In Peter's Garden

You are standing stock still, staring into the room that seems to glow red. You don’t know how long you have been standing here. You can’t seem to look away. On the other side of the glass there is a figure, face and body obscured by the strange suit he wears. He looks like a cosmonaut, an emissary of a far-off planet. You watch, transfixed, as he removes his mask, then one glove, and rubs his temples. He looks exhausted.

After a moment the man looks up, and when his eyes meet yours, you startle, like the rabbits you see illuminated by your headlights in your parents’ neighborhood. You don’t know how long you’ve been standing here. You don’t think there is an exact rule against being here, but it feels wrong.

You think the man will be annoyed at you for staring, but instead he shakes his head slowly, and pulls a scrap of paper from his pocket. He holds it up flush against the glass. On it are scrawled three words in black marker, the lines thick and haphazard:

PAST
PRESENT
FUTURE

He points at the paper, then looks at you quizzically. Do you understand? He seems to ask.

You do.

In less than five minutes, you are standing in front of another pane of glass. The words aren’t lit up, but they are there, unmistakable, surrounded by the magenta symbols of past statisticians and geometers. And there – tucked behind the time capsule, almost out of sight – is the corner of another crimson envelope. The room is full of people, but you don’t want to let the envelope out of your sight, so you wait, for hours, until the last straggler has left the room. Then, hoping there are no cameras trained in this direction, you jimmy the cheap display case lock with a bent bobby pin until it clicks, then retrieve the envelope from inside.

Within the envelope, you find a single piece of glossy paper that looks as if it was torn from a large book:

---