the-place

The chapter introduces Greta Forzane, an Entertainer who nurses time-traveling Soldiers wounded in the Change War, a secret conflict fought across time to influence a distant future. The narrative focuses on the Place, a recuperation station outside normal space and time, where three newly arrived Soldiers—dressed as hussars and including Greta's commandant Erich—arrive amid tension and conflict, culminating in a violent confrontation that tests the fragile order of the Place. The chapter sets up the complex temporal warfare, the psychological toll on participants, and the interpersonal dynamics among the Entertainers and Soldiers.

In this chapter, the characters confront their new reality of being isolated in the Place, a self-sustaining environment cut off from the rest of the cosmos. Lili presents the idea that they are the survivors and seeds of a new future, suggesting the possibility of procreation despite previous sterility in the Change World. The chapter ends with a tense confrontation as Erich vehemently rejects the notion of domesticity and procreation, expressing deep misogyny and despair about their confined existence.