It was the year when they finally immanentized the Eschaton. On April 1, the world's great powers
came closer to nuclear war than ever before, all because of an obscure island named Fernando Poo.
By the time international affairs returned to their normal cold-war level, some wits were calling it the
most tasteless April Fool's joke in history. I happen to know all the details about what happened, but
I have no idea how to recount them in a manner that will make sense to most readers. For instance, I
am not even sure who' I am, and my embarrassment on that matter makes me wonder if you will
believe anything I reveal. Worse yet, I am at the moment very conscious of a squirrel-in Central
Park, just off Sixty-eighth Street, in New York City-that is leaping from one tree to another, and I
think that happens on the night of April 23 (or is it the morning of April 24?), but fitting the squirrel
together with Fernando Poo is, for the present, beyond my powers. I beg your tolerance. There is
nothing I can do to make things any easier for any of us, and you will have to accept being addressed
by a disembodied voice just as I accept the compulsion to speak out even though I am painfully
aware that I am talking to an invisible, perhaps nonexistent, audience. Wise men have regarded the
earth as a tragedy, a farce, even an illusionist's trick; but all, if they are truly wise and not merely
intellectual rapists, recognize that it is certainly some kind of stage in which we all play roles, most
of us being very poorly coached and totally unrehearsed before the curtain rises. Is it too much if I
ask, tentatively, that we agree to look upon it as a circus, a touring carnival wandering about the sun
for a record season of four billion years and producing new monsters and miracles, hoaxes and
bloody mishaps, wonders and blunders, but never quite entertaining the customers well enough to
prevent them from leaving, one by one, and returning to their homes for a long and bored winter's
sleep under the dust? Then, say, for a while at least, that I have found an identity as ringmaster; but
that crown sits uneasily on my head (if I have a head) and I must warn you that the troupe is small
for a universe this size and many of us have to double or triple our stints, so you can expect me back
in many other guises. Indeed do many things come to pass.