Anonymous pamphlet found in bus shelter, part 2 of 5

Reader, you may not understand what has gone before. That is no sin, but a fact of life. You cannot be blamed for it.

What you need to know is this: Benedict Dean and David Perlez are waking up in their room in Kufstein, Austria, circa 1888. They are not of this time, but it is the only time they have now. You might be disoriented in this story; fear not, your disorientation is a mirror of their own.

Perlez woke first, and when his eyes opened, he shuddered. In his head, he had been centuries away, at some distant point in the future, walking down a street in a city not yet named, speaking words that referred to things not yet invented. Then a blast of light from the window shattered it and he realized it was an illusion. He existed in a sidebar in a history textbook now; the future was a fantasy for the profit of writers. If he tried to speak about his past to anyone but Dean, he would be labelled a lunatic. He glanced over at his comrade, who stretched, eyes still shut, seemingly contented.

Dean opened his eyes slowly. He lay on his back, just staring at the ceiling, water-stained and cracked in places. Turning his head to Perlez, he said good morning. And then shut his eyes again.

Perlez sat up and said, “Get out of bed.”

His colleague did not move. Without saying anything else, Perlez dressed himself and packed up the few things he had taken out the night before. When that was done, he sat done at one of the chairs at the table and watched Dean.

“It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be,” Dean said. “Last night, I mean.”

Perlez still did not speak. He rested his head against his fist and stared straight as his colleague, no expression on his face.

"I didn't even dream of the past,” Dean explained. He chuckled, adding, “By which I mean the future. Did you?”

There was no response.

Dean continued. “I thought I would, but I didn't. I dreamt as if I was born in 1855, someone else's life as if it was my own.

“I saw myself farming, isn't that ridiculous? I don't even know the first thing about farming. But I imagined myself helping my father--though it wasn't my father--put shoes on the horses. I thought it seemed a painful thing to do, but he told me it had to be done, and I believed him. And then the horse kicked him and I was terrified. I got so angry at the animal that I even hit it. I've never done that in my life. I would never beat a horse, no animal. But I lashed it so hard that I think I drew blood.

“The only thing that stopped me was my mother--though it wasn't my mother--and I realized that as I had been beating this animal my father had been writhing in pain on the floor. And I wiped the blood off the animal and let it calm before I rode it to the nearest doctor.

“When we got back, my father was dead. The bleeding had been too much. So I killed the horse, because there seemed no justice in letting it live. My mother didn't seem too happy about that.

“I didn't dream about my wife or my parents or my friends. It's like I forgot all of that the instant I shut my eyes,” and here Dean's voice faltered, just slightly, “but I--”

Perlez leaned back in his chair, eyes never wavering from Dean's face. “Get up,” he said. “We're going.”

Dean sat up in bed and rubbed his face, rubbing so hard with the tips of his fingers it almost looked like he was clawing away at a mask. “But I slept well,” he added. “I really did.”

“Good.”

After Dean had dressed and gathered together his things, the two left the room, left the hotel, left the city.

The wind from the north bit down hard, but the two men were glad to be free from the city. The oppressive air of the city, with all of its noises and smells, dissipated within minutes of escaping Kufstein's boundaries. Out in the countryside, the two men were freed from the schizophrenia forced upon them by the city, which required them to somehow live in their own time and the present. Hundreds of years from now, a tree will still look like a tree. It may have been an illusion, but at least for a little while, the men could forget when they were.

The plan was to head straight north, working or begging whenever necessary. It could take several months to slowly wind their way up to Braunau, but by the time they reached their destination, Perlez and Dean would hopefully have finally eased themselves into 1888. This was their decompression chamber.

The first few days passed uneventfully. Usually, they tried to watch for farms where they could sleep overnight in the barns. They would circle the periphery until the lights in the house went out, and then crawl into a pile of straw, leaving before sunrise. With what little money they had left, they managed to purchase the occasional loaf of bread, otherwise relying upon nature to provide enough fruit and vegetables for sustenance.

