The doctor closed the door softly behind him. He looked at his ID, “Dr.George Rubenstein,” a thoughtful thumb stroking the picture that was him, but not. He would never get used to that name. These humans, offering their name to the world on cheap plastic and ink. He would make them squeal before offering his own name.

Dropping his ID, the doctor recovered his poise. The important thing was the book, Alhazred, the only accurate penning of the apocalypse, and not that Nostradamus bullshit; all metaphors and euphemism. There was only one known version of the forbidden tome, and in all of the potential universes within universes, it had been placed here, on this unobtrusive rock called Earth, in the shaky hands of a madman. The doctor had no doubt that it was upon laying his hands on the book that the fragile being had gone mad. The truth tends to do that to you.

The problem was how to get the truth out of the man.