An ominous short story of first contact told by the visitors themselves. Memory is rewritten, truth erased, and their presence becomes eternal.
When the Watchers arrive, there is no fire in the sky, no sound of engines. There is only stillness. Streets, forests, and oceans fall silent as faces vast enough to hold entire continents gaze down on a world that does not yet understand it is being rewritten.
Through the Appointed Ones, the Watchers map every thought, memory, and story humanity has ever told itself. They give the gift of visions of possible futures, ideas that will one day be seen as genius, and solutions that will shape our future. But in return, they will take our history.
Told entirely from the Watchers’ collective point of view, The Watchers is an ominous, mythic science fiction story of memory, inevitability, and transformation. Told in seven haunting chapters, it unfolds more as a meditation than an invasion.
Fans of Ted Chiang’s Arrival, Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End, Becky Chambers’ A Psalm for the Wild-Built, and Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation will love this atmospheric, philosophical short story of first contact.
What you’ll find inside:
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A first contact story told entirely from the visitors’ perspective
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Lyrical, cinematic prose perfect for readers of visionary and metaphysical science fiction
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Themes of memory, continuity, and subtle transformation
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The 7 original illustrations that inspired the story
The Watchers is a story of quiet awe. Here, the most profound invasions happen not through war, but through memory, belief, and the rewriting of history. It's also the debut short story in a new collection known as Visions to Words: the author’s ongoing exploration of the place where images meet words, where reality meets unreality, and human imagination meets technology.