Years I lived inside that history without taking sides. There was still time to think of an exit, of another possible future, but when the whole room turned against me, the frontier was blacked out. Carried on your shoulders, I held the banners high enough to be seen at a hundred feet. Such is thy name, such is thy law. These Victorian imposters with nowhere else to hide. They have no one to blame but themselves. If you want to call me into a dark room and yell at me until I cry, my evenings are usually free. Most likely at this point the mind drifts to questions of accountability, or rather, was the experiment reproducible? If you had just stayed in character, the record might have been expunged. I’ve been away a long time. I’m beginning to forget the digressions. The scrubbed corridors, the inner workings. Room after room of possible experience. I like to know what I’m getting myself into. The tactical or the doctrinnaire. As with any back story, the purpose is to raise this possibility: that everything could have turned out differently. Everything does turn out differently, for everyone. Though you can’t predict the effort involved, the efficiency. Even the details are anachronistic. The wrong style of coverlet, the wrong china. The knock at the door that could be a camera crew lying in wait. The gardens where every path leads to a folly. If only a light had been left on in an upstairs window, I would have known which house was mine. That’s why my hands were empty, holding nothing.