The Gifted Epoch

I

ORDINARY events are arranged in time, strung along its course like beads on a thread. There they have their antecedents and their consequences, which crowd tightly and tread on one anothers’ heels, without stopping or leaving gaps. This is also significant for a narrative, whose very soul is continuity and sequence.
    But what is to be done with the events that have no place in time — events which came too late, when all of time was already allocated, distributed and shared out, and which now find themselves all-at-sea, as it were, unclassified, suspended in the air, homeless, and astray?
    Has time not, after all, been too narrow for all the events? Could it be that all the seats in time have already sold out? Anxious, we run along that whole train of events, now being made ready for its journey.
    For the love of God, can there really be no street trade at all here in the tickets for time..? Mr Conductor!
    Remain calm! I will settle the matter quietly, with no unnecessary panic, within the proper scope of matters.
    Has the reader heard anything about the parallel strands of time, in double track time? Yes, such branch turnings of time do exist, a little illegal to be sure, and problematic, but when one carries such contraband as I do — such unclassifiable, supernumerary events — one cannot be too particular. And so at some point in my story I shall attempt to take such a branch turning — a siding — and shunt this illegal history into it. Don’t worry. It will all happen imperceptibly — the reader will not experience any shock. Who knows, perhaps that tainted manoeuvre is already behind us, even as I speak of it, and we are already trundling down the siding.

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