The Short Life

A nonhuman intelligence urgently selects a living host but an error during implantation leaves a flawed result. The narrative follows a child born apparently congenitally impaired whose mind awakens with unnerving precocity and a traumatic memory of death, destabilizing his mother and provoking his father's decision to have him institutionalized. The story contrasts maternal denial with subconscious revelation, traces the child's rapid sensory and associative learning, and suggests that the alien's mistake has unpredictable, potentially dangerous consequences for the family.