The Everborn - Nicholas Grabowsky [27]
I could not release my gaze from his. I understood what he was saying to me, yet I could not feel any reaction to what he was saying, like the occasional times past when someone would talk to me and I was so incredibly tired or dazed I would find myself more attentive to who was talking rather than to what they were talking about. His words were seeping into me, however, and I would remember them enough to carry them with me as though what he said were to remain a part of my very existence for the remainder of my life and beyond into eternity.
He continued, and in doing so, he proceeded to explain what I did not know and what I already knew, my past, present, future, my situation with him and my destiny in the tasks which I have even then performed by my very presence there and the tasks that I was to perform still, for his sake, for the sake of my wife, myself, and for the sake of time untold.
***
He explained to me a few things. Only a few. Everything else I needed desperately to know would be explained to me soon, over the course of time and over the hours I would spend in the endeavor I was about to undertake, with his help, for his benefit and for the benefit of all involved. He was about to explain to me that I was about to do this for him and willingly, I might add, though the way he imposed this upon me came about so naturally that likewise naturally I could not refuse him. To refuse him was inevitably to refuse what I had come there for, or rather what he summoned me there for. I had come there for many reasons, but he, I found, had summoned me there for a matter of utmost importance, a matter I was as of yet very much unaware.
I was about to become aware.
And this was how the Watcher made me thus.
This was what he explained:
“Although you may not have said very much, you must have thought a great deal, ‘cause I’ve gotten a Goliath of a headache from your thoughts, Mister UFO Busybody, Mister Detective or Private Investigator or whatever you call yourself. For starters, don’t get the idea that I’ve achieved this mental capability from something as mundane or universal as evolution. I am not a being as simple as having been evolved from humanity’s future, am not an example of what you guys are gonna look like a thousand years from now, am not a volunteer space cadet on a rescue mission to preserve the species, any species, except maybe to preserve my own interests for the time being. Any preconceived notions you have learned or heard or yearned for can be put to rest right now, before we begin, before you fuck things up with limited vision and observation. You terrestrial people, for crissake...always looking for something beyond yourselves for the answers to everything. The answers are right where you are. Right where you’ve always been. And they’ve always been there with you.
“For instance, this reading of minds....you can do it, too. It’s not something the human mind will evolve into. It’s a matter of tapping your strengths. It’s a matter of needing to tap into your strengths to do so. It’s also a matter of fucking things up if you don’t know how to control it. People will learn all about that, in time. Don’t try too hard to harness it. Remember, everything is meant to be.
“Oh... you haven’t learned that yet, have you? Don’t worry, I’ll teach you all about things meant to be. That’s pretty much the core of why I’ve sent for you.
“You see, there is something I need you to do for me. That is where this business of typewriters comes in, that is the purpose of that typewriter at the desk behind you. Funny things, typewriters. Typewriters, computers, word processors, the pen. Not just mightier than the sword, I should say. They’re mightier than diddlydamn Doomsday. Words and the conveying of words, thoughts which are essentially preconceived words, communication, all are the building blocks of the universe. AND