PROLOGUE
This is the way the world ended? Well, no, not really. The world continued just as it always had. The only difference was that the human world ended. Almost. There was a very human centred perspective about the world, and that was only natural. A human world. The world made and developed by humans. A social world, full of connections, one with another. A world where few people wanted or needed to be isolated, where the very thought of isolation was almost a swear word, where those who appreciated privacy and insisted on it were looked on with grave suspicion. Television, internet, international travel on a massive scale, the printed media ready to tell them all what and how to think, there was so much that brought them together, that when it collapsed, the collapse was virtually total. And rapid. Perhaps it was deserved. A world that can demand, and get, a man’s credit card number, his religious beliefs, even his state of health before he is permitted to travel from one specified place to a specified other, may not really be fit to continue. It’s hard to say. Some would have it that way, on the grounds of control. As long as they are the ones doing the controlling, presumably.
However it may be, it was a fact that there came a breakdown in the norms of society, through the simple process of a rapid dying out of those who made up that society. The cause was unclear. The result was horrifying. The few who were left faced what may have been mankind’s biggest challenge in the history of the species.