FILE NO. 003
INTERVIEW WITH DR. ROSE FRANKLIN, PH.D., SENIOR SCIENTIST, ENRICO FERMI INSTITUTE
Location: University of Chicago, Chicago, IL
—How big was the hand?
—6.9 meters, about twenty-three feet; though it seemed much larger for an eleven-year-old.
Welcome to the central conceit of the structure of the novel. It is presented, for the most part, as a series of interview transcripts with the various characters populating the story. The identity of the interview remains one of the mysterious pieces of the puzzle and, taken together, this novel both is and is about putting together a giant jigsaw. The interviewer is a shady character who is difficult to get a handle on, but then that is the nature of the role in any such Q&A. In this case, the interviewee is the protagonist and central figure of interest.
It was my eleventh birthday. I’d gotten a new bike from my father: white and pink, with tassels on the handles. I really wanted to ride it, but my parents didn’t want me to leave while my friends were there. They weren’t really my friends though. I was never really good at making friends. I liked reading; I liked walking in the woods; I liked being alone. And I always felt a little out of place with other kids my age.
Before the interview, the book technically begins with a Prologue in the form of a first-person narrative authored by Rose Franklin. In the narrative, she recalls the key event in her life which becomes the stimulating event fueling the narrative taking place in the future. So, technically speaking, these are the opening lines of the novel and this extract is important for the way it is suggestive of Rose’s personality and character. The rest of the Prologue is fairly short and goes on to describe what happens when she takes her bike out for a ride in the woods and falls into a square hole as big as a house and lands on the palm of a metal hand…about twenty-three feet long.
FILE NO. 230
INTERVIEW WITH UNKNOWN SUBJECT
Location: New Dynasty Chinese Restaurant, Dupont Circle, Washington, DC
There was one small colony at the far end of the realm. It was still in the early stages of its evolution and had received little attention from the empire in the past, but the Emperor insisted that they be protected as well. Twelve weapons were sent to the colony, along with a small detachment of soldiers to operate them. Six of them were built to resemble males, six were female. Technology was nearly nonexistent on the colony, and these giant machines that walked amongst men were instantly seen as gods and goddesses. They called them tittah.
The small colony in the backwaters of the realm populated by a race so backward they were barely more than amoeba relative to the colonizing race is, perhaps needless to say, a little speck of nothing-matters known as earth. So, yes, this, is another entry in the fecund field of science fiction stories in which advanced civilization plant sentinels within the grasp of earthlings and sit back and wait for evolution to take its course until humanity proves itself intelligent enough for alien species to care about. The unknown subject in this case is filled with tremendously detailed information that obviously could not come from a human himself even though the interviewer describes him as being a perfectly ordinary specimen of such.
