Prologue

Once upon a time, the Universe happened. At some later unspecified date, possibly on a Tuesday, people happened. No one has yet been able to determine if that is a good thing.

On most civilized worlds, it is generally agreed upon that both of these things did actually occur, except by the Flavian philosopher Magros, whose followers suspect it is all a conspiracy to make them believe that they do, in fact, exist.

Most of the rest of the people of the universe like to argue about how it all actually happened. They also like to pretend to kill each other in various creative ways using video controllers, and to sit in dark, crowded rooms where they watch other people pretending to kill each other on large screens. This is because actually killing people is usually regarded as a very rude thing to do and results in not getting invited to as many parties.

It also tends to reduce the number of people available with whom one can argue about various things. Many of the inhabitants of many of the universe's planets haven't worked out that last bit, and go on actually killing each other, in addition to pretending to kill each other. Many of the inhabitants of many of the universe's planets aren't terribly bright, in spite of having invented cell phones, which is considered by some to be a measure of a civilization's relative intelligence.

In fact, whenever someone does manage to work out these things, they are generally scoffed at until someone gets around to nailing them to something. Then the people who did the nailing go about doing things as they'd always done them as if nothing had ever actually happened.

On many planets, the easiest way to get yourself killed is to provide its inhabitants with new information. They simply don't have a place for it in their brains. That is why The Veil works so well.

The Veil is a web of sound waves encircling certain planets – Earth, for instance – which has the ability to communicate with the inhabitants by means of subliminal whispers. In the listener's primary language, The Veil says things like, “You didn't see that pink spaceship,” or “You don't really believe gaunt-faced androgynous aliens are traipsing around Alabama in glittering body suits, do you?”

It works very well, because the average Earthperson would rather not believe he had seen a pink spaceship or an alien resembling David Bowie circa 1972.

The average Earthperson is fairly happy going about life without the slightest inkling that the solar system surrounding his little blue planet is positively brimming with life, much of it with terrible fashion sense.

In fact, one old gentleman who went deaf in such a way that The Veil could no longer communicate with him, actually went stark raving mad. He wasn't particularly bothered by finding a party going on around the planet, but he absolutely could not deal with discovering the sun was a warm shade of red-orange. He'd always been told it was yellow, simply yellow, and wasn't prepared for any colors more complicated than that.

At the height of his madness, he attempted to jump out of a 42nd-story building, but was prevented from completing his fall by the sudden appearance of a large Cerulean Dodo. It is an odd-looking creature, resembling a constipated, and very confused, ostrich. Over the last decade alone, it has been sighted several hundred times, but since human beings are not a race to let physical evidence get in the way of not believing in dodos, everyone is in denial and the bird continues to multiply unchecked. The old man spent his last days babbling to himself about color mixtures and became quite an oracle for interior designers. All in all, he was pretty much the average Earthperson.

Tom Collins, however, was not an average Earthperson. In fact, Tom Collins was not an Earthperson at all. Not technically, anyway.