Just because I did good doesn’t mean I don’t feel bad, because the feeling bad, it’s not particularly because of anything that’s happened, it’s just … - Adrian Tchaikovsky

He seemed dead, but perhaps “dead” meant something different. Perhaps it meant something less permanent.

I am nothing but a scientist of sufficiently advanced technology, which is to say a magician.

But haven’t you heard? We’re in a collapsing climate disaster. The Zone’s just one part of it. Collapsing as in, all our usable biomes crunching together as the heat pushes out from the equator. And you’ve all seen how that goes. Everything wants to live. People move north and south, animals move north and south, diseases move north and south. Waves of epidemics as all those people and animals and microbes mix in new configurations. Every year a new wave of hospitalisations from some fresh plague that’s mutating to survive the conditions we’re imposing on the world.