[ WP ] You 're a history major . Your final exam is to travel back in time and successfully pass as a normal , everyday citizen . It 's not going well .

The crowd cheered as the next victim was bundled up the stairs to the platform, hands bound tightly behind him. 
 
 He was clearly terrified, and the wet patch at the front of has pants indicated he had lost his courage already. The executioner did n't care, Madame Guillotine took everyone, rich and poor, coward and bravo. 
 
 The man fell to his knees, and the crowd jeered him. He turned and shrieked hoarsely at them, eyes bulging in fear. 
 
 `` I do n't belong here, I did nothing wrong, oh god no I do n't want to die'' he wailed as the mob booed. This was a pitiful display, the man had no backbone, no dignity. 
 
 The Comte d'Anjou now, there was a fellow you'd walk a day to see beheaded. He had contrived somehow to have his codpiece opened, and on the platform as his condemnation was read aloud, he had waved his dick to the crowd, and told them how much their mothers had enjoyed it. The crowd had roared their approval. They sold penny sheets bearing a woodcut of his likeness, and a song celebrating his courage. 
 
 At last the pitiful man was kneeling and staring into the basket. As the crowd pelted the coward with rotten fruit and even a few stones, the executioner pulled the lever and the blade swooshed down, bringing a ragged cheer from the crowd. 
 
 The last execution of the day over with, the crowd bean to disperse. Only the executioner noticed the barely-there oval shaped temporal portal that had opened in a nearby doorway, hanging there like a ragged curtain of unreality, edged in glimmering light of a color not found in eighteenth century Paris. He opened his coat, pulled out his Temporal Passport and tossed it into the portal which then silently closed. 
 
 He grinned at the irony of completing his assignment because he had passed as a local, but failing his assessment because he refused to return. This time and place suited him better. It stank gloriously of blood on the cobblestones, and anger in the air. 
 
 A man of certain tastes, and armed with certain knowledge, could live quite comfortably here.
