Prologue
I stood behind a view panel, staring breathlessly at the colossal system of interconnected spheres on the other side of the glass barrier. My palms were sweaty, my heart thrummed uncomfortably, and I fought the urge to shift my stance every twelve seconds.
There it is. Everything I’ve been waiting for.
My mouth was dry and hanging open. The light of the type-G star glistened off the white hulls of the spheres, and I sighed wistfully at the site. A faint metallic groan sifted through the walls, but I paid no attention to it.
It’s almost time.
A door whooshed open behind me, dragging a faint sterile breeze into the room. A garbled, waterlogged voice tried to say something to me, but I ignored it in favor of soaking up a few more moments of staring out at the spheres.
Here I go.
Chapter One: Garden Snakes
The sun never fully rose and it never fully set, perpetual morning painting the round sky. I was hardly ever tired and almost always cheery. People wandered around in bright clothes, stopping randomly to stack blocks or share snacks or paint the grass purple and blue. The trees smiled at me, the beetles chuckled at my jokes, and the grasshoppers always wanted to see whatever I brought to show them. The birds gave me hugs whenever I wanted, the foxes cuddled next to me on the rare occasions I felt the urge to rest, and the raccoons were excellent storytellers.
I don’t know how many days passed. I didn’t care about time or days or seasons.
Every once in a while, a thought would slither into my brain about where I was or what I was doing, but it always slithered out before I could catch it. Once it was gone, I forgot all about it until it happened again. At some point, however, I realized it was happening more frequently.
“What are you?” I asked one day as I laid on a tuft of grass, my knees bouncing against each other and my arms tucked behind my head. “Are you a garden snake? I heard they’re supposed to be harmless. Are you harmless?”
The slithering thought didn’t respond.
A beetle crawled onto my leg and begged me for a joke, so I didn’t get back to the slithering thought until all my jokes were exhausted. I might have gone on forgetting about the wayward thought entirely if it hadn’t slithered through my brain once more.
I found myself growing a little irritated, which was a new sensation for me. Why wouldn't the wayward thought leave me alone? Why did it want to complicate things?
“What is it you want, little garden snake?” I huffed, rolling onto my side so I could pluck out a few blades of grass. “Are you even supposed to be here? You’re not like everyone else. You’re not easy to understand, and I don’t think I like you. You should leave me alone.”
And so the slithering thoughts stopped for a time, and I eventually forgot all about them as I continued listening to raccoons and exchanging goofy grins with trees.
But they didn’t disappear forever. They waited, patiently, until I was ready.
One day after waking from a particularly satisfying nap next to a fluffy fox, I realized that something was different. I knitted my brows together and tried to figure out what it was. The grass was still green. People still wandered around in bright clothes. A bird still hopped onto my shoulder and nuzzled me with its beak.
What could it be? Nothing’s changed, even though I know something has.
I stared at my hands, studying the grooves of my skin and curvature of my nails.
I’m still me, aren’t I?
I stayed that way, confused and anxious and staring at my hands, for an hour.
An hour.
Since when did I know what time was? I glanced up at the never-changing sky—and gasped! The sound was so harsh that it sent the grasshoppers into the ground and the birds skittering away to the trees.
The sun was in the west now.
It’s never in the west.
My gaze, pulled down by some cosmic force I didn’t understand, landed on the soft grass in front of me. There, not five feet away, stood an imposing metal door framed by nothing but sky and anxiety.
The grass shivered suddenly, and I jumped to my feet in surprise. Grass didn’t move like that. The ground rumbled in response, and the sky grew dark. Delicate water droplets patted my head and tickled my ears. The wind glided across my skin, pulling the cold with it. I shivered and hugged myself.
“What is this?” I shouted to no one. “I don’t understand!”
The wind turned more forceful, pushing me forward. The grass undulated back and forth, and a strange hissing noise escaped from between the blades.
Except they weren’t blades of grass.
They were garden snakes.
Every single thought that had slithered into my brain was now out in the open.
They began to move as one, wrapping around my legs and tugging me toward the daunting metal door.
“I don’t want to go!” I screamed. “I’m not ready yet!”
But the winds grew fiercer, the sky hardened, and every droplet of rain stung as it slapped against my skin.
The metal door opened with a mechanical whoosh, and strange light poured in, obscuring my vision.
With one last collective heave, the garden snakes shoved me through the doorway.
