Prophets
We, who stand in this nice enclosure, are considered by the medical community and the rest of society to be crazy. Hence, we are receiving the same treatment as all the other inmates: pharmaceutical treatment, drama therapy, kinesiotherapy, etc.
The other residents, though, call us “prophets” and render us tribute. I should make clear that some patients became residents merely because they listened to us talking, while others for the exact same reason were “cured”. Some of them built their life on the basis of our predicaments, whereas a few others killed themselves. Some became rich while others distributed their belongings among the poor.
Let me straighten another thing up: those who are referred to as “prophets” are (we are) in fact time-travellers. This is the explanation behind their deep knowledge of past or future events, or the hard-to-interpret forces they are (we are) supposed to possess. Nevertheless, the prophets belong to three categories: travellers from the past that become truly insane the second they enter the present, travellers from the future that are distinguished thanks to their reputable wisdom and, finally, travellers of the infinite present (this is where I belong) who bounce from moment to moment without being able to approach neither the present nor the future.
I am well aware of the amount of bizarreness that characterises this last category. However, there is something even stranger. It is said that a traveller from the past is the same person as one from the present and one from the future. In other words, it is about three identical individualsdifferentiated only by age and the point of view through which they see things. Should this theory apply, it would mean that we are trapped in a three-mirrored world in which we are forced to face past – but also future! – events as if they were accomplished facts we have no involvement in, nor will we ever have. So, here is the relentless question: Who are we? And what do we do?
This is the greatest enemy of time-travellers: seeking or questioning identity. Had we gotten over it, we would work miracles in every society we went astray.