Prologue

A man watches his child, and I Watch them all.

The child can be seen in every corner of the room.

The room is not lined with photographs, mirrors, video monitors, or holograms. Rather, the boy himself… is everywhere.

In the northwest corner, the boy is an infant, sleeping soundly in a small crib adorned with a mobile.

Halfway along the north wall, the man pauses to watch his son at three, playing with blocks. One block tumbles from the top of a small stack. The man kneels down, picks it up, and places it back on the stack. The little boy looks up briefly, but he's deeply confused, and doesn't try to speak. The man moves on.

At age five, in the northeast corner, the boy is busily writing the alphabet over and over, down the length of a printed worksheet. He's too focused to notice his father, who sighs and moves on.

A short distance down the east wall, the boy is eight. He intently plays a VR game, and the father doesn't even bother to slow.

In the southeast corner, the man observes his eleven-year old son reading a novel. The boy is quick, turning a page every minute or so, and the father watches longingly, but he doesn't work up the courage to speak to his son.

Midway along the south wall, the boy is fourteen. He has obviously always been home-schooled, as the Elpis colony closed all of their public schools years ago. Nevertheless, he wears a gym uniform. He performs a full handstand, and isn't satisfied. With his feet straight up in the air, the boy repeatedly lowers himself to the floor, gently touching the crown of his head to the carpet, then raises himself back to his full height. I'm genuinely impressed. Even after a year of hitting the gym with Anya-28, I know I could never manage something like that. And I'm not the only one. The father is so impressed that he forgets himself and mutters something about being too old to attempt such a thing. The boy immediately flips to his feet as if startled. He squints up at his father, confused. Embarrassed, the man apologizes and hurries on.

In the southwest corner, the father stops again. His son, now seventeen, has paused in the middle of a meal. The young man stares out across the room, lost in deep thoughts, seemingly unaware of the younger versions of himself.

The father draws nearer to his son, his tension obvious. He's clearly working himself up for something. I zoom in, bringing my perspective close to them. The son seems to notice his father for the first time, and is confused. When the father starts speaking, the son makes a concerted effort to listen. But it must be very hard. The father speaks loudly, slowly, and clearly, but the young man squints, and several times shakes his head to clear it. After several minutes of strenuous effort, it's clear that the boy can't really understand his father. The man chokes up. He acknowledges how much all of this hurts. It's so hard for his boy to try to integrate new data. A simple conversation is essentially impossible. Though still not understanding the words, the boy knows pain when he sees it, and empathy softens his features. The man is now so emotional that he has to step away. It's tragic to see the relief that comes unbidden to the son's face. Trying to understand his father's words was tremendously taxing.

Unable to bear it, the father rushes from the room. My perspective smoothly shifts to track him. Passing through a doorway, the man stops at a curtain at the end of a hall. I zoom in to better hear as he speaks with his wife on the other side.

"It's so hard to see them—him—and not being able to really be a part of their—his—life."

"You're a fool to put yourself through this," the woman snaps, with the harshness of an argument repeatedly made but never won. "No one ever keeps the younger versions this long. The smartest dispose of them the moment a replacement appears. They're called 'Unwanted' for a reason! Supporting them all is costly. It can't possibly end well if you refuse to... tidy up."

Anguish so deep as to defy description tears at the man's features. "I just can't! I won't! They're all my boy! Our boy!"

Mercilessly, the wife digs at his emotional wounds. "Only the oldest version at any given moment is legally alive! You're clinging to obsolete editions that can't grow or advance! Stop being so selfish! Think of your current son! Think of me!"

"Our current son? His time is close! He'll become Unwanted in less than a month! Will you still love him after that, or will you only care about his replacement?"

Disturbed and disgusted, I'm done Watching this family for now. If I can't directly address and smooth over conflict, observing it hurts too much.

I rapidly shift my perspective away, up through the ceiling and then westward beyond the neighborhood. The technology level of this distant world feels archaic, trailing about a century behind what we have on Earth. Seventy lightyears of distance, coupled with strong incentive to avoid growth and learning, has exacted a heavy toll on this society.

My gaze glides smoothly above a forest road, where I soon zoom in on a car. The vehicle has its headlights off, so it's difficult to see in the predawn twilight. It accelerates to reckless speeds, closing rapidly on the minivan ahead of it, which in turn is following a flatbed truck transporting cut trees. At the last moment, the car in the rear turns on its headlights, and the minivan driver in front panics. Hitting the gas by mistake, he rear-ends the flatbed, which swerves wildly left and right. An oncoming pickup grinds to a halt, narrowly avoiding collision. The angry driver jumps out… just in time for the bands holding the logs to snap. The trees roll from the flatbed and bury the woman.

