* * *

…This manuscript was found in a half-broken desolated bungalow on the island of San-Sebastian – one of the last strongholds and shelters of Mankind in the hard, troubled times after the Great Break. Banished from the cities, left to their own resources, – some gave in to the persuasions of the Avoiders of Objects (the Empters) and emigrated after signing the contract; some adapted to the new lifestyle, quickly losing restraining moral factors. And some went away to the rapidly developing hotbeds of the Necrosphere, and their further fate remained unknown. In that time few had associated the forming of the Necrosphere with the Great Emigration caused by the signing of the contract between man and Empter…

The manuscript itself was almost rotten, so that there was impression that its pages had been in the water for a long time, and what remained was written in a clumsy, uneven handwriting, as if it was hard for him who had written it to hold a pen in his hands – or whatever had he held it in, he who had written this tale too similar to a true story…