7:30

Jakob’s Notebook. It was all there: the dreams, the schemes and all the details. Jakob kept the notebook meticulously. He rarely went a day without an entry in a fine, elegant hand; always written in ink and the pages, as Shakespeare’s were said to be, without blot. There’s no hesitation, no additions or deletions; the notes and thoughts were set out uniformly, accurately to the best of his ability and without thought to posterity or readers of any stripe.

Jakob’s notebook was the history of the universe, the universe that Jakob inhabited, ruled over and was sole arbiter and dispenser of justice for. It held his judgements and detailed his triumphs; it was a study of secrets and the bible of all things that had existed. It did not, however, venture into what would be. The future was for Jakob to decide, its outcomes to be recorded within the pages; but the future was not to be trifled with.

Jakob was not superstitious. To be superstitious one would have to accept a power outside of oneself. Jakob merely knew that while a future had not yet arrived, it could still be twisted and shaped by Jakob himself. Thus to attempt to presage or predict any outcomes would lead to a loss of control. And a loss of control was not allowed in Jakob’s reality.

Thus the notebook was a record of what was and though Jakob — and now Haid — worshipped its contents, he never made the mistake of allowing access to the notebook to any but his servant. But the notebook was more than a record. It was a map, a guidebook, a treasure house of knowledge; the notebook was the only thing that was of Jakob that existed outside Jakob.

And in the end, it was all that remained of Jakob.