This story postulates that the people of Earth are in reality the slaves of beings from another dimension who control all thought that people are allowed to have. When an occasion savant arises that produces knowledge the masters don't want people to have, that individual is made nonexistent.; A dwarf surgeon's family is held at the mercy of a cruel carnival barker when the surgeon is arrested for practicing without a license and the barker offers the judge to provide them with work at the circus, sparing them jail. When the barker loses his temper and kills one of the children, the surgeon cuts off his head and exchanges it with that of a dog, exhibiting him as a freak.; A man with a pair of claws for hands pays for an operation to give him normal hands and on his twenty-fifth birthday, turns into a lobster with a pair of human hands.; A native foreman poisons his cruel boss for his beatings of the laborers but the boss promises to turn over a new leaf if he is given the antidote. The boss is led to a group of trees and he carves an 'X' into one of the healing trees. When he recovers, he goes back to being sadistic, so the foreman poisons him again. The boss just laughs and kills the foreman, but when he returns to the trees, he finds the foreman has had his revenge from beyond the grave for they are all marked with an 'X'.