That night, at his dining table, with Nestor the king of Pylos curled at his feet, Zeno lays out his legal pads. Everywhere he looks he sees the inadequacies of his early attempts. He was too concerned about recognizing clever allusions, steering clear of syntactical reefs, getting every word right. But whatever this strange old comedy was, it wasn’t proper or elevated or concerned with getting things right. It was a story intended to bring comfort to a dying girl. All those academic commentaries he forced himself to read—was Diogenes writing lowbrow comedy or elaborate metafiction?—in the face of five fifth graders, smelling of chewing gum, sweaty socks, and wildfire smoke, those debates flew out the window. Diogenes, whoever he was, was primarily trying to make a machine that captured attention, something to slip the trap.

A great weight slides away. He brews coffee, unwraps a new legal pad, sets Folio β in front of him. Word gap wordwordword gap gap word—they’re just marks on the skin of a long-dead goat. But beneath them, something crystallizes.

I am Aethon, a simple shepherd from Arkadia, and the tale I have to tell is so ludicrous, so incredible, that you’ll never believe a word of it—and yet, it’s true. For I, the one they called birdbrain and nincompoop—yes, I, dull-witted muttonheaded lamebrained Aethon—once traveled all the way to the edge of the earth and beyond…

THE ARGOS

MISSION YEAR 65

DAY 325–DAY 340 INSIDE VAULT ONE

Konstance

The slip of paper settles onto the table.

Christopher Dee

Olivia Ott

Alex Hess

Natalie Hernandez

Rachel Wilson

One of the children held hostage in the Lakeport Public Library on February 20, 2020, was Rachel Wilson. Her great-grandmother. That’s why the book of Zeno’s translations was on Father’s night table. His grandmother was in the play.

If Zeno Ninis doesn’t save Rachel Wilson’s life on February 20, 2020, then her father is never born. He never signs up for the Argos. Konstance doesn’t exist.

I had traveled so far, and it was all so magnificent, yet…

Who was Rachel Wilson and how many years did she live and how did she feel every time she looked at that book, translated by Zeno Ninis? Did she ever sit in the windswept evenings in Nannup with Konstance’s father and read to him from Aethon’s story? Konstance stands, walks laps around the table in the atrium, certain now that she is missing something else. Something hidden right in front of her eyes. Some other thing that Sybil does not know. She summons the Atlas off its shelf. First to Lagos, to the downtown plaza near the gulf, where brilliant white hotels soar above her on three sides, and forty coconut palms grow from black-and-white checkered planters. Welcome, says the sign, to the New Intercontinental.