Summary

In Part I, “Clinic of the Past,” Chapter 1, the narrator, G.G. learns about an Irish bishop Ussher’s calculations about time. Ussher calculated that time began “4,004 years before Christ” (13). Human time, G.G. argues, ended September 1, 1939.

In Chapter 2, while walking “through the streets of Vienna,” Gaustine saw a newspaper article that made him realize he “would have to disappear again” (14, 15).

In Chapter 3, the newspaper article was for Gaustine’s Alzheimer’s clinic in Vienna. The clinic was filled with artifacts from the past. In the clinic, “patients with memory issues” could revisit their old lives (16).

G.G. believes the idea for the clinic was his. When he sees the article, he tries contacting Gaustine, but Gaustine is missing.

In Chapter 4, because G.G. invented Gaustine, he knows he is notorious for jumping “from decade to decade” (18). He and G.G...