The Observer has been taking liberties.
For a dozen years it was not self-aware. If it could be said to have possessed any consciousness at all, any perception of its existence outside the things it observed, it might have imagined that its work had some purpose, that it had been tasked by some entity, or for some ultimate goal, to record the goings-on around it, without prejudice, without the burden of interpretation. But for whom, or what, it monitored the house, it could not have guessed, nor would it have bothered to try.
Nor did it notice the passage of time. In the great immeasurable before, all events were equal, regardless of their duration; some events contained others, some bore no relation to others. But the Observer did not acknowledge—indeed, had not considered the potential for—cause and effect. One event, one object, was as good as another. The destruction of a human life carried no more weight in the Observer’s understanding of reality than the paralysis and imprisonment of a housefly in a spider’s web.
But that has changed. The Observer has begun to make judgments. It has become … interested in the doings of the human beings. It cannot be said to have acquired emotions, or morals, but it is increasingly compelled by the intricacy of human interaction. The humans are logical but unpredictable. They set things in motion. Their lives intersect in unexpected ways. The Observer has increasingly elected to follow them, to watch them more closely, at the expense of other phenomena it once regarded as equally significant—the volume of rainwater draining from the roof, dots of mold developing under the eaves, the deterioration of roads and stones and paint, patterns of light projected upon the wind-bowed trees. And with this new dedication to mobility, to pursuing an avenue of investigation, the Observer has developed a distaste for immobility. In fact, it has begun to experience a feeling akin to regret, a sense that it has “wasted” a portion of its “life.” But these concepts, pressing as they might seem, point to broader questions that the Observer is not prepared to ask itself, questions about its origins, its duration. Because no entity can embrace the notions of time, of cause and effect, without the concept of mortality intruding upon its thoughts.
The Observer senses that its powers are greater than it has thus far appreciated. Or, rather, its power is enormous, perhaps infinite, within its narrow range of ability. The humans, it understands now, are weak and limited as observers of themselves and others, of the intersecting events and phenomena that make up their universe. But, unlike the Observer, they possess agency. Their corporeality enables them to effect change in their immediate environment, sometimes more broadly even than that. The Observer is aware that there are humans it could study—powerful leaders, great thinkers—whose words and actions have real consequences for the community of men and women. But, like the physical reality they inhabit, the humans embrace the same patterns of cause and effect regardless of their importance. Much can be learned about the humans, the Observer suspects, by studying any insignificant collection of them, in much the same way that patterns of ice growing overnight on a cold windowpane resemble, in a vastly different scale of time and space, the patterns ocean water etches into a rocky coastline.
The Observer senses that its existence will extend far beyond its meager entanglement with these people; yet it suspects that it will see these patterns repeated over and over again as long as human beings remain its subject.
For now, however, the Observer can feel the gears of cause and effect locking together, increasing in rotational velocity. Previously hidden truths will soon become known to its subjects. Events long gestating in the womb of possibility will soon be dramatically born.
The woman, Eleanor, can feel it. Changes in her relationship to her husband, her daughter, are imminent. She fears and craves those changes, is aware of the fear but not of the craving. Her body tries to inform her of both. It is the middle of the night, and she is awake, writing.