Shiny and new she rolls across the live giving rollers, sliding to her new life. A machine picks her up and places her on top of a stack of her sisters. They eagerly await their new lives. Placed into the darkened world of cardboardial travel, they bump and giggle through the dark. Traveling to the orphanage that will be their fate. Light shines as she and her sisters are placed upon a shelf with other of their kin. Thousands of her relatives line shelves awaiting adoption. People pass, grabbing cousins and brothers, while new family is placed within the family fold.

Time passes slowly with fewer and fewer adopters pass to inspect her and her relatives. Hope wanes as they hear whispers of a simple clone and shell of their kind, that doesn’t have a physical form but lived only as pages on a screen. So few adopters came to see her and her kin for a long time, that hope seems like a luxury. Fear spread throughout her family as the only adopters that were seen were the one’s that moved her family among the shelves. And those false adopters rarely took any orphans home.

Almost comatose she watched as her close family either slowly got adopted or taken away by the false adopters. She lulled into a zombie state as she was only the remaining of her kind among her family left on the shelf.

A gentle touch woke her from her stupor. A new adopter that she had never seen was lightly stroking her cover. She was lifted into the air and turned, she could see her extended family on the shelf. Most of them were just as zombified as she was. She tried desperately to not feel hope as this potential adopter handled her. The adopter opened her cover, the first time someone had breached her pages. If she could, she would have cried for the release it was to finally be noticed for what she was. A spark of hope blossomed within her pages.

They were moving. This was the moment that she and all of her kin waited for. She called to her relatives, and they cheered for her as she passed. Her new adopter walked her to the adoption counter and handed over his paper. She was going to a new home! Her cover glossed as her new family refused the plastic receptacle to hold her lovingly in his arms walking out of the orphanage that she had known almost all of her life. She fainted as the great glass doors of the outside world were opened for her and her new family.

She woke as her new parent flopped down into a plush chair. He opened her cover and she shared who she was to him one page at a time. This is what it is to live. To be useful and wanted. She loved her new Father with all of her being and wanted to share all she could with him. Her pages made him laugh, cry and even rage. Her loving parent sighed as he finished her inner workings many hours later. Holding her in his hands against his chest for a long time. She hugged him back with all of her might. She could feel the love he had for her as he placed her on a new shelf with many of her long lost kin. He would return many times over the years to read her once again as if it was the first time. Until her body was no longer shiny and new but cracked and dogeared to a lovingly full life.

He addressed her as an old friend many years later, after many more sharings. Her body was worn out. She feared it was time to lose the parent she had loved for so long. Her spine was ruined and some of her insides were loose and fearful of getting lost. She loved him so much, she couldn’t leave him. For the second time in her life, she wished she could cry. She resolved herself to her fate.

Her parent headed to the trashcan of death. She trembled as he held her up and stroked her cover one final time. She didn’t want to die. She tried to be strong, her kin could see her and she didn’t want them to see her fear. But within her pages, she feared the worst. Where does a book go when it die?

She fainted…

She awoke not in the literal afterlife but on her Father’s table. He had read her many times here, but this time was very different. Her pages were no longer connected to her spine. She could no longer feel her spine. Her Father had pieces of fabric and a small metal can of foul smelling liquid. Slowly, painstakingly, and very lovingly he placed her back together with a new body. He talked to her during the whole operation as any parent should, explaining how he was fixing her up so she could continue to live.

With a brand new spine and ornate new body of leather, he lovingly stroked her cover, placing her back in her home of her shelf. She was rebuilt, a brand new book that her loving Father made himself so she could live on and be loved.

Many years later her loving Father, his own spine wore out handed her to a new parent. Her worn leather cover still had some life in it as she reached for her Father one last time. She begged him to rebuild his body so she could live with him forever. But adopters cannot be rebuilt. Her new Mother stroked her cover lovingly just as her Father had. Holding her close to her Mother’s chest her family hugged tightly. Father, Mother and she embraced for a long time.