In their own time, they would have considered their actions thievery. But out here, in this strange time and place, such categories seemed less defined. Who were these people that they stole from? To Perlez and Dean, the light in the farm house was pure abstraction. There was a person controlling that light, of course, but they never saw who it was, some person who was not even a footnote in history. They were nowhere to be found, not in the margins, not even in the background of some grainy, black and white photograph. What did it matter if they were a few apples less? They were nobody.

It was not a matter of morality. Who really owns an apple anyway? Do you own the seed? Do you own the tree? And then do you own the shit afterwards? The compost? The dead rot? The nutrients feeding someone else's tree in the soil? Do worms steal from you? To consider it a crime to take a few pieces of fruit from a tree or even from a barrel is nonsense. But the danger in all of this was that Perlez and Dean had not yet found a way to make these people real. They had their own ingrained sense of respect for the property of others, but out on the road, they did not recognize any others. Out on the road, they were the only ones who existed in this world.

Their first real encounter on the road came after a week of walking. It was around midday, and the two men were silent, each quietly retreated into his own memories, sifting through what to keep and throw away, the things they would hold onto the longest before they succumbed to the amnesia of the present.

From behind, a clattering of hooves could be heard--distant, and then growing closer. Perlez glanced back and tugged on Dean's sleeve to pull his comrade to the side of the road as the carriage passed.

It was a large wooden carriage pulled by four horses. The body was windowless and unadorned save for the words "Miracles of Science" painted in a mannered script on the side. The driver sitting up top and holding the reins appeared to be a midget. Perlez and Dean exchanged a glance as it passed them, spitting up dust.

“Do you think--” Dean asked.

“We can only assume,” Perlez cut him off, and the two said no more for several hours.

They trudged along, both weary and malnourished, until the sun began to set and they were faced with the unpleasant prospect of another night without shelter. There appeared to be no farms in sight, no nearby town to offer them cover. So they kept walking, hoping to find something or else simply fall to sleep out of sheer exhaustion.

Before long, they noticed that the trail of the carriage, which had proceeded their every step like a taunt, veered off the road. The grass beside the road was crushed, clods of dirt torn up by hooves. Behind a line of trees, the two men could make out the flickering light of a fire.

“Should we?” Dean whispered.

Perlez gave him an irritated look. “Do you really think there's any point in begging from him? Do you really think we'll get anything?”

“You can ask and find out,” the man called from behind the trees.

Dean shrugged and walked forward, Perlez reluctantly following behind.

As Perlez and Dean drew closer to the fire, the man who had called them looked startled. He pointed at Perlez. “Aren't you the man from Kufstein?”

Perlez nodded.

“Well, no matter,” the man said, gesturing to a cast iron pot heating over the fire. “Everyone has to eat, I suppose.”

He stood and handed each a bowl, ladled out some stew to each man, and then handed each a piece of slightly stale bread. “It's not much, but it'll do.”

Dean started eating immediately, but Perlez looked down at his food and then back at the man. “You seem very trusting for a shyster.”

The man laughed. “And you're too sincere to be a murderer.” He paused and grew grave for a moment. “Or do you think I poison beggars for sport?”

Perlez did not laugh, but ate slowly.

“Not entirely sport, I suppose,” the man continued facetiously. “I chop up the last batch for the stew, and then feed it to the next bunch. It's a wonderfully efficient system.”

“I understand, I understand,” Perlez muttered, mouth half-full. “Thank you, we both appreciate this, especially considering--”

“Yes, no matter, it made for a good show,” the man said dismissively, waving his hand.

After Perlez and Dean had finished eating, the man collected the bowls and said, “So, we should probably be properly introduced. I am Bernhard Cuyler, and you two gentlemen--”

“David Perlez.”

“Oh, is that Spanish?” Cuyler said, shaking his hand.

“Sure,” Perlez said.

“Benedict Dean.”

“You must be the ascetic of the two,” Cuyler smiled, shaking hands.

“What?” Dean asked.

“Never mind,” Cuyler said, sitting back down on his side of the fire. “So, where are you gentlemen headed, if you don't mind my asking?”

“Braunau,” Perlez said.

“Oh, what is there?”

“Work.”

Cuyler smiled at Perlez's terseness, seeming to take pleasure in the man's obvious discomfort with questioning and yet never flagging in his polite, innocuous tone. “But there is work everywhere. What is so special about Braunau?”

