THEREON LYES

Theron Lyes was a mysterous man even before he came to town. People scratched their heads in wonder, even at his absence. When he arrived, nobody noticed. They were looking in all the wrong places. The police set their hounds loose, but they couldn't find him until it was too late to do anything about it. And so he disappeared into their midst.

It made everybody uncomfortable. There was somebody they didn't know somewhere in their town, somewhere among them, but they didn't know who. It could have been anybody. Everybody knew that much: and they even looked in their mirrors suspiciously.

The mayor ordered everybody fingerprinted. They all turned out to be different, and each set matched with somebody's fingers. And there were no left-overs.

The police ordered bugs put on everybody's phones. But nobody talked to anybody who wasn't there. Merchants all wrote down the numbers of credit cards used for purchases, and checked them against the names on the cards. In schools and churches, teachers and ministers called the roll. At Catholic Churches, priests started asking simmers to identify themselves when they went to Confession. Oaths of secrecy were forbidden. The lights were kept on in movie theatres. The local morgue started requiring identity cards, and all coffins had to be inspected by the police just prior to burial. All births had to be witnessed and attested to by two licensed observers. In public places. oaths were required for the use of first-person pronouns.

 But Theron Lies didn't show up. Nor did he get away.