Detail from Dali's “Persistence of Memory.”

Constructing a new super-highway, workers blasted off the corner of a cliff. A pocket of air appeared within the stone. In it lay a sleeping man, surrounded by scientific implements and gauges.

Marveling that a man should be found within what had been solid stone, the workers approached. The sleeper woke. Through a translating device he spoke to them in perfect English. “Greetings, my friends. May I speak with your scientists?”

Awed at first by the sleeper’s technology and apparent ability to travel through time, the National Science Foundation was soon calling him a hoax, suggesting that one of the workers who “found” him had actually planted him there. For a rare moment the majority of Christians found themselves in agreement with the majority of skeptical scientists.

The time-traveling scientist stood before representatives of both groups and shook his head sadly. “You are like every other generation—every generation but one,” he said. “You reject me and the truth I bear. The ancients tried to stone me as a blasphemer because I taught that their gods, the sun and stars, were but gases and the moon but rock and dust. The Medievals tried to burn me as a sorcerer, saying my knowledge and power could have come only from the devil. Every culture I visited has labeled me as a madman or worse because my teachings did not agree with some prevailing theology, philosophy, taboo, or category—some false system which, like them, has perished or is perishing. Others brushed me off as irrelevant, because universal cycles would efface me and raise me up again endlessly.

“The one age which would have heard me out with respect is now a century gone. As for you—half of you denounce me because I insist that God created the heavens and earth through Jesus Christ and the other half because I say this all took place in a cosmic creation event more than 10 billion years ago. I will waste no more of your valuable time. Adieu.”

With that he walked to the great double doors of the meeting hall. As he passed outside, those within saw a translucent green egg envelop him, followed by a flash as bright as lightening and a thunderous rumble. They rushed to the entrance, but the time traveler was nowhere to be seen.