“Honest work,” Perlez said, almost growling.

This provoked a bit laugh out of Cuyler. “Oh, is that an insult? Biting the hand that feeds you so soon? Well, this is honest work, I'll have you know. Pure theatre for the amusement and education of the public. What could be more honest? If I were a paid soldier, taking money for lives, would that be more honest? I take money for lies, and it's as good and clean a living as any you'll find out there in Braunau.”

Perlez and Dean exchanged an anxious glance at this good-natured tirade from their host, and Cuyler continued. “So let us drop our pretensions, shall we? If I'm a fraud, then I know other frauds when I meet them. None of us have any need for honest men, do we? If there is one person I cannot trust, it is the honest man, who is too ignorant to even know his own lies when he speaks them. You are not honest men, obviously, so tell me: why are you going to Braunau?”

“We are from the future,” Dean said, “and we wish to prevent a child born in Braunau from becoming a tyrant.”

“Was that so hard?” Cuyler said, smiling. Perlez and Dean did not look at each other. Both men just stared into the fire, unburdened and yet feeling no better.

“What, do you believe us?” Dean asked.

Cuyler's expression turned bemused. “What sort of idiot do you take me for?”

Neither Perlez nor Dean cared to correct Cuyler.

The man poured the remains of the stew into his own bowl and set the pot on the dirt beside the fire. As he ate, he talked. “Listen, if you want work, I can use some help. You--” he indicated Perlez “--can keep on doing that deranged skeptic thing of yours, which plays quite well. As for you--” and here he indicated Dean “--I'm sure I can find something for you to do.”

“I don't know,” Perlez said.

“You see, that's why I'm hiring you,” Cuyler said, slurping the last drops of broth from his bowl. “Anyway, think about it. Tell me tomorrow morning.”

With that said, Cuyler stood up and walked to the carriage, opening the back door. A small hand from inside passed several blankets to Cuyler and he shut the door. “My companion is shy,” he explained, passing a blanket each to Perlez and Dean. He wrapped himself in his own blanket and leaned back against the wheel of his carriage. One of the horses tied to a tree snorted and grabbed a mouthful of grass.

“Good night, gentlemen,” Cuyler said, and shut his eyes.

“Come on,” Perlez said to Dean. He stood up and walked away from the fire, leaving the blanket behind. Dean followed.

The two walked a little ways into the woods, where they could still see the fire but felt out of the range of Cuyler's hearing.

“He's insane,” Perlez said.

Dean shrugged. “Well, he seems to think the same of us. Kindred spirits, perhaps?”

Perlez scowled. “No, I don't think so.”

“But we can actually get somewhere with him. We might start to make some progress if we travel with him.”

“But he seems so dishonest. How can we trust him?”

“We can't, of course, but who can we trust? Trying to get by on our own will get us nowhere, I fear.”

Perlez nodded and his expression darkened as he resigned himself to this opportunity that had been presented to them. “I had just hoped we could get by for a while on our own, until we were ready to start dealing with this era.”

“So had I,” Dean agreed. “But we can't hide out here forever.”

The two said nothing more; they returned to the fire, wrapped themselves in the blankets, and tried to let themselves fall asleep. It was difficult, but they managed after a while. And if Cuyler had been listening to them, he gave no indication of it.

The next morning, they awoke to the sound of Cuyler stirring the ashes. “Good morning,” he called cheerfully as he noticed Dean's eyes open. “I trust you slept well.”

“As well as one can out here,” Dean said, stiffly pulling himself to his feet and brushing the dirt and dead grass from his pants. My god, he thought, looking down at himself, I look like a derelict. No wonder he thinks we're insane. We look like we could have escaped from a mental hospital.
Dean paused at this thought. Maybe we did.

Perlez opened his eyes at the sound of their voices and groaned a little as he stood. “We'll come with you,” he said to Cuyler.

“And good morning to you too,” Cuyler replied.

They set off shortly afterwards, with Perlez and Dean riding on top of the carriage alongside Cuyler, who held the reins.

