The two friends struggled through the next day as best they could.

It was far too much for them to really rip everything to shreds so they satisfied themselves with pulling out intentionally blank pages, errata and other end pages and then hurling the books to one side. The courtyard was knee-deep in books and papers and pages anyway so they figured that no one would really notice what they were doing.

Furthermore, and because both men were eidetic in their recall, Gilly and Mac set about trying to roughly catalogue every book, manuscript and pamphlet they came across.

‘The ground will be our new shelves,’ whispered Gilly. ‘We must at least try to remember every name and title we read here.’

‘Melvil Dewey would turn in his perfectly-indexed grave,’ smiled Mac.

‘You always were the gloomy one,’ teased Gilly as the two men lay down to try and sleep. The bonfires were burning fiercely and ash still fell like confetti at a funeral.

Mac and Gilly had been undergraduates together and had remained friends ever since. They even got married on the same day, to the Garritty sisters, Aoibhinn and Sibeal. Whereas Gilly and Aoibhinn had recently celebrated their Diamond wedding anniversary, Mac lost Sibeal to a sarcoma in 1973.

‘Sleep well, my friend,’ whispered Mac. ‘This is simply the last of it. Nothing more.’

It began to rain and the two men pulled a ripped tarpaulin over their heads.

After a backbreaking day of hard work, harsh threats and cheap food Mac, Gilly and the rest of the Rippers settled down for the night in their corner of the courtyard. Bathed in the orange light of the flames and buried in soot, the two men sat beside each other.

‘Genius, absolute genius!’ whispered Gilly to Mac. ‘The Pilers pull the books from the lorries. The Rippers tear them to pieces and the Burners put them on the bonfires.’

Gilly was one of the world’s leading authorities on feudal labour management. He winced as he tried to get comfortable on the hard ground. ‘This is the truly the end, my dear friend. We cannot get back from here.’

Mac agreed. ‘Culture is always the first victim of despotism,’ he said and then swilled a mouthful of pink lemonade around his mouth.

‘Our time has already been,’ Mac continued, ‘but if we carry on this way then the world will one day simply refuse to spin and hang limp in the eternal darkness like all the other dead stars.’

‘There you are Professor Fancy Words!’ sneered a familiar voice. ‘Feeling better after your little comfort break?’

This time Mac didn’t reply. The lout continued.

‘It’s high time you and your wordy friend got to work, I think.’ The lout pointed at a group of people gathering beside a giant pile of papers. ‘You’ve got three hours before breakfast so go and join the rest of the Rippers.’

Three hours later a box of stale sandwiches and a crate of cheap fizzy drinks was dumped beside the Rippers. ‘You’ve got ten minutes before the next fleet of lorries arrive,’ sneered the lout.

‘Bon bleedin’ appetit.’

Mac woke to find Gilly wiping his face with a filthy rag. ‘Where am I?’ he croaked. ‘What happened?’

‘They dragged you out at first light and threw you here,’ whispered his terrified friend.

Here was a pile of rotting rubbish beside the toilets. Gilly lifted a sooty bottle of fizzy orange liquid to Mac’s lips.

‘I saved this for you,’ he whispered. ‘Sip slowly, my friend.’ Mac took a sip, winced but took another anyway. Gilly pulled the bottle away. ‘Careful, Mac, not too much at once.’

Gilly pulled a paper bag from his pocket and handed Mac half a chicken wrap. The chicken was coated in something vaguely crumb-like and lay beside a piece of limp lettuce.

Mac chewed in silence for a while and then managed to smile at his friend.

‘Well, Professor Giollaiosa Ó Ruairc, this is a thing and a half and no mistake.’

‘Indeed it is, Professor Amhalgaidh Mac an Bhaird. Indeed it is.’

Mac spent two days and nights in the portable toilet.

It was dark and the bowl was overflowing. The smell was beyond endurable. Unable to sit on the seat, Mac found himself leaning, half-laying, on the wall.

Time crawled like the flies on his face. And when Time crawls it likes to play tricks. Hours become seconds and seconds become infinite.

And infinity becomes the moment before the moment that is after the moment before.

‘Leave him alone!’ screamed the lout. ‘Leave him alone! How really dare you tell me to leave him alone!’

A filthy froth flew from his mouth and spattered Mac.

‘We’ll leave you alone,’ screamed the lout.

And with that he dragged Mac to one corner of the yard where a line of portable toilets stood waiting. The lout opened the door of the closest one, threw Mac inside and bolted the door behind him. As if this wasn’t quite enough, the lout completed the job by laying a heavy paving slab against the plastic door.

‘This is what it feels like to be left alone,’ he screamed through the door.

Mac stepped forward. ‘Leave him alone,’ he said loudly and firmly.

The lout pushed Gilly to the floor and turned to Mac.

‘You want some too, do you?’ he snarled.

‘What I actually want is for you to leave him alone,’ continued Mac. ‘There is absolutely no need for such malevolence!’

Gilly lay cowering on the floor.

‘Please don’t, Mac,’ he croaked but it was too late.

‘No need for absolutely such what?’ spat the lout. ‘Your fancy words won’t help you now.’ He grabbed Mac by his collar. The lout’s breath reeked of cheap ale and anger. Mac stood as tall as he still could.

‘I am simply asking you to leave the poor man alone,’ he repeated defiantly. The lout seemed momentarily stunned by the fact that Mac wasn’t cringing and cowering.

As the crowds toiled and laboured in the orange glare of the bonfires an enormous PA system played a medley of nostalgic tunes about the ‘auld’ times and the countryside; airs and jigs and graces that spoke of a life not like this one, a life more tranquil, a life back then.

The irony of the situation was not lost on Mac.

Boiler-suited bullies roamed the yard, shoving and forcing, using a fist here and a cudgel there if necessary.

‘Work!’ they shouted.

‘Faster!’

‘Harder!’

‘Better!’

A particularly brutish lout barged past Mac to grab an old man by the collar. ‘You helped write this rotten stinking stuff,’ he screamed, ‘now get on with destroying it!’

The man looked terrified. It was Gilly.

It was a frenetic few minutes for Mac and the others being processed, for that is what was happening.

Forced to stand in front of a table, Mac was asked to confirm his name, had his photograph taken and then was roughly led in line to the central courtyard. And what a sight awaited him.

Hundreds of elderly men and women dressed in rags and covered in soot were pulling books and manuscripts from the back of trucks and piling them up. Others set about the piles, ripping and shredding and tearing with their bare hands, filling barrows and then wheeling them towards enormous bonfires that crackled and spat in the half-light.

Here more ragged people threw the paper onto the flames. Everything was orange and everyone was choking.

‘My God,’ said Mac in horror, ‘they’re emptying the libraries!’