I'd seen the diagrams. The newspapers printed them as often as they
could find an excuse. Cross-section - two concentric speheres, the inner
with little fractures. Fancy labels, 'parallel dimension', 'time-space rifts',
'anomolous radio byproducts'. That diagram was the official theory. But
what's a theory? Fiction. Scientist writes fiction and they get to call it
theory.

I call it panacea, or opiate. You tell people the fiction enough times
and they'll start to think you've got it figured out. By extension they'll
probably think you've got a solution too.
'Don't worry about it dear, they've got a theory'

Back in reality, it's eating people. It's eating minds; and it's slowly
eating the planet. Wait. Slowly? Fuck that. I remember when the first one
went critical, we all thought it'd burn itself out somehow. That was the theory.
But it didn't. It grew.

There was another flux last week. Biggest one yet. Afghanistan went critical.
I mean the whole fucking country, one big Dark Zone. Afghanistan had one little
pinprick pissant Zone, but it exploded.

What's the population of Afghanistan? 20, 30 million? No saving them
now, and nobody tried. Pakistan, Russia and the US all got their soldier
men and just locked down the borders, quick-smart. 30 million souls trapped
in a Critical Zone.

From what I hear, there's safe pockets in there, and damn near the entire
population is crowded into them. But no-one's tried to evacuate them, so they're
dead. One by one, someone'll wander off and come back loony, kill a few people.
I give it a few months and a whole country is dead. And that's the best case
scenario.

If the Zone closes up on the safe holes, there'll be 30 million Affected
Afghanis banging on the gates. The borders won't hold, no way. Then a lot
more people die.

And if it can happen there, why not here? Or anwhere. And what can you do?
Nuke the survivors to save ... to save whom? Genocide is genocide, Affected or
not. Their concentric-sphere theory is for shit, it's not going to stop the
dying.

I've got a little theory of my own. Darkness, normal darkness is just the
absence of light. But this stuff goes through that and out the other side, and
comes alive.

It's not much of a theory. I don't care where it comes from though.
I make my living running through it, and one day we'll all be dead because
it.