Jane Air

“The body of a man was discovered in the woods behind the wreckage of the home, however authorities have not yet released the identity of the victim or the means of death. Now, time for a look at the hottest gadgets on the market this holiday season. Tony, what can we look forward to this year?”

            “Well, Sandra, it seems that this year’s hottest electronic is the HoloReader. It’s an electronic replacement for books. As you can see here, it’s pocket-sized, so you can carry it with you, no problem, and it can hold up to about 60 books at a time.”

            “But Tony, the screen is so small.”

            “Yes, Sandra, that’s the amazing part. The HoloReader projects a hologram of the pages right in front of your face. Here, I’ll show you. Just choose the book you’d like to read on the screen and there we go. A bit of Edgar Wallace for me.” [Laughter]

            “Well, that’s amazing-“

            Jane flicked the TV off. The ad was pointless, everyone in the city already had a HoloReader. Or a Lapbook. Or an E-story. No one carried real books anymore. No one except Jane. Seriously. She was the last person in the city who even owned real books.

This is what the human world was like at this time: Libraries had been turned into Chinese buffets and everyone had an abundance of shelving in their houses that they didn’t really need anymore. The fires that roasted people’s chestnuts at Christmas were often made from the pages of classic novels or Children’s bedtime stories. No longer did people live in fear of the paper cut, at least not while they were leisurely reading. Those suffering from OCD didn’t need to worry that a guest in their house might put a book back in the wrong place. There was a kind of freedom in the world that humans didn’t even know was possible. They didn’t realize how much physical books had negatively impacted their lives.

            But this wasn’t how Jane saw it. Jane saw books as something more than just stories. Jane saw books as weapons and tools. Jane saw books as a way to make the world a better place. Most people just didn’t look at them the right way.

            You see, Jane had a bit of a hobby. Jane liked to help people. But, not just help people. She liked to dress up in tights and boots and a mask and then she would help people.

She called herself Jane Air, because it was a clever play on words, not because she could fly or run really fast.

It had all started a month or so earlier, while Jane had been walking home from classes alone at night. She heard a disturbance from down an alleyway. Crime often occurs in alleyways. The beginning of hero stories often take place in alleyways as well. Almost no one becomes a hero on purpose. Ordinary people become heroes only after they find themselves victims of circumstance. Or after they walk down a dark space between two buildings.

Jane found herself in such a circumstance that night. She peered down the alleyway. There was a man waving a gun at another man. Humans love guns, this is important to know. Guns make humans feel like Gods. Gods can do whatever they want, or so humans think. Humans think this way because of things they read in books. Books are often wrong, but don’t tell the people who read books that.

Speaking of books, Jane held one in her hand that night. It was a large book. A law textbook, in fact. Humans were always making up new rules for things. Only special humans had a say, though, in what those rules should be. They were chosen to be responsible for the well-being of the world by making up fair and reasonable rules about everything. For instance, there were important rules about not killing other humans, or stealing from other humans, or touching other human’s genitals if they didn’t want you to. (None of these rules applied to humans with money.) It was thought that in order for society to function, the common masses needed rules.

Jane looked at her law textbook. The abundance of rules in there made it a very hefty book. She looked at the man with the gun. He was yelling. Then she looked at the man who was gunless. He was cowering on the ground. Then she threw the book.

Every one of Jane’s classmates had opted for a digital version of the textbook. After all, it was heavy and humans are not mules, they shouldn’t have to carry heavy things on their backs. But Jane liked the feel of a real book. She liked the smell of a real book. And as the book soared through the air towards the man with the gun, she was glad that she had chosen the physical copy. A HoloReader couldn’t have possibly crushed the gunman’s occipital bone in the same way that the enormous law textbook did. It cracked the bone into pieces, and crushed the spinal cord. The man crumpled to the ground. He was dead. Dead is kind of like sleeping, but without twitching or snoring or awakening to use the bathroom.

So, this was how Jane Air was born. Jane felt good, knowing that she had saved a person. The other man ran away, without even a thank you. Jane supposed he was just in shock. She retrieved her book. There was some blood on the cover, which she wiped away on the dead man’s shirt.

She went home and immediately began on her costume. She found a police scanner radio online for a good price. She bought it. She listened to it day after day. She was excited to show the world what good books could do.

It was a week before she found her next opportunity to save the day. There was a teenage boy who had robbed a liquor store right down the road from her apartment. Liquor was not good for teenagers. While adults used liquor to combat complications in their lives, it had the opposite effect on teenagers. It created more problems, like pregnancy and crime and poor grades. Jane needed to save this teenager from all of that.

She found him in an alleyway. He was breathing hard and his eyes were wide. He was a wild boy, Jane could see that clearly. But he didn’t see her, not in time. If he had looked slightly to the left he would have seen a girl with wide eyes and heavy breath. She swung her hardcover copy of Les Miserables right at his face. She made contact with his nose, which broke immediately. Jane thought about swinging again, but the man started gagging. Blood poured out of his nose and covered his face. He was choking on it. As he fell to the ground, Jane walked away. She took his bag with her.

Things went on like this for quite some time. Jane was excited to prove to the world that books still had a purpose. Books could save people.

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare fractured a woman’s skull in four places after she threatened to stab a man on the subway platform.

Desperation by Stephen King pummeled a mother’s body after she left her child in the car on a warm day.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix crushed a man’s face after he refused to pay a taxi driver.

And Jane Eyre came down again and again on the head of a homeless man sleeping in an alleyway.

“And that marks the sixth mysterious death by blunt force trauma in the city in the last couple months. There are no suspects although there have been reports of someone dressed like a superhero in the vicinity of several of these incidents. A superhero who’s always just a little too late, it seems. What do you think, Tony?”

“Yeah, Sandra, I think that hero needs to get himself a bat mobile instead of taking public transportation. Which brings us to our next story, bus fares will be going up!”