Prologue
     The Millenium
     It was again today that I chose to watch a child die. I watched her 
drown. This evening, her family will find her still and unfamiliar. Dead leaves 
and dead insects will float on the surface beside her, as things of the same 
meaning do. It will be this way because I let it be. It is this way because I 
did nothing to stop it from being. It was again today, and I’m certain not the 
last today, that people will suffer, and my decisions will be the cause. 
     I don’t wish to, but I watch over the remains. Neither cold nor night 
can care what has taken place. As I stand, ice crystallizes on broken water, 
and darkness obscures the yard. But I will do nothing to cure the blindness 
that night will cause me. Instead, I will know the family’s sorrow through 
reflections of moonlight and slashes of sound. That will be more than enough, 
as it will be, when the next-door-neighbor, an elderly woman, shuffling tiny 
steps, finds the accident, and its lifeless child.
     As she cries out, the ice will deaden her screams. Dissonant winds will 
sweep the woman’s voice away. She will weep uncontrollably. She will fall onto 
frosted cement. 
     Days before, she wished that the noisy girl would be silent forever. 
Now, the child’s hollow body floats soundless, and I am the only living thing 
that will hear the woman’s regret.
     Waiting, I notice it is small here. Blocks of cement and stucco hide 
the landscape. Nature had intended here to be vast, level, majestic. But these 
enclosed spaces are made even smaller by blinding reflections, which turn the 
stark whiteness into a saturation of everything visible. The world is only a 
photograph faded by the sun. And, when looking to the sky, the moon is flat. 
The city lights and fumes have shallowed the depths of the heavens. All 
infinity is only a painted ceiling. 
     Winters are only now becoming like this. The winter of my earliest 
memory was not so small. No, when I try to imagine where it is I came from, the 
first thing I remember is the unending depth of what a winter sky was. In fact, 
the only memory that predates the sight of that sky is the memory of a dream. 
It was a dream made by golden colors and ocean sounds. 
     Too much, that golden dream is my first reality. Everything before it 
seems more like the dream. Before it, memories are vague smears of color, 
crookedly sequenced and faintly spoken. They are knots of invented images, 
pasted to the inert explanations of others. They are things I must never wholly 
know. They are prior to my purpose, and caused it. 
     But, I’m told, and I believe, that they must be cut off from who I am. 
If they’d not been cut off, I might never have done the things that I did. I 
might have shown mercy. I might have shown forgiveness. 
     And where would Humanity be now, if I had shown forgiveness? 
     If those memories and purposes hadn’t been cut off, I certainly 
wouldn’t watch a child die. I would save that child, I would give her life back 
to her, as easily as you might take the life from an insect.
     But what kind of future would humankind have, if I did such things?
     
     The story that I recount tells how I’ve chosen to let lives, all lives, 
fade before my eyes, and how I've chosen to let Fate, good and bad, push the 
world around. It tells how this choice could be better, even for the dying, 
than my standing in the way of growth and change. And, it tells how difficult 
this choice was to make without bias. For, as painful as it is now, now with 
the company of the corpse, my future is saved by it. This story is about how 
this choice, unlike any other choice I can remember, has echoed through all of 
time, in every direction, forever. This pebble has hit the lake, and its 
ripples will never fade away, will never find a shore to wash against. It will 
be unending. They say, “Amen.”
     It, the choice, the story of the choice, begins with the golden dream, 
and ends here as I speak, in the company of the cold child, at the beginning of 
a long sleep. During that span, during this story, every gear in the pitiless 
machine will turn. Life will thrust its purpose on the living, only to be 
dodged, like a mortal strike. Worlds, cultures, miracles will grow in spring, 
only to whither in autumn, like timid flowers. Gods will stand able against the 
ice of winter, only to be burned by the thirst of summer, like tall evergreens. 
And all that one could ever love, and all that one could ever hate, will have 
its turn as king, only to grovel before the throne of Fate, like the expendable 
servant of an indifferent majesty.
      So, when the story ends, you will wholly know. You will see what was 
prior to your purpose; you will see what caused it. You will not be cut off 
from who you are. And - I pray - you will no longer be cut off from who I am. 
     Then, you might forgive me, for what I have done, and what I must do.
     
