Prologue: Prisoner

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"Our sun is one of 100 billion stars in our galaxy. Our galaxy is one of billions of galaxies populating the universe. It would be the height of presumption to think that we are the only living things in that enormous immensity."

-Wernher von Braun

From the far away surface of planet Earth, the stars are like magic

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From the far away surface of planet Earth, the stars are like magic.

Gold and azure and ethereal silver orbs of pure light, dancing across the black of the night sky.
They paint pictures and tell stories, a celestial game of connect-the-dots. Stars are the stuff of myth and legend, the stepping stones of the heavens that children dream to walk on, brushing their fingers against the moon along the way.

If only they knew.

If only they all knew the deceit of the stars, of the moons and all the galaxies.

If only they knew like you know.

Icy metal bites into the skin of your wrists, burning the already raw flash there. As you're pulled forward with harsh urgency through a tunnel of scrap metal, heating panels spread here and there to offer some pitiful protection against the freezing temperatures outside, you let your head droop forward tiredly.

How have you come to this?

Surrounded by jagged metal pounded together in a permanently makeshift manner, chained and trapped and imprisoned.

Far, far away from the place you know as home.

The panels emitting that blessed heat are tucked haphazardly along the tunnel, casting a reddish-orange glow across the reflective grey of the handcuffs circling your wrists, making them glow like embers.

Looking ahead of you, you can see where the tunnel curves off, blocking the final destination from your view. Behind you is the frigid black entrance to the dingy ship you've just come out of, spurts of frosty air blowing out from the entrance.

It's been days since you've slept.

The handcuffs are too tight on you, barely allowing any circulation to make it through to your hands. The ache has been a constant presence in the back of your mind, bullied to a tiny corner by the fear eating you alive.

You're going to die.

That's all you can think. That's all you've been able to think for the whole time you've been here.

How long has it been?

You can't remember how long the handcuffs have been clasped around your abused wrists - a week, a month, a year? A long time. Long enough that you know for the rest of your pithy life, you'll have two scarlet bracelets of scar tissue around each wrist.

The handcuffs trail off of a long metal chain, grasped in the massive, dinner plate-sized hands of Thing.

That's what you've been calling the creature for the time you've been trapped here.

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