Prologue

The morning sunlight streamed through the curtains, landing in a warm stripe across the bedside table.

A young woman lying on the bed reached out her right hand, fingers searching the familiar surface of the table for something that was not there.

The confusion that crossed her face was immediate — the particular disorientation of a person whose morning routine had been interrupted before it had even begun. She jolted upright, now fully awake and aware of her surroundings.

Grey and white dotted curtains. A small sturdy table on the right side of the bed by the window. A medium sized closet on the left, shortly followed by the bedroom door. The room was not large — three metres wide at most, compact and functional in the way that one bedroom apartments tended to be.

She sat still for a moment, blinking at the curtains.

Then it occurred to her. She was seeing them clearly. Every thread, every dot, every fold of fabric where the morning light caught the weave. Clearly, and without the pair of glasses she had just spent thirty seconds searching for.

Sighing, she pushed back the covers and padded out of the bedroom toward the bathroom. The apartment was small but complete — a living room, a kitchen, a storage room, a hallway, a separate bathroom and toilet, and the bedroom she had just left.

The bathroom was not attached to the bedroom, which on most mornings was a minor inconvenience and on this particular morning felt oddly fitting, as though even the short walk down the hallway was giving her time to adjust to something.

She entered the bathroom and looked into the mirror.

No glasses. Perfect, unaided clarity looking back at her.

A surge of memories from the night before came flooding in all at once.

Her last examination as a senior high school student, finished and done with. The walk home through damp streets after the rain.

Her father home earlier than expected, a smile that did not quite reach his eyes. Dinner, quieter than usual, with the television off. And then her parents — both of them, carefully, kindly — telling her that they had decided to separate.

That they had grown apart over the years, that every attempt to find their way back to each other had not worked, and that the decision had been made with love and with thought and with the two of them very much still a family in every way that mattered.

She had sat at the table and listened and said very little. She had helped clear the dishes. She had gone upstairs to her room, sat in her study chair, and looked out of the window at the rain soaked street below.

And then a sound echoed in her mind.

She had been bounded to a system.

A beautiful and famous system, it had called itself, with one singular purpose — to make her known to the world. It had rewarded her immediately with a newbie pack, and among the items inside had been two passive skills that were now, apparently, very much active.

Perfect Memory. Perfect Eyesight.

She reached out and turned on the tap.

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