Three Wise Men

There was a window, if such I may call it, into a world of desert sands under a night sky. wherein three men of African or Asian appearance had made their camp. One of them spoke passable Latin, which the Oxford scholar was still just able to understand, despite his state of near inebriation. They too had found their world running out into a cardboard waste, and after a considerable study had put it down to some event, possibly astronomical, which had severely distorted Space and, who knows, perhaps even time itself. 

Twenty Pence, With Envelope and Seasonal Greeting by Terry Pratchett (from A Blink of The Screen)