The typical backstory: a watcher of clocks in the before times. Consciousness: the predator we feed indiscriminately before we learn better. Which is to say, time is the water that envelops us before we learn to swim. It takes time, however, to realize our mind’s drowning. When we do, we’re liable to jump out, choosing to watch the waves pass to and from the shore at a safer distance. But eventually, as the saying goes, life catches up—and the erosion always reaches you. Until, finally, even your once-safe vantage becomes too steep, and suddenly you find yourself immersed in something both universal and universally strange. Now life really begins.