The driver of the minivan jumps out, wailing in dismay and shock, standing at the center of a disaster. But I've already zoomed in on the faces of the others, and I see that this is all a sick prank. The drivers of the flatbed and the car that caused the panic are both laughing. The woman that had been "crushed" crawls out from under the wood pile, laughing even harder. Zooming in, I see that the "logs" are in fact just empty bark, cleverly shaped. The victim of the prank drops to his knees, reduced to a gibbering wreck, and the others laugh in pure hysteria.

Though such rotten tricks seem common on Elpis, I'm still disgusted, though not so much as before. I elevate my perspective to escape the scene.

The orange sun is rising, and I soon notice movement off in the forest. I zoom in, tracking until I get a clear view.

A girl, perhaps ten years old, sits all alone in a tiny boat out in a slow-moving stream. I lower my perspective to water level, irrationally cautious despite the total impossibility of being detected. After all, my body is seventy lightyears from here. Only another Watcher could sense my presence, and even then they'd have no notion of my mind's exact location.

My vision follows her downstream. I'm surprised when a little boy sits up inside the boat. He must have been lying down under a blanket. I zoom in further, and confusion sets in when I recognize him. He is the five-year-old version of that man's son. Why would that boy be here? Shouldn't he still be with his father, and with all the other versions of himself? And in any case, how could he have gotten so far from home in such a short time? It's been mere minutes since I last saw him.

Doubting my first assumption, I zoom in so close that my perspective reaches the rear of the small, inflatable boat.

I feel the rubber surface of the craft, as if my own hands have reached out.

This sensation makes no sense. Sight and sound are all Watchers experience when our minds reach beyond our bodies. But when I angle my perspective downwards, I see small indentations, as if from the pressure of two hands. Startled, my perspective becomes stationary, and the boat floats away from me. The indentations disappear, along with my sensation of contact.

After a moment of stunned disbelief, I decide that I must have imagined this. A Watcher cannot interact with the world being Watched. Not even Charlotte-17 has ever managed it, and she's the strongest Watcher in the history of the Organization.

I resume my study, moving my perspective forward to overtake the boat, which is rounding a bend up ahead. Reeds and lilies line the edges of the slow-moving stream, pristine forests stretch out in all directions, and the sunrise gradually spreads light across the sky.

When my view rounds the bend after the boat, the beautiful, peaceful scene is marred. Ugly stained concrete lines the shore, the stream widens and slows, and drainage pipes spoil the water farther downstream. Curiously, I see no signs of animals or even alien insects. The entire area seems dead. The boat has pulled over next to a grungy, scuffed, inflatable structure. From close to water level, I zoom in on the bouncy house, wondering why it's out here.

It occurs to me that the girl in the boat doesn't look at all related to that boy, and I recall the disturbing conversation between his parents. Nothing about this adds up.

The girl steps ashore, barefoot, skin pale in a flowing white sleeveless nightgown. She stoops to pick up a red-stained wooden pencil lying on the concrete.

A strong gust of wind blows bits of trash into the water. I turn my gaze back to the silly, ugly inflatable house, expecting it to be pushed into the stream by the breeze. But the wind doesn't even budge it.

I hear the boy nervously asking the girl a question, but my attention remains on the house. It must be weighed down with something. Before I can elevate my perspective, the boy's question cuts off abruptly. Startled, it takes me a moment to reorient my view toward the boat, during which time I hear a splash. The boy's nowhere to be seen, and the girl smiles with fiendish satisfaction.

Dread builds within me, and I begin to elevate my perspective. The girl's smile darkens into something... wrong. Something that disturbs me deeply. She flicks her red-soaked pencil toward the mud-spattered bouncy house. It somehow feels like a familiar ritual for her, and a single crimson drop flies inside.

I hear the sound of a drop falling into liquid.

Rotating my perspective, I've risen high enough to see into the ugly inflatable structure.

Red liquid sloshes inside… too deep to see the bottom.

Revulsion seizes me, as leaps of intuition reveal dark truths of this world. The younger, Unwanted versions of children are typically disposed of. This... girl... happily plays a role.

Loathing and a burning hatred grow in me, and when the girl casually tosses her dripping pencil onto the concrete and gets back in her boat, I forget that I am only a Watcher. I cannot be satisfied with passive observation, and proximity to this evil childlike being seems to have altered the rules.