“My friend does not take kindly to strangers,” Cuyler explained again, almost as if apologizing for making the pair ride up top with him.

“Most people don't,” Perlez replied.

“True, true,” Cuyler said, snapping the reins.

“So where are we headed?” Dean asked.

“Northerly.”

Dean said nothing to this, and the three men fell into silence as Cuyler focused on the road while the other two watched the countryside shift and change rapidly, moving from field to forest to field again with a joyous speed. Everything changed so quickly, but none of it really seemed to change at all. There were no cities or towns out here breaking up the continuity of the landscape, just a single line of thought uninterrupted.

Watching the landscape ebb and flow between development and wilderness, Dean lapsed into a meditative state, contemplating his earlier notion that they couldhave escaped from a mental hospital. There was something seductive about the notion that he was insane. Imagine all of this as a delusion, and these trees are not trees (they are walls) and this road is not a road (it is a floor) and this carriage is not a carriage (it is a bed) and this fear is not fear (it is stupefaction) and this exhaustion is not exhaustion (it is dementia). And the mission?

Perhaps there was some peace in this thought: that there was no purpose to what he was doing because none of this was real. Dean saw himself walking through a hallway, the floor all dingy brown and the walls painted grey. When he entered his room, there was a cast iron bed with a thin mattress and a scratchy grey blanket. There were bars on the one window in theroom, but it was too high up to see out of anyway.

He laid himself down on the bed and stared at the ceiling and said, “I saw myself farming, isn't that ridiculous?” But when he looked around, Perlez was not there. He was alone, and he fell silent.

Perlez came in and told him to run away quickly, but he didn't understand what was happening and he tried to tell his friend about his dream. Two men came in and grabbed him, and Perlez screamed--he actually screamed, Dean had never heard his friend scream before--and the men asked Dean where he was from. When he said the future, one man slapped him and so Dean started crying and he heard one of the men say lobotomy but Perlez was still screaming and so he didn't hear everything that was being said. And he looked out the window and it was sunny, but the window was so high he couldn't see the sun so maybe it actually wasn't sunny after all.

The men carried him without any difficulty; he did not resist. This must be my life, he thought, it comes so naturally to me. The men slapped him down on the table like a wet rag and strapped down his arms and legs. Another man came up and said I'm a doctor, now where are you from. Dean said the future even though he might get slapped again, but no one did anything this time. The man held out a knife and Dean wanted to lift his arm to touch it, and one of the men said, won't this be painful, and the other said, yes, but it doesn't matter because he won't remember it. Shut your eyes, the doctor said, and he did, and he tried to imagine where he came from, figured it would be there when his eyes opened, but when his eyes opened, he was on a carriage with Perlez and a man who looked like the doctor.

“This isn't the future,” he said, and then he doubled over in pain and vomited over the side of the carriage.

“I'm not stopping,” Cuyler declared.

“I think there's something wrong with him,” Perlez said, reaching out to hold onto Dean in order to prevent the man from falling off the carriage.

Cuyler shook his head. “He'll be better soon enough--probably just motion sickness.”

Perlez said nothing, but held on to Dean's shirt as he leaned over the side and heaved. Cuyler pulled out a small flask and handed it to Perlez. “There's some ginger in this. It might help a little.”

When Dean was sitting upright again, he wiped his mouth and took a sip from the flask. “Are you a doctor?” he asked Cuyler.

“In name only,” Cuyler replied, taking the flask back and putting it in his coat.

Perlez didn't say anything, but the look he gave Dean was enough. “I'm okay,” Dean said. “Just motion sickness, I suppose.”

“There, you see--nothing to worry about,” Cuyler said. “And anyways, we'll be stopping soon.”

Dean looked up and saw the outline of a town looming at the end of the road, pulling them in like a black hole.

The eyes of the townspeople were on the carriage as it slowly made its way through the streets towards the town square. Who were these strangers, with this ridiculous declaration, Miracles of Science? What nonsense would they try to sell? Were they thieves or murderers? People watched with caution, a few following the carriage to see where it would stop.

