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[i]“Alone. Yes, that's the key word, the most awful word in the English tongue. Murder doesn't hold a candle to it and hell is only a poor synonym.”[/i] -Stephen King

It seems a fear of the dark is innate in the human mind. It is surely a core part of childhood anxieties, so natural that if we ourselves do not remember crying out for our parents in the smothering black, we surely know someone who does. But for such a common thing, it is still a subject scholars fail to illuminate in full. They even fall short in agreeing on a name, throwing forth litanies amongst which words like nyctophobia, scotophobia, and lygophobia reside. It is typical thought that this root unease stems from dismay in abandonment, that the mind sees the dark as a barrier between them and those they love. Loneliness truly is a terrifying fact to behold, but I think it is not the worst horror that lurks in the shadows. No, true fear of the dark comes from knowing you really aren't alone, knowing that something lurks behind the voided veil that devours sight and surety. Something hiding in wait, watching your every move, and waiting for the moment when all hope is gone. In the dark, I would rather be alone. I would rather know the safety of nothingness is all I am blinded to see.

But I am not the teller of this story. I am not the one who holds the pen. No, the poor souls cursed to face this primal fear reside on a world far away, a world so very different than our own that one might say it defies all known laws of existence. It doesn't, of course, but one might certainly say it, and they wouldn't be wrong in thinking such a strange and twisted scape is both a miracle and freak of reality's oft insipid hordes. This place is Terminal, and in truth, people were never meant to live on it at all.

A toroidal planet orbiting a blue-white star, an eternal desert on its outer husk and a frozen pit in its core. Ionic storms rage along the poles, dividing the arid crust from the inner tundra, which, when combined with the staggering mountainous peaks, make travel between near-impossible. No life beyond the cellular should have been able to survive in this waste of a world. However, somehow, humans came to be. There is no history of how they arrived on Terminal, nor no record of how they made a city of the same name. Many have speculated. None could prove anything beyond theory. The only hallmark feat that stood in the civilization's past was the rise of the Technocrats and the lighting of the dark. A story to rival any Genesis, a group of scientist gods came together in mind and vision, and with their shared prowess, harnessed the power of the ionic storms. This was the birth of the city of Terminal, when heat and fluorescent glow pierced the frozen blackness in which humanity was bound. From this point on, guided by the glowing lamps above, technology seemed to grow with rapid prowess. Terminal flourished, and grew to sprawl the entirety of the planet's inner ring.

But darkness came again, now in the hearts of the humans who thought they had conquered it. The Technocrats withdrew into their Nexus fortress, lost in experiments and pondering, and left the running of their city to contracted businesses. Without the guiding sight of their gods, an anarchy of order came to being. Lawlessness, looting, crime running rampant in the grungy streets, ignored and even encouraged by the corporations in power. They were no longer sectors of government with noble goals, but now selfish mafias intent on extorting the pathetic toys they had inherited. Yes, the world was rich with progress, yes, there were great forces at work, but happiness was sucked from the spirits of the oppressed like the juice from a plump, ripe tomato. And as if this wasn't enough, a city of tyrants and hidden gods, the unexpected occurred. On one fateful day, the first blackout struck. The silence of shock lasted almost as long as the screams that followed.

It has been six months since the lights first faltered. In the passing time, the blackouts grew longer and longer, and the time between shorter and shorter. Still the Technocrats stay hidden in their Nexus, the only source of light in the dark besides the flashing of the ionic storms, and many have begun to wonder if they even still live. The devious have used the increasingly frequent eclipses to further their criminal pursuits, and the few sane and innocent left in the world huddle tight in rising terror. The shadows are coming. The lights will die.
We are not alone.

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