Some 18,000 centuries in the future, one remaining being from the past looks after the animals and artifacts in the zoo where They keep Their collectables including Ruth, a reflective and naive woman of the long-lost past.
Having conquered Time and Space, They have now returned to them, as children do to long-forgotten toys. The collectors of string, match-boxes, old bottle-caps, have finally inherited the earth, and the City, built in the first star-reaching flush of power, has now become a dusty antique shop stuffed with every period Man ever knew. People in queer costumes parade the streets; the Old Vehicles Club has outings along SP@ Ave. (and only They, who can control time and motion, could keep Anglo-Saxon carts and Hexabiles from the 4th archy going at the same pace.)

Variants

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  1. “The Zookeeper” by Otis Kidwell Burger, Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, July 1961.
    2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . written by Otis Kidwell Burger