The clip was created by the Japanese animation studio Gonzo and director Soejima Yasufumi. The video's executive producer, Joey Goubeaud of Amusement Park Media, coordinated the efforts between DREAM THEATER and Gonzo. According to a posting on ANN, the band based the song on Ivan Turgenev's "Phantoms", a short story about an enigmatic woman who haunts a man as he travels the world. However, instead of the 19th century setting of the short story, the band agreed with Soejima's decision to place the music video in a future science-fiction setting. Soejima said the video's male lead is an innocent man abandoned and jailed by an "inhumane world." The female lead (who is described as "an apparition, a restless soul, an evil spirit, a sylphide, a vampire" or something else entirely in Turgenev's story) is "an android that was made as the toy of [an] ancient regime."