This year, the hands carrying you are calloused and shaking.  They are clammy and unpleasantly hot, and you find yourself wishing for the smooth, cold hands of the previous years, just as you did for wrinkles when the frigid hands were new.  The sweat from the Calloused Hands is making the fraying corner of your cover curl, and shouldn’t they be holding you… reverently?  Frigid Hands always held you as if you were important—Calloused Hands act as if they have other things to be doing.  You are indignant.  You are a book.
     You have had a long life.  Once, you had friends; who goes through life without them, after all?  But they were all burned, years ago.  They died together, sentenced after being judged to be "inappropriate", too soon entering their final chapter.  Sometimes, late, on nights when the attendants forget to extinguish the light illuminating your case, you envy them.  Books cannot scream—they are but paper, binding, and ink, of course—but there is an echo in their ashes.  The eternally murdered words cannot die.  It is the worst fate for a story, and the highest wish for a flame, the killer.  You know it is crazy to wish for this horrible demise, but you feel there’s something romantic about it.  You’ve always been a disparaging romantic—probably spurned by your contents.
     You can easily be judged by your cover.  The title is scholarly, practical and efficient, though the words are peeling.  Secretarial List of Decisions Made in the Death Seminar.  Or, perhaps, not so efficient.  Your maker was eccentric, passionate.  He believed in his cause, his beautiful, wondrous idea, that would change life as we know it—or, rather, life after we know it.  You do not know his species, just that he had the gentlest hands that ever touched you.  He caressed you, whispered to you, loved you.  You were not inanimate to him, you breathed, held life within you.  At this time, your pages were blank, and you were brimming with potential.  Then the first meeting was held.   At this time, it was only a few scholars and ethnologists, all avidly discussing death and ethics well into the night.  At long last, a decision was made, and the first words were inscribed on your pages.  A date.  A word you cannot fathom.  And signatures.  There is a quote at the bottom, something serious and ironic, both appropriate and curiously off-topic.  Perfect, in short.
     The decision held for years.  How many there were, you can't say for sure; you just know that the occasions of freedom from your confinement in the stately case were regularly-spaced apart, and were not long enough.   It was all a formality, as everyone was happy with the initial decision.  More words were written, but they didn’t say anything profound, just the date of the meeting, that they came to the same conclusion, and the signatures of the attendees.  This list of names grew more with every passing Seminar, until minorities had to be represented.  Other species were involved.  The universe finally recognized that this gathering determined their quality of life—or death, we should say—and thought they should get involved.  This is where the trouble began: thinking.  Personal opinions got in the way of progress, and eventually no conclusions could be come to.  The idea was put on hold.  As for those who died during this time, what happened to them is uncertain.  Violent protests were held.  While the original conceivers were long since deceased, the current holders of the seminar knew that something had to be done.  An untraditional congress was called.  The universe held its breath.  The problem would be resolved—the burning question was how.
     Here is where you were plucked unceremoniously from your case.  You had just been reflecting on that fateful night when your secluded world blossomed into flame—but now, you have work to do.  Perhaps tonight, after all these long nights, you will learn the meaning of your existence, why you were not burned.  For although you understand all speech, and can read what is written within you, you don’t know what they are deciding.  Death of a book is to cease existing, cease thinking, just continue to spiral, reading your own words for eternity.  Living death must be different, you think.
     You are dropped on an altar, and are greeted by your hefty accumulation of dust, which soon settles back down into your pages.  A new hand, one with a nervous twitch, lays on your cover.  You sigh contentedly.  Twitching Hands are beyond reverent—they are worshipping.
     You hear whimpering in the assembly.  Far in the back, on the right side, you sense.  A voice cries faintly, “Where am I?  Why am I here?  Please, let me go home…”  An unwilling race, you realize, and wonder smugly where the unfortunate soul hails from.  Though you understand the words, you have never before encountered the language.
     “Good evening, scholars, ethnologists, and honored representatives!”  A weak, higher-pitched voice gives an effort to shout, and fails.  His voice is not enthusiastic; it is dull, squeaky, and somewhat monotonous, though a current of impatience and aggravation can be felt.  The male clears his throat.  “We, as our fathers before us, have gathered here for centuries, to debate and agree on the most important of judgments—that of death.  We call this assembly the Death Seminar.  For years, our ruling was unquestioned, but recently, controversy has spread, our council has been challenged, and compromises have been put into place.  This year, representatives from every race imaginable are gathered here to have their say, no matter how ignorant or incapable—” Here in the speech, there is some inflamed muttering in the crowd, and the male again clears his throat.
     “Yes, well…” he begins again, “Though the same decision is reached each year—the recycling of souls through reincarnation—we must allow the smaller races to have their say, and to understand.  Tonight we make history, though I am confident that the same conclusion—the best conclusion—will be reached.”
