CHAPTER ONE

Bryce sat up in the middle of the night. There was something nagging at his mind. A vague recollection of something he'd heard a long time ago. A word spoken when he'd been very little and his father had been by his crib talking to himself as fathers sometimes do when they are alone with their infant sons.

The word had popped into his mind before. But he'd never been able to make sense of it. On the one occasion he'd asked his father what it meant. His father had sidestepped the question while praising Bryce for remembering a word spoken when he'd been an infant.

There was one word that was similar. The name of the small country once known as Ceylon, now Sri Lanka. But Bryce knew, somehow, that that wasn't it. Close. But wrong.

~Not Ceylon,~ his mind insisted. ~Cylon.~

He knew it was important. A word from the past. He wondered if it had anything to do with the forgetfulness that seemed to have descended upon the people of the world. His father and mother had always insisted that people had lost their memories when they stopped using their brains and letting the media think for them.

But Bryce had alway suspected that there was something more going on and that his father knew a lot more than he was letting on.

There was no doubt the man was brilliant. Bryce got most of his talent from his dad.

He wondered, as he always did when the word came to him, if his father had planted the word in his mind. He often felt that it seemed a bit odd that every network in the world, except the pirate stations and the adult stations, would hire a teenager as their head of Research and Development.

There had to be a reason they were there. Beyond the explanations the networks always gave people, which was that they had the best grasp on what young viewers wanted.

The reason was, of course, even more incredible than Bryce could ever have imagined.