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“Whu – what?” I mumbled.
The world was blurry at first.
A face resolved. Jean-Claude?
No, he is younger, but he looks like my friend Dumiére.
“He has awoken!” the man said.
Another face stood over me now, a woman.
“How – how long?” I asked. My body was stiff and sore. My skin tingled.
“Sir, it has been two hundred and twenty three years,” said the man. “I am Pierre Dumiére, and this is my sister, Celeste. Ever since our ancestor, Jean-Claude put you under his spell of sleep, our family has watched over your body, awaiting this day.”
“Why have you revived me?” I asked, looking at their strange, frilly clothing and big powdery hair. “Is the end of man upon us?” I tried to sit up. I could not lift my bones.
“We believe it is, Sir. They have lined up all of the aristocracy in the palace square, and they are beheading everyone!” said Celeste. “Surely, this is the end of the world!”
“Beheading?” I asked, looking around the room at the paintings on the walls and the fine draperies over the windows.
“It is a revolution,” said Pierre.
“A revolution?” I said, getting irritated. “You woke me up for this? Do you not understand what a revolution is? Out with the old, in with the new. No more this, but plenty of that. Ah yes, the end is nigh for our royal friends, but that is not the end of all mankind! I am not interested in change! Change is a constant of existence. I am interested in the cessation of change. The elimination of existence!”
Pierre and Celeste looked at each other. They looked rather mortified. “Uh, yes. We’re so sorry, Sir.”
“Well, don’t just stand there,” I barked grumpily. “Put me back, put me back! I must sleep again!”
“All right,” said Pierre. “As you wish.”
The two of them rubbed me down with the ointment, and I soon drifted off to the blackness that flows between the sands of time.
Time and Again: A Collection of Crazy Chronology Page 4
