At an unknown time, out of an uncharted space, a mysterious creature, whose existence had never previously been reported, developed an interest in the way human beings thought about the future. The very word future was a relatively recent addition to humanity’s dictionaries, and its meaning had yet to fully take root in the minds of most on Earth. Granted, humanity’s study of the future was widely expanding, further beginning to propel entire societies forward, but this didn’t mean that the future’s fame and publicity had yet surpassed its obscurity.

One day, the creature sensed that something on Earth was unsettling. It was a calamitous shift in humankind’s collective picture of the future. The word future had never truly been synonymous with hope, yet it was an ominous portent that human beings were starting to become suspicious of all the promising power of the future. And for the first time, the creature felt its fascination begin to wither. It was because observing humanity’s evolution, propelled by their notion of the future, had always been one of the creature’s most amusing hobbies; perhaps it hoped that its own advanced universe could cross paths with the human world one day.

The remainder of this work will be included in the upcoming publication “The Vessel of Randomness: Three Short Stories on Futurity (nondesigncritic, 2026).”