Xanadu’s Reviews > Sheep: Classified: A Witty Literary Time-Travel Political Satire Across 2,000 Years of Human Folly > Status Update

He was quiet for a moment. "You understand that what
you are about to walk into is the oldest mechanism we
have. We have simply updated the vocabulary." A
pause. "They will not call it a witch trial. They never
do, they never need to, but they will hunt you to the
end."
He turned towards the window. The light had not
changed.
"They will decide what you meant," he said, "and that
becomes the record."

Then he said: "Do you expect people to believe you?"
"I expect them not to," I said. "Belief is the wrong in-
strument. The ones worth reaching will verify. That is
enough."

...on a ride with the full commitment of someone who has nowhere else
to be, and if, in each case, he is accompanied by some-
thing wearing a sheep's patience behind a dog's eyes,
do not be alarmed.
No rejoicing is required. We cross, and we pass. A nod
will do. A small smile. That is enough light for the
moment.

That is how we will know you.

The world contains people I care
about. And the people I care about contain people they
care about. And somewhere in that chain, in that accumulation of people caring about people, extending outward in every direction from wherever you are standing right now, there is someone who will read this and
recognise something.

The most honourable thing, I had come to understand, was not to demand that the world change. The world has been asked to change before. It has noted the request and continued. The only thing, really, that belonged entirely to me, was to change what I could change, which was myself, and to leave behind what I could leave behind, which was this.

The kindness was the evidence.

More than anything, this book seems to be satirizing the absurdity of arbitrary authority and officious behavior.

I do not know how long we were in the arena. Long enough for the
sky to finish its business and go fully dark, the stars properly arrived
now, more of them than I was accustomed to, no city light here to
soften them, just the string lights below and everything else above, and
between them the warm dark and the sound of bumper cars and, occasionally, a laugh that I recognised as mine and did not try to account
for.

I laughed.

Not the polite laugh of a meeting, not the careful laugh of a man who has learned which laughs are appropriate and deployed them accordingly for fifteen years. Something further back than that. Something that did not consult the rest of me before it arrived.

...the car lurched forward with a sound like mild disagreement, and I drove it in a wide, wobbling loop and felt the specific pleasure of moving without destination, which is a different thing from going nowhere, and is in fact almost the opposite.