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