Brother Dawfitz, ordained monk of the Holy Order of Time Immaculate stepped back from the crystal shrine and regarded the freshly polished surface with sanctified satisfaction.

 

He was still new at his job and viewed it as a holy calling instead of boring routine, which is why he had taken the trouble to polish the clasps that held closed the transparent cover above the sacred text, History Transcendent in the Flux of Time. This original handwritten tome was never opened even on the highest of holy days, and yet the young monk hadn't wondered how the clasps could possibly have gotten dirty. He simply saw that they were, and had cleaned them, giving up hours of irreplaceable sleep in return for the rapture of completion that now filled him.

 

That he was still in the chapel long past the hour when the Rule prescribed sleep was the only reason he saw the shabby little fellow amble in. Untidy, unkempt, and perhaps even unwashed, the man was clearly not a monk, and thus must be an intruder. Brother Dawfitz had opened his mouth and was drawing in breath to draw attention to this fact when the fellow looked up and smiled at him.

 

"Oh, hello there," he said. "I didn't expect anyone to still be awake. Hope I'm not disturbing you." Then he wandered over to a damascened side table and began rummaging inside, muttering to himself all the while.

 

Absent-minded civility was the absolute last thing the monk had expected from a nocturnal intruder, and it quite put him off his stride. Surely a burglar would not be so brazen as this, and according to his limited education, heretics were generally much louder and tended to be armed, if only with the customary pitchfork-and-torch of the traditional peasant mob. This was something new.

 

"Um, excuse me," he said after a while.

 

The little man didn't notice. "Now, where did I leave... Ah, yes; here it is. Funny place to keep it." Then he turned and walked toward the crystal shrine.

 

Dawfitz gaped when he saw what the fellow was holding. "You've... you've removed the Blessed Pen of St. Arbrust, With Which Only He May Write, from its reliquary!"

 

The stranger eyed him curiously. "Well, I should hope so. It's my pen, after all. Don't know why they keep putting it in these fancy boxes, mind you; it’s code-locked to my DNA. My instructions were..."

 

But his audience wasn't listening. Brother Dawfitz, overcome by the sanctity of the vision he was evidently having, had fallen to his knees and was reciting holy prayers to the gods of Time.

 

"Oh, well; takes all kinds, I suppose," said St. Arbrust to himself, gently nudging the monk aside with a shabby boot. He popped open the clasps and took out the book, opening it on the nearby lectern. "Now, where was I? Ah, yes; disproved the Third Law of Time."

 

When Brother Dawfitz returned to his senses, he was confronted by the sight of the little man jotting notes in the margins, crossing out entire passages, and arguing furiously with himself. His entire upbringing had focused on the reasons people weren't allowed to do exactly this, and it took the poor monk a while to grasp that it was, in fact, happening.

 

"You're... writing... in the Book!" the monk eventually said.

 

"I was, yes," said St. Arbrust. "Finished now, haven't I? Be a good chap and lock this back up, will you? Still need to test that third conjecture before it's ready for printing."

 

"But..." said the monk.

 

"Oh, very well. I'll do it myself."

 

"But you can't just change the Book!"

 

"And why not?" demanded St. Arbrust testily. "I wrote it; I can change it if I want to."

 

"But... but it's Sacred Scripture!" wailed Brother Dawfitz. "It's immutable!"

 

"I'm sure I never wrote that!" exclaimed St. Arbrust. "Just look at the title: Flux of Time, it says, plain as day. How you can have flux without change is beyond me, and I wrote the book on it, you know." He chuckled at his own feeble joke, then pointed at the image on the altar. "See? My picture, right there."

 

To be fair, the bas-relief looked a great deal more noble than the genuine article. It didn’t have dandruff, for one thing. Bas-reliefs on altar panels so rarely do.†

 

"St. Arbrust died six hundred years ago!" the monk said, shocked.

 

"Well, it is a book about time travel," said St. Arbrust. "Kind of a broad hint, that."

 

The brother was still obviously distressed, and his eyes had begun to dart about wildly. "Must be simple, poor chap," observed St. Arbrust to himself.

 

"Right," he said more briskly. "It's late; best get you to your bed. Come along, there's a good fellow."

* * *

 

When Brother Dawfitz finally woke two days later, he was incoherent and babbling. He spent the next few days in the infirmary being convinced by the kindly physician that he'd had a sort of waking dream. "Probably brought on by overwork," he added. "Get some more rest now. You'll feel better in the morning."

 

The monk woke in the middle of the night, and his restless mind wouldn't let him fall back asleep. To calm himself, he picked up his Book of Hours and opened it. He blinked once and screamed. By the time the doctor rushed in, still in his bathrobe, Brother Dawfitz was catatonic.

 

"Poor fellow," muttered the doctor. He picked up the Book from where it had fallen, glanced at it, then gaped at the inscription.

 

To a true fan,

Santana Arbrust

 

* * *

 

† This is one reason saints don't customarily carry around altar panels and other religious portraits for identification purposes. The wisest among us rely on passport photos taken after long nights of sleeplessness, drinking, and other debauchery so the picture looks exactly like we would if we ever got arrested. That this is another thing saints rarely do in no way devalues the advice.