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This is the story of a man
marked by an image from his childhood.

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The violent scene that upset him,

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and whose meaning
he was to grasp only years later,

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happened on the observation deck
at Orly Airport

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a few years
before the outbreak of World War III.

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Parents take their children to Orly
on Sunday to watch the departing planes.

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Of this particular Sunday,

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the child whose story
we're about to tell

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would long remember the frozen sun,

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the setting at the end of the deck,

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and a woman's face.

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Nothing distinguishes memories
from ordinary moments.

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Only later do they become memorable
by the scars they leave.

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That face was to be
the only image from peacetime

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to survive the war.

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He often wondered
if he'd really seen it

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or just invented
that tender moment

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to counter the moments
of madness to follow.

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The sudden roar,

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the woman's gesture,

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the crumpling body,

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and the cries of the crowd,
blurred by fear.

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Later he realized
that he'd seen a man die.

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Soon afterwards,
Paris was destroyed.

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Many died.

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Some considered themselves victors.

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Others were taken prisoner.

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The survivors settled in underground
passages beneath Chaillot.

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Aboveground, Paris,
like most of the world,

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was uninhabitable,
riddled with radioactivity.

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The victors stood guard
over a kingdom of rats.

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Prisoners were subjected
to experiments

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apparently of great concern
to those who conducted them.

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The outcome was disappointment
for the experimenters,

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and for the subjects,
either death

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or madness.

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One day they came to select a new
guinea pig from among the prisoners.

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He was the man whose story
we are now telling.

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He was frightened.

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He had heard
about the head experimenter

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and was prepared
to face the mad scientist

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or Dr. Frankenstein.

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Instead, he found
a reasonable man

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who calmly explained
that the human race was doomed.

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Space was out of the question.

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The only hope for survival
lay in time.

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A loophole in time
might make it possible

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to reach food, medicine, energy.

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This was the aim of the experiments:

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to send emissaries into time

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to summon past and future
to the rescue of the present.

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But the human mind recoiled.

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To wake up in another time

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was to be born again, as an adult.

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The shock was too great.

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After sending lifeless or unconscious
bodies into different time zones,

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the inventors now focused on men
with powerful mental images.

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lf they could conceive of
or dream of another time,

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perhaps they would be able
to enter into it.

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The camp police spied
even on dreams.

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This man was selected

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due to his fixation
on an image from his past.

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First, the present and all its supports
must be stripped away.

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They start again.

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The subject doesn't die

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or go mad.

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He suffers.

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They continue.

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On the tenth day,

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images begin to well up
like confessions.

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A peacetime morning.

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A peacetime bedroom.
A real bedroom.

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Real children.

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Real birds.

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Real cats.

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Real graves.

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On the 1 6th day,
he's on the observation deck.

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lt's empty.

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Sometimes he finds
a day of happiness,

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but it's a different one.

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A happy face,
but it's a different one.

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Ruins.

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A girl who could be
the one he seeks.

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He crosses her path
on the observation deck.

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She smiles at him from a car.

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Other images pour out
and mix

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in a museum
that is perhaps his memory.

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On the 30th day,
the meeting takes place.

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This time he's sure
he recognizes her.

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ln fact, it's the only thing
he's sure of

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in this timeless world
that amazes him with its riches.

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All around him
are astonishing materials:

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glass, plastic,

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terry cloth.

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When he shakes off his fascination,

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the woman has disappeared.

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The experimenters tighten their control

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and send him back on the trail.

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Time rolls back again.
The moment returns.

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This time he's close to her
and speaks to her.

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She greets him without surprise.

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They have no memories, no plans.

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Time takes shape
painlessly around them.

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Their sole landmarks
are the taste of the moment

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and the markings on the walls.

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Later they're in a garden.

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Ηe remembers that there were gardens.

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She asks him about his necklace,

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the combat necklace he wore at the start
of the war that is to break out someday.

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He makes up an explanation.

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They stop before a redwood trunk
marked with historical dates.

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She mentions a foreign name
he doesn't understand.

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As in a dream, he points beyond
the tree trunk and hears himself say,

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"That's where l come from"...

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and falls back, exhausted.

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Then another wave of time lifts him up.

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They probably give him another shot.

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Now she lies sleeping in the sun.

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He thinks that,
in the time it took him

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to return to her world, she died.

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She wakes up.
Ηe speaks to her again.

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The truth being
too fantastic to be believed,

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he mentions only the essentials:
a distant land,

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a long way to travel.

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She listens and doesn't laugh.

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ls it the same day?

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Ηe no longer knows.

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They'll take countless walks
like this one,

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and an unspoken trust
will grow between them,

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trust in its purest form.

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No memories, no plans,
until the moment he senses

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a barrier ahead.

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Thus the first set of experiments
came to an end.

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lt was the starting point
for a series of tests

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in which he'd meet her
at different times.

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He meets her a few times
before their markings on the walls.

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She welcomes him simply.

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She calls him her ghost.

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One day she seems frightened.

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One day she leans over him.

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He never knows
whether he moves toward her

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or is pushed,

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whether he's made it all up
or is only dreaming.

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Around the 50th day,

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they meet in a museum
filled with ageless animals.

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Now their aim is perfect.

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They can aim him at a given moment,

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and he can stay there
and move around at ease.

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She too seems to have adjusted.

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She accepts the ways of this visitor
as a natural phenomenon,

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how he comes and goes,
exists, talks,

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laughs with her, falls silent,
listens to her,

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and then vanishes.

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Once back in the laboratory,

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he sensed that something
had changed.

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The camp director was there.

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From what was said around him,

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he gathered that after the success
of the experiments in the past,

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they now meant
to launch him into the future.

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His excitement
made him forget for a moment

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that the meeting in the museum
was their last.

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The future was better armored
than the past.

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After several
even more grueling attempts,

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he eventually caught
some waves of the world to come.

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He crossed a planet transformed...

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with Paris rebuilt...

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10,000 incomprehensible streets.

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Others were waiting for him.

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lt was a brief encounter.

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They clearly refused
this slag from another time.

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He recited his lesson:

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Since humanity had survived,

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it couldn't refuse to its own past
the means of its own survival.

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This sophism was taken
for fate in disguise.

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They gave him a power unit

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strong enough to set
all human industry in motion again.

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Then the gates of the future
closed once again.

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Shortly after his return,

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he was transferred
to another part of the camp.

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He knew his jailers
would not spare him.

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He'd been a tool in their hands.

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His childhood image
had served as bait to train him.

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He'd lived up to their expectations
and played his part.

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Now he only waited to be executed,

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with the memory of a twice-lived
moment in time somewhere inside him.

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Deep in this limbo, he received word
from the people of the future.

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They too could travel through time,

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and more easily.

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There they were,

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ready to accept him
as one of their own.

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But he had a different request.

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Rather than that pacified future,

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he asked to be returned
to the world of his childhood

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and that woman
who might be waiting for him.

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Once again
on the observation deck at Orly...

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on this warm Sunday before the war
where he could now stay,

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he thought confusedly
how the child he'd been

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must be there too,
watching the planes.

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But first he sought out
a woman's face

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at the end of the deck.

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He ran toward her.

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And when he recognized the man
who'd trailed him from the camp,

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he realized there was
no escape from time,

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and that that moment
he'd been granted to see as a child,

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and that had obsessed him
forever after...

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was the moment of his own death.

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