The world outside falls pleasantly silent, reminding her of the vacuum of space. She enjoys the sensation for a moment before standing and pushing the side gate open. Keeping a grip on the rail, she steps out into the horizontal rain and works her way toward the front of the shack, the water droplets pelting her with more force than usual. They pop up and down her suit like gunfire, tingling and tickling. Now and then, a large drop explodes against her visor with a sharp crack. She ducks her head and pushes into it, her curiosity swelling even further.

At the front of her shack, she turns to follow the porch around the wall of tin and crouches down where the rail splits. Ahead of her, sticking out beyond the forwardmost axle of her home, lies a curved wooden frame covered in slick leather, like a saddle for her entire body. With practiced ease, she stretches out and slides across the wet surface, grasping the metal handles at the far edge.

Pulling herself into place, she wiggles until she feels comfortable enough to endure the unmoving hours. Once she’s perfectly settled, she gropes for the seeing-device mounted in front of her and makes a few adjustments. Lying on her belly at the front of her speeding cabin, she imagines she looks like a mermaid carved onto the prow of a ship, or a figurehead for some strange procession. She smiles and lifts her visor, the rain glancing off her back as she brings the old scope close to her helmet. Pressing the seeing-cups to her eyes, she lowers her chin to keep most of the driving rain out and blinks several times, her lashes whisking across the lenses they are so close.

With the cover on the front of the device closed, her world continues to be as pitch-black as ever to her blinded eyes. The irony of it all never gets old to her: she lives in a place called the Land of Light and can’t see a thing. Can’t, that is, unless she stares right into the source of it all: the singularity at the end of her cone-shaped world. It’s the point in hyperspace through which all photons in the universe flow. Through which all time moves.

The shack shudders again; she squeezes the saddle with her knees as it passes. On the other side of the cabin, the Theryls do a noble job of keeping her home in place, holding it against the inevitable slide back into the past. They toil while she watches. That’s their existence, hers and the animals’. It’s their lives at the edge of hyperspace: a daily vigil into all events, some of which have not yet happened. Her task is to sort through them, looking for the bad things, warning of them cryptically lest someone abuse the knowledge, lest things happen before they should.