Preface

Some stories cannot be finished. They can only be continued.

This book is a story. With people who see a little more than they’re supposed to and now have to learn to live with it — as a pair, as a trio, as a whole world.

Behind it stands a question that has not let me rest for several years: what if the ability to see how the world is built is a switch? One that someone, sooner or later, will flip.

Maybe you’ll think I’m fantasizing. Maybe I see a switch where there isn’t one. Maybe — and this is the most uncomfortable variant — the switch is real, but I’m speaking of it before anyone else sees it, which means I’m speaking into a void. The only thing worse than a scientist with an unprovable hypothesis is a writer with an era that hasn’t yet arrived.

It happens.