We were prepping the device for its first real test when it went off, lighting up our test silo. Roy, my supervisor was the first to … to be converted. I saw the plasma hit him, and somehow go through him. As chain lighting, it arced among the best and brightest, and now least lucky, we had hired. In their place I saw the result — blackened creatures of unrelenting hunger. Lisa was the first to meet her doom and we saw the unrelenting hunger consume her.

We fled, and the consequences of our actions pursued. We will never outrun them. But the scope of the problem is beyond us. We can’t estimate its solution.

We separated in the parking lot. Our loved ones aren’t safe. OSHA wasn’t the best agency to contact, but their inspector was one of us, now.

With the crisis an hour behind me in the desert, I realized the error. 3.14 was too conservative. 3.15 would have worked. We didn’t properly close the circle we opened to hell.