i am sorry, doctor, but your protege has not returned. i do not suppose you have any objection to our starting the conference without him?
of course not. i warned the headstrong youth of the consequences of his impetuous folly, and now he must suffer them.
very well then, everyone else is here. let us begin.
our first speaker is doctor dee, also known as number one.
algernon was lost.
and alone.
people flowed past him a kinetic dance of obfuscation, blotting out the doors and windows of the myriad shops and cafes in the endlessly looping streets.
just when he thought he recognized a shop from a previous passage, he would be swept past it.
not that he wished to enter any of them.
all he wanted was to get back to the safety of the hotel.
he turned on to a quieter street.
surely he had not been on it before.
the street sloped up a hill, and seemed occupied not by shops, but by dwellings with curiously small windows.
old fashioned automobiles were parked in front of the dwellings, and algernon thought he heard the sound of children shouting, although he could not see any actual children.
the street grew narrower, and the buildings and the automobiles and the shouts disappeated.
he reached the crest of the hill.
and looked down upon a city square, with not too many people walking around it.
and there was a movie theater - perhaps the same one he had seen on first leaving the hotel by its side door!
but it was not to be.
the marquee of the theater did not read “ to be continued”.
it read -
how will you meet your end?
algernon took a deep breath.
he resolved to ask one of the passersby where he was, and how to get back to the hotel.
he had heretofore refrained from this bold step, fearing the worst.
but now there was nothing else for it.
excuse me, sir -
but his first target went by him unheeding -
so far from being daunted, algernon felt a fresh surge of optimism.
excuse me, miss -
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