornamental. It somehow stood out in the row of books it was placed in. I gently pulled the book free, crammed in between too many books. It fell open to an old photograph tucked between the pages. Cursive on the back. I had to buy it. The meeting was exactly as I expected: sterile, efficient, and utterly devoid of personality. The whole trip felt like a colossal waste of time, except for one thing. Back in my apartment, exhausted, the only worthwhile thing from the trip was the book in my hands. Why did I even get it? No one reads anymore. Books had been banned long time ago. The "big shift". *Should I load the embedding model for ancient texts?* "No, books were meant to be read." I flipped the book open and looked at cryptic signs and symbols, a weird pattern of black and white. No meaning whatsoever came to my mind. Real paper between my fingers, banned since the Shift. A strange feeling. "Alexis, load in the reading algorithm! This makes no sense at all." *Sure!* Within a blink of an eye the black and white pattern turned into words. I tried to read. Single words became sentences and sentences began to speak - a voice forming in my head. "Keep quiet Alexis!" *I haven't said a word!* "No?!" My eyes kept walking across the lines and paragraphs. The voice intensified, becoming its own character. This was not my voice! *I am sensing alien brain patterns!?* "Shh!" My eyes flew across the lines. The voice told about the things that happened long time ago describing a city of towering glass before the Shift, the taste of real coffee, the feeling of rain on skin. I could see it, feel it. The world in my head was more real than the one around me. *Time for work. You've been sitting there for nine hours.* The sudden alert from Alexis shattered this world like glass. Time passed. No, it did not. How should I explain this? But there is more to it. I am not sure if this is even OK to tell anyone. But... He is still there. Still in my head. I hear his voice: The man in the pages.