Chapter 1: Curtain Up

I AM NO GOD OF THE STAGE

Every time he survives, the bill comes due.

After the red meteor crossed the sky, the world stopped making things. No new engines, no new aircraft — nothing that flies. The science that held civilization up came down in a single night, and the Grey came in behind the meteor: a second city laid over this one, visible only at the edge of vision.

The dead do not always stay where they are put. In Meridian, some of them walk home. The people who buried them are still in the houses.

In this age, a human life is dust. In this age, humans are the stars.

And on the rubble of the old world a figure in a red coat stands with his arms wide, laughing one minute and weeping the next, while the house lights go down behind him.

Curtain up.