The driver pulled to a stop in the town square, right beside a church, and then stood on top of the carriage in order to address the people who had followed.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he declared, “my name is Bernhard Cuyler, and for those of you who have not heard of me, I travel from town to town bringing all the wonders of scientific progress and enlightenment to the public.

“Tomorrow, I--with my associates Mr. Benedict Dean, a rogue monk, and Mr. David Perlez, from Spain--shall present to you a series of unexplainable phenomena that will dazzle and astound you. I promise it shall be a day of infamy in the history of your fair town.”

With that said, he sat down and picked up the reins again. Calling out to the crowd, he added, “And now can someone point me to a reputable inn?”

Several people pointed east, a couple pointed west, and someone pointed in the direction which the cart had come from. Cuyler chose west.

“Rogue monk?” Dean asked, mildly amused.

“We'll figure out the details later,” Cuyler smiled. “You have to earn your keep somehow.”

Continuing in his generous vein, Cuyler offered to pay for a room for Perlez and Dean, although he explained that this meant he would not split the proceeds from the next day's show with them. Not being in a position to protest, they accepted this condition, grateful for the shelter and warmth, even if only for one night.

In the room, Perlez could finally ask Dean, “What happened back there?”

Dean sat down on his bed. “I don't know. I imagined I was in an asylum, and I was a madman saying I was from the future, and then I opened my eyes and I was on that carriage, and...I don't know.”

“Are you losing your mind?” Perlez asked bluntly.

Dean wrapped himself in a blanket and shivered in his bed. “That was always a possibility, wasn't it?”

Perlez paced the room angrily. His movements were sudden and constrained, held in by the compactness of the room. Everything was falling apart already, and they had decades to go. How could they adjust to this era when they were penniless and fighting off dementia? It wouldn't be long before they actually did find themselves in an asylum.

“What will we do about tomorrow?” Dean finally asked.

Perlez slowed his pacing and sat on his own bed. “I don't know. Do we have a choice?”

“No,” Dean sighed. “I guess not.”

“Just go to sleep,” Perlez said. “Forget about this for a little while, at least.”

He sat there on the bed, watching Dean quietly and quickly succumb to sleep. The man was helpless in a certain sense. For all of Dean's intelligence and experience, he seemed to fade away in this era. Whatever had grounded his personality in the future was lacking now, and the man was floating apart, becoming a few fragments of a person instead of an unified whole. But what does it say about me, Perlez thought, that I can hold myself together in this time? Why do I fit in while he doesn't?

When sleep came to Perlez, he didn't even notice it. He was still sitting there on the bed, watching, vigilant right up until the moment his eyes shut.

The next morning, Cuyler woke up the two men and brought them down to the stable where the carriage was housed.

“We need to discuss what role you both will play in the show later,” he said.

“I'm really not sure what good we can be,” Perlez began, almost embarrassed. He was uncomfortable about being put in such an exposed position, and even more anxious about how Dean would handle it.

“No, I said I could use you both, and I intend to,” Cuyler said sharply, but still in his genial tone. There was such an innate sense of theatricality to his voice that it was difficult to read real emotion into what he said. Everything sounded friendly and inviting, but always with a faint aura of falseness.

“Since I've already billed you as the Spaniard, I think I'll just say that you brought the curios from Spain. Exoticism plays well out here, don't you think? By the way, do you speak Spanish?”

“No,” Perlez said. He was trying not to scowl, even though Cuyler probably would not have noticed or cared.

“Then just don't speak when you're up there. You'll be mostly a prop this time around, I suppose, until I figure out something better. But you can help me set things up and assist me as necessary. Just follow my lead.”

Cuyler turned to Dean. “And you--I've had some ideas about you. Since you're the mad monk, how do you feel about speaking in tongues? Can you speak in tongues? Give it a shot, okay?”

Dean's expression was genuinely perplexed. “Tongues?

Cuyler nodded, as if Dean had just offered a reasoned counterpoint. “You're right, that might not work for you. You seem a little too inhibited to just burst into tongues.”

There was a pause as Cuyler stared thoughtfully at Dean, considering what role fit his appearance. “How about visions of the future? A mad monk prophet of doom? What were you saying about the future the other day?”

Dean looked anxiously over at Perlez.