     Again, you hear the tiny voice, female, you think, and almost… musical.  She has begun shrieking, flailing her arms, trying to weave around the different species and races stacked around her in chairs.
     “Will someone please control Mankind in the back row?” the male snaps from the altar.  “Ridiculous,” he sighs, but only you hear.  Eventually, the source of the annoyance is quieted, and the debate begins.  You are opened to your first page, and the lines there are boomed out to the congregation—the male is surer of himself, now—and they are repeated back.  You invite the din, as your dusty hall is so quiet.  Yes, you will think of this day almost constantly until once again, next year, you are plucked from your transparent prison.  The previous decision of the Death Seminar is stated, and some heart-filled ethics discussions take place—but the outcome is clear, even to you, a book.  The souls will again be reincarnated, recycled, passed from one being to the next, to be used and filled, and then emptied, for its next occupant.  It is the way it has always been done.
     There is a disturbance from the back, for the first time in hours.  “Wait—I don’t understand.”  It is Mankind.
     “How do you mean, Mankind?”
     Her voice is small, but clear, and it seems to fill the entire hall.  “When we die, we just… die?” she asks.  “There is no afterlife?”
     “It is the way it has always been,” the male behind the altar replies.  “Many of us do not die—”
     There is pointed throat clearing from the front row.  The male glares.  “—Though there are theories that we will eventually die—”
     The front row scoffs, “’Theories,’ he says.”
     “—And therefore, we feel this is the best decision.  Our lives are long.  Souls are not just created, you see?”
     “Humans don’t live for more than eighty years, most of the time!”  Mankind seems frantic, now.  “I don’t know if this is a dream, or if you really do decide the fate of death in this Seminar, but I do know that your decision is wrong.  How can a being just stop existing?  Is there no God?”
     “I know not of what you speak,” says the altar male disdainfully, “and I am sorry for your short lives, Mankind.  But the rest of the universe is content, and we cannot change the course of the world for a minority.”  Mankind falls into a stunned silence, silently weeping.  Your words stir, moved by this small being’s imagined spirit world—you see it, she calls it “Heaven.”  Having never dreamed before, you are enthralled by these images, these wishes, these certainties that are now shattered.  You feel the emotion coursing through her veins, the simple genius of her race’s design—and fall in love with the mass of biodegradable carbon.  You hope she speaks again.
     The Seminar ends a short hour later, and all hopes of ever hearing her music drowns in a sea of buzzing voices and scraping chairs.  You think you hear, “please—please, someone, take me home,” but you cannot be sure, in this chaos.  An intense sadness fills your old, yellowing paper, and for an instant you feel that you, too, have veins.
     The male behind the altar turns your pages sharply, dutifully, with a dampened finger, and you know what you must do: a forbidden act, known to all single-print novels.  Known to them because it is their duty to keep their words alive—they would not dream of the events you are plotting.  You know it is wrong.  You know it must be done—the music must breathe forever, and never, ever die.
     As the exactly-mixed ink stains your pages with the same phrase written for centuries, one you only recently understood the horrible meaning of, you compose the words, the words that will martyr you for the good of Mankind.  For a moment, you doubt your decision—Man is so inconsequential, so weak, so small.  So beautiful, you think, and when you slam shut in a cloud of dust that promises not to be your only companion for much longer, you locate the tainted words.  You change them, symbol by symbol, and such pain you have never known before.  It seems to wake you, and for the first time, you see.  Light, you think, light.  This is my last sunrise, this first dawn.
                              Free will, you write, free life
                                          eternal, in death
                                          these words live.
     Your sacrifice rings in newly found ears, frenzied shouts reverberate off walls, facets of crystal reflect morning, and you expand, explode, and are filled with life—it is little known that the same flame in your eyes burns.  This same fire that turned your friends to ash lets you breathe its living smoke.
     The end is near.  Curiously, you find you are afraid.
     A lifetime of inanimation proves life too poignant; the greedy fire senses a moment of vulnerability, and pounces, feeding on all but your soul as you scream and scream.
     The words ache like stab wounds, like a mule being branded.  But you never did have strong ties to this world—never were owned, or belonged—and they are easily severed, and you have never been happier to rest in numb, sightless silence.
     You still feel the words, smoldering.  They live on; as will you.
     A book with a soul, yes, destined to read your own words for eternity, but you discover it is a choice.  That is the gift you are giving; that Man may choose his death as he chooses his life, and read his story until—if he wishes the greatest of words be true—trumpets announce the opening of clouds, and something will descend.
     And, of your knowledge of Man, you know, bared to your soul, they will choose wisely.