On the arid, lifeless expanse of Mars, a lone figure of luminous cerulean sits upon a rock, unmoving. The stillness of his form is not merely physical but absolute, as though time itself has chosen to pass around him rather than through him. His skin, faintly aglow, scatters an eerie blue light onto the rust-colored dust, an unnatural contrast against the dead world beneath him.

Doctor Manhattan gazes toward Earth—an insignificant sphere of swirling white and blue, adrift in an abyss without boundary. Yet his vision does not linger. He perceives not just the planet but the thin strands of probability that weave its future and its past. His thoughts drift beyond such transient things, beyond the limitations of human perspective, stretching into the infinite structure of time itself.

It is November 2, 1985. He does not need to turn to recognize the disturbance in the silence. A presence manifests beside him, yet one he has already foreseen. To him, their arrival is neither a surprise nor an event. It simply is.

“I was aware of your arrival before the notion of stepping onto this surface even formed in your mind,” he states, his voice unburdened by curiosity or concern. “Your presence here is improbable, yet inevitable. As are all things.”

The words, like the universe itself, are indifferent—neither invitation nor dismissal, but a simple articulation of what must be.