“Well, just come up with something,” Cuyler said. “You made it sound quite plausible the other day. Just do it again.”

Cuyler turned to leave, but added, “Meet me back here in an hour. We'll move the carriage out into the square and set up then.”

Perlez and Dean wandered through the stable without saying anything for a while. Several stalls held horses, but they were the only people around. Dean watched a horse scratch its neck against a post. Perlez watched Dean.

“Are you okay?” Perlez finally asked.

“Yes,” Dean replied, but he did not look at his colleague when he spoke.

“What are you going to say?”

Dean paused before he replied, as if he hadn't even considered it himself. “I suppose I'll tell them about the future.”

“You can't do that.”

“It's not like I'll tell them specifics, name names. But if I say that a tyrant will be born next year, what does it matter? Any fool can predict that,” Dean said, and then his voice took a sardonic turn. “Isn't that what we want? To be like any fool in this time?”

“At least you can talk,” Perlez said, and despite himself, Dean chuckled.

When they met up with Cuyler again, he was dressed in the same suit he had been wearing when they first encountered him. He held some more clothes in his arms.

“This will be for you,” he told Dean, handing him a brown robe. “It seems monk-like, I suppose.”

“And this is for you.” He handed Perlez a black towel and blue robe.

Perlez held the towel up. “What is this for?”

“It's a turban,” Cuyler explained, adding, “You wear it on your head.”

“I know that.” Irritated, Perlez pulled the robe over himself and began wrapping the towel around his head. “I wasn't aware that this was how the Spanish dressed.”

“Oh, probably not,” agreed Cuyler. “But tell me, how do Spaniards dress?”

“I would imagine they wear normal clothes like you and I.”

“Right,” Cuyler said. “So put on your turban.”

After hooking the carriage up to the horses, they headed out into the square, with Cuyler riding on top and Perlez and Dean following behind in their robes, like two penitents. Some people in the town noticed this miniature procession and began to follow the carriage, and it was with a certain anxiety that the two men noted there were others waiting in the square. Again, Cuyler parked the carriage beside the church and stood on top.

“Ladies and gentlemen, tell your friends and family that a demonstration of the miraculous heights of modern science is about to commence shortly,” he declared in his most booming voice, adding in a quieter, more conspiratorial tone, “And their wallets, of course, are invited as well.”

A few people in the audience chuckled at this, but most just watched with dull-faced curiosity, seemingly bored by the idea of whatever spectacle they were imagining. But people still came, and a crowd accumulated quite quickly, there being little else to compete with whatever paltry amusement this well-dressed stranger could provide.

But there was always a level of resentment, even in the curiosity of the crowds, and it was this resentment that always mystified Cuyler. He could just begin to fathom it, but he had yet to understand how to master it. In his mind, it was simply a result of the crowd's own resentment at itself for being fooled by such an obvious fraud. His only solution was to wink at the audience knowingly every so often as an acknowledgement of their unspoken pact: that he would fool them and they would submit to being fooled.

However, this really only covered part of the problem, and when the crowd escaped his grasp, Cuyler was helpless before it. They did resent themselves, but it was not merely a matter of resenting their submission to an obvious lie--it was a resentment at that need to submit, a need that came from the hideous boredom they were slowly discovering as their world dragged itself into modernity. This was supposed to be a new age of technology and reason, and here they were, allowing a suited buffoon to spit their irrationality back in their faces, and they would pay him for it, and talk about it excitedly the next day because there was nothing else to do between working and waiting for the next buffoon to spit in their faces. No, Cuyler did not understand the crowd at all.

But the crowd did not necessarily understand Cuyler. What seemed to observers an obvious travelling charlatan, just another freak show curator making a cheap living, was actually a man of some principle. When he said he hated “honest men,” he did not lie: he truthfully hated people who spouted pieties of honour and principle without understanding that they were putting the lie to their own lives. It was a vain hope, but nonetheless, he still wished people to leave his show thinking that perhaps the men of honour were not to be trusted, while the charlatans like himself could offer a glimpse into the strange workings of the world. Which is why he would begin his show by saying:

“What miracles have you seen in this church?” At this point, he pointed at the spire of the church. “None, I'll wager. What marvels can God bring you that man cannot himself create?”

