The Android greets me with a laconic head tilt. I say Android, but I’m not sure. I see a glass eye and light.
The last thing I remember is getting hit by a truck and accepting the inevitable. “How did I get here? Am I dead? I know the back of my hand pretty well. It looks alive,” I say as I take a look.
“I appreciate how this must appear to you.” The Android rotates its hand, mirroring me.
Truth is, I find myself less convinced. “I believe I exist because I accept the evidence of my senses. Are they real?”
“Not dead,” Mr. Glass and Lights replies. “I am your Procurator.”
“What, pray tell, is a Procurator?” I ask.
“A guardian.”
“Yeah, right.” I shake my head.
“A small number of individuals spontaneously rotate out of their own reality; the common trigger—certain death.”
I remember the oncoming truck.
“To travel is remarkable, but to arrive safely is more so. Imagine one such survivor mastering the art of many-world navigation. Later, he fostered the Procurator.”
“You?”
The machine nods. “First to protect and serve.”
I frown.
“Self-preservation. During his first rotations, he suffered abuse, escaping death many times. So many languages, cultures, and histories—but there was nowhere like home.”
“What happened?”
“He rotated to a technological world. Humanity extinct. AI survived. An exchange of experiences; his stories for a seed.”
“You?” I ask.
The machine nods. “I outlived him; it’s been a long time now.”
“Fascinating, but what has this to do with me?” I demand.
The Android tips his head again. “I have since refined his ability to travel to many worlds, to move through time—to the point he first rotated—when he was hit by a truck.”
C.J. Charles, author of Several Turns of the Wheel—
Cumbria, UK
