Prologue

"Hey, where are you taking me?!" The words dashed from her lips, her native tongue echoing off the walls. The combination of sounds and clicks of her tongue danced across her ears, and the burlap sack covering them. Her eyes were shut, the sack clawing at her eyelids.


She found herself walking forward, through no will of her own. Her hands clasped each other behind her back, holding themselves in place. She couldn't fight her own body. Her mouth closed itself, not budging to let her speak again. She wasn't in control of herself. She picked up to a jog, dashing down the dark streets of her home. She thought she would never see it again. She thought right.


After several hours of running, her body aching from the physical strain she had never before put on herself, she stopped. Her body sat in the dirt, hands wandering up to her face. She pulled the bag off of her head, the uncomfortable fabric no longer scratching her flesh. Her lips opened, and she was able to speak once more. "Where am I?" She whispered to herself.


"You are nowhere. You are everywhere." Words blasted down from the heavens, unknown in origin. "Less cryptic, please?" She asked. "I cannot simplify that any further."


"Okay, where am I going?"


A mumble came from the darkened sky, a sound she had never heard before. "Roughly translated, Appaloosa Fields. This language does not have the word I require to tell you where you are going."


"Where's that?"


"Earth." She had never heard of anything with that name, but she knew it must be somewhere. Unless the Voice was planning to kill her. She hoped not. "Where's that?" She tried again.


The Voice sighed. Lightning flashed in the distance. "About seventy-three light-years from here."


"We're going into space?" She gulped. She knew there were planets out there, both like and unlike her home. Maybe this one would be like the planet she was born on. "Indigenous beings: The Sim race. Their world is very similar to yours. There is one major difference."


"And that is?"


"These people are very different than you. Very different. I'll let you find out how. Just... put that sack back on."


"No!" She screeched, appalled. "Why are you bringing me somewhere else? Why me? Why not my sister, or my brother-in-law, or that girl down the street that I hate? Why does anyone have to go at all?"


"I guess I'll have to force you then." Her hands began acting of their own will again, and nothing she could do would stop it. The sack was forcefully pulled over her head, her eyes shrouded in darkness once more.