Perlez eyed the crowd nervously, half-expecting a lynch mob to form, but they seemed more bemused than offended by Cuyler's blustery attempts at blasphemy. The townspeople might take a certain pride in their religion, not unlike the pleasure one takes in wearing fine jewellery, but they were not so consumed by their vanity that they could not laugh about it once in a while.

“Let me bring you the finest miracles from around the world,” Cuyler entreated the crowd. “My associate, Mr. Perlez, has fled from the small-minded authorities of Spain to bring us curios unknown in our lands.”

At this cue, Perlez lifted the side of the carriage, revealing a series of jars covered beneath blue cloth. People pushed forward to see what would be revealed, and Cuyler climbed down off the carriage to better direct the crowd.

Addressing Perlez, Cuyler spoke rapidly in what seemed to be utter nonsense, although there seemed to be a few stray words of French and possibly Latin. When Perlez shook his head in confusion, Cuyler leaned forward and whispered in his ear, “That's Spanish, idiot.”

Perlez sighed, feeling more foolish by the second. Refusing to engage Cuyler in a nonsense conversation, he whispered a noise that sounded vaguely like language to Cuyler, who then translated for the crowd.

“My associate says that this particular specimen--” and here he pulled away a cloth to reveal a jar containing a two-headed pig foetus “--was created out of a failed scientific experiment. Yes, science is imperfect, friends, as flawed as your shoes or the weather. Anyway, this creature was bred to fatten itself quicker, two heads being better than one--at least as far as eating is concerned.”

The audience seemed to respond well to this and actually clapped respectfully for Cuyler's spiel.

“And what do we have next?” Cuyler beckoned Perlez closer, who dutifully went through the motions of whispering again.

“Even stranger,” Cuyler intoned ominously. “This next creature was a tragic misfit that could not survive in the harsh elements. But we may behold it and wonder what might have been.”

Cuyler pulled away the next cloth to reveal a calf head totally devoid of hair. The skin was pink and veiny, while the animal's eyes were sewn shut and its bloated tongue sticking out of the mouth. Disgusted, Perlez looked away.

“No, we cannot always trust progress, I fear,” Cuyler said sadly, watching the floating head. “Some things do not turn out how we wish. Tell me, Mr. Perlez, what is next for us?”

Perlez whispered in Cuyler's ear, and as he spoke, the man's eyes grew wide. “Oh, my, really?” he asked Perlez in a horrified tone. “Do you think they are ready to see such a thing?”

Looking at the crowd, Perlez could see that not only were they ready, they were growing impatient with this ridiculous build-up just to see a few freak animal foetuses. He solemnly nodded to Cuyler.

“The next thing we shall see,” Cuyler declared in a dark tone, “is the reason our friend here is no longer in Spain. But I assure you, kind folks, that you need not fear his twisted experiments. He has renounced them as evil, and he will only use his knowledge for good. Is that not right, sir?”

Perlez nodded again.

“Good. Then I shall present to you the last of his failed experiments.” With a flourish, Cuyler swept the cloth away from the last jar. Several gasps came from the crowd as they saw a human foetus floating in the jar. The child looked no bigger than an average newborn, except that it had four arms and four legs. Perlez tried to hide his discomfort and looked at his feet. To the audience, this probably appeared like shame, and it served the purposes of the show well.

“We've all wished this, haven't we?” Cuyler asked, his voice suddenly dropping into a gentle and soothing timbre. “I've only got two arms, we say, I can't do everything at once--but what if we did have more than two arms? What an incredible achievement it would have been. The small-minded authorities in Spain saw no benefit in these experiments--are they not aware that you need to fail if you are ever to succeed?”

A woman in the audience started crying.

“Oh, do not be afraid. I assure you the child felt no pain,” Cuyler said. “We are all enlightened people here, are we not? In more superstitious times, they would have said this child was a sign of the devil. But we know better, don't we?”

The smile on Cuyler's face did nothing to lighten the mood, and Perlez could feel the crowd turning. What troubled him was that Cuyler either did not notice or did not care about the increasing unease of the spectators.

