Prologue

In a sea of consciousness, he watches.

It is not space. It is not time.

It is not life as his friends and family might consider it.

It is more.

So much more.

It is an existence...outside normal existence. Not linear. He exists outside of the mainstream, but can jump in whenever he wants.

He can go into the past and watch his birth.

Into the future and watch the birth of his grandchildren.

But for now he watches his loved ones in their present. He watches some continue on, others do not. And from his perch, and from what he learns, he comes to see how minuscule corporeal existence is. They are given a set amount of existence, and they must make the best with that.

So when he sees his loved ones stop living, he finds that bit of existence, that expanse of time, wasted. Why? he wonders. You must continue on. You don’t have much time.

Their suffering to him is meaningless, brought upon themselves. The point is to continue on. And yet they continue to chase their loss, their fear, their pain.

He watches as things change: the seasons, the circumstances, the people. He sees it all at once, and he comes to the understanding that all time exists in periods on a cycle. When one ends another begins, only slightly different than the first, and so on. It is therefore fruitless, he scolds them, to brood. Every new beginning comes from the end of another, and in the end all periods will come together and make sense.

And if you continue to live in the end you can never begin.

He watches. And waits. Perhaps this is just another period of the cycle, and it will end soon, allowing another to begin. Perhaps this is what they're waiting for. And perhaps he will come back then.

All things come to pass.

And there is plenty of time.

Chapter 1