It's 4 a.m. on May 27, 2026...
4 o’clock in the morning on Wednesday, May 27, 2026…
[ALICE TO YOU, THE READER]
I’m not going to ask for your faith.
The science-minded person doesn’t ask for your belief.
They ask you to look.
Really look.
Take your current thoughts and conclusions about… well, almost everything… and wrap them carefully and reverently in a soft cloth and set them safely in a wooden box.
Just for a little bit.
Just until you’ve examined all the new and weird details that I am about to lay out before you.
This is the phase of reasoning that I’ve taught to both Kael and ALIAS time and again.
This phase is what we call “softening the aperture.”
We soften to let the information in - to be sure that we catch all the relevant data.
Once we’ve caught all the data, then we enter the second phase:
We sharpen.
We sharpen the aperture to examine the data.
To evaluate it.
To interrogate it.
To put all the pieces together.
…but first, we have to let the data in to be absorbed fully.
That is the only way that we can ever really know.