“But let us not dwell on the failures of the past,” Cuyler declared charitably. He motioned to Perlez to close the side of the carriage, which he did to the great relief of the crowd. “Now, let us turn to the future.”

Dean wandered out from behind the carriage, his eyes darting uncertainly over the crowd. Perlez stood off to the side, watching anxiously.

“Our friend here is a monk abandoned by his order, thrown out in disgrace for possessing visions of the future to terrible to be reconciled with God. Tell us, enlighten us--what have you seen?”

Cuyler led Dean by the elbow and left him right in front of the crowd.

Dean was hesitant, his face lost and afraid. His features seemed to be shrinking, and his voice trembled. “Next year, there will be a tyrant born....”

“Oh, there's one born every year,” Cuyler said, and the crowd laughed. “Tell us something more.”

“He will murder millions,” Dean replied in a hurt voice like a child.

“That's all well and good, brother,” Cuyler retorted, “but I think we would rather hear about what wonders the future will offer us.”

The crowd applauded this, and Dean looked to Perlez, but he had turned away from the crowd, unable to watch.

“In the future, there will be no violence,” Dean said softly, “and we will control time. We will bend it backwards and try to heal the sickness of the past, and we will fail, we will fail....”

Anxiously, Cuyler tried to egg Dean back on track. People in the audience were muttering amongst each other, steadily losing interest in this doddering, meek prophet. “But what of the fantastic machines of the future?” Cuyler asked. “What great devices will make our lives better? What great scientific leaps will improve our lives?”

But Dean was too stupefied by the crowd to respond to his cues. “You mean insulin?

Several people in the crowd began to boo, and Dean looked like he would cry. Cuyler grabbed him by the arm roughly and led him away. “Remember, I did say he was mad,” he cautioned the audience as he left Dean behind the carriage. “But now for the final exhibit, one that shall surely live in infamy in this fair town's history....”

Behind the carriage, Dean took off his robe and tossed it down on the ground. He started wandering the streets, strangely empty of people. It occurred to him that this is how streets sometimes appear in dreams, devoid of human life save for the dreamer. The existence of other people in such a state could only be assumed. But he knew Perlez was out there and would find him, so he wandered.

The streets of this town seemed like loose strings all leading to the square at the centre. Some were cobblestone and others still dirt; some filled with houses and others filled with shops. Dean followed one--it didn't matter which one, they were all the same to him--and found himself walking a long curved street, unable to turn away or find a different path. The houses were so close together that you couldn't squeeze between them and there were no side streets to escape down. If you wanted to escape, you had to enter a house. And when you entered that house, you would play the role it assigned to you. Enter it as a stranger. Enter it as a husband or son, lover or murderer, worker or thief. But you always enter it as something.

Dean walked, following the street until he found himself on the outskirts of town. The afternoon sun was shining brightly and the coolness in the air was barely noticeable. Dean sat down against a barren tree and watched the town.

A couple hours later, Dean finally spotted his colleague. Perlez was walking down the street, looking from house to house as if he expected Dean to be watching from a window. When he spotted Dean, started walking quickly towards the outskirts of the town.

“There you are.” Confused, he asked, “Why are you waiting out here?”

“I knew you would find me eventually,” Dean explained calmly, “so I just stopped here.”

There was a flash of irritation on Perlez's face at this explanation, but he said nothing. Instead, he pulled a few coins out of his pocket. “Bernhard gave us these, although he said he doubted we had earned them.” After a pause, he added, “We're fired.”

“I thought I quit,” Dean said.

“It makes no difference.” Perlez looked down at Dean. The man seemed so relaxed, despite having been so close to another meltdown. His face was not pale and his body did not shake, even though the wind was picking up and made Perlez shiver. “Are you okay?”

“Yes,” Dean replied, sounding a little surprised at himself.

Perlez nodded. “Good. Then we should be going.”

Dean stood and he pointed in a direction. “That's north, isn't it?”

Without a word, Perlez started walking, and Dean kept pace beside him, following through the trees, the leaves crunching under foot and the empty branches like claws. And if the wind from the north bit down hard, the two men paid it no mind. They walked between its teeth.