     
     The golden dream? The golden dream faded away as any dream as I began 
to wake. I didn’t instantly know that it would haunt me, always. I didn’t 
instantly know it’d become the bookend that memory leaned against. I didn’t 
know anything, but that gentle wind touched my face, and asked me to open my 
eyes. 
     It was winter, and above was the endless winter sky. 
     Closer was Cassel, stuffing his creased satchel with tattered blankets. 
Anxiety was in his actions: he knew that I was awake, but wished I weren’t. He 
was reluctant in letting go of the way he’d wanted to leave. He’d wanted to go 
mysteriously, with integrity. He’d imagined soundlessly stuffing his things 
away, then taking one last look, vanishing into the forest, withdrawing, as he 
would see it, silently and nobly. The only reminder of his caring would be the 
fire, which he’d given a few more branches to burn. This man, who I respected 
more than any other, had wanted to sneak away, without explanation.
     “What’s happening?” 
     I propped myself up on my elbows, but an answer did not come. A 
shiftless winter wind howled down from the mountainside. It would snow soon. I 
could tell that, and little else.
     Cassel went on packing. 
     I quickly came to hate that I felt out of place in the camp where I'd 
fallen asleep, so comforted. I hated that something monumental had changed, and 
I was not enough to be confronted with it.
     “Cassel – tell me what is happening.”
     Then, he sighed, and let his imagined and honorable exit pass away. He 
froze, locked at the point between understanding and action. The wind didn’t 
dare dishevel his stillness, until finally, he muttered under his breath, 
“It’s a shame you had to wake up.” His voice was a fragment of a world that 
had been lost, strained, on the brink of vanishing. “I didn’t want to lie to 
you.” 
     “What do you call this? Sneaking away?”
     Cassel looked down again, never having looked toward me. He latched his 
bag with obvious intention, and said, “I didn’t want to say anything at all, 
because I didn’t want to lie. I wanted to follow my judgment, and stand by its 
ultimate outcome.” He turned his head, and looked to my eyes. Mine were the 
sea after a storm. His were pale and gray ice. “But I see I have to explain, 
even if I don’t want to.” He looked back to his things. “Even if it won’t be 
enough.”
     “Where are you going?” I asked.
     “Back home, in a sense.”
     “In a sense?”
     “In a sense…”
     My surroundings seemed bizarre, and I stood. I made myself ready to 
face my surroundings. But I didn’t move closer to Cassel. 
     “Is that truth, or lies?”
     “It’s more a lie than the truth.”
     “Then tell me the truth.”
     The intolerable wind blew across the valley. His long coat danced on 
it. His many scarves blew behind him on it, like banners flapping from the 
wings of birds. 
     All of this was surreal, and I was grabbing awkwardly at meaning. 
     “Tell me what’s going on. Tell me the truth.”
     Cassel pulled the strap of his satchel onto his shoulder. He looked off 
over the curve of the earth, and said, “That would be a terrible mistake, I 
think.”
     Finally, with that, he turned toward me. His chiseled face, with its 
thin nose, deep-set eyes, angular jaw, was laden with dry wrinkles. His long 
silver hair doubled the shocking blue of his eyes. The darkened form of his 
body was enormous and square, a man of health and mass, twice my size and 
strength. 
     “You have to give me some kind of explanation – after all these 
years.”
     “After all these years? After all these years,” Cassel said. “After 
many more of these years, periods like that will stop meaning so much to you. 
They’ll be shooting stars.” 
     He looked down into the fire, and was silent, was thinking again of how 
he’d intended his departure to go.
     I took a step toward him, and his eyes snapped up at me, disturbed that 
I’d broken the distance between us. I stopped, leaving the fire there, 
separating us.
      “Jerress, I am going to leave you here to face your own fate, good 
and bad,” he said, angry to be saying what he’d hoped not to. “And that is 
the very best thing for you. The very best thing.”
     “That’s crazy.”
     “You’ll get used to it.”
     “What are you talking about?”
     “That's as close to the truth as I can get.”
     “I don’t understand you. It’s crazy.”
     “The truth is, I’m leaving, Jerress,” he said. “The truth is, I’m 
bound to responsibilities so tightly that there’s no difference between the 
duty and the man. You’ll understand, when your time comes.”
     “Take me with you, like before.”
     “You mustn’t face what I’ve faced, what I must now face. In order to 
fulfill your purpose without pain, you must be spared that. But now, if I don’t 
go, even leaving you here won’t be good enough. I'm afraid I’m already too late 
to undo what's been done.”
     “Cassel,” I begged.
     “I’m trying to save you from destiny, Jerress Kyl.”
     “You’re getting crazier,” I said. 
     “I know that I can’t change anything that’s already gone wrong, and 
probably can’t prevent anything else. But, I would fail myself, and I would 
fail you, if I didn’t try. I must act. And you must stay here.”
     
