Dayton Scott sat in front of the big picture window that looked out from his study across the sea of lights from the city below. He had sat in this same chair many times over his seventy-two years. He could still remember sitting on his father’s lap, looking out this same window as his father read to him. He remembered how much smaller Vancouver had been back then. It had just started to bloom, like a rose that had opened up just enough to show its true colors. Nothing more than a distant clump of lights in the night back then, but still a beacon of hope for a world just starting to be reborn. Now the lights filled the entire valley below. Now it was a blazing symbol of prosperity, of accomplishment, and of anticipation of things yet to come. He could still hear his father’s voice telling him, “Things are already changing, Dayton. By the time you’re my age, everything will be completely different. It’s a great time to be alive, my boy!”

His father had been right, everything had changed. Things he couldn’t have imagined in his wildest dreams had not only come to be, but were no longer considered wondrous. When he was born, they had just started flying around in propeller-driven aircraft. Now they were building faster-than-light space ships that could take them away from Sol and out to the long lost colonies of Earth. But that sudden, meteoric rise in technology had come at a price. And it was a price he was desperately trying to prevent his world from having to pay.

“Dayton,” his wife beckoned as she entered the room. “We have a house full of guests and you’re hiding in here?” When he failed to offer a response, she became concerned and moved across the study to stand at his side. “What are you doing?”

“Just looking out the window, my dear.”

“Dayton,” she teased, “are you nervous?”