With an enormous exertion of will, I imagine my hand reaching down and grabbing the pencil. Filled as I am with pain and loss, imagining the millions of drops it would have taken to form such a deep pool, I don't experience the bewilderment that should come from my sudden success. Straining, I feel the pencil as if my physical hand holds it. The small, simple murder weapon rises into the air. I turn my gaze back on that vile house and surge with disgust. For just a moment, I feel the pencil in its entirety, far more than my physical body could have sensed. The smooth yellow paint, the rougher exposed wood, and damp graphite… I feel it all. It's almost a part of me, an extension of my will. And that will… is unbreakable.

The pencil launches forward with power my real body never could have mustered. It effortlessly punctures all the way through the structure near its base. The house begins to deflate and spill the amassed liquid trophies into the filthy stream.

The girl stops. She is simply standing in her little boat… but it no longer floats downstream. It hangs there, suspended against the current, as if tied to the shore by an invisible rope. The girl begins to turn toward her ruined treasure trove.

All at once, the gravity of the situation hits me. For the first time, I do not feel detached and immune. I whirl my perspective around, elevating higher. Driven by panic, I race my vision upstream. It occurs to me that it would be far smarter to simply end my Trance and return to my body…

…but I'm too late.

A chill washes over me... A sensation only a Watcher can ever feel…

I am being Watched.

My mind is grasped by a monstrous force, and my perspective stops moving. I feel a sensation similar to returning to my body… but in reverse…

I fall.

I have only half a heartbeat to wonder why I've lost control of my Watch.

Then I hit the water.

The sound of the splash, the impact on the surface, the chill of the stream. These sensations shatter my understanding of what it means to be a Watcher. I thrash back to the surface, overwhelmed at the sight of my hands and arms, my wet hair partly obscuring my vision.

I am here.

This cannot be possible. And yet I can't deny the effort it takes to tread water. My struggles intensify as I fight against the current, trying to swim upstream.

Somehow, horribly, I am personally, physically, at this terrible location. I am alone in the wilderness of Elpis, a world where unexplained temporal anomalies leave Unwanted copies of children behind as they grow up. A world where society approves of handing these children over to the being behind me.

As I swim with desperate strength, the little inflatable boat gradually overtakes me. The girl stands upright, not paddling, but her boat still makes headway against the current. Soon, it takes position directly in my path. I feel dread sinking deep into my bones and chilling me to the core.

She speaks. "Who are you?"

The girl hasn't yet turned toward me, and initially I don't answer. Terror wars with the grief that fills me with my new understanding of this world. But then she turns, looks right at me, and asks, "How can you see me? You aren't one of the Unwanted."

The implications of this question, deepening my conviction that this girl cannot be what she seems, freeze me in place. I stop treading water, but strangely I don't sink. I don't even float back downstream. The girl's boat has stopped resisting the flow of the current, and as she drifts toward me, I realize she's holding me in place.

"Who are you?" the girl snaps, the sweetness and innocence in her voice long gone.

I know, deep down, that I will not survive this encounter. This entity before me, typically unseen by all but her victims, that pulled me into this world and holds me at her mercy… I am powerless against her.

Yet this awareness brings a wild sense of freedom. An urge to make some grand gesture, some bold bluff, takes over.

Seventy lightyears from home, unarmed, and in the grip of a higher being, I have nothing to lose.

"I am Klaus-21, the Heart of the Watchers." My voice builds in strength as I utter what will certainly be my last words. "I am the Light that pierces the Darkness. I am the Hope that banishes Despair. I am he who inspires all Watchers to ever greater–"

The girl has drifted within reach of me. She changes.

What I behold cannot be described, for I cannot even understand it. My mind rejects the evidence of my eyes.

But I will not die passively. Niko-29 taught me that.

The thing lunges down at me, and I make one desperate attempt to punch my fists into it with all my strength. But it reacts faster than sight. It splits open, and my hands enter a hideous maw.

Nightmarish jaws close on my arms. The briar patch of wild, chaotic teeth cannot be numbered.

It wrenches me from the water and into the air, as ever more mouths burst open all over its undulating surface. The countless teeth begin to churn.

At least this should be quick…

Author's note:

The events of this Prologue weren't actually a product of my conscious imagination. It was the single most unsettling, bizarre, and terrifying dream I've ever had. Normally, dreams in which I suffer, or even die, don't really count as nightmares. I'm rarely all that afraid, instead focusing on the task at hand. This was even true with the dream I entitled "Nightmare." In that one, I was getting massacred by a xenomorph, but all that mattered was killing it.

But this dream… yeah, it was the real deal. I woke up shivering, horrified, but also fascinated by the bizarre premise. After years of pondering and planning, I have finally expanded this dream into a full novel-length story. I added a few names and minor details to this prologue in preparation for the bigger events to follow. I hope you enjoy it.

Reviews throughout are welcome and appreciated, so long as you avoid major spoilers for other readers.