     In two ways, Cassel was wrong that night. First, he thought it would be 
better to disappear without an explanation; I knew immediately that he was 
wrong and selfish to feel that way. Secondly, and more importantly, he felt 
that it was his responsibility to shape my life, because he knew my purpose, 
thought he knew how to prepare me. That, I did not immediately know to be 
wrong. It took many cruel lessons before I learned that people like he and I 
cannot guide things once our time is over. 
     Even if I’d known as much then, it wouldn’t have changed a thing.
     “Cassel.” 
     Stopping, I shook my head, trying to hold onto something that made 
sense. There was less and less to hold onto. My mind was hammered by empty 
questions. “What do you expect me to say?” I asked, feeling the fight falling 
away.
      “If all goes well, we will soon meet again. Then, I’ll explain this 
to you. Then, it’ll be time. Then, you’ll need to know the truth.”
     “What happens when you fail?”
     His answer was immediate. “Then, the future becomes harder than the 
past, and you'll still be searching for answers when your life’s all gone. If 
we fail at this, we’ll spend the rest of our existence trying to put it right 
again. We’ll spend the rest of our lives just trying to get back to where it 
all went wrong.” 
     We already were.
     Cassel, old, broad, strong, turned his back to me. He faced the 
illumination of the immense mountainside. At last, snow began to fall. It was 
thick within seconds. Flakes were clinging to my face. 
     “There is this, which I can say,” he began. “Take it for what it’s 
worth.” I listened numbly to frozen words. “This is a place of incredible 
change. Right now, it’s peaceful. But the time of peace may soon be gone. Soon, 
if this fight cannot be won, this place will be fraught with horror, and it 
will reach you, Jerress Kyl. You will find this world a more terrible place 
than you’ve known to imagine.
     "And if the darkness comes, if my fears and my beliefs come true, there 
will be a day, just as certain, when you’ll overcome it, and you’ll be ready, 
despite our errors and faults. When that day is here, long after you’ve 
surpassed me in every way, long after I’ve abandoned my strengths, you’ll come 
to me, and you will ask me for the truth. Then, and only then, you’ll give it 
to me.”
     True enough.
     
     It is also true that Cassel would fail. And I would suffer more, and 
longer, and would cause more pain to those around me, because of his decision, 
because of his decision to save a drowning child from choking pain.
     Yet, even if I’d known that much, I still couldn’t have done anything 
to prevent what followed. Cassel, in his compassion, had taken me away from the 
agony that I needed. 
     Indeed, he erred, and he knew it. He even knew why. He knew that he 
didn’t have the truth in his heart. He didn’t have the truth that only I could 
give him, that everything was already doomed to unspeakable pain, to fighting 
to get back to that place again, that place before things fell apart. It was 
something he could not help. For nothing, nothing possible, nothing that life 
might dream, could be more painful than fighting backward against the machine 
of time. 
     “Goodbye Cassel,” I said, feeling his absence already.
     “Goodbye Jerress.”
     He walked away in the wilderness. Snow drifted downward between us. He 
merged with the dense woods, becoming a branch of the forest as he pulled away.
     
     Imagine - the light reflected by this moment has not yet reached the 
Earth. It’s had a lazy time of nearly a billion years, but still hasn’t come. 
Light travels so slowly. It and time, conjoined twins, move across us, either 
with pointless energy or with sluggish design, like two crippled idiots in a 
sack race. Maybe in a half-million years, I’ll look into twinkling starlight, 
and I’ll see this moment again.
     It’s possible. 
     Indeed, we can see the planet I call Ecco from here. 
     


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