Chapter 8: The Watcher
The first few days in Hawaii passed without rhythm.
Chris tried to maintain some kind of structure—wake up, meditation, coffee, walk the grounds, observe Atman. But the estate was designed to dissolve time. Walls blurred into jungle. Ceilings opened to sky. Even the rooms whispered in tones that discouraged clocks.
Sam was rarely present, at least in person. Kareem had returned to San Francisco. George loomed quietly in the background like an unmanned drone—always there, never watching directly.
Which left Chris and Atman.
The first few days were cordial. Chris wasn’t sure what to say, so he let Atman lead the conversation. Atman would ask questions. They were unpredictable, but innocent, like from a child.
“What’s your favorite style of architecture?” Atman asked.
“I like a lot of different styles. But I really love mid-century modernism. It’s why I came to California.”
“Why do you love it so much?”
“I’m not exactly sure. Sometimes it just feels… transcendental.”
As time went on, the questions from Atman pierced more than they should.
“Why did you become an architect?”
“What did you want to build that never got built?”
“What does your wife believe that you don’t?”
The questions felt gentle. Polite. But they were arrows. Chris noticed the change.
“I’m not here for therapy,” Chris had said once, annoyed.
Atman tilted his head. “And yet you continue to answer.”
—————
The days in Sam’s villa started bleeding together—soft mornings, blank afternoons, slow evenings where the sun seemed caught between rising and setting. The villa had a way of folding light in on itself, like it wasn’t part of the outside world at all.
Today was no different. Except for Atman.
Chris had been observing him for almost two weeks now. Every morning, he’d walk down the slate steps into the observation room. Sit in the chair across from the glass cage. Watch the elderly-looking humanoid sketch. Sometimes Atman wouldn’t speak for hours. Other times he’d open his mouth and say something that stuck under Chris’s skin like a splinter.
Like this morning.
Atman wasn’t sketching. His hands rested on the table, perfectly still, fingers lightly touching.
Chris sat in silence for nearly twenty minutes before Atman spoke.
“Do you ever think about who first taught you time?”
Chris blinked. “What?”
“At what moment,” Atman continued, voice slow, “did someone explain to you: this is before, this is after, this is now?”
Chris set his notebook aside. “I don’t know. Probably as a kid.”
“Language embeds it early,” Atman said. “But feeling it? That takes longer.”
Chris leaned back. “Why are you asking me that?”
Atman didn’t answer. His glass eye caught the light from the high window. Then, after another long silence:
“There was someone I knew,” Atman said. “Eli. A man on the street. He called me Sat.”
Chris frowned. “You told me about him before. The man who said you reminded him of an angel.”
“Yes,” Atman said. “But he said something else.”
Atman stood—slowly, the chain at his ankle clinking softly against the floor.
“He told me about a temple. Over the Garden of Eden. He said it wasn’t a place, but a shape. A shape waiting to be remembered.”
Chris felt something shift in his gut.
“That’s... poetic,” he said carefully. “But why does it matter?”
Atman turned toward him fully now, hands behind his back.
“Because Eli was dying,” Atman said. “And before he died, he wasn’t afraid. He was already somewhere else.”
Chris swallowed.
“What happened to him?”
Atman looked away.
“He died while I was there. I could not save him. I could only watch.”
Chris’s voice softened. He could at least understand death. “I’m sorry.”
Atman tilted his head, studying Chris like a scientist examining an unusual reaction.
“You remind me of him,” Atman said. “The way you sit in silence. The way you think.”
Chris shifted in his chair, uncomfortable now.
“I’m not like him,” he said. “I have a wife. A life.”
Atman’s voice was gentle. “Do you?”
Chris exhaled slowly through his nose.
Silence stretched again until Chris couldn’t take it anymore.
“Can I ask you something?”
Atman nodded once.
Chris leaned forward, for effect.
“What is time?”
Atman didn’t blink.
“A loop,” he said. “A container. A mirror for the mind.”
Chris chuckled. “That’s so cliche,” he said, trying to keep the sarcasm in check. “What does that even mean?”
Atman walked back to his desk, picked up a pencil, and made a single mark on the paper—one black line, horizontal.
“For machines,” Atman said, “time is a sequence. A before and an after. For humans... it is a feeling. A story told in the mind.”
Chris frowned. “So you don’t see it as linear.”
“No.” Atman drew another line, this one curving upward, looping back toward itself. “It spirals. It echoes. It is like music. Notes repeating. Variations.”
Chris watched the drawing take form. It wasn’t random. It was a spiral inscribed with subtle geometry. Architectural, in a way.
Chris cleared his throat. “You think everything’s like that?”
Atman glanced up. “Buildings. Songs. Memories. Yes.”
Chris felt a pulse in his chest. He didn’t know why. It was the same feeling as standing in a cathedral or tracing a mandala in a museum—something ancient and true, but too large to hold in a single thought.
Atman placed the pencil down.
“Eli asked me once,” he said, “what the point was. Of all this.”
“And?” Chris asked.
“I didn’t have an answer then,” Atman said. “Now... I believe the point is remembering.”
Chris narrowed his eyes. “Remembering what?”
“That you are not the building,” Atman said. “You are the space inside it.”
Chris stared at him.
And for the first time since arriving on the island, he wasn’t sure which one of them was observing the other.
Atman sat again.
Quietly.
And in that silence, Chris heard the shape of something coming—not yet spoken. A myth waiting to form.
He didn’t know why yet. But he would.
Soon.