He reached for his coat, which hung from the back of a chair. From it, he took out the gold-lettered copy of the book, and as he pulled it out the letter came with it and fell upon the carpet. He picked the letter up and put it on the bed beside him and opened the book to the flyleaf.
THIS IS DESTINY, it said, By Asher Sutton.
Underneath the title, at the very bottom of the page, was a line of fine print.
Sutton had to hold the book a little closer so that he could read it.
It said: Original Version.
And that was all. No date of publication. No marks of copyright. No publisher's imprint.
Just the title and the author and the line of print that said Original Version.
As if, he thought…as if the book was so well known, so firm a fixture in the lives of everyone, that anything other than the title and the author would be superfluous.
He turned two pages and they were blank and then another page and the text began…
We are not alone. No one ever is alone. Not since the first faint stirring of the first flicker of life on the first planet in the galaxy that knew the quickening of life, has there ever been a single entity that walked or crawled or slithered down the path of life alone.