
He gets the crate of paperbacks up on their steel shelves and takes stock. The aisle rises on girders into an endless chasm of books. Dozens of aisles in this Fulfillment Center alone. And every month, new Fulfillment Centers across several continents. His employers won’t stop until everyone is fulfilled. Nick squanders a full five precious seconds of his time-motion gazing down the gorge of books. The sight fills him with a horror inseparable from hope. Somewhere in all these boundless, compounding, swelling canyons of imprinted paper, encoded in the millions of tons of loblolly pine fiber, there must be a few words of truth, a page, a paragraph that could break the spell of fulfillment and bring back danger, need, and death.