Once, while the soldiers were asleep, a man broke out of the letter X. He burst through its centre and emerged into the world in a loincloth and began to run. He was past the soldiers before they could see him, and when they did see him, they just stood there rubbing their eyes and wondering if he was real. The man ran through the winding streets of the city faster and faster in apparent terror and many people saw him as he darted here and there along the cobblestones. As the day progressed and the streets contained more and more people, the man who had broken out of the letter X would suddenly find himself face to face with a pedestrian. When this happened his terror would redouble and he would dart off even quicker, shrieking as he continued his flight. Soon the news spread that a man had broken out of the letter X and there began to be a great deal of apprehension about him. Where had he come from? What did he want? Why did he flee from them as though they were monsters? The governor approved the order and helicopters were sent to follow the running man. Faster and faster he ran, his lungs burning up, coughing as he scrambled and fled across the plains and plazas of that immense city. Cars screeched to a halt, crowds gasped as he passed. As the police began to close in, the man was like a tiger in the jungle, scrambling up walls, leaping up stairs, jumping over the canyons between small buildings. They caught him at last in a net. A very beautiful man — a man as beautiful as they had ever seen. But when the flashbulbs went off and he looked into the faces of his captors, he let out shrieks of horror which were like nothing they had ever heard before. As he screamed, the man went into a spasm — his back arched under him, his jaw clicked open, his eyes bulged, and all of him trembled like a leaf of death. And so he died, this man who had broken out of the letter X. And why he came here and what he was running from no one ever knew, but from then on the soldiers guarded the letter X with greater vigilance, so that if anyone else broke out they could send him back inside for his own good.