Chapters 4-5 Summary

Tall, lanky Richard MacDuff and elderly Professor Urban Chronotis, Regius Professor of Chronology, also known as Reg, walk across the St. Cedd's College, Cambridge campus to have dinner in the hall, where former student Samuel Taylor Coleridge is being honored. Reg, whose memory is starting to become unreliable, is Richard's former tutor from his college days. Reg once explained to Richard that his chair was created by crazy King George the Third to answer whether there was a reason why things happen in sequence and if there is a way to stop it. Reg says "the answers to the three questions were, I knew immediately, yes, no, and maybe," so he hasn't had to work at all. Reg is evasive about the former professors who held the chair.

At the Coleridge dinner, Reg and Richard catch up